First they shopped. Sam and Theo and Marty had lost their smartphones, their backpacks, and a lot of their belongings when they’d been taken prisoner by Gideon Arnold the day before, and Evangeline, credit card in hand, insisted on replacing what had been taken.
“But this is all so expensive,” Marty protested as Evangeline held up a waterproof, insulated jacket to her shoulder to check its size. She already had a new backpack at her feet, stuffed with more outdoor gear than a Girl Scout troop would need for a weeklong trek through the wilderness.
“The Founders do not lack for resources,” Evangeline said, and gave her a quick, reassuring smile. It was the friendliest Sam had seen her look so far. Personally, Sam had no trouble spending the Founders’ money. He figured if he was going to dodge their traps and solve their puzzles, the least they owed him was a new phone with the latest apps.
It took the rest of the afternoon for Marty to replace all the supplies that she’d lost and pick up several dozen more things that she considered essential. Sam, once he had a new backpack on his back and a new phone in his pocket, decided to leave her to it. He’d seen a shop on a side street that he thought might be worth investigating.
He thought of asking Theo to come with him, but one glance at the boy’s face as he sat frowning on a bench, waiting for Marty to finish comparing GPS units, was enough to squash that idea. Theo looked like a guy who seriously wanted to be alone.
So Sam promised to meet them all in twenty minutes, quickly scanned the street for suspicious characters or kids in pirate T-shirts, and spent fifteen of his free minutes in a little store that had a very nice selection of classic comic books and wasn’t too shabby in the junk food department. Marty didn’t like to venture out into the world without waterproof distress flares and enough protein bars to feed a very hungry army, but Sam had different priorities.
Then they were off to Caractacus Ranch, with Evangeline at the wheel of their rented SUV. It didn’t take long to get out of town and for the view out of Sam’s window to shift from stores to houses to trees. Theo, up front next to Evangeline, kept his eyes on the map on his phone and gave terse directions.
“You know, Thomas Jefferson was probably the smartest of all the presidents,” Marty said cheerfully as they drove. “He wrote the Declaration of Independence. Well, other people helped too. John Adams put in some stuff. But Jefferson did most of the work, and they followed his first draft pretty closely. And he made the Louisiana Purchase when he was president, which doubled the size of the United States.”
“Louisiana isn’t that big,” Sam said.
“Sam, really. Didn’t you ever pay attention in history class? The Louisiana Purchase was a lot more than just Louisiana. It included territory up to Canada. Jefferson was an architect too. He designed his plantation, Monticello. Plus he played the violin.”
Theo’s low voice drifted back from the front seat. “Sure. He was a great guy. For a slave owner.”
“Well.” Marty hesitated. Sam saw, with surprise, that for once she was not sure how to reply. “That’s true. Of course. Some of the Founders—”
“He wrote, ‘All men are created equal,’” Theo interrupted. “How could the man who wrote that have kept hundreds of people as slaves? How equal were they? What a hypocrite.”
“Yeah, that’s a good point,” Sam put in. Mostly he was just happy to see Marty stuck for a moment, but the more he thought about it, the more he agreed with Theo.
“But, Theo . . . ,” Marty began. Theo didn’t let her finish.
“He kept his own children as slaves. Did you know that?” Evangeline glanced sideways at Theo, a concerned look on her face, then turned her eyes back to the road as he went on. “One of the women he owned, Sally Hemings, he had seven children with her. Four who lived to grow up. And they were slaves in his house.”
“But he freed them,” Marty said, a little weakly.
“Eventually. Some not until after he died. What a great guy.”
Marty got quiet. Which was quite an achievement on Theo’s part.
“Jefferson had kids?” Sam asked. He wasn’t sure he really wanted a part of this conversation; Theo sounded seriously irritated, Marty looked anxious, and Evangeline didn’t seem to be in any mood to interfere. But an idea had popped into his head.
“Two daughters with his wife,” Marty answered quietly. “Two who lived to become adults, anyway. And yes, children with Sally Hemings as well.”
“Then he’s got descendants?” Sam asked. “Like, you know, you guys? I mean, you’re not his descendants—Jefferson’s—but you are somebody’s. I guess everybody is somebody’s. But you know what I mean.”
“Astonishingly, I do,” Evangeline said. “And yes. Thomas Jefferson has living descendants. As do all the Founders.”
