The Mystery of Death Trap Mine Page 3

  “It was not me,” the boys heard the housekeeper say. “I did not shoot the gun.”

  Bare feet thudded on the stairway, and there was a pounding at the door. “Hey, you guys!” It was Allie. “Did you hear that?”

  The Three Investigators got into robes and went out on the landing. Allie was kneeling at the window there with her elbows on the sill. “It’s Thurgood!” whispered Allie. “I’m sure that shot came from Thurgood’s place. And look!”

  Pete went to the window. “What is it?” he asked.

  Allie pointed across to Mrs. Macomber’s house. The woman on the porch turned, went inside, and shut the door.

  “The sound woke Mrs. Macomber,” Allie pointed out. “And it woke the dog. He barked. And it woke us. But it didn’t wake Thurgood. At least he didn’t put on any lights and he didn’t go out to calm the dog down. I’ll bet it was him shooting!”

  “Allie!” Harrison Osborne’s voice came from below. “What are you doing up there?”

  “Just seeing what I can see,” called Allie. She got up and went to the top of the staircase. “Uncle Harry, I’m sure that was Wesley Thurgood shooting.”

  “Allie,” said her uncle wearily, “you’re getting to be a nut about Thurgood. It was

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  probably somebody out hunting jack rabbits or coyotes.”

  “Who?” demanded Allie. “From here I can see all the way to the hills. There isn’t anybody out. Besides, if there’s a coyote around, wouldn’t he be trying to get at our chickens?”

  “Not if somebody shot at him first,” said Uncle Harry. “Now you come down here and go back to bed, and let the boys get their sleep.”

  “Oh, blast!” exclaimed Allie.

  She had started down the stairs when Jupe suddenly called her back to the window.

  Thurgood had appeared in the clearing near his cabin. A shotgun was cradled in his arms. The boys saw him gaze at the hills across the road from his property. Then he put the gun to his shoulder, took aim, and fired.

  Again the sound of a shot broke the night stillness. Again the dog howled. Thurgood went to him and patted him on the head. He quieted, and Thurgood disappeared into his cabin.

  “You were right about one thing, Allie,” said Pete. “It was Thurgood.”

  “And it looks like your uncle was right about another,” Bob pointed out. “He must have been firing at a coyote.”

  Allie made an indignant noise and flounced down the stairs.

  “Allie sure has it in for Thurgood,” said Bob, as he padded back into the bunkroom. “No matter what he does, she decides he’s up to no good.”

  Jupiter got into bed. “I think that if I owned a mine, I would escort Allie Jamison on an inspection tour so that she could satisfy her curiosity,” he said. “It would be so much easier than making an enemy of her.”

  Bob and Pete climbed into bed, and in a few minutes their steady breathing told Jupe that they were asleep. But Jupiter found himself oddly wakeful. The First Investigator lay in the darkness and listened to the wind rustle the Christmas trees.

  Finally Jupe sat up. “Where was Thurgood when he fired that first shot?” he said aloud.

  “Hm?” Pete turned over in bed.

  “Who … what?” said Bob.

  “Where was Thurgood when he fired the first shot?”

  “The first shot?” said Pete. “In his house, I suppose.”

  “Did you see him come out?” Jupe asked. “Did you see him come into the yard before that second shot?”

  “No, I guess not. I was watching Allie.”

  “So was I,” said Jupe. “Bob, did you see where Thurgood came from before he fired again?”

  “No, I didn’t,” said Bob.

  “So he could have been anyplace,” Jupe concluded. “I don’t think he was in his house. The first shot was muffled, so much so that I wasn’t even sure it was a shot. The second one was clearer and it sounded nearer. I think Thurgood was in the mine when he fired that first shot.”

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  “So what?” asked Pete.

  “Nothing, perhaps,” said Jupe, “except that I don’t think there was a coyote. The dog would have barked at a coyote, and we would have heard him. But the dog didn’t bark until after the shot. What if Thurgood shot at something in the mine and then came out and found that the noise had roused the neighbours. Suppose he didn’t want anyone to know he was shooting in the mine. What would he do?”

  The other two boys didn’t answer.

