Something moved just beyond the doorway to the kitchen. Gary pointed down, tapped his chest, pointed up, and touched Tuck's chest. His sign language was clear. They'd take the intruder by force, Gary in low and Tuck on high. Somebody loomed in the doorway and Gary drove in hard, arms outspread to grip the legs while Tuck closed in. The stranger thrust out a balled fist and Tuck smacked into it and grunted in pain as he fell sideways to land on top of Gary. The intruder broke loose. Tuck came up and caught a boot heel against his chin. Down he went again. Gary darted after the intruder as he ran for the back door and dived for him, catching him about the waist and driving him hard against the wall. Fingernails clawed Gary's face. "Let me go, you big ape!" screamed a thoroughly feminine voice.
"It's Sue!" yelled Tuck. "We might have known she'd be nosing around."
Gary could feel the blood running down his face. She had put up one whale of a defense. "Don't put on a light," he warned Tuck. He pulled the blinds on the windows and locked the door.
"Man," said Tuck. "I ran right into that fist of yours, Susie. Were you holding a flatiron in it?"
She laughed shakily. "I was so scared I didn't know what I was doing."
"I'd hate to see you in action when you did know what you were doing," said Gary ruefully.
"I didn't want to disturb anyone," she said. "Besides, I wasn't sure you were here. Lobo wasn't around."
"He usually isn't when we need him," said Tuck.
"Would you mind telling us how you happened to come here at this hour?" asked Gary.
"Well, I was going to stay with Francie Kermit this weekend," she said.
"Just by coincidence," said Tuck dryly. "I never thought you and Francie were buddy-buddy. The only reason you were going to stay there was to keep an eye on us."
"What difference does it make?" she said. "Don't answer that! Well anyway, Mr. Kermit is gone for the weekend."
Gary looked quickly at Tuck. "I wonder?" he said, thinking of the shadowy figure that had been watching them.
"Wonder what?" asked Sue.
"Nothing," said Tuck. "Go on with your lying, Cousin Sue."
"Well, Mr. Kermit had left something for Gary at the house. I wanted to bring it right over, but Francie said it could wait until tomorrow, today I mean. I couldn't sleep. So I sneaked out of the house and came over here."
"You could have got killed," said Tuck fiercely.
They could see her inspecting her nails. "Oh, I don't know," she said archly.
"Listen to her!" snapped Tuck.
"Forget it," said Gary. "What was it he left for me?"
She took out a roll of heavy paper from within her shirt and handed it to Gary. He got a bull's-eye lantern from a cabinet and lighted it, holding it close to the floor so that no glow would show through the blinds. It cast a bright circle of light on the floor. Gary unrolled the paper and saw that it was an aerial photograph — an aerial photograph of mountains cut with deep twisting canyons. His breath caught in his throat. "The Espectros!" he said excitedly. He looked up at her. "Tell me about this!"
"He wasn't there when I got there. Francie said that he told her he found out that one copy of the aerial photograph made during the war was still in the files of The Cottonwood Wells Courier, so he picked it up for you."
Gary eyed the photograph. "The negatives were destroyed in a fire at the airfield and Jim told me he didn't know who had any prints of them."
"That was darned nice of him," said Tuck.
"I wonder?" said Gary quietly.
"What do you mean?" asked Tuck.
Gary stood up and turned off the lantern. "Maybe Jim Kermit has been looking for the Lost Espectro all these years without any luck. Perhaps Jim figured that we might find it with the help of this photograph coupled with what we already know. He'd let us go poking into those canyons, trailing us maybe, until we did find the mine, then close in for the kill."
"How you talk!" said Sue. "After he was nice enough to get that photograph for you!" Her voice changed. "Is he a prime suspect, Gary?"
"Forget that TV talk," said Tuck. He paced back and forth. "He's not at home this weekend. Who knows where he really is? Might be outside right now. Maybe he was at your grandfather's house in The Wells when we found the derrotero there…" His voice trailed off. His eyes widened. He clamped a hand over his mouth.
Sue seemed to expand a little in the darkness. "So," she said slowly, "you did find the derrotero?"
"You and your big flapping mouth!" moaned Gary to Tuck. "Well, she knows now!" He picked up the photograph and the lantern and took them to the little windowless room next to his where he kept his relics and other odds and ends. He put the photograph on the table, then placed the faded and wrinkled derrotero beside it. He did not look up as the other two quietly entered the room behind him. Gary traced a finger up Cholla Canyon on the photograph and located the water hole, hardly more than a dot on the narrow floor of the long canyon. To the east of the canyon and slightly north, the terrain seemed a lighter hue, hardly distinguishable from the rest of the land, but still obviously lighter. He studied the derrotero. The sunburst with the question mark in it was marked to the east of the waterhole canyon in yet another canyon, nothing more than a narrow slot in the rough terrain, but plainly marked on the derrotero. There was no such canyon apparent on the photograph.
Tuck traced the line of another twisting, narrow canyon. "That's where we found the arrastres." he said. He moved his finger to the right and placed it on the area where the canyon showed on the derrotero but not on the photograph. "It figures," he added. "There was a canyon there in the old days, in the time of your great-grandfather, Gary, that could be reached both from Cholla Canyon and the canyon of the arrastres. It isn't there now, that's for sure."
"Buried forever in a landslide," said Gary gloomily. He reached for a magnifying glass he used on his rock specimens and began to study the photograph inch by inch. The lighter area held his attention. There wasn't any doubt in his mind that the lighter area indicated the massive slide. He noted, too, that on the derrotero water was indicated as flowing down the canyon of the arrastres, but no water showed on the photograph. He looked for the time of the year when the photograph had been made. It had been taken in the wintertime and there surely should have been drainage water in the canyon at that time. Yet no water showed there. But water did show in the photograph of the narrow canyon they had explored, and did not show on the derrotero. Surely his great-grandfather would have marked such an important thing as a water hole in that dry land. Then, too, the very carved symbols in the canyon did not indicate water there, but rather farther on, at the spring they had found in the upper reaches of Cholla Canyon. So there had been no water in there during the time of the Mexican miners either. "No wonder the Lost Espectro has never been found," he said. "The land changes have been too great." He quickly related his thoughts to his two friends.
Tuck placed a finger on the water hole they had found. "The key is right here somewhere," he said. "You think it's possible that the landslide may have diverted the original water source in the canyon of the arrastres back into the canyon where we found the water hole?"