“So why are we the ones looking for this artifact, whatever it is? Can’t one of them find it?”
“One of them could. His name is James Randolph,” Evangeline answered. “Unfortunately, he is unavailable at the moment.”
“What, did he turn his cell phone off?”
“He is, I believe, leading a trek near Annapurna, Nepal. Where phone service is not the best. He has not responded to any attempts at contact.”
“Of course he hasn’t.” Sam sighed. “So it’s up to us?”
“It seems to be. Mr. Solomon, you must understand that, for a great many years, there has been no serious threat to the Founders’ artifacts. This has led to some”—she paused, searching for the right word—“complacency. The Founders were not, shall I say, used to taking on an active role in protecting their inheritance. When my father . . .” She took a breath as if to firm up her voice. “When he disappeared, I knew that something was wrong. But as I could not tell the others exactly what danger we faced, I did not find it easy to convince them. It was only when the three of you encountered Gideon Arnold in Death Valley that the peril to all of us, and to the country, became entirely clear.” Her hands tightened on the steering wheel. “One of my associates did believe me from the beginning.”
Theo clicked his phone off suddenly and turned to stare out the side window.
“She attempted to check on the safety of several of the artifacts,” Evangeline went on. “But we have had no word from her in quite a while, I am sorry to say.”
“Oh.” Sam winced a little. That did not sound good.
“And that is why I started the American Dream competition. The Founders needed allies. I believe we have found them.”
Sam had to admit that made him feel sort of good. Allies. Him and Marty, on the side of the good guys.
As long as the good guys were sharing all their information, of course.
“Oh!” Marty said suddenly. “There’s a sign—Theo, didn’t you see the sign? For Caractacus Ranch. Turn left. Right there! No, I mean left there!”
Evangeline did so, and they bounced up a gravel road, clouds of dust rising under the SUV’s wheels.
“Look!” The car rounded a bend, and Marty pointed up ahead. “It’s the ranch! Oh yes. This is the right place for sure.”
“What are you talking about?” Sam leaned forward to peer between Evangeline and Theo’s shoulders. A gravel driveway wound up a smooth green hill and led to a large white house. It didn’t look very much like a ranch to Sam. It looked more like something out of Gone with the Wind, a mansion with pillars all along a front porch and a dome rising above.
“It looks like Monticello,” Marty breathed. “The dome, those columns. It was designed to look like Thomas Jefferson’s house!”
“Let us hope you are correct, Ms. Wright.” Evangeline brought the SUV to a gentle stop in front of the house. They got out, and Sam took a careful look at the big white building. He began to feel a familiar excitement—the feeling of being one step closer to solving a puzzle—bubble up inside him. He had the sense that Marty had been right. Good old Marty. Their next clue really could be here.
As they stood together by the car, the front door of the house opened and a man came down the steps of the porch. “Hello. Can I help you?” he asked, a cheerful smile on his face. He was as tall as Theo, and his thick brown hair was touched with gray. Cowboy boots on his feet scuffed through the gravel as he walked toward them.
“I certainly hope so,” Evangeline said. “Are you the owner of Caractacus Ranch?”
The man nodded. “Charley Hodge, that’s me. Were you hoping for a trail ride? I’m afraid we’re not going out on any more rides today. But we can put you on the list for tomorrow, if that’s what you’d like?”
A trail ride! That was about the last thing Sam wanted. The last time he’d been on a horse, it had been a pony at his best friend Adam’s fourth birthday party, and the thing had given him an evil look and stepped on his toe. Since then he’d steered clear of horses. He’d take a dirt bike any day.
“No thank you,” Evangeline said. “Actually, we’re here on . . . business. My name, Mr. Hodge, is Evangeline Temple.” She waited for a moment, as if to see if the name meant anything to him.
If it did, he didn’t show it. Sam glanced over at Marty, worried. This guy didn’t seem like he’d be of any help. Maybe Marty Always-Wright had been wrong, just this once.
“Pleased to meet you,” Charley Hodge said politely, but he looked kind of baffled. His gaze swept over Sam, Marty, and Theo, his confusion only increasing. “And these guys? Your kids, or . . . ?”
