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come back for him soon as I can.”

  “It’s okay, Joel. I’ll stick with you. Keep that bear away.”

  “Bear?” Lois couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “What’s this about a bear?”

  “We had a little encounter,” said Roke

  “Yeah, there’re plenty of bears waking up around now,” said the pilot with a laugh. “Tell you what you can do instead. Follow that stream downhill a few miles, and you’ll hit a paved road. You can hitch your way from there into town.”

  “Okay,” said Joel. “No choice, I guess.” He reached into the helicopter and ruffled Bryan’s hair. “You better get out of here, get him fixed up right away.” Looking at Roke, he said: “You don’t have to come with me. I’ll find my way out.” He paused. “I suppose you’re going right back into that stupid cave.”

  “Well, I was thinking about it.”

  “You’re insane, Roke,” said Joel. “You should be taking some time off.”

  “Not right now. I’ve got a funny feeling about that sinkhole. I need to go down into it and look at that cave you found at the bottom of it. My hunch says it leads to Bryan’s secret---probably the secret Deeter doesn’t want us to know about. Maybe it can tell me what I’ve never been able to find out.” He shrugged. “God knows, I’ve searched every other corner of Slater’s.”

  “You mean the answer to what happened to your dad,” said Joel. “I’d like to know what’s down there myself. If your dad’s part of it, you have a right to know.”

  Roke had turned somber. “Yeah,” he said quietly. “I guess it’s my fate to follow this out. No man escapes it once he’s born.”

  “Homer, right?” said Joel with a laugh. “Well, good luck, big guy.” He grabbed Roke’s arm and gave the huge bicep a last squeeze. “Thanks for helping me pull out Bryan. You’ve been super. Beyond super. Way beyond it.” Joel handed him back his helmet and LED light and heavy jacket. They watched Roke stuff everything into his wizard’s bag and swing it up over his shoulder. “Maybe Bryan and I’ll come back some day when he’s well. Find you. Help you check things out—if you’re still at it.”

  “Might be. I’ll be looking for you,” said Roke. “Take care of him. I sure hope he comes around.”

  Joel pointed him up the hill towards the cave entrance they had found.

  “I’m okay. I’ve got it figured out.”

  He strode off toward the cave. Just then Joel snapped his fingers as though he had just remembered one more important item. “Say, Roke, we ate up all the trail mix and the candy bars. No more left. Sorry about that.” He smiled. “But you’ve got lots more beef jerky. Mmm yum.”

  Roke turned to him. “Not all of them,” he said. He plunged a hand into his jacket pocket and pulled out a handful of Milky Ways. “Filched them while you were asleep, kid.”

  He grinned that sly grin of his and trudged off across the swamp toward the forest. Joel and the others watched him enter the line of trees. Suddenly he slipped and crashed to the ground. He got up, smiled foolishly back at them and disappeared into the trees.

  “Blind as a bat,” said Joel under his breath.

  “I guess he sort of is,” said Lois with a grin. She turned to Joel from the chopper’s hatchway. “Do you think he’ll be all right down there by himself?”

  “That guy would know how to survive on the moon, maybe even on a comet.” He began to kick dirt onto the fire to put it out.

  “You think that secret Roke was talking about really has anything to do with his dad?”

  “It might,” he said. “I wouldn’t mind getting a look at it myself. Just to know what it is.”

  Lois hesitated a long moment. “Well, why don’t you?”

  “Huh? How can I? We’ve got to take care of—”

  “Listen, I can take care of Bryan. I’m going to be right alongside him all the way to the hospital.” She smiled. “You’re not needed till he comes to and can talk. You’ve spent all this time checking out these new caves. That’s what Bryan wanted to do. He’s going to want to hear all about what you found out---and can still find out.”

  “Well, maybe.”

  “There’s no maybe about it,” she said. “Let’s go!” she shouted at the pilot as she slammed the hatchway door shut. Joel saw her wave through the window as the copter swung up into the air and headed skyward.

  She didn’t even give me a chance to say no, he said to himself. He waved back as the bird zoomed out of sight.

  He kicked more dirt onto what was left of their fire and set off after Roke. The big guy would have to lend him the coverall and the helmet and the LED light all over again. He might not be too happy about that, he thought. Nah, he’ll probably be glad to have some company.

