Sam was thrown on his face in the soft grass, and he heard Abby shriek. He staggered up to see that the birch tree was gone. It had fallen straight into a deep pit that had opened up underneath it, and Abby was clinging to the side of that same pit. She’d grabbed at the grass before she fell, but her grip wasn’t enough to hold her weight. Her fingers were slipping slowly through the dirt.
Sam lunged forward. “Don’t let go!” he yelled, flinging himself down and grabbing for both of Abby’s hands. She gripped him frantically, her fingernails biting into his skin. Sam dug his knees and elbows and feet into the earth, trying to brace himself, but it was no use. He was inching forward, Abby’s weight pulling him down with her.
Then Marty thumped on top of him, anchoring him with her weight and knocking the breath out of him, and Theo threw himself onto his knees beside the pit, grabbing Abby beneath her arms.
For a moment Abby’s eyes met Theo’s, and Sam saw something strange on her face—astonishment? Confusion? Resentment? Then Theo said, “Pull! Now!” and all three of them heaved, dragging Abby up over the edge of the pit.
Marty rolled off Sam. Abby sat up, shaking. “Thanks,” she said, her voice wobbling. She glanced at Theo and then away.
Theo didn’t say anything—but then, that was typical. “No problem,” Sam wheezed. “Geez, Marty, what do you have in that pack, a set of weights?”
“You’re welcome,” Marty said tartly.
“Yeah, yeah. But, Abby, just so you know—it’s better not to, you know, pull on things. Or step on bridges, right, Marty?” Marty snorted. “Or whatever. Old TJ was a typical Founder, all right. He loved making things difficult.”
“Well, that’s kind of the point,” Marty said. “It’s supposed to be difficult if you don’t know what to do. If we had Jefferson’s descendant here, we’d know.”
“But he’s in Nepal, so we’re stuck with difficult.” Sam looked around. “And that’s what we’ve got, all right.”
When Abby had pulled that lever, it hadn’t merely opened up a pit beneath her feet. A rough circle of ground inside the clearing, with the ring of trees at its center, had dropped down as well. It had been that movement that had tossed Sam on his face. Now they were at the bottom of a hole maybe forty feet across and ten feet deep.
How could the earth just fall down like that? Sam frowned. He yanked up a handful of grass by the roots and poked into the hole he’d created. Under about three inches of dirt was a rough metal surface. The entire clearing was a fake.
“I bet there’s a crater below us, or a sinkhole,” Marty said. “And the Founders built this on top.”
“But trees can’t grow in just a few inches of soil!” Abby said, puzzled.
“I don’t think they did.” Sam got up cautiously, in case the ground beneath his feet planned to do any more gymnastics. It stayed steady, however, and he approached the octagon of trees, except that now, without the birch tree in it, it was—what had Marty called it?—a heptagon.
Sam reached out to tap an oak tree, and nodded. “Fake. Metal. I bet they all are.”
Marty was at his side. “So they were made. Not planted.”
“Right.” Cautiously, staying on the outside of the circle of trees, Sam moved on to a maple. “And they all have those metal plates, look. With handles.”
“And if we pull the wrong handle—” Marty glanced at the pit where the birch tree had been standing and shuddered. Sam could not see a bottom to the hole where, not long ago, Abby had been dangling.
He nodded. “So let’s not do that, okay?”
Theo spoke up. “We don’t want to pull the wrong handle. So which one’s the right one?”
“There has to be a way to figure it out.” Sam continued his prowl around the ring of trees. “It’s a puzzle. It has an answer.” He had to give the Founders that much. They were happy to kill anybody who got a puzzle wrong . . . but they did give you at least one chance to get it right.
“All the trees are different,” Marty said.
“So?” Sam answered. “Trees are probably like snowflakes. No two the same.”
“Different species, I mean. The one that fell in was a birch. Oak, maple, elm, cherry . . .” Marty paused. “The cherry tree. Remember George Washington, cutting down the cherry tree?”
Theo shook his head. ‘That’s a myth. He never really did that.”
“And this isn’t Washington’s puzzle anyway,” Sam put in. “It’s Thomas Jefferson’s. What kind of a tree would TJ have?”
Marty looked blank. “I can’t think of anything . . . wait! Virginia!”
It was Sam’s turn to look blank. “There’s a kind of tree named Virginia?”
