Return of the Homework Machine (7 page)

MR. MURPHY. SIXTH-GRADE TEACHER

I had read the
Phoenix Gazette
article very carefully, line by line. But still, I had only a very general idea of where the caverns might be. I knew they had to be pretty well hidden, or some tourist would have stumbled upon them a long time ago. And they were probably pretty high above the river. We'd have to climb up to them if we saw them. Thousands of years ago, when people inhabited caverns, the Grand Canyon wasn't as deep. Maybe it was a short climb up from the river. Now, it would be a longer climb.

Of course I was well aware that the whole story I had read could have simply been an elaborate newspaper hoax. In all probability, there
were
no secret caverns, no hidden treasures. How could ancient Egyptians have found their way to the Grand Canyon in the first place? How could they cross the ocean? It just didn't make sense.
I remember that's what I was thinking, when suddenly our raft bumped into another raft.

SAM DAWKINS. GRADE 6

We were all looking up at the canyon walls through binoculars when our raft crashed into another raft. It was tied to a branch at the north side of the river. Except for the paddles, the only thing on the other raft was a picnic cooler. Everybody freaked out a little, because we hadn't seen another soul on the river since we started out.

I climbed on the other raft and looked for a name or something. That's when I saw the writing on the back of the cooler. It said
PROPERTY OF RICHARD MILNER
.

Oh, I remembered
that
name. He was the guy who was stalking us when we were using the homework machine. He seemed a little nutty. We put two and two together. Ronnie and Milner must have teamed up. They were looking for the treasure too.

KELSEY DONNELLY. GRADE 6

I couldn't believe it. They beat us there!
We all looked up, thinking we would see them climbing up or down the rocks. But they weren't around.

BRENTON DAMAGATCHI. GRADE 6

I knew right away what happened. Ronnie must have taken our chip from the homework machine and put it into that portable GPS he was always carrying around. That would have been the only way to find the caverns.

KELSEY DONNELLY. GRADE 6

I figured that was it. Let's go home, y'know? But the boys got all excited. They wanted to climb up. Even if we couldn't get any treasure for ourselves, they wanted to see it. So did Mr. Murphy. Judy and I would have been just as happy to call it a day. I wanted to go home and take a good long nap in my own bed.

MR. MURPHY. SIXTH-GRADE TEACHER

I should have stopped it right there. If I'd known then what I know now, I would have ended the trip and gone home. But as they say, hindsight is twenty-twenty.

RONNIE TEOTWAWKI. GRADE 6

Milner and I didn't hike down the canyon like the others. We took his van to Lee's Ferry and put the raft in the water there. It was his idea. He said that if we found any treasure, we could load it up in the van and drive it out of there.

The GPS worked like magic. I plugged all the information I had into it, and the thing practically led us straight to the spot where we tied up the raft. You couldn't see any caves from the river and there was no trail, but we had confidence that something was up there. We tied up the raft and started climbing the north wall. It was hard. I remember that I wished I had hiking boots, because my sneakers weren't very good for digging in the cracks in the wall. Luckily there were a lot of vines to grab on to.

We must have climbed nearly two thousand feet up. That's where we started to see stains in the sedimentary formation. Then there was a rock shelf up there, and right above it was the mouth of the cave. The rock shelf hid it from the river.

The opening was about the size of a small doorway, but rounded at the top. There were chisel marks on the wall inside the entrance. It
wasn't just a natural cave. People carved it. Those chisel marks were probably thousands of years old. The last time somebody stood on that rock shelf, Columbus hadn't sailed for America yet. I got goose bumps.

Milner and I turned on our flashlights and went inside the cave. There were steps going up, about ten of them. At the top of the steps there was a room, and that's where we found a body. Yeah, a dead body.

SAM DAWKINS. GRADE 6

We tied our raft to the same branch as Milner's raft and started climbing up the rock wall. Yeah, all of us. Even Judy. Even Mr. Murphy. He's in pretty good shape, for an old guy.

