He was the oddest-looking man I’d ever seen, a mixture of Archy and Neo in his shiny green suit and earlights and old-fashioned hair. I didn’t know what to make of him.
“Now,” he said, “before I ask you why you’re here, I must know, what do you think of my collections?”
“They’re incredible,” said Zander, looking around. “I see a dodo bird—is that really a dodo? And a silver-billed grub warbler. A crimson night catcher. I’ve never seen a blue diver before. That is a blue diver, isn’t it? I thought you couldn’t have those stuffed anymore.”
Suddenly, we were all talking at once. “That mask there is Navajo,” I said, gawking at the wall. “Dad has a photograph of one.” I gaped at these incredible things I’d only heard about. “And is that an original Dijkstra map of the world? No one knows where it is…”
M.K. was gaping, too. “You have an original Peterson steam engine,” she said, staring. If it hadn’t been inside a display case, she would have had it apart in about ten seconds.
“I am so glad to find an appreciative audience,” said the man behind the desk. “I am Delorme Mountmorris. Sit down so we can talk.”
We sat in the chairs facing his desk, the three of us lined up in order of descending age, first Zander, then me, then M.K.
There was a long silence during which he appeared to be studying us. Finally, he said, “I was so sorry to hear about your father. To what do I owe the pleasure of this unexpected visit?”
I took a deep breath and looked at Zander. He nodded and I said, “We read your book, and we were wondering… I mean… do you know if our father ever went to Arizona? On one of his expeditions?”
Mr. Mountmorris looked up quickly. “Arizona? Not that I can recall, but it’s possible, I suppose. Why do you ask?”
I could feel my heart pounding. There was a sour taste in my mouth.
“Well,” I started, unsure what to say. I was suddenly nervous, and I didn’t want to show him the map.
“Show him,” Zander said.
“Show me what?” Mr. Mountmorris said it casually, but he was sitting up very straight in his chair.
I hesitated. M.K. gestured to the backpack. I still wasn’t sure it was the right thing to do, but I took the half map out of my backpack and spread it out on his desk. “We were wondering if you might know what this is. It was Dad’s and we’re just trying to get some information about it. You wrote about him, so…”
Mr. Mountmorris tapped his glasses down on his nose and studied it.
Have you ever seen someone who is very happy or very excited about something try to keep himself from acting happy and excited? That was what Mr. Mountmorris seemed to be doing. As he looked at the map, his hands were almost vibrating over it, as though he could barely stop himself from seizing it and hugging it to his body. But he kept himself very rigid, and after a couple of seconds, he sat straight up in his chair and said, in a calm voice, “This is very interesting. Very interesting indeed. May I ask where you found it?”
I tried to keep my voice even. “Uh… around. With some of Dad’s things.”
He smiled, making a little tent of his fingers in front of his face and studying each of our faces in turn. When he came to me, I felt the power of those protruding eyes; he seemed to stare right down into me and I didn’t like it at all.
“Do you know what it is?” he asked finally.
“A map,” I said. “Obviously.” His eyes flickered with something, annoyance maybe. He looked at me as though I was two rather than thirteen, which was why I couldn’t help myself—I showed off a little. “It appears to be of the American Southwest. From the topography, I can tell it’s a high desert environment. One of the identified locations is Azure Canyon, which is located in Arizona—the northern part—up near the Grand Canyon. Azure Canyon was one of the early domestic discoveries of the New Modern Age. It is known for its blue pools and waterfalls, but otherwise it wasn’t a particularly exciting discovery. No natural resources or anything like that. What I can’t figure out is what the title is down at the bottom. It’s something Man’s Canyon, but I couldn’t find any references to it. Do you know what it is?”
Mr. Mountmorris smiled and nodded as if to say touché, and then there was a long silence, as though he was deciding whether or not to tell us something. Finally, he stood up and walked over to one of the display cases. He looked down at something in the case for a few minutes before he started talking. The room was eerily quiet and it struck me that although we were in the middle of the city, we had not heard any sound from the street since we’d stepped into his house.
Mr. Mountmorris began. “In 1567, a group of Spanish conquistadores—the Spanish soldiers who had come to the New World looking for Aztec gold in what is now Mexico—decided to run off with a fortune in gold ingots and bars, unprocessed nuggets, statues, and jewelry—an incredible treasure in gold.”