“But Don Sebastián got shot here instead. Now, if he didn’t die right away but thought that he was dying, he’d worry about how José could ever find the sword. So — ”
“So he would have left some message for José!” Jupiter cried. “Of course! He would have been sure to try! Only after all this time would a message still be readable?”
“Depends what he wrote it on and with,” Pete said. “If he wrote a message. I didn’t see anything while we were looking.”
“No,” Diego admitted, “but we weren’t looking for anything like a message.”
“What could he have written a message with, anyway?” asked Bob. “I don’t think he’d have had paper and ink with him. Not if he was on the run.”
“I guess not,” said Diego. “But maybe he would have written it with what he had, fellows — blood!”
“On what?” Pete said doubtfully. “If he wrote it on his shirt or something, it’s long gone.”
“The walls?” Bob suggested, looking around.
“Badly wounded, dying,” Jupiter mused. “He couldn’t have moved much. Look on the walls of that little cul-de-sac!”
They all bent low and studied the rock walls of the cavity where Don Sebastián died. His skeleton seemed to watch them from where it lay against the small boulder.
“I don’t see anything,” Pete said at last, staying as far from the silent skeleton as he could.
“Would blood last so long, First?” Bob wondered.
“I’m not sure,” Jupiter confessed. “Maybe not.”
“What’s this?” Diego asked.
Near the skeleton, behind the small boulder, Diego picked up a small object that the boys hadn’t seen before. It was an earthenware jug with a broken top. It looked like Indian pottery.
“It’s got something at the bottom,” Diego said. “Sort of black and hard.”
Jupiter took the jug. “It’s an Indian pot, all right. That black stuff looks like dried-up paint.”
“Black paint?” Bob said.
They all looked at the pot, and then at each other.
“If he wrote something with black paint,” Pete said. “It could have faded, been covered by dust, and become almost invisible!”
“Everyone dust off the walls,” Jupiter said, pulling out his handkerchief. “And dust carefully! We don’t want to knock off any flakes of paint!”
Working gently, they all dusted the walls of the cul-de-sac. It was Pete who finally found the faint marks.
“Bob! Shine your torch right over here!”
Four words stood out faintly on the stone wall to the left of the skeleton. Spanish words, Diego translated them aloud.
“Ashes… Dust… Rain… Ocean.”
Everyone stared at the four words, wondering what they meant.
“The last two words are written pretty close together,” Diego commented. “They’re all very shaky.”
“Maybe,” Pete guessed, “he hid the sword in some fireplace somewhere?”
“Somewhere near the ocean?” Bob added.
“But how does ‘rain’ fit in?” Diego wondered.
“Maybe there’s a dusty rain tank somewhere near an outdoor fireplace,” Pete said wryly. “Face it, fellows, it’s gibberish! It doesn’t mean anything!”
“Why would my great-great-grandfather have written something that meant nothing?” Diego demanded.
“He wouldn’t have,” Jupiter said. “But… Ashes, Dust, Rain, and Ocean?” He shook his head. “I confess I don’t understand the connection at all.”
“Maybe,” Bob said, “Don Sebastián didn’t write the words. Maybe they were written earlier by someone else.”
“I don’t think so, Records. Don Sebastián would have left some message for José, I’m convinced of that, and the paint was right beside him,” Jupiter said. “And it’s unlikely that someone wrote the words after his death. If anyone had come in here later, he’d have found the four bodies and reported them, and we wouldn’t have found the skeletons. No, I’m certain that Don Sebastián wrote those words. But — ”
“Maybe he was delirious, First,” Bob said. “He was hurt bad, dying. Maybe he didn’t even know what he was writing.”
Jupiter nodded. “That’s possible, yes. But, somehow, I feel the words do mean something, taken all together. Something that Don Sebastián knew José would understand. Ashes… Dust… Rain… Ocean.”
The words seemed to echo through the hidden cave. The boys repeated them in their minds, as if hearing them over and over would reveal their secret. Concentrating hard, they were slow to notice a strange noise coming into the cave.
“Jupe!” Diego suddenly exclaimed. “What’s that? That tapping noise? Up there!” He looked up towards the roof of the cave.
“Outside!” Bob said softly. “Footsteps! Someone’s up on Condor Castle!”
“Maybe it’s those three cowboys,” Diego said.
“If it is,” Jupiter said, “they won’t find us. We’ve got the entrance to the cave blocked.”
“Our tracks!” Pete said in alarm. “If they spot our tracks in the mud, they’ll know we came down here! They can push those stones away from the hole if they try! Then they can — ”
“Come on,” Jupiter ordered.
The four boys hurried across the cave to the narrow passage and crawled back out into the smaller chamber. They crouched on either side of the blocked-up opening and waited in the dark. Soon they heard faint voices outside.
“They’re coming down,” Pete hissed.
The voices outside became louder, and then the boys could hear faint steps slipping and sliding down the steep ridge.
“Stay flat back against the wall on each side of the hole,” Jupiter instructed. “If they do push the rocks in, and come inside, maybe they won’t see us right away. When they’ve gone past us, we can make a dash for outside.”
The sharp sound of boot heels striking stone rang above them. The voices were almost directly in front of the covered hole now! Three voices with fierce, arguing tones!
“What are they saying?” Bob whispered. “I can’t make out the words.”
“Neither can I,” Pete whispered back.
The boys strained to hear. The angry voices seemed to be right in front of the blocked hole, yet they were oddly muffled.
“Why don’t they try to come in?” Diego wondered.
“They must have seen our tracks,” Pete whispered, “or why would they come straight down to the hole?”
In the dark cave the four boys waited in an agony of suspense.
“They’ve been out there ten minutes,” Bob finally whispered.
Time seemed to stand still in the cave.
“Fifteen minutes,” Bob said. “What are they — ”
Boots moved out beyond the thin barrier of rocks that covered the hole! Footsteps slipped and slid — and the voices faded away! The three men were gone!
In the small cave, the boys waited another fifteen minutes.
“They didn’t see the hole!” Diego exclaimed at last.
“They missed us!” Bob echoed.
“But,” Pete said, “they must have followed our tracks down. How could they miss the hole? Even if it’s dark out there now?”
Jupiter stared at the rocks that covered the hole. “And why couldn’t we hear words? We should have been able to hear what they said if they were right outside.”
For a moment, none of them spoke in the dark cave.
“Guys,” Pete said at last, “pull out some of the rocks.” Bob turned on his torch and propped it on a boulder. Then the four boys pulled out one of the large rocks they had rolled against the hole. Then they pulled out another. And a third.
There was no light or fresh air from outside.
Frantically, they removed all the rocks they had pushed into the entrance to the hidden cave.
No light, no wind, and no rain came in.
“Where is it?” Diego cried. “The entrance?”
Pete crawled into the dark space they had opened, and felt around at the end.
“Rock!” his muffled voice came back. “It’s all rock!”
“You mean they blocked it up!” Bob cried, pale.
Pete crawled slowly out. His eyes were wide. “No, they didn’t block it up. There’s been another mudslide! A big slab of rock has slipped down over the hole. That’s why those guys didn’t see the hole — there isn’t any hole out there now! And that’s why we couldn’t hear them clearly! Now what do we do? We’re trapped in here!”