JUDY DOUGLAS. GRADE 6

I offered to stay behind and guard the raft. I'm not a rock climber. There were some vines and branches to hold on to, but it looked really scary. Mr. Murphy wanted us all to stay together as a group, so I had to climb up. And to be honest, I wanted to see what was up there as much as anybody else.

RONNIE TEOTWAWKI. GRADE 6

I had never seen a dead body before, and I kinda freaked out. I didn't want to touch it. It didn't look like a mummy. It wasn't wrapped or anything, like in the cartoons. It was more like a skeleton, but with clothes on. Regular clothes, not Egyptian clothes. It wasn't ancient or anything.

I felt like I might have to throw up, and I sat down for a minute to catch my breath. Milner wasn't bothered by the body. When he touched it, the skull fell off. He went through the pockets of the clothing until he found a wallet. There were some papers inside it. The name on one sheet was G. E. Kinkaid. I remembered that was the name of the guy in the newspaper article who claimed to have discovered the treasure. And here he was—dead.

JUDY DOUGLAS. GRADE 6

We started climbing up the side of the canyon. I was terrified. Everybody kept saying not to look down, but I couldn't help it. I knew that if I put my foot on a rock and the rock gave way, I would be dead. I would be another one of those idiots Mr. Murphy told us about who fell into the
Grand Canyon. I would become a story that boys like Snik would laugh about someday.

RONNIE TEOTWAWKI. GRADE 6

After G. E. Kinkaid discovered the caverns and told the newspaper about it, he must have gone back to haul out the treasures. Then he died in there. I couldn't tell what happened to him. There weren't any bullet holes or signs that he died violently. I didn't want to investigate too closely though. It grossed me out. For all I knew, he died of starvation in there, all by himself.

Milner told me that if Kinkaid's body was there, the treasures must be there too. He stepped right over the body like it was a pile of laundry.

We shined the flashlights around and there were four or five tunnels going off in different directions. It was like we were at the hub of a bicycle wheel and the tunnels were the spokes. I couldn't tell if they were man-made or not.

MR. MURPHY. SIXTH-GRADE TEACHER

We were very careful climbing up the rock wall. I didn't want any of the kids to get hurt.
For the first time, I entertained the real possibility that we had actually found the secret caverns of the Grand Canyon. The article in the
Phoenix Gazette
may have been factual. The higher we climbed, the more excited I became.

Think about it. For centuries, explorers had been looking for treasure in the Southwest. Back in 1540, a Spaniard named Francisco Vásquez de Coronado led an expedition from Mexico looking for the Seven Cities of Cíbola. There were supposed to be great riches hidden there. He never found anything except the natural beauty of the land. As I climbed up the rock wall, I was excited. Maybe we were going to find what Coronado didn't. We were modern-day explorers.

RONNIE TEOTWAWKI. GRADE 6

Milner and I went into the first tunnel, and it was like when that guy Howard Carter found King Tut's tomb. There was stuff
everywhere
. Big pots made out of clay and straw. Simple wooden chairs. Tools made from some kind of metal. Milner said it must have been the place where food was prepared by whoever lived there. The tunnel went on and on. It was musty.

Instead of exploring the whole thing, we went over to the next tunnel. It was empty, but when we pointed our flashlights at the walls, we could see they were covered with paintings. Mostly they were pictures of animals. Deer and elk. There were some stick figures, too, that looked like people. Some of them were painted, some looked like they were drawn with charcoal, and some were carved right into the wall. It was an ancient art gallery.

Milner said we must be getting close. I remember he said that God would have never built such an incredible underground city unless there was something very special hidden inside it.

SAM DAWKINS. GRADE 6

I realized why we couldn't see the cave from the river. There was a rock shelf right below the opening, so the cave was hidden. I pulled myself up onto the shelf, and then helped the others climb up. There were marks on the wall inside the entrance. They must have been made with a metal tool. I wondered where Milner and Ronnie were. If their raft was down below, they had to be up there somewhere.

