“Keep your heads down,” Brit warned as they followed him into a narrow tunnel. “Okay. You can straighten up now.”
Only a little light filtered in through the tunnel, but the Three Investigators could see they were in a large cave with a high ceiling.
Brit struck a match and lit a candle. Jupe guessed Brit had been living here for some time. A sleeping bag was rolled up on the floor. Pots and pans, a kerosene cookstove, some half-filled sacks, and several picks and shovels were stacked around the walls. From the look of the smooth ceiling, he could also tell no gunpowder had ever exploded in here. This couldn’t be Pancho Villa’s cave.
Brit picked up a sack and emptied a heap of oats onto the floor. “Good thing Dad got these for his horses,” he said. “There isn’t much to graze on around here. Even for a hungry burro.”
Bob was looking at the single sleeping bag.
“Where is your father?” he asked.
“Why? Why do you want to know?” Brit’s eyes were suddenly wary again.
“Because we should warn him about Dusty too,” Bob said.
Brit picked up a clay jug and poured some water into a pan for Blondie.
“No. Dad took the horses down to the valley to get supplies.” He handed the jug to Pete and all three Investigators took a quick refreshing drink from it.
“He’s gone down toward the lake?” Jupe asked. “I hope he doesn’t run into Dusty.”
“No. He didn’t go that way. There’s a village on the other side of the mountain. It only has a couple of stores and Dad won’t be able to find what we need there. The village doesn’t even have a vet. But the bus stops there, the bus to. ”
Brit stopped and looked at the guys as though trying to make up his mind if he could trust them or not.
“Why did you come up into the mountains?” Brit asked.
“It was Dusty’s idea. ”
The time had come to tell Brit the whole story. Jupe explained about the crossword contest with answers that had to be tape-recorded. How he and his friends had finally realized what it was all about — Pancho Villa’s silver pesos.
Brit had listened in silence until then, sitting with the Three Investigators, on the ground.
Now he suddenly stood up.
“Dusty told you about the silver?” he asked furiously. “What did he do? Promise you a share if you found it?”
“No,” Pete assured him. “Dusty never let on about that. His story was that we were going up into the mountains to file down Blondie’s hooves.”
“What!”
Pete went on, “Mercedes was the one who told us about Pancho Villa.”
“Mercedes?” Brit frowned in a puzzled way. “Who’s Mercedes?”
Bob described her. Her long black pigtails. Her dark eyes.
“She’s Mexican?” Brit was still frowning.
“Seems to be,” Jupe said. “I’ve never heard her speak anything but Spanish. And her skin’s brown.”
He was getting a little puzzled himself now.
“Mercedes told us to warn you about Dusty. She said she was a close friend of yours. You know her, right?” Pete asked.
Brit shook his head.
“I’ve never heard her name,” he said. “And as far as I know, I’ve never seen her in my life.”
“These hills are full of caves,” Brit said. “Pancho Villa and his men probably used most of them as hideouts. But Dad’s sure we’ve found the one where he hid those silver pesos.”
The four guys were sitting on their rolled sleeping bags in Brit’s cave that evening. He had cooked up a big pot of their favorite — beans and rice — on the kerosene stove. Three candles were burning now and Brit had hung a blanket over the entrance to the tunnel so no light would show outside. Blondie was contentedly nibbling at her oats in a corner.
“How do you know you’ve found the right cave?” Pete asked. “If this place is so full of them.”
“Well, for one thing,” Brit explained, “the entrance was all blocked up with fallen rocks. And when we managed to shift some of them, we found Ignacio.”
“Ignacio?”
“One of Villa’s soldiers,” Brit explained. “Of course, he wasn’t in very good shape after being buried under tons of rocks since 1916. Just a skeleton with pieces of uniform sticking to him. And his skull — ”
“Do you mind?” Pete interrupted him. “I’m trying to eat.”
Bob smiled. “Dead bodies put Pete off his feed.”
“Oh, don’t worry, we gave him a decent funeral.” Brit laughed. “Dad put up a cross over his grave and carved the name Ignacio on it in memory of one of Mexico’s great military heroes. Ignacio Allende was, well, like their George Washington and — ”
“Did you get inside the cave yet?” Pete still wanted to change the subject.
Brit shook his head. “We shifted some of the rocks with picks and shovels. But we couldn’t get any farther. To where the silver is. That’s why Dad took off. To buy explosives.”
“When do you think he’ll be back?” Jupe asked.
“Not for three or four days. It’s only a few hours’ ride down to the village. Dad’ll leave the horses there to get a good feed and a rest. He’ll need them both to carry back all the supplies. And then he’ll take a long bus ride to Chihuahua. That’s the nearest town where he can buy the dynamite and other things we need.”
“So that leaves the four of us to handle Dusty. And maybe Mercedes,” Bob said. “I guess a quartet ought to be able to manage this gig. If we all play together.”
Brit looked at his new friends. “I’m glad I won’t have to do it solo,” he said. “I want to tell you it was great of you to come and warn me about Dusty. I mean, you didn’t even know me.”
“Well. ” Jupe realized he hadn’t told Brit who they were. “It wasn’t just you. We were on a case. So we wanted to follow through on it.”
“What do you mean?” Brit didn’t understand. “You sound like private eyes or something.”
“That’s what we are,” Jupe told him. “Private investigators.” He took a card from his pocket and handed it to Brit. It said:
