“Dennis!” Nipper called as he entered the pit room. “Time to go home!”

His voice echoed as he searched the room for the pug. No one was there.

“Dennis?” Nipper repeated. “I said it’s time to…”

He looked at the pit and gulped. Had the pug fallen in?

Nipper stepped to the edge of the hole. He squinted into the darkness. It sure looked bottomless…and useless. In spite of everything, his Yankees were done.

But it would be truly horrible if—in addition to not saving his team and not helping his sister—he’d gone and lost their dog.

“Dennis?” he called again.

As he stared into the darkness, he heard a faint scratching, tapping sound.

Nipper looked over his shoulder. The sound was coming from around the corner, the exit across from where he had followed the monkey. He left the pit’s edge and walked through the doorway quickly.

Nipper entered a room that he remembered very well. It was a treasure room filled with statues, trophies, jewels, and furniture. Shiny metal masks were stacked in a neat pile. A woven basket had tipped over, scattering dozens of huge red gems and gold coins across the tile floor. Everything glinted in the light of Nipper’s headlamp.

When they’d first discovered this underground tomb, Nipper had wanted to bring a bunch of loot home so he could buy his team back. Samantha had convinced him it was a bad idea to take anything out of this place. She couldn’t have been more right about it. All he’d taken was one lousy ring, and it had wrecked his life!

At the far end of the room, Dennis’s cone tapped against the lower part of a tall flat panel as he scratched at it with his front paws. The surfboard-shaped stone was the lid to a mummy case propped up against the wall. The pug alternated between scratching at the lid and licking flecks of powder that he had scraped free with his paws. Nipper could tell the dog had been at it for quite a while. The bottom of the lid looked like Dennis had worn some of it away with his sharp toenails.

“What are you doing, pal?” asked Nipper, stepping forward.

Crunch!

Nipper looked down. He’d stepped on a ruby, and it had crushed under his foot.

“Fake?” asked Nipper.

He knelt down and studied the crushed stone. All that was left of it was a clump of pink powder.

Nipper stood back up and looked around the room. How much of the treasure in this room was real?

He stepped to the side and bumped into a low table, toppling a statue of a bird.

Crash!

The statue hit the floor and shattered into a hundred dusty fragments. Nipper scratched his head. It was a fake, too. What else in this room wasn’t a real treasure?

Next to him, on the ground, was a bundle of long slender rods. They were carved with elaborate geometric shapes. They looked like magic wands, the kind wizards used in storybooks.

Nipper brought his foot down on the sticks, and crunch, they crumbled into small chips of sparkling white powder. He knelt down and touched the powder with his finger. He brought it to his tongue. It tasted salty. He crushed the rest of the wands into powder. It was all made of salt!

Cree-e-eak. Smash!

The heavy sarcophagus lid fell sideways and crashed onto the floor of the chamber, exploding into pieces and sending up a cloud of white salt flakes. They swirled around the room like a dusty snow flurry.

“Watch out for the SNOW,” Nipper said quietly.

The SNOW had been here. Somehow they had found a way to get in and out of this place, and they were using the room to store all their phony, salty treasure.

Nipper looked back to the doorway that led to the pit room, and his eyes went wide.

“Everything is connected to something,” said Nipper.

He looked across the chamber at Dennis. The pug licked furiously at a chunk of the shattered sarcophagus lid.

“Come on, pal,” said Nipper.

“Wruf?” the dog barked, switching on the Blinky Barker light.

“Off, off,” said Nipper, shielding his eyes from the bulb’s intense glare.

“Wruf,” Dennis barked again. The light turned off, and the little dog followed him through the door back to the big round room.

“It’s too late to save my Yankees,” said Nipper, walking to the edge of the pit. “But maybe it’s not too late to save my sister.”

He stepped forward, picked up Dennis, and then walked to the mine cart that still sat next to the pit. The pug began to squirm.

“Relax, pal,” said Nipper, climbing into the cart with the dog. “I have an idea.”

He peered over the front of the cart, and into the blackness of the pit. Then he began to shift his weight, causing the cart to rock back to front.

“Wruf!” Dennis barked nervously.

The cart began inching forward.

Dennis kept struggling, but Nipper held him tightly to his chest.

“Here goes…everything!” Nipper shouted.

The cart rolled over the edge and dropped into the pit.