“He had a knife!” Bob declared.
“Your amulet?” The man looked puzzled. “Ah! Then you must be the boys Alfred Hitchcock telephoned about. The Three Investigators.”
“We are, Professor,” Jupiter confirmed proudly.
“And you have a problem for me? Some language you can’t identify,” Professor Meeker went on.
“We did have,” Bob said glumly, “but that dark man stole the statuette. It’s gone.”
“Correction,” Jupiter announced. “We still have a problem for Professor Meeker. The amulet is gone, but not the message. I took the logical precaution of carrying it separately.”
Triumphantly, Jupiter handed the slip of paper to the professor.
“Amazing!” the professor cried, his eyes gleaming with excitement behind his thick glasses. “Come inside where I can study this properly.”
Without another glance at the boys, Professor Meeker trotted to the house. He was so absorbed in the strange message he was holding in his hands that he almost ran into a tree. Once inside the small house, the professor waved the boys to chairs in his book-lined study and sat down at his desk to study the message.
“Yes, yes, there’s no doubt about it. Absolutely amazing!” Although the professor was muttering aloud, he really seemed to be talking to himself. It was as if he had forgotten that the boys were there. “In blood, too. And fresh, quite recent. Fantastic!”
Jupiter cleared his throat. “Uh, Professor Meeker, sir, do you know what language it is?”
“Eh?” Professor Meeker looked up. “Oh, yes, yes, of course. It’s Yaquali. No doubt at all. It’s the Yaquali language. A fabulous people, the Yaquali. Few Indian tribes ever wrote, you know. No alphabets or vocabulary texts. But the Yaquali learned the Spanish alphabet, and Spanish missionaries compiled a dictionary for them so that they could read and write their own language.”
“Are the Yaquali a local tribe like the Chumash?” Pete asked.
“Local? Like the Chumash?” Professor Meeker cried, blinking at Pete as if the Second Investigator was completely crazy. “Good heavens, no! The Chumash were quite a backward tribe. They never wrote their own language. Yaquali is entirely different from Chumash — as different as English and Chinese. The Yaquali aren’t local at all.”
“But they are American Indians?” Bob queried.
“Of course, although not from the United States,” the professor said, and stared happily at the slip of paper again. “It’s simply unbelievable to see a message written in Yaquali here in Rocky Beach. The Yaquali people rarely leave their mountains. They hate civilization.”
“Er, what mountains, sir?” Jupiter asked. “Where do the Yaquali live?”
“Where?… Why, in Mexico, of course,” Professor Meeker said as if surprised that everyone didn’t know. Then he smiled. “Ah, forgive me, boys. Of course you wouldn’t know about the Yaquali. They’re quite obscure, mainly because they shun contact with other men and the modern world.”
“Well, sir,” Jupiter observed, “Mexico isn’t far from here. I don’t see why it should be so surprising for one of them to come to Rocky Beach.”
“In the first place, young man, the Yaquali hate to leave their homes, as I said. In the second place, they live in the most remote and rugged part of the Sierra Madre Mountains in Mexico. It is an isolated and terribly dry area called the Devil’s Garden. They have a long record of shunning civilization. In fact, they became so hard to locate, and so skilful at climbing where no other men could climb, that they were often called the Devils of the Cliffs.”
“Devils?” Pete shivered. “Were they so dangerous, sir?”
“Very dangerous if they were attacked. But, under normal circumstances, they are a peaceful people who wish only to be left alone. That is why they learned to climb so well, so that they could live up on their inaccessible mountains.”
“Then how would a message from one of them get here?” Bob asked dubiously.
Professor Meeker rubbed at his lean jaw. “Well, I suppose it isn’t so improbable. Although they are still quite remote, the Mexican government has been working with them over the last few years. Time and the needs of the modern world may have caught up with the Yaquali. They are an intelligent people, and they have long been in demand for their climbing skill.”
“You think some of them may have come here to work?” Jupiter asked.
“It’s possible, although I haven’t heard of any of them being anywhere in the United States. And I can’t really imagine what they would be doing in Rocky Beach. You did say that you found the message here in Rocky Beach, didn’t you?”
“Yes, sir, in a secret compartment in the amulet.”
“Ah, yes, the Yaquali are fond of amulets.”
“But Mr. Hitchcock thought the amulet was the work of the local Chumash tribe,” Bob explained. “He said it was like one you used in the television show.”
“Chumash, eh. Well, that seems odd. I fail to see any connection between the extinct Chumash and the Yaquali. It’s unlikely that Chumash work would have ever reached the Yaquali in Mexico. And you say that it was this amulet that the dark man stole from you?”
“Yes, sir,” Pete said.
“It was solid gold, too,” Bob added.
Professor Meeker stared at the boys. “Gold? A Chumash amulet? That’s quite impossible, boys.”
“Oh, no, sir,” Jupiter declared firmly. “I examined it closely. I am certain it was gold.”
“You must be mistaken, young man.”
Jupiter shook his head. “I really know gold, sir.”
“Mr. Hitchcock said it was solid gold, too, Professor Meeker,” Bob stated.
The professor seemed stunned. His mouth dropped open, then snapped shut. He rubbed his jaw and stared hard at the boys, his eyes narrowed in thought. Then, slowly, he leaned forward.
“If it was truly gold, my young friends, you may have stumbled on to something of the utmost importance,” the professor said carefully, pausing in order to give emphasis to his words. “You may have found a clue to a mystery that is almost two hundred years old.”
Jupiter’s eyes opened wide. “A two-hundred-year-old mystery?”
“Yes, my boy, the mystery of the Chumash Hoard!”
“You see, boys,” Professor Meeker went on, “the Chumash never used gold! There was no gold in this part of the state. If that amulet was gold, it must have come from the Chumash Hoard.”
“What is it, sir? The Chumash Hoard?” Bob asked.
“Between 1790 and about 1820,” the professor explained, “there was a renegade band of very dangerous Chumash in the mountains. Although there were a few of them, they were deadly when defending themselves and expert at hiding. The Spanish were unable to control them, so they tried to bribe them with gold to leave the settlers alone. The band soon learned the value of gold, and when the Spanish didn’t give them as much as they wanted they stole more anywhere they could find it.
“By the time they were finally beaten and their last leader, Magnus Verde, mortally wounded and captured, they were reputed to have amassed a great hoard of gold articles — jewellery and bullion. Magnus Verde refused to tell where the Hoard was hidden. All he said before he died was that no man would ever find it. The rest of the renegades vanished and were never seen again. Since then many, many men have looked for the treasure without any success. I have always thought that it was thrown into some impenetrable place — perhaps the ocean — to keep the white men from ever finding it.”
Jupiter’s eyes seemed to be looking far away. “I think it would have been hard for them to throw away the gold after fighting so hard to get it.”
“You may be right,” the professor said. “And if you have actually seen a Chumash amulet made of gold, there is good reason for thinking the Chumash Hoard does still exist somewhere. What an exciting discovery!”
