Cave of Danger

CHAPTER 1When the spring weather began, Matt Wilde started opening his eyes earlier and more anxiously each morning. On Friday morning he awoke while the wooded Ozark Hills around the lonely house were still dark. He listened to the predawn stirring and chattering of the birds, and he thought uneasily, What if I never find that cave? The thought rolled him urgently out of his blankets, wide awake and blinking. He shook his head and then grinned to himself in the vague gray light. He always felt optimistic again as soon as he was wide awake. I’ll find it—maybe today, he thought, stretching, and felt around the bare board floor for his Levis. At sixteen, he was lithe and well muscled, and already tanned from getting all the sun he could in these first weeks of spring. His high-boned face was very solemn, and he seldom smiled. I’ve got to find that drop soon. I’m running out of space and time. Putting on his Levis, he tiptoed to the side door of his room that led out onto the back porch. He walked barefoot, carrying his boots, socks, and rucksack, not wanting to wake his mother. The dim light glinted on Matt’s collection of Indian arrowheads and snakeskins mounted on the walls. Interesting souvenirs of childhood, Matt thought, nothing more. A dedicated spelunker now, he cared only about caving. And like every true spelunker, he dreamed of finding and exploring a new cave where no human being had ever been before. Matt went out and quietly doused his face in the rain barrel that stood near the porch steps. His body tingled with the cold. Their frame house had a sink in the kitchen, but the hand pump that drew water from the artesian well made a rusty clatter that would wake his mother, so Matt washed in the rain barrel. His mother didn’t understand caving. She might wake up and start another argument. She respected his independence, and she nagged a lot less than most mothers. But she was very sensitive about his education and the College Boards. Anyway, she needed plenty of rest. Matt ran dripping hands through his short wiry black hair, dried on a coarse towel, and put on his denim shirt, quickly rolling up the sleeves to cover a humiliating patch. Then, carefully avoiding the loose boards under the worn linoleum, he went into the kitchen and slipped over to the cupboard. He always got up early so that he could squeeze in at least three extra hours of cave hunting. On his way into town to Lakeville High School, he cut across a wild section of land he knew to be cave country. But after a year’s steady, carefully planned search, he had still to find that crucial drop opening. He knew it was there, but only a small northeast sector remained unexplored. If he failed to find that drop within the unsearched area, he knew he would never find it. Three or four days more at the most would finish his probe of the wildest land in Natacomo County, Missouri. So it was now or never, and the idea of possible defeat was unthinkable. Matt took cereal, raisins, a bowl, and spoon from the cupboard and put them on the bleached board table by the sugar jar. Halfway to the table with a pitcher of cream from the cooler, he sensed his mother standing in the shadows. She stood quietly belting her housecoat, a tall, ruggedly attractive woman forcing a tight smile. Trying, Matt knew, to hide the worried-over-school-problems look. “Ah,” he said, annoyed to the point of disgust, “why’d you have to get up?” He took two long strides to the table and sat down. “You work too hard at that dirty diner. You need more sleep. You look beat.” “And you look starved, sonny boy.” She went to the cooler and took out a slice of ham and a dish of brown eggs. She carried them to the worktable beside the stove. “You need a real tuck-in breakfast.” “You bragged about my being old enough to fix my own breakfast five years ago, Mom.” “But you never do anymore. A little dry cereal won’t stick to your ribs.” She started to pat his arm, but he twisted away. She forced a quick uneasy smile and turned toward the stove. “You need a smart breakfast. Tramping those jungly hills night and day. Not getting enough food and sleep. Matt—it isn’t good, the way you’re acting up over a fool cave.” Matt barely controlled a flare of anger. It was never easy to admit that caving meant everything to him and nothing to his mother, nothing more than a nuisance. She remained unconvinced by anger or argument. She considered a cave merely a hole in the ground and caving only a foolish hobby that afflicted growing boys. But Matt never gave up. “Mom, I’m due to find that cave any day now. I know you worry about my grades, but you shouldn’t even be thinking about school. I mean when I find that cave and open it up for the tourist trade, we’ll be rich. Famous, too. If you’re rich and famous, why bother with school?” She answered by banging a skillet down on the four-burner kerosene stove. She lit a match and held it to the wick. Matt’s nose curled at the miserable smell of kerosene. It always reminded him of their poverty. Their poorest Brushcreek hillbilly neighbor could afford a car and a decent stove, but the Wildes had to cook on a rusted antique. Well, as soon as he found his cave and developed it, he’d buy his mother a big new electric range with all the trimmings. Why couldn’t he make her see that? She flopped a thick slice of ham into the skillet. “Mom,” he went on hopefully. “That land above the lake’s what spelunkers call karst. Karst is a good sign of buried caves. Bet you don’t even remember what karst is.” “Eat your cereal,” she said, and started breaking four eggs into a