As the car roared past, he could not make out the face of the man bent close over the steering wheel, but he saw a black sombrero on the head. He also saw that it was the car with the Nevada licence plate!
Alarmed, Bob hurried back on to the road. The Nevada car had been in a hurry. What had happened inside Devil Mountain? With a sinking feeling, Bob began to trot as fast as his injured leg would let him. He had to get to the ranch house right away. Maybe even Jupiter had gone too far this time.
“Uf — ooof!”
Bob had bumped headlong into a man who appeared suddenly in the road. Strong hands gripped his shoulders. He looked up into the long, scarred face of the man with the black eye patch.
Jupiter and Pete crouched in the darkness behind the wall of rock. From time to time they could still hear the moaning of the cave, distant and faint.
“Can you see anything?” Pete whispered.
“Not a thing. We’re totally walled in, and — Hey, are we crazy or something!” Suddenly Jupiter started to laugh.
“Gosh, Jupe, what’s so funny?” Pete whispered.
“We’re whispering,” Jupiter said, “and sitting in the dark, but there’s no one to hear us and we have our flashlights!”
The boys switched on their flashlights and grinned a little sheepishly at each other. Then Pete shone his light on the wall of rock.
“Maybe no one can hear us, and we have our lights, but how do we get out?” Pete asked.
Jupiter, as usual, refused to be discouraged. “First we’ll see if we can push that big rock out. El Diablo did not appear to be exceptionally strong, yet he moved the stone with ease.”
Pete tried to move the stone first. It would not budge. Then Jupiter joined him, and together the two boys applied all their strength. The boulder still did not move an inch. Panting, they finally gave up.
“He must have it wedged from the outside,” Jupiter observed. “The more we push, the tighter we wedge it. He’s locked us in tight.”
“Great,” Pete said. “What do you think. Jupe? Could he really be El Diablo? You know, the professor said he might still be alive.”
“El Diablo may still be alive,” Jupiter said, “but he wouldn’t look like that. Remember, El Diablo would be almost a hundred years old. The man who caught us looked like El Diablo back in the 1880s!”
“Yes, I thought about that.”
“In addition,” Jupiter continued, “did you notice how his face never seemed to move? How he never showed any expression?”
“Sure I did, but — ”
“I’m convinced that our captor was wearing a mask, Pete!” Jupiter said triumphantly. “One of those flesh-coloured rubber masks that fit over the whole face. In addition, he spoke very little. I think he was afraid we might recognize his voice.”
“I didn’t. Did you, Jupe?”
“No,” Jupiter admitted. “But I’m sure of one thing, anyway. He didn’t want to harm us seriously, or he wouldn’t have just imprisoned us in here.”
“Just imprisoned us!” Pete objected. “Isn’t that bad enough?”
“He could have done a lot worse,” Jupiter pointed out a little grimly. “In here we’ll be found sooner or later after we’re missed, and he knows that. There’s plenty of air. All he wanted was to have us out of the way for a short time, probably just to-night. Which means that we have to hurry and find our way out of here.”
“Do you think it’s safe yet, Jupe? Why don’t we just let someone find us?” Pete asked.
“I’m convinced that the mystery has to be solved to-night,” Jupiter insisted. “If we wait, it will be too late. Since we can’t get out the way we came in, we have to see if going in the other direction leads us to some exit. Come on.”
Pete followed Jupiter down the narrow passage. The tunnel continued straight ahead without any cross passages for what seemed like miles. Then suddenly the boys stopped and stared at each other in dismay. In front of them was another fall of rock. The passage was blocked at this end, too!
“Golly, Jupe!” Pete cried. “What do we try now?”
“I hadn’t thought we would be blocked in so completely,” the First Investigator said, and for the first time his round face looked worried. “It doesn’t fit my deductions at all.”
“Maybe El Diablo has different deductions,” Pete observed.
Jupiter leaned down and carefully inspected the fall of rock. It, like all the others, was not recent. Jupiter bent closer. Suddenly he became excited.
“Pete, this big rock has been moved!”
Pete bent down and looked. From the marks on the floor there was no doubt that the big rock had been moved recently.
Together the boys strained at the boulder. It rocked slightly, but would not roll loose. Jupiter stood up and looked around.
“I think our friend used this passage to enter and leave the cave unseen. If the two of us can’t move it, then there has to be some other way… There! That long steel bar near the wall!”
Pete understood at once. A lever! He grabbed the long bar and inserted it between the stone and the wall. Together the two boys leaned their weight on it and the great stone rolled away.
A gaping hole opened in front of them. Jupiter shone his light into the darkness.
“It’s another cavern,” he reported.
Pete dropped the long bar and both boys scrambled through the opening. They shone their flashlights around.
“Wow!” gasped Pete.
Jupiter just stared.
They were standing in an enormous cavern. In the centre was a great black pool.
13
The Pool of The Old One
The pool glittered in the beams of their flashlights.
Pete swallowed hard. “The pool,” he said in a low voice, “where The Old One lives.”
“So there is a pool,” Jupiter said. “It must have been blocked off a long time ago, but the Indians knew it was in the cave somewhere.”
“And now we know, too, but I wish we didn’t,” Pete quavered. “Let’s find a way out of here quick!”
“Just because the pool is really here doesn’t mean that The Old One actually exists.”
“It doesn’t mean The Old One doesn’t exist, either,” Pete pointed out. “Maybe The Old One’s been blocked off a long time, too. Maybe he’s mad and hungry and just waiting for two smart boys.”
Jupiter glanced around the dark cavern. Shadows in the wall indicated more passages leading from the cavern.
“We’d better try to find a way out,” Jupiter decided. “Light your candle and we’ll test the openings.”
“Now that’s what I like to hear,” Pete said.
He lit his candle and followed Jupiter. They tested two of the passages without success. Pete started to move on, but Jupiter stood still.
“Pete,” he whispered.
Pete followed Jupiter’s gaze. At first he could see nothing.
“There, against the wall,” Jupiter hissed. “It’s… it’s… ”
Then Pete saw it — or rather, him! In a dark recess just inside the second passage, seated against the wall with his legs straight out in front of him was a small man, dressed all in black, with a sombrero on his head, and black boots on his feet. In his right hand the man held an ancient pistol, and his face was grinning straight at the boys.
Except that the face looking at them was not a face at all — it was a skull! And the hand that held the pistol was not a hand, it was five bones — a skeleton!
“Yow!” Pete cried. Both boys turned and ran. They reached the tunnel which had led them into the cavern and tried to scramble through the opening together. Both of them went down in a heap. “Where are we running to, Jupe?” mumbled Pete, on the bottom. “We can’t get out this way!”