"Phooey," said Tuck. He mustarded, ketchupped, lettuced and mayonnaised his sandwich. "Big deal! I love Elbertas! You like 'em! Why even Sue eats them like popcorn! Lije Purtis would walk ten miles to get a can of Elbertas." Tuck's voice died away and his eyes widened. "Lije Purtis!" he added in an odd voice.
"The man who doesn't know how to use a gun," said Gary.
"At a distance a man who looked as ragged and dirty as Lije could sure look like he'd been in the mountains a long time. Maybe Fred got mixed up. He was scared you said, and he was quite a ways from the truck."
"I know two characters in this house who are more mixed up than he is," said Gary dryly.
"Have you thought any more about that crazy derrotero?"
"I think about it all the time," said Gary. "Like Fred said, it was either stolen when my folks weren't around or it's still here. It just has to be one or the other!"
"Big help," said Tuck. "Where'd we leave those candy bars?"
Gary left Tuck and walked into the living room. It was getting dark outside. He sat down in his father's big chair, a legacy of Grandfather Cole's. Gary closed his eyes. His head ached with thinking about that lost derrotero. If it was hidden in the house, it surely must have been well hidden; Gary and his father had once conducted a systematic search for it, and Gary's mother had even helped them. It had been no use.
Yet something rankled at the back of his mind. He had been an infant when the derrotero vanished. It had been about the time his mother decided to move into town to stay with her widowed father who hadn't been feeling too well. With Pete Cole in the hospital, the Cole Ranch was a right lonely place for a young mother and a baby boy.
Gary could hear Tuck calling to Lobo to feed him the ham bone. The big dog barked as he raced toward the back porch of the ranch house. Then Gary could hear Tuck in deep conversation with the dog. Tuck liked that. It let him do all the talking. He was telling the dog he'd have to work for the bone.
"Nineteen forty-six," said Gary aloud. He started and sat up. Why had he said that date?
He could hear Lobo chasing Tuck around the house and the bloodcurdling cries of the lean one were enough to send a chill down the spine of Asesino.
He stood up and paced back and forth. "I was only a baby then. That was the year my mother took me to stay at The Wells." He stared at the wall and smashed a fist into his other palm. He certainly could not remember staying with his grandfather there. Grandfather Hart, the retired high school principal of Cottonwood Wells Union High School, had died the first year Gary had started school. Gary could remember him. He always seemed to have a pipe in one hand and a book in the other. Where Great-grandfather Cole had been a man who had probed into the mysterious Espectros to make his precious derrotero and to find traces of the old Spanish and Mexican miners by tracking them down, Grandfather Hart had been strictly an armchair explorer, although his interest in lost treasures and in the Espectro was every bit as keen as that of Greatgrandfather Cole's.
There was a tremendous crashing noise outside and the sound of splashing water while Lobo barked in delight. Gary walked to the window. A pair of skinny legs protruded from the water trough and then Tuck Browne's lean face showed above the edge of the trough. He climbed out, sluicing water from every stitch of his clothing. He limped toward the house. Lobo barked again. Tuck turned. "You did that on purpose, Lobo," he said, and tossed him the wet ham bone.
The Hart house, now unoccupied, still stood on a side street in The Wells. It had been left to Gary's mother and she had kept it, always thinking that when the day came for the ranch to be sold, the family could move into the Hart house. The house had been rented several times but never for very long. There were more modern rentals in the newer part of The Wells.
"Tuck," said Gary.
The lean one was wringing out his trousers. "Yeh?" he said in soppy disgust.
"We're going to take a ride!"
"To where?"
"My grandfather's old house in The Wells."
"Nothing there," said Tuck.
"I have a feeling we've been looking in the wrong place for the derrotero, Tuck! The derrotero vanished about 1946; in 1946 my father was still in the hospital, and my mother and I were staying with Grandfather Hart."
Tuck stopped wringing. "By jiminy!" he said quietly. "Grandfather Hart was loco about such things. You think maybe the chart was taken there and forgotten?"
"I'll take a chance that it might be there."
"Keno! Let me change my clothes!"
Gary got the jeep and was waiting for Tuck. He ordered Lobo to stay behind and drove out onto the darkening road. There was an intense eagerness within him. Nothing had been changed in the old house. Every now and then Gary would go into town and clean up the grounds of the place, cut the lawns, and sometimes, accompanied by Tuck, he'd stay the night in the gloomy old house. Not once had he ever considered that the derrotero might be hidden there.
It was quite dark when they pulled up in front of the old house, dreaming on its quiet side street. Gary unlocked the double front door and it creaked open.
"Always thought this place was haunted," said Tuck.
"You think every place is haunted," said Gary. "I'll go in alone if you're chicken."
"Who me? Fearless Browne? 'Lead on, Mac-Duff!'"
The street lamp shone through the stained glass at the top of the big door and made an eerie reddish pattern on the faded wallpaper. Gary quickly led the way up the wide creaking stairs. "I figure we'd better hunt in the library," he said. "That's where Grandpa Hart spent most of his time."
The library was in the front of the house, across the hall from the huge master bedroom. Gary walked into the dim room faintly lighted by the street lamp. He lighted an oil lamp and turned to look at the serried ranks of bookshelves that entirely lined the big room. "I've heard of papers being hidden in hollowed out books," he said.
"Sounds like a story from Poe," said Tuck. "Hollowed out books! Hooooey!"
"You got any better ideas?"
"Let's look for hollowed out books."
An hour passed while the two boys took down one book at a time and examined it. Their hands were black with dust, and dust floated about the room and swirled about the draft of hot air rising from the lamp on the table.
"Man," said Tuck in grudging admiration, "your grandpap was sure a readin' man."
Gary nodded. He had reached the end of one row of shelves, and he reached for the first book in the next row. His hand stopped part way and he stared at the row of books.
"What is it, Gary?" asked Tuck.
"Look, Tuck," said Gary. "Every book on these shelves is marked with fingerprints."
Tuck eyed the books. "Yeh," he said. "When was the last time any of your family were in here?"
"Early last spring — and we didn't dust the books as I recall."
Tuck whistled softly. "Someone was pawing around in here then," he said. He raised the lamp. "Look, Gary. That whole wall of books back there have been handled too. Lookit the finger marks on 'em!"
A cold feeling came over Gary. Someone had been in there then. Someone who might have gotten the same idea that had occurred to Gary.
"Ghosts," said Tuck.
"Ghost don't leave fingerprints!" snapped Gary.
"Take it easy! I was only joking, amigo."
Gary shook his head. He was getting discouraged. Maybe this idea was a bust too. Everything connected with the story of the Lost Espectro seemed to be a bust.
Tuck walked to the end shelf, close to the door. Here the books still had their coating of dust. He grinned. "Just supposing that clod who was looking through these books stopped a little short of finding the derrotero?" he asked.