“No, it’s not moving!” Jupiter said. “There’s someone up there near it!”
“Someone hiding behind the statue!” Diego cried.
“There’s two of them. They’re running now!”
“Coming this way down the ridge!”
“It’s Bob and Pete!”
“Come on!”
They shoved their bikes into the brush beside the road and ran forward. Bob and Pete were slipping and sliding down the end of the ridge towards the road. Out of breath and panting, the four boys met where the ridge ended in a deep ditch beside the pavement.
“We found some evidence, First!” Pete panted.“And three guys found us!” Bob gasped.
“What three guys, fellows?” Diego asked breathlessly.
“We don’t know, but they’re after us right now!”
“Back to the bridge,” Jupiter puffed. “We’ll hide under it!”
“They’re sure to look there, Jupe!” Bob objected.
“There’s a big drain-pipe back down the road!” Diego cried. “It runs into this ditch, and it’s all overgrown! Come on!”
They raced back along the muddy brush-filled ditch. Diego scrambled amidst thick and thorny chaparral to uncover the mouth of a giant drainage pipe that came out of a hillside. The boys tumbled inside the pipe despite a thin stream of draining rain water, and pulled the brush back across the mouth. Huddled together, they waited anxiously.
“What evidence was it you found?” Jupiter whispered.
Bob and Pete told him about the set of keys and their adventures in the burned barn. Diego looked at the keys in the dim light of the pipe.
“I am sure they aren’t ours,” he said.
“Those men said they lost them and had to jump the ignition of some car?” Jupiter pondered. “From the way you tell it, fellows, it sounds as if they were at the barn before it burned. And they obviously don’t want anyone to find the keys and know they were there! Perhaps they stole the hat and planted it out at that campfire!”
“But who are they, First?” Pete wondered hoarsely.
“I don’t know, Second, but somehow they must be involved with the fire and Pico’s arrest. I… Shhhhh!”
In the pipe they all fell silent. Running feet were coming along the road! The boys peered through the thick bushes and saw the three saddle-tramp cowboys! Grim and silent, the three menacing men trotted past.
Diego whispered, “I never saw them before! If they work for Mr. Norris, they’re new.”
“Then what are they doing here?” Pete asked.
“That is something we must learn, Second,” Jupiter said.
“All I know,” Bob said, “is I hope they don’t come back!”
The four boys waited, listening hard. Down the road there was only silence. After another fifteen minutes, Jupiter sighed nervously.
“I guess one of us had better look,” he said.
“I’ll go,” Diego said. “They’re after Bob and Pete, not me. And I live out here, so they might not be suspicious.”
The slim boy slipped out quickly so that there would be little chance of anyone seeing where he came from. He climbed up to the road, turned left, and disappeared towards the bridge. In the pipe, The Three Investigators waited again. Bob was the first to hear someone coming back. He started to go out.
“Wait!” Pete whispered. “Maybe it’s not Diego!”
They waited. Someone stopped in front of the pipe.
“Okay, fellows, it’s all clear.”
It was Diego! The Investigators piled out, and Diego led them back to the bridge over Santa Inez Creek. He pointed towards the mountains. Far ahead, the three cowboys were disappearing north along the dirt road of the Norris ranch.
“They gave up,” Diego said with a grin. “And this is just about where we want to investigate, isn’t it, Jupiter?”
“Investigate what?” Bob and Pete asked together.
Jupiter told them about the lieutenant’s journal, and showed them the page he had duplicated from it.
“Wow!” Pete exclaimed. “Don Sebastián really did escape! And he must have had the Cortés Sword with him!”
“I’m sure he did,” Jupiter said, and he sighed. “But what that lieutenant wrote isn’t going to help us find it!”
“But, Jupiter, he wrote — ” Diego began in protest.
“He couldn’t have seen what he said he did,” Jupiter interrupted, “or, at least, where he saw it. Look, he wrote that he was leaving the hacienda, so that means he was on our side of the creek, the west side. He looked east, across the creek, from right about here. He says he saw a ridge — but from here there aren’t any ridges at all on the other side of the creek!”
On the far side of the swollen creek, as far as the boys could see, the land was flat all the way past the Norris ranch buildings!
“Somehow,” Jupiter said gloomily, “he must have made a mistake — about where he was, or in what he remembered when he wrote in his journal.”
The boys looked at each other unhappily.
“I guess it’s a dead end, fellows,” Jupiter said.
Dejected, they walked towards their bikes to ride home.
14
Time Runs Out for the Alvaros
It started to rain hard again that night, and poured down all the next day. The Investigators had no time to talk about the Cortés Sword or to try to identify the car keys from the burned barn. After classes, they were busy with school activities all afternoon.
“We don’t have any new leads anyway,” Pete said sadly.
Diego visited Pico in the afternoon and showed his brother the keys. He described the three mysterious cowboys to Pico. But Pico didn’t recognize the keys, and he had no idea who the three strangers were or why they were interested in the ruined barn.
“Unless,” the older Alvaro said bitterly, “Mr. Norris has hired toughs to force us off our ranch!”
After their dinners that night, The Three Investigators returned to the library and the Historical Society. They searched through the old newspapers, journals, diaries, memoirs, and US Army reports again. They re-read the false report of Don Sebastián’s death, the statement declaring Sergeant Brewster and his two confederates to be deserters, Don Sebastián’s baffling letter with its heading of “Condor Castle”, and the American lieutenant’s apparently erroneous journal entry. The boys could find nothing new that seemed important.
Rain continued to come down all that night, and all day on Wednesday. Flood warnings went up in the county. After school, Bob and Pete both had chores to do at home. Diego went to visit Pico again, and Jupiter wearily returned to the Historical Society to continue the plodding detective work.
Their chores completed, Bob and Pete met at Headquarters. They took off their wet rain gear and huddled around the small electric heater in the hidden house trailer to wait for Diego and Jupiter.
“You think we’re ever going to find that sword, Bob?” Pete asked.
“I don’t know, Second,” Bob admitted. “If only it all hadn’t happened so long ago. There are all kinds of reports of shooting and running around back in the hills, by the Mexican locals and the US Army, but we can’t tell if any of them involved Don Sebastián or those three deserters.”
Diego came climbing up out of the trap-door from Tunnel Two. The slender boy looked even more miserable than he had the last two days. Pete and Bob stared at him in alarm.
“Has something happened to Pico?” Bob cried.
“Is he in more trouble?” Pete echoed.
“Nothing has happened to Pico, but he is in more trouble. We all are.”
The unhappy boy took off his wet jacket and sat beside the two Investigators close to the glowing heater. He shook his head hopelessly.
“Señor Paz has sold our mortgage to Mr. Norris,” he said.
“Oh, no!” Pete groaned.
“But,” Bob said, “he promised to delay as long as — ”
“It is not Don Emiliano’s fault,” Diego said. “He must have his money, and with Pico in jail there is no way we could hope to pay him for a long time. And, Pico needs money for bail and for his defence. Pico told Don Emiliano he must sell now.”