As if she couldn’t help herself, Evangeline glanced sideways at Sam. “Ah, no.” Was he imagining that slightly appalled look on her face? She introduced the children and then slipped off her jacket, handing it to Theo. Underneath it she wore a pale-blue sleeveless dress. “Thank you for your welcome, Mr. Hodge.” She reached forward to shake his hand.
Sam could spot the tattoo on her upper arm, the pyramid with an open eye above it and a key inside. He knew it was the secret sign of the Founders, and it marked Evangeline as what she was—a direct descendant of Benjamin Franklin.
Charley Hodge shook Evangeline’s hand once and then stopped. His eyes went to her arm, then to her face.
She nodded.
Theo shrugged off his jacket too and rolled up his sleeve. On the inside of his forearm was his own tattoo—another pyramid, this one with a sword inside.
“I feel kind of underdressed,” Sam whispered to Marty, who elbowed him in the ribs.
Mr. Hodge swallowed and looked quickly around, as if checking to make sure they were safe. He lowered his voice to a whisper—despite the fact that there probably wasn’t another person within miles of here. “You’re Founders? Both of you?” Eyes wide, he looked over at Sam and Marty. “And them?”
“Mr. Solomon and Ms. Wright are our associates.” Evangeline was putting on her jacket again and buttoning it up. “Can we speak inside, Mr. Hodge? We have a matter of some urgency to discuss.”
Charley Hodge was shaking his head. “I never thought. I never really thought I’d be the one—yes, of course! Inside! Please! Ms. Temple, kids, come on in.”
He led them up the steps of the front porch and into Caractacus Ranch.
Sam had thought a ranch would involve something sort of western—furniture hacked out of logs maybe, Navajo blankets, deer heads on the walls. Instead, he felt as if he were walking into the White House. Charley Hodge led them into a many-sided foyer with an intricately inlaid floor, and then into a living room where bookshelves stood along creamy white walls, a crimson rug lay on the floor, and a fire crackled in a fireplace. “Anita! Abby!” Hodge was calling. “Come quickly! There are people here you have to meet!”
Anita turned out to be Mrs. Hodge—as tall as her husband, with neat silver-blond hair tucked into a bun, corduroy pants, and a plaid shirt buttoned to her throat. Abby ran into the room right after Anita, and she looked to be about Sam and Marty’s age, with her mom’s blond hair and her dad’s excited grin. She looked around, bouncing a little on her sneakered feet, eager to hear her dad’s news.
After Anita and Abby had both stared, wide-eyed, at Evangeline’s and Theo’s tattoos (Theo looked embarrassed, Evangeline cool and smiling), they settled down on couches and chairs. Abby and Sam grabbed pillows in front of the fire.
“The responsibility has been passed down for generations,” Charley Hodge said, still shaking his head as if he couldn’t quite believe it. “My father told me that one day someone with tattoos like yours might show up, and I’d have to do everything I could to help them recover the Quill.”
“The Quill?” Evangeline asked quickly.
“That’s what my family has been guarding all these years. The Eagle’s Quill. The one Thomas Jefferson used to write the first draft of the Declaration of Independence.”
“Told you!” Marty mouthed at Sam, with a self-satisfied smirk on her face. Sam rolled his eyes. As he did so, he caught Abby’s gaze on him. A quick smile spread across her face, and he couldn’t help smiling back. Then Abby wiped the grin away and turned back to her father, straight-faced. Sam felt himself starting to like this girl. It might be nice to have somebody around who didn’t take everything as seriously as Marty, or Theo either.
“Ah. Indeed.” Evangeline leaned back in her chair, looking relieved. “That is what we have come to find, Mr. Hodge. The Quill. Where is it?”
“Don’t you know?” Mr. Hodge looked surprised.
“We do not.” Evangeline’s face grew even more serious than usual, and her dark eyes focused sharply on Charley Hodge’s face. “There has been . . . some trouble, Mr. Hodge. I do not want to go into details. But we must recover the Eagle’s Quill as quickly as possible, and we need your help. Please tell us where it is.”
Blinking, Charley Hodge spread his hands out, palms up. “I—I don’t have any idea,” he said.
Evangeline’s shoulders dropped ever so slightly. Theo’s face didn’t change, but Marty sighed, and Sam groaned to himself. Of course it wouldn’t be easy. Nothing to do with the Founders was ever easy.