  “Wouldn’t he stand out in the open and shoot again’” asked Jupe. “Wouldn’t he want it to appear that he was shooting at a coyote?”

  “You’re getting as bad as Allie,” said Bob.

  “That may be,” Jupe admitted. “But it is also possible that there is something a bit odd about Mr. Thurgood. Perhaps Allie does have a case after all!”

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  Chapter 5

  The Forbidden Mine

  When Jupe woke to see sunshine, his suspicions of the night before seemed ridiculous. He dressed and went down to the kitchen, where Bob and Pete were already eating. Uncle Harry sat at the head of the table, and Magdalena was at the stove pouring pancake batter onto a griddle.

  Pete lifted a hand in greeting. “Allie’s out riding and we were about to come up and wake you,” he said. “Today we get to do our stuff with the machetes.”

  “That will be a change,” said Jupe.

  “A change from what?” asked Uncle Harry.

  “From moving junk around The Jones Salvage Yard!” Jupe told him.

  “I hope you enjoy it.” Uncle Harry smiled. “I do. It’s kind of creative to think that you’re carving a Christmas tree. Don’t work like slaves the first day though. Just go at it for an hour or so at a time, then rest.”

  After breakfast Uncle Harry took down three of the great knives that hung over the workbench in the barn. The boys followed him to a field between the ranch house and the road. They watched as he pruned a tree, bringing the machete down in quick slanting strokes to cut away branches that grew out in odd places. “Don’t get too close to the tree,” he warned. “Stand back away from the machete, and always swing the knife off and to one side. I don’t want any accidents.”

  Uncle Harry watched while each of the boys pruned a tree. When he was satisfied that they had the hang of it, he left them in the field and went back to the house. A few minutes later he drove off in the station wagon with Magdalena.

  The boys worked in silence until they heard the hoof beats of Allie’s Appaloosa pounding in the fields between the drive and Wesley Thurgood’s property. As the boys looked up, Allie rode on into the pasture, unsaddled the mare, and rubbed it down with handfuls of straw. Then she disappeared into the ranch house.

  Before long the boys heard the sound of a car starting. They looked toward the barn. “Oh, wow!” Pete said. “What next?” Allie had climbed behind the steering wheel of her uncle’s pickup truck. Gears clashed and Allie and the truck came lurching down the drive.

  “Allie, you nut!” yelled Pete. “What are you doing?”

  Allie came abreast of the boys and stepped on the brake. The engine coughed and died. “It’s okay,” said Allie cheerfully. “I can drive it, so long as I don’t take it off the ranch.”

  “You’re too young!” protested Bob.

  “I’m too young to get a license,” said Allie. “But as long as I can reach the pedals, I’m not too young to drive.”

  She tried to start the truck again and failed. “Need more practice, I guess,” said Allie.

  “Does your uncle know you do that?” asked Pete.

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  “Sure!” Allie answered. “He thinks girls should know how to do everything guys can do.”

  “I’ll bet,” said Pete. “That’s why you waited until he and Magdalena left.”

  Allie leaned out of the cab. Her eyes were dancing. “They’ve gone marketing and they won’t be back for a while. And Wesley Thurgood isn’t home either, and the dog is chained up.”

  “I know what you’re thinking,” said Pete. “You want to explore that mine. Well, you’re on your own.”

  Jupe stood holding a machete. He remembered the sound of the shot in the night — a muffled sound that might have come from a tunnel in the mountainside.

  “Stickin-the-muds!” jeered Allie. “Okay! Stay there and forget about the mystery.” The truck engine ground again, and this time it caught.

  “Wait a second!” shouted Jupe. “I’ll go with you!”

  “Good!” Allie laughed. “Bring your machete along. If Thurgood comes back, we’ll run back to the truck and pretend to be pruning in the field near his place. What about you, Pete? And Bob?”

  Pete looked doubtfully at Jupiter. The tallest and most athletic of the Investigators, Pete enjoyed physical adventures — but he hated walking into trouble. Jupe, on the other hand, could not resist investigating any mystery, no matter how slight, no matter what the danger. And once he had decided to act, he couldn’t be stopped. Shrugging, Pete climbed into the cab next to Allie. Bob, too, realized that Jupiter was on the trail of something, and followed him into the back of the truck.