“No, Sam. The state tree of Virginia. Jefferson was from Virginia.” Marty closed her eyes, thinking hard. “I know this . . . Give me a minute . . .”
“Does she really know that?” Abby whispered to Sam, awe in her voice. “The state tree? Of every state?”
“I bet she does,” Sam answered, keeping his voice low as well to let Marty think.
“Flowering dogwood!” Marty announced, opening her eyes and grinning. “I remember because it’s the state flower too.”
Sam grinned too. “Marty, you’re amazing. Which one’s flowering dogwood?”
Marty turned in circle, gazing at the trees. “It’s . . . it’s . . .” Her grin faded. “It’s not here.”
“You’re kidding.” Sam felt his shoulders slump. “I was sure that was right. Thomas Jefferson, Virginia . . .”
“You told me sometimes you have to guess wrong the first time to guess right the second.” Marty’s face took on a look of fresh determination. “So the state tree isn’t the right answer. Something else about trees and Jefferson, then—oh. Oh!”
“Marty! What?” Sam demanded.
“I am so stupid. I can’t believe I didn’t see it before!”
“Marty! Just tell us!”
“The elm tree! The tree of liberty!” Marty practically shouted.
“Honestly, Sam, anybody would think you’d never read a book. The Liberty Tree, on the Boston Common! The colonists gathered there to protest the Stamp Act! It was a huge symbol of the resistance.”
Sam nodded. “And it was an elm tree, I’m guessing?”
“Give me your backpack!”
“Huh?” Marty snatched the pack from Sam’s shoulders as he twisted around to stare at her in astonishment. “Marty, chill. Yes, I’ve got another Kit Kat in there. You could have just asked.”
“You’ve got Josiah in here!” Marty pulled out the urn with the ashes of Abby’s ancestor. “Don’t you remember what was carved on this? Thomas Jefferson said it! ‘The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants!’”
“Okay, okay! Marty, we’re convinced. The elm tree is the tree of liberty. Fine. Do the honors.” Sam nodded at the elm.
“But what if . . .” Abby’s voice trailed off. “Be careful, Marty. What if you’re wrong?”
“Nah.” Sam grinned. “Marty’s always right, Abby. It’s in her name. You get used to it.”
Marty snorted. With Josiah’s ashes still in her hand, she stepped up to the elm tree, found the metal plate, reached up, and pulled the lever.
Sam braced himself, but the ground did not move. No pits opened up. No earthquakes shook their surroundings. The metal plate on the elm swung meekly open and inside was another. This one had a circular hole in its center, its edges notched like rough saw blade, with a pattern of triangles.
Marty looked down at the urn and up at Sam. He nodded.
“Looks like a keyhole to me, Marty. Try it.”
Marty did so, tipping the urn sideways and sliding the top, with its jagged, saw-toothed edge, into the hole. She frowned, hesitated, and twisted the urn. There was a click. The top of the urn had opened.
“The blood of patriots,” Marty said softly, as Josiah’s ashes fell from the opened urn into the tree’s hollow center.
Then there was a crunch.
Sam jumped forward, ready to grab Marty if she started to slide away into a bottomless pit, but that was not what had happened. A small section of the clearing inside the ring, perhaps four feet square, had slid open, revealing a set of stairs leading downward.
“So we go down,” Sam said, and headed for the staircase. The others followed.
The stairs were wrought iron, curving in a spiral. Sam went down cautiously, alert for more Founder tricks, but nothing happened. At the bottom of the staircase, he found himself standing in the center of an octagonal vault. The walls were white granite, polished to a gleaming shine. On one wall, engraved in silver and as tall as Sam’s head, was a pyramid with an eye atop it and a quill in its center.
In front of this engraving was a simple wooden desk, worn by time. On it stood an inkwell, and beside the inkwell was a quill.
Not an ordinary quill, though. This one was silver, as bright as though it had just been polished. Sam hesitated and glanced back at the others.
Abby looked wide-eyed and anxious, hugging her arms across her chest. “I—I don’t like closed-in places,” she said suddenly. “I’m just going to—wait outside. Okay?” Before anyone could answer, she had dashed up the stairs.
That was kind of weird, Sam thought. For somebody with claustrophobia, Abby had seemed fine the whole time they’d been in the cave behind the waterfall. But he didn’t want to spend too much time thinking about that now, because he was about six inches away from . . .