Charley Hodge explained that, about two hundred years ago, his ancestor, Josiah Hodge, had been part of the Corps of Discovery, led by Lewis and Clark. It was the first formal attempt by the new American government to explore this part of the country. Josiah had not only been an explorer, however. He had a secret mission—to safeguard Thomas Jefferson’s Quill.
Hodge’s family had kept the Quill safely in their home for many years. “But around the Civil War something happened—I don’t know what, and my dad didn’t know either,” Charley Hodge said. “But two Founders came, saying they were descendants of Jefferson. They took the Quill and hid it somewhere else, somewhere safe. My family wasn’t told where. All we were told is to help anyone who came looking. Anyone with the right tattoos, that is. Like you.”
“James Randolph would know where to look,” Evangeline said, tapping her fingers on the arm of her chair in frustration. “But he is . . . unavailable.”
“Climbing Mount Everest,” Sam said.
“Perhaps not literally, Mr. Solomon. But, yes, in Nepal. So we shall . . .” Evangeline let her sentence trail off.
“What?” Abby asked, looking up from her seat by the fire. She had a thin, eager face with a scattering of freckles across milky skin, and she looked ready to jump up and start hunting for the Quill right then and there. “What’s your plan?”
“We don’t exactly . . .” Evangeline trailed off again.
“A plan makes this hunt sound a lot more organized than it’s been so far,” Sam said. “But now we know what we’re looking for, right? That’s something.”
“Absolutely right.” Evangeline sat up straighter. “And we have friends and allies that we did not have two hours ago.”
“Of course you do.” Anita Hodge spoke up for the first time. “Ms. Temple—”
“Please, call me Evangeline.”
“Evangeline, then. We can tell something is wrong.” Anita’s voice and her eyes were warm and reassuring. “You don’t need to tell us what—we won’t ask. But we’ll help you all we can.” She stood up. “And right now, I think the best way to help is to get you dinner, and beds to sleep in, so we can all start to figure out this problem with fresh minds in the morning.”
“Ms. Hodge—Anita.” Evangeline smiled up at her. “You are perfectly correct.”
“Then I will get some food cooking. Charley, you finish feeding the horses. And Abby, show our guests to their rooms.”
Sam and Theo got a room together, with thick patchwork quilts on the bunk beds and posters of the wildlife in Glacier National Park—wolves, grizzly bears, mountain lions. Marty got her own room across the hall, and Abby showed Evangeline to a bigger guest room on the other side of the house, with its own bathroom and shower. Evangeline wanted to rest before dinner, so Abby turned to the three others.
“Come on! I’ll show you around the ranch,” she said. Her eyes met Sam’s, and she smiled. “There’s some cool old stuff. I bet you’d like to see it.”
Theo trailed silently behind, Marty asked a million questions about Thomas Jefferson, and Sam tried to pay attention. “The house was designed to look something like Thomas Jefferson’s plantation, right, Abby?” Marty said, following closely on Abby’s heels.
“Sure, I guess,” Abby said. “My dad knows more than I do about the history of this place. But the hallway out front is supposed to be the same—”
“As the front entrance in Monticello!” Marty interrupted. “I could tell. It’s an octagon, and it’s got the inlaid wooden floor and the clock over the door.”
“Sure!” Abby said, her voice bright and cheerful. “Just the same!” Sam recognized that voice. It was the one he used when he was trying to convince a teacher that of course he’d done his homework.
“Jefferson designed that clock himself, you know,” Marty went on. “And he—”
“I’ll show you the musket Josiah Hodge carried on the Lewis and Clark Expedition,” Abby broke in. “Dad keeps it in the dining room.” She had figured out Marty in no time at all, Sam thought, impressed. She knew the only way to get a word in edgewise was to interrupt, since Marty never stopped for a breath.
Abby led them through the kitchen, where the smell of hamburgers sizzling in a skillet made Sam’s mouth water, and into the dining room. There was a big table of smooth, dark wood in the center of the room, surrounded by eight chairs.
On one wall, over another fireplace, was an ancient-looking gun. To Sam, it looked like something from a play—could it really have fired bullets? It was hard to imagine.
Beside the musket, in a heavy gold frame, was an old map, its parchment protected by thick glass. “That shows where the Lewis and Clark Expedition went,” Abby told them. “You can see how close they came to where we are.”
“What’s this thing?” Sam asked, as Marty darted off to examine the map up close.