bowl. “Two are plenty,” he said, thinking guiltily of the little extra cash they collected selling eggs in town. “Four today make up for the two you didn’t eat yesterday.” Matt sighed. He went on re-explaining the meaning of karst while spooning at his cereal. He’d learned about karst from his closest buddy, Spotty Jessup. Everyone considered Spotty extra smart, but no one suspected that he was really a hidden genius who read scientific journals as eagerly as lesser intellects devoured comic books. Browsing through the Speleological Quarterly at the library, he had discovered the article about karst. In certain land areas, all runoff water drains down through sinkholes in the earth’s surface and is carried away underground. For miles such areas contain no creeks or rivers or lakes, yet streams are there, underground. Topography marked by sinkholes, caverns, and underground drainage is known as karst—after the region in Yugoslavia where the phenomenon was first studied. “And karst means there’s sure to be big hidden caves, Mom. And I’m finding us one. Then all our worries will be over. You won’t have to work at the dirty diner—won’t have to worry about my higher education. We’ll buy a big new house in town. We’ll have two cars. Why go to school? To become a big success, right? Well, tourists pay good dough to go through caves like the Moseby Wonder Caverns. I’ll find a cave bigger than the Mosebys’. Kurt Moseby says his old man takes in up to fifty thousand a year from tourists. We’ll make even more, Mom. I’ll be a success, already, so you can forget school and—” “You sure do have clouds in your head,” his mother interrupted. Matt clenched his eyes shut in weary resignation. She had seemed only interested in running a cold boiled potato through a grater for hash-browns. She said tightly, “I got another call from Mr. Buckner.” “Mr. Buckner?” “Your school principal,” she reminded him. Only the sizzling of the ham broke the long uneasy silence that followed. All she can think about is marks and College Boards, he mused glumly. All she cares about is my finding a safe cozy niche somewhere behind a desk. Safe and secure—safe and dull. No, thanks. “I don’t want to nag, Matt, but this is serious. Mr. Buckner says you’ve been skipping classes, skipping whole days. You’re sure to fail spring finals, he says, if you don’t straighten out right now.” Her voice was higher now. “Matt, this caving business is like some kind of—obsession or something. It’s gotten all out of bounds. You’ve given up football and basketball and track. You don’t see your friends anymore; you don’t study. Now you’ve just got to ease up on this caving thing. I’m not saying to cut it out completely. Just put it in its place, Matt. Other things are important, too, and you’ve got to pay them some attention.” Matt stared at the table, stiffened against a frustrating sense of futile anger. His dad had been the same way about school, until he was killed when he smashed up a truck on the Joplin run. He’d always talked up a storm about college. Over and over he’d said, “Be smart, son, and get that sheepskin. Or you’ll end up a charity case. Or driving a truck like me till your kidneys get pounded to a pulp.” Still, he might have understood about caving, Matt thought, if we’d had a chance to discuss it. His eyes blurred, and he stood up abruptly from the table. He hurried onto the back porch and took a deep breath of cool damp air. Heavy mist still held low to the ground under the cottonwood and Chinese elm trees. “Come back and eat your breakfast,” his mother said, standing in the half-open screen door. He shook his head and sat on the porch steps to put on his socks and climbing boots. “Matt—we have to talk about this, Matt.” The hurt concern in her voice was hard for Matt to take, but he couldn’t help it. He’d argued himself blue, trying to make her understand. But it was no use. He wouldn’t do it anymore. “I’ll be OK, Mom,” he said. “You’ll see how it’ll work out. No more skips—that’s a promise. And I’ll make up the deficiencies, OK? But I’ve got to find this cave. I’ve got to, or I won’t be any good here. I won’t even be able to stay here.” Hoisting his rucksack onto his left shoulder, he hurried around the house toward the road. * * * * As Matt walked with long and steady hiker’s strides down the dirt road between the rocky, wooded hills, mist began to thin from the lower hollows. Morning light worked in through the trees. Rabbits played in the dew-wet road dust, and squirrels scolded from the tops of bleached fence posts. Matt usually whistled as he walked, but not this morning. His mother’s stubborn indifference to caving hurt him. But part of the trouble was his own fault: his inability to tell her the whole reason he had to find this cave. Adventure and being rich and famous were good and true reasons. But the chief reason was something he couldn’t tell his mother or anyone else. His shame and his fear of being laughed at. The boys and girls of Lakeville High were already beginning to laugh and giggle a little, he mused grimly. If he’d kept quiet about cave hunting until he made the great strike, everything would have been all right. But no, he’d had to sound off long and loud, brag big about the fabulous cave he was sure to find—more fabulous, he’d insisted, than even the Moseby Caverns. His cave would drive the Mosebys right out of business. Then to make sure that no one would doubt the greatness of his dedication, he had given up star positions on the football, basketball, and track teams; those evenings and weekends of practice and games were needed for