“Go ahead, Sam,” Marty said. “You’re closest. Pick it up.”
Sam reached out a hand for Thomas Jefferson’s Quill.
“This is it, huh?” He turned it gently in his hands. “The real thing.”
Theo spoke up. “It’s real.”
Sam had held a Founders’ artifact once before, but at the time there had been a very scary guy with a gun in the room, and Sam’s attention had been divided between holding Benjamin Franklin’s key and not dying. This time there was nothing to take his mind away from what was in his hands.
The Quill Thomas Jefferson had used to write the Declaration of Independence.
Someone—Thomas Jefferson himself?—must have taken the Quill and dipped it in molten silver. Every little curve and delicate tendril of the feather it had once been had been perfectly preserved. It seemed familiar, somehow, as well. Was it just that Sam had seen a thousand pictures of quill pens like this in history textbooks, in movies, in books?
All men are created equal.
Thomas Jefferson had written that with this pen. What Theo had said about the man was true. He’d owned slaves. He’d kept his own children as slaves. And it had probably never occurred to Jefferson that women—like the ones Marty and Abby would grow up to be—would like to be considered equal too.
But he’d written it. He’d thought of it. Old TJ had said to the world: We don’t have to have some sort of system with royalty on the top and the rest of us spread out at the bottom. Instead, we can start out by thinking that we’re all the same. That a pawn can be as powerful as a king.
Maybe there hadn’t been perfect equality in this country when Thomas Jefferson had written that, Sam thought. Maybe there still wasn’t perfect equality today either. But it had been a start . . . and it had started with this Quill.
Theo let out a slow breath, interrupting Sam’s thoughts. “That was . . . simple.”
Sam blinked and looked around. “I know. I was expecting the ceiling to fall on our heads, or something. I guess old TJ figured that if we made it this far, we were the real thing?”
“I guess so.” Marty looked amazed and relieved too. “Come on. Let’s get it out into the light. I have an idea . . .” She headed for the stairs as well. “Abby, look at this!” she said, once they had all reached the surface. “Do you recognize it?”
Abby had been standing with her back to the staircase, facing out through the ring of trees. She turned and frowned. “Recognize what?”
“The Quill. Sam, show her!” Sam held the Quill out so Abby could see it. “It’s just like the quill in the polygraph back at your ranch,” Marty told her, and Sam nodded. That was why the Quill had seemed familiar!
“There were supposed to be two quills in that machine,” he said. “I bet if we put this Quill in beside the other one, it’ll tell us what we need to know!”
“What we need to know?” Abby looked confused.
Marty nodded, her eyes shining. “You’re right. I’m sure you’re right, Sam. Ben Franklin’s key told us to come here . . . and the Quill will tell us where to go next. We just have to get back there quickly!”
“Quickly,” said Theo, “is going to be the tricky part.”
“Well, we just . . . we just . . .” Sam’s voice trailed off. He looked around. They were at the bottom of a ten-foot pit, created when the cover over the crater had dropped down. First they had to get out of that. Then they had to . . . what? Find their way back to the abandoned town, follow the ancient road, clamber through the cave system (and hope the mountain lion wouldn’t be lurking around), climb up a waterfall, follow a river, and finally hike back to Caractacus Ranch?
It would take days, Sam realized. Could they even do it? They wouldn’t have horses to ride or rafts to paddle. Would their supplies hold out?
“We’ll just get started, I guess,” he said glumly.
“It might not be as hard as you think,” Abby said. “Look there.”
She pointed. A pine tree, maybe twenty feet tall, had been uprooted when the crater’s cover had dropped down. Now its roots rested on the edge of the pit, and its crown, in a snarl of branches and pine needles, lay not far from their feet.
“As good as a staircase,” Abby said, starting off toward the fallen tree. Sam was a little surprised by how cheerful she seemed. Wasn’t she going to argue more with Theo about trading the Quill for her parents’ safety? Sam looked down at the Quill, still in his hands. And if she did that, what side would he take?
But an argument didn’t seem to be on Abby’s mind. She circled the tree and found a way to the trunk through the clutter of broken and bent branches, and she began to climb. The tree wobbled under her weight, but it didn’t fall. Marty went next, inching her way upward cautiously, and then Theo. Once the big guy had clawed his way through the massive spread of roots sticking up into the sky, Sam started up.