“Um . . .” Abby frowned at the contraption Sam had noticed. It stood on a long, narrow sideboard below the musket. “I forget its name. My dad will know. It’s some kind of—”
“A polygraph!” Marty exclaimed, rushing back to their side. Theo came to look too.
“Huh? A Revolutionary War lie detector?” Sam asked. “What did they do, wire somebody up to this and tickle them with the quill if they told a lie?”
Abby giggled. Marty sighed. “Not a lie detector, Sam!” she said, like a disappointed teacher.
“I think he was joking, Marty,” Abby told her. She kept her mouth straight, but she shot a quick glance at Sam, and her eyes were bright with amusement.
Marty’s gaze went quickly from Abby to Sam and then back to the machine on the table. Above a flat wooden platform a quill pen was poised, held in an intricate system of wires and levers, as though it were about to start writing all by itself. An inkpot of thick, carved glass stood nearby—Sam guessed you were supposed to dip the quill in that. A tall, elegant silver candlestick had been placed on each side.
Theo moved away, as if he’d lost interest, and went across the room to stand with his hands in his pockets, staring out of a window that showed a view of stables and corrals and all the buildings of a working ranch.
“It’s a copying machine,” Marty explained. If she’d been at all bothered by the fact that Abby got Sam’s joke while she didn’t, the joy of history seemed to have washed it from her mind. “See, you put a sheet of paper—or parchment, I guess—on the platform. Then you write with one quill, and the other quill follows the movements precisely, creating a second copy.”
“What other quill?” Sam asked.
“Well, there should be another quill. There. See how there’s a holder?” Marty pointed. “But it’s empty.”
Anita’s voice drifted in from the room next door. “Dinner in two minutes! Abby, go tell your father. The rest of you kids, why don’t you come in here and help me get the table set?”
“Thomas Jefferson used a polygraph every day,” Marty said as they gathered up plates and napkins in the kitchen and took them to the dining room. “To make copies of all his letters and documents. He thought it was a great scientific advancement.”
“A Revolutionary War Xerox machine, huh? A lie detector would have been cooler,” Sam said, folding napkins.
Along with the hamburgers, dinner was corn on the cob, coleslaw, baked beans, and heaping bowls of ice cream for dessert. Charley Hodge told them stories about the Lewis and Clark Expedition. Marty chimed in often to add details. Abby, sitting next to Sam, turned to whisper to him. “I’ve heard all of these before,” she told him. “The next one is going to be about the moose that trampled a canoe.”
Sure enough, the next thing Charley said was, “And one evening, just as everybody was settling in for the night, a moose came tearing out of the woods, straight for the river where the canoes were moored. And then—”
Sam had to cover his mouth with one arm to smother his laughter. Theo, meanwhile, ate three hamburgers in silence, chewing mechanically, as if he hardly noticed the food. Evangeline, listening attentively to Charley’s stories, glanced at Theo from time to time, worry in her eyes. Then she would turn back to Charley and ask another question that would start a whole new story.
After dinner was over and the dishes were washed, Sam found to his surprise that he couldn’t stop yawning. Anita Hodge noticed, and before Sam could figure out what had happened, she’d sent all four of the kids off to bed.
Sam lay on the top bunk, warm under his quilt. His stomach was stuffed, his thoughts slow and sleepy, his body starting to relax. Not even the gaze of the ferocious predators on the walls could bother him.
This wasn’t going to be so bad, Sam thought. Not anywhere near as difficult and dangerous as finding Ben Franklin’s key had been. In Death Valley, he and Marty and Theo had been all alone, thrown into the crazy puzzles and deadly traps of Ben Franklin’s vault before they even knew what they were doing. This time was different. They had Evangeline and the Hodges to help them, a place to stay, and it looked like Gideon Arnold hadn’t managed to follow them from Death Valley. Because if he had, surely they’d have seen some sign of him by now.
So, for the moment at least, they were safe. Sam sighed and closed his eyes.
The next day they’d have to start figuring out where the Eagle’s Quill was hidden and what kind of traps might be guarding it. All that would be a puzzle—just what Sam was good at.
Puzzles were for the morning, though. Right now, all Sam had to do was rest. He listened to Theo turn over once, twice, and then a third time in the bunk below. And he felt himself slide peacefully into sleep.
At least, until the explosions began.