  (EIGHT)

  Roke didn’t act surprised when Joel fell in behind him as they walked toward the cave. It was as though he had expected him to join him. “I’ll be all right as soon as we get in there,” he said. “Caves are where I’m at.”

  “Well, you’re not much good out here. What do you think we’re going to find in that cave?”

  “I have no idea—except I’ve got this feeling,” said Roke. “I’ve got to get in there. Got to have a look.”

  “Let’s do it,” said Joel even though he strongly suspected all they might find was another dead-end tunnel through the earth.

  The trek through the caves to what they had dubbed the fairy cavern was uneventful. The fear and foreboding he had felt so vividly before were gone. Amusement park rides were scarier than this. He walked out on the ledge onto which Roke had hauled Bryan’s body a couple of days earlier—what had seemed to be his body. The bolts his brother had hammered into the ledge to hold climbing ropes were still there, but the ropes were gone.

  He felt a slight return of uneasiness. Who could have taken them? He asked Roke about it.

  “There’re some things I didn’t tell you before,” said the big man. “We’re not the first people to find this ledge. Those ropes weren’t your brother’s. The bolts weren’t his either. Somebody else put them there. What’s more the ropes were old and frayed. They’ve been used a lot. I threw them away.”

  “No kidding.” Joel was astonished.

  “That may be why they broke under him.”

  “How come we--?”

  “I used my own ropes,” said Roke. “Fact is, kid, someone’s been going back and forth into this sinkhole pretty regularly.”

  Joel felt a shiver crawl down his back like a spider. “So who was it?”

  “Can’t help you on that, boy.” It was a nervous-making thought for both of them.

  He proceeded to help lower Joel into the giant sinkhole. Of course, it wasn’t anything like as fearful as it had been the first time. Now he knew what was down there--what to expect. When he touched bottom, he walked over to the mysterious cave entrance leading out of it, the one he had peered into before and which led into darkness. The LED light, which Roke had given back to him, revealed again the haunting paintings of animals on the ceiling, created, perhaps, by ancient cave dwellers.

  Roke had lowered himself down, too, and was also looking at the paintings. “Bryan said nothing about this stuff?” he asked.

  “I mean in his note.”

  “Don’t think so.” Joel felt in his back pocket for the note. He looked at it again, then, realized he had not examined the back of it.

  Sure enough, there was something written there, too. Scrawled like Bryan had written it in a hurry.

  “Maybe I’m hallucinating but I swear there’s something down here. Something moving in the darkness. I can’t hear it but it’s there. Be careful Bro!

  Roke read it over Joel’s shoulder and made a hooting sound like an owl.

  “Come on, Roke, get serious,” said Joel. “If there was anything down here, you’ve just chased it off.”

  “Let’s keep moving. I’ve got to know where this cave go
es,” said his big friend. “One thing’s for sure. I was never in this part of Slater’s before.”

  Holding their lamps straight out in front of them, they marched into the mysterious black maw of the cave. More of the paintings showed up sporadically on the ceiling and the walls. Joel described some of them for Roke: a hulking black bear racing after a deer, male elks clashing while females watched, then, a strange, all-white bear.

  “Probably a polar bear,” said Joel.

  “Nah, not this far south. It’s an albino,” said Roke. He brought his face up close to it. “Pretty unusual. I saw a white deer once, thought I did. Never a bear.”

  Now the art disappeared, and the cave seemed to become intensely dark and silent. They had gone into it at least a mile. There was no hint when it would end. “Don’t like this,” whispered Roke. “Feels spooky.” Just then, he stopped. “Stepped on something,” he said. He leaned down to pick it up, showing it to Joel. “What do you think it is?”

  Joel told him it looked like a fragment of white bone with part of a face carved into it. It was actually quite beautiful.

  “My dad loved to carve,” Roke said almost inaudibly.

  Suddenly, he found himself knocked to the ground, overwhelmed by a huge rope net. He cursed loudly. The area was abruptly lit up by a ring of lights held by shadowy figures. Others held down the edges of the net preventing him from escaping. One light, larger and brighter than the others, lit up the glaring face of---Deeter.

  “Thought you’d never see me again?” he rasped. “Amateurs!