RONNIE TEOTWAWKI. GRADE 6

Milner and I went over to explore the next tunnel. There were stone tablets scattered around in there, and some of them had writing on them. Milner said it looked Egyptian. He told me that the ancient Egyptians used to post warnings and curses outside their tombs. Like, anyone who disturbed the tomb would die a horrible death. I was scared, but tried not to show it. Milner said he bet we would hit the jackpot in the next tunnel.

He was right. It was the most incredible thing I had ever seen. A large room filled with mummies, dozens of them leaning against the walls in simple wooden coffins. The coffins had no tops on them, so the mummies were just standing there, staring at us. It was creepy. It looked like they were wrapped in bark or something.

On the ground were a bunch of gold swords. Gold! And in the far corner of the room was a big statue. Maybe seven feet high. A man. It looked like a Buddha sitting there. It was cross-legged, holding a flower in each hand. My flashlight shined off it. The thing was made of gold. I tapped it with my knuckles. It was solid. Solid gold. It must have been worth millions. It was beautiful.

Milner and I both cried out. I couldn't believe it! We had found the treasure of the Grand Canyon! It was ours for the taking. Milner picked up one of the swords and blew the dust off it. I'll always remember what he said to me: “Kid, guess what? You'll never have to work a day in your life. We're millionaires.”

Then he took a big flask of whiskey out of his pocket, opened the top, and drank it. A little celebration. He offered me a sip, but I didn't take it. So he downed the whole thing without stopping.

While he was drinking, it crossed my mind that Milner might try something to cut me out of the deal. We didn't have any written contract or agreement. Just a handshake that said we would split anything we found down the middle.

He was bigger and stronger than me. There would be nothing to stop him from taking all the stuff for himself. In fact, there would be nothing to stop him from killing me and leaving me there. Nobody would find me for years. Maybe centuries. I'd end up like that Kinkaid guy.

I made it a point not to turn my back on Milner. Just in case. When the whiskey was finished, he threw the flask against the rocks and it shattered.

JUDY DOUGLAS. GRADE 6

I thought I heard a sound, like glass breaking. I wanted to get out of there. Just back out and climb down. The others held me and told me everything would be all right. Maybe it was just my imagination. There were some steps going up near the entrance to the cave, and we started climbing them. It was dark.

RONNIE TEOTWAWKI. GRADE 6

I heard a sound. Like footsteps. And voices. It had to be my imagination, I figured. Nobody had been in the cave for thousands of years. How could somebody be there
now
? I thought it was a zombie or something. Milner and I rushed out to the landing, the hub where G. E. Kinkaid's body was.

And that's where we saw them—Sam Dawkins, Judy, Kelsey, and Brenton. And the thing that surprised me the most was that they were with our teacher, Mr. Murphy.

KELSEY DONNELLY. GRADE 6

Well, I just screamed! Ronnie Teotwawki was standing there with that guy Milner, who
had been stalking us when we had the homework machine. He was carrying a sword in his hand. And on the ground in front of them there was a dead body with no head. I had never been so terrified in my life. Judy and I screamed. I thought I might pass out.

JUDY DOUGLAS. GRADE 6

The four of us instinctively moved closer together, as a group. It just felt like a bad situation. I wished I had never come.

RONNIE TEOTWAWKI. GRADE 6

I was furious. I said to them, “What are
you
doing here?”

SAM DAWKINS. GRADE 6

So Ronnie says, “What are
you
doing here?” and I say, “The same thing you're doing here. Looking for the treasure.”

RONNIE TEOTWAWKI. GRADE 6

Milner was even more mad than I was. He told them to get lost. He started yelling, “We were here first! You just followed us! You never
would have found the cavern if we hadn't found it first! If anybody deserves to get the treasure, it's us. So get out!”

And he was right, too.

BRENTON DAMAGATCHI. GRADE 6

I told Ronnie that the only reason he found the cavern first was because he stole our chip and put it in his GPS.

RONNIE TEOTWAWKI. GRADE 6

I told Brenton that maybe he shouldn't have catapulted his computer into the Grand Canyon if the chip meant so much to him. There's an old law of the jungle: finders keepers. I found the chip, so it belonged to me. And I used the chip to find the treasure, so that belonged to me too.