  Allie got the pickup started again, and they went jouncing off through the fields on a rough dirt track that had been bulldozed across Harrison Osborne’s property.

  “This is a neat truck!” Allie exclaimed. She was so busy trying to control it that she seemed to be in action from the top of her head to the soles of her feet. She had to slouch low every time she put the clutch in, and push mightily on the gear-shift lever. Her hand flashed out to touch a second lever next to the gear shift. “That’s to convert it to four-wheel drive, in case you go up into the hills and need the extra power,” she said. “And there’s a winch on the front in case you get stuck or go into a ditch. And it’s got four forward speeds. The diagram for the gear shift is on the lever. You push it up there for first and then pull it toward you for second and …”

  “… And I only hope we get it back to the barn in one piece!” said Pete as the truck lurched forward.

  “You worry too much,” said Allie. She stopped the truck at the edge of the field that abutted Wesley Thurgood’s property. The boys climbed out and stood looking around.

  Across a bare stretch of ground they saw the mountainside jut up abruptly. The mine entrance was a dark, threatening hole at the base of it. They could see a few feet into the mine, past the timbers that framed the entrance. There was dry white sand and some gravel on the floor of the mine tunnel. The tunnel itself seemed to slope downward away from the entrance. To the right of the mine was the decaying cabin where Thurgood lived.

  “Crummy, huh?” Allie said, pointing.

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  “He’ll probably fix it up sooner or later,” said Bob. “How long has he been here?”

  “Almost a month,” Allie told him. “He moved in with a bedroll and some pots and pans, and I think that’s all he’s got now. He’s really roughing it. That big building behind his cabin used to be the mine works. That’s where they took the ore from the mine and separated out the silver.”

  A chain rattled and the guard dog came around the corner of the cabin. He was not as enormous as the boys had thought at first, but he was a very large dog. Jupe guessed that he was part Labrador retriever and part German shepherd. When he saw Allie and the boys, he gave a low growl.

  “You sure that chain he’s got on is attached to something real solid?” said Pete.

  Allie laughed. “Don’t worry. I threw a stick at him before, when I rode past on Queenie. He can’t get at us.”

  “I like the way you make friends with dumb animals, Allie,” said Bob. “Suppose he’d gotten loose?”

  “Then Queenie and I would have outrun him,” declared Allie. She took a flashlight from the glove compartment of the pickup. “Come on.”

  They started across the clearing to the mine entrance. The dog went into a frenzy, flinging himself at them, trying with all his might to break his chain. Allie ignored him, and the Three Investigators followed her into the brooding gloom of the mine.

  When they were a few feet past the entrance, Allie snapped on the light. Its beam darted along the floor of the tunnel, which slanted downward. Side passages went off at intervals. The walls were braced with timbers as big as railroad ties, and huge crossbeams helped support the rocky ceiling.

  Aside from the sound of the dog barking outside, the mine was perfectly quiet. Yet somehow there was a faint air of menace all around. Allie and the boys moved slowly along the tunnel, picking their way on the rocky, uneven floor. Jupe kept his eyes fixed on the beam of light as it probed the waiting darkness ahead.

  About fifty yards into the mountain, the tunnel branched out and became two tunnels, one leading off to the right and one extending at a slight angle to the left. They hesitated. Then Allie started toward the left. The boys followed and the feeble light from the mine entrance was gone. Except for the flashlight, they were in total darkness. Their footsteps echoed eerily in the tunnel.

  “I wonder where the lady fell,” said Allie. “The one who was killed in here.” In spite of herself, she shivered.

  “Wait up, Allie,” said Jupe. He had glimpsed something on the floor of the tunnel. “Shine the light over here a second, would you?” he asked.

  Allie flashed the beam of light on a little heap of loose rock and pebbles. They seemed to have fallen from the wall of the tunnel. As Jupe bent to pick up a small stone, Allie and the light abruptly moved away.

  “Hey!” shouted Pete. “Come back with that flash!”

  Allie kept going, the flashlight bobbing and glowing ever more faintly from a side corridor that she had dodged into.