It was trickier for him, because he was still holding the Quill in his right hand. He didn’t want to stuff the precious artifact in his backpack; it would be awkward to explain to Theo or Marty or Evangeline that he had broken it.
Except he wasn’t likely to see Evangeline again, was he? Any more than Abby was likely to see her parents again.
Sam didn’t like that thought. He shoved his way up through thick branches, his hands sticky with sap, breathing in the Christmasy smell of fresh pine. Theo had made sure they couldn’t contact Arnold to hand over the Quill, but surely that didn’t mean they just had to give up on Evangeline. Or Abby’s parents, or Theo’s mom. There must be something they could do.
Granted, Sam couldn’t think of what that something might be, but that didn’t mean it didn’t exist. They’d discovered two of the Founders’ artifacts, hadn’t they? If the four of them worked together, couldn’t they pull off a rescue too?
His foot slipped off a branch, bringing Sam’s mind back to his climbing. He grabbed at a muddy root with his left hand, pulling himself up, but he couldn’t find a foothold. A hand appeared through the roots, and Abby’s voice called out, “Hand me the Quill, Sam! You need your hands for climbing!”
Sam did so, and then, with both hands free to hold on, clambered half over and half through the upturned mass of roots. He fell or slid or sort of both down the other side and to solid ground again. Theo offered a hand and pulled him to his feet.
“Okay, now which way?” Sam asked, looking around. Theo frowned, and said something in return that Sam could not hear.
He couldn’t hear it because a deep thump-thump-thump noise was growing steadily louder. Helicopters! Sam saw Marty’s eyes go wide, saw Abby turn her face to the sky, saw Theo’s gaze moving quickly back and forth as he searched for a way out. Then shadows fell over them, and Sam saw the black machines hovering overhead like giant flying spiders, blocking the light.
They did not look like Park Service helicopters, Sam realized in dismay.
“We should run!” he shouted to Theo, but Theo shook his head.
“Nowhere to go!” Theo yelled back.
And there wasn’t. The helicopters were coming down already, generating winds that pounded at Sam, whipping his hair into his eyes, tossing dust and dead leaves and pine needles in a whirlwind. All four kids hunched over and shielded their eyes as the helicopters landed and the disturbed air died down into quietness once again.
Marty moved close to Sam’s side as two men stepped out of each helicopter’s door. Sam had seen men like this before, in Death Valley and at Caractacus Ranch—large men with large muscles, black jackets, and hard eyes. One of them had a pair of black eyes and slightly swollen nose, probably because somebody had punched him in the face a day and a half ago.
That man moved aside to let another off the helicopter, and Sam’s heart sank a little further. Flintlock stepped down to the ground, looking a little too big for his dark suit, his brown hair slightly rumpled, a frown on his craggy face.
Sam shook his head a little, feeling stunned and sick. They’d solved the puzzles, they’d survived the dangers, they’d found the Quill—and now their triumph was about to be snatched away. How did Flintlock find them? How could he have gotten here so quickly?
But the sight of the man who followed Flintlock out of the helicopter drove those questions out of Sam’s head. His smooth white suit fit him perfectly; his light hair was slicked back, not a strand out of place.
Sam would have muttered the worst curse he knew, but his mouth was too dry for words.
Gideon Arnold had arrived. Sam knew this was the man who had tortured Evangeline’s father to death. He’d kidnapped Evangeline and Abby’s parents. And what was he about to do now?
Arnold slid off a pair of sunglasses to study the children with pale-blue eyes. When his gaze landed on Abby and what she held in her hand, he smiled.
Two more people were getting off the other helicopter. Sam turned his head to see them and felt his jaw drop.
Charley and Anita Hodge? Really?
Sam stared, his mind spinning. The Hodges looked good. They had on fresh clothes; they looked rested and comfortable and like they’d had a shower and a fine breakfast before jumping aboard a helicopter for a scenic ride. They didn’t look at all like people who had been prisoners of Gideon Arnold for two days.
And they were . . . smiling. Smiling? All of a sudden, Sam felt very queasy. This was wrong. Nobody should be smiling right now except the bad guys. And that meant . . .
“Dad!” Abby shouted with joy.
She raced across the clearing, Quill in hand, to throw herself into the arms of Gideon Arnold.