cave hunting. He’d stopped grouping up at Cisco’s Drugstore, even stopped seeing Joyce McGinley; they demanded too much of his precious cave-hunting time. He’d skipped too many school days and scorned too many assignments. He’d searched mornings and evenings and weekends for an entire year. A year was too long. He had given up too much. Matt could not afford to fail now. A lot of those at school who knew about his bragging and his long search were already laughing and baiting him a little. “How come you’re not a millionaire yet, Matt?” Joyce McGinley had asked, and the girls with her had giggled. “Where’s the big cave, hillbilly?” Dinny Allardyce yelled when study hall let out. In the hall, with everyone listening, Kurt Moseby said, grinning, “Hey, hillbilly. Where’s that cave that was supposed to put me out of business?” Matt could not bear to think of failure. It would mean final humiliation and shame. He couldn’t stand being laughed at. He’d been laughed at enough when he’d first come down out of the Brushcreek Hills to attend school in town. They’d laughed and teased and bullied and baited him the way they did all Brushcreekers when they came out of the hills. But the jeers if he didn’t find his cave would be worse—a whole lot worse. Kurt Moseby would laugh louder and longer than anyone. They’d laugh him right out of town. If they had the chance, which they won’t, Matt thought as he hoisted the rucksack higher on his shoulders. I’ll grab a handful of boxcars and leave town myself; I’ll ride the rods out west and never come back. Only it won’t happen, he corrected himself. He would find that cave—and no one would ever laugh at him again. Matt walked faster as the sun slipped through the trees and burned off the mist. It steeped woods and fields in a green and gold warmth, and the air began to hum with insects and spring peepers that called from the lake. Matt adjusted his rucksack again as he left the road at Hog Creek Bridge and followed his old, beaten trail through the brush. He always carried the rucksack to school, for it contained, in addition to his books and lunch, the basic spelunking gear he might need if and when he found a likely drop. Twenty minutes later, he entered a broken wilderness of rocky hills. People said Jesse James had holed up here once for months without anyone seeing a sign of him. It was state-owned land; if you found a cave on it, you could stake a claim, but only after a number of legal requirements were fulfilled. Matt would worry about such technical details later. He could get any legal help he needed from older members of the Cave Club Grotto, especially from its leader, Ernst Fuller. Mr. Fuller who was also his biology teacher knew just about everything there was to know about caving, including all the rules and regulations of the National Speleological Society. But first Matt had to find the cave. He knew a deep drop opening lay hidden somewhere in the karst. He had known it from the beginning. He would never have given up so much and risked everything and searched day after day during a whole school year without knowing. He knew all right; he’d seen the drop. He didn’t know its whereabouts, but he had seen “the sign of the crow.” * * * * A cave hunter looks first of all for an opening. Any hole may open into deep, concealed caverns. The hole, to begin with, may be no larger than a small rodent’s hole. But a crowbar or hammer blow can crumble the rock edge and expose a larger opening. Matt had known since last October that a deep drop waited in the karst. Walking home from school, he’d stumbled upon the clue. A late afternoon thunderstorm had caught him, and he had wandered around lost, unable to figure out where in the karst he was. Then in the fading, rain-battered light, he saw the silhouette on the high jagged lip of a gorge. A gnarled branch angled one way, and an arm of corroded rock twisted the other, forming a huge, ragged V-shape. And just as Matt saw that shape, he also saw a large crow fly up, cawing that odd cry crows make before, or just after, the beginning of a heavy rain. The crow flew straight up in full flight out of what seemed to be solid rock. But, of course, Matt knew it couldn’t be solid rock. He knew that the bird must have gained a lot of speed beneath the surface. He knew it could only have flown up out of a deep opening. Wildly excited, Matt crawled and stumbled around, trying to reach the gorge, but flooding darkness hid any sign of the drop, and it also caused Matt to lose all sense of direction. He had never since been able to figure out just where in the karst he’d been when he saw that ragged V-shape. But he had named that shape “the sign of the crow” and he knew a deep drop opening waited just below it. He had never stopped looking for it. He had searched most of the karst from lowest gully to highest crag, for he knew that the V-shape of a tree and a rock had to be seen at just the proper special angle or it wouldn’t look like a V at all. He had tried to examine every likely spot from as many perspectives as possible. But by now he had covered almost all the likely spots. He was nearly at the end of the karst. That inescapable fact made him uneasy as he hurried to get across the greater part of the area already searched. He dogtrotted down the bottom of a deep gully toward that last unexplored section, that northeast corner that would soon end his long and painful quest—one way or another. Only the eyes of a circling chicken hawk could have seen Matt down there in the maze of dry washes, steep-sided ravines, chasms, and broken outcrops of limestones...