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  “Allie!” called Bob.

  Suddenly there was a light in the tunnel behind them — a very powerful light that caught the boys and held them in its glare. “Exactly what do you kids think you’re doing?” demanded an angry voice — the voice of Wesley Thurgood.

  “Uh-oh!” said Pete.

  Then the Three Investigators heard Allie drop her flashlight. It clattered against some rocks and they heard glass breaking.

  At the end of that dark side corridor, Allie let out a blood-curdling scream.

  She screamed and screamed and screamed.

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  Chapter 6

  Death Trap!

  “Allie! What is it?” shouted Jupe.

  The screams went on, high and hysterical.

  “Blast that brat!” Thurgood dashed past the boys and plunged into the side corridor. The boys stumbled after him and his light.

  Allie was there, standing stiffly at the edge of a pit that gaped in the floor of the mine. She stared down into the darkness at her feet and she screamed.

  “Stop that!” Thurgood seized her arm and pulled her back away from the pit.

  Allie trembled and pointed toward the pit. “D-dd-down there!”

  The boys went cautiously to the edge of the shaft and Thurgood shined his light down. The pit was not deep — only ten or twelve feet — but the walls were sheer, straight up and down.

  At the bottom of the hole was something that looked like a heap of old clothes. But then, in the light of the torch, they could all see what had once been a hand — a human hand. There was a body inside the clothes, a body that lay strangely twisted on the rocky floor of the shaft. They saw hollow eyes and a dusty, matted tangle of hair.

  “Dead!” cried Allie. “He’s … it’s dead! Dead!”

  “Stop that!” snapped Thurgood again.

  Allie gulped and was quiet.

  “Now get out!” ordered Thurgood. “All of you!”

  Jupiter and Bob grabbed Allie’s arms. With Pete stumbling behind them and Thurgood herding them along with his flashlight, they made their way back to the main mine tunnel and then out through the entrance to the sunlight.

  The dog barked, but it seemed to Jupe that the sound was unreal — part of a nightmare. In his mind Jupe kept seeing the crumple of clothing at the bottom of the shaft, the head with the staring eyes, and the skinny, leathery hand.

  “You kids get home!” said Thurgood. “Get home and stay there, all of you. If I ever catch you in my mine again, I’ll personally break your necks!”

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  He slammed into his cabin. Allie and the boys moved off slowly, past Thurgood’s shiny red Chevy Suburban “truck,” which was now parked near the mine, past Uncle Harry’s pickup, which they left standing in the field.

  By the time they reached the ranch house, colour had come back to Allie’s face. “We’ll call the sheriff,” she said. “That Thurgood! I knew there was something spooky about him!”

  “I am sure he has already called the sheriff,” Jupe told her. “I am also sure that you’d better not accuse him of anything.”

  “Why not?” said Allie. “There’s a dead man in his mine!”

  “And at the moment we have no idea how that dead man got there,” Jupe pointed out.

  A cloud of dust soon appeared on the road to town. A second later a tan sedan sped past. The word “Sheriff” was on the door. The boys glimpsed the driver, a big man wearing a Stetson. The car turned in toward Thurgood’s cabin and halted.

  Jupe smiled. “You see?” he said to Allie.

  Allie smiled back, but her smile was malicious. “I wonder what Thurgood’s going to tell the sheriff.”

  “What are you going to tell your uncle?” Jupe nodded toward the road. The station wagon was approaching, with Uncle Harry and Magdalena in the front seat. Uncle Harry turned in at the gate, and Jupe could see that he looked concerned.

  “Allie!” he called. The car came to a stop in the drive and Uncle Harry leaned out the window. “Sheriff Tait passed me on the road. Is anything wrong?”

  “There’s a body in Thurgood’s mine,” said Allie smugly.

  “A body? In the mine?”

  Allie nodded.

  “Madre de Dios!” Magdalena got out of the station wagon. “Allie, how do you know this?”

  There was an uncomfortable silence. Harrison Osborne looked at his niece. “Allie, were you in that mine again?”

  Jupe took a step forward.”Yes, we all were, Mr. Osborne. I was curious about those shots last night, and …”