Riddle Gully Secrets (6 page)

They sat for a moment to the drilling of crickets and the crackling of the bush. Pollo brushed a beetle from her arm. ‘You know, the Diamond Jack gang of bushrangers used to hide out around here. If you believe the stories, they lived underground for weeks at a time. They knew all the tunnels and caves. I reckon there's your ancestor's portal – a secret cave.'

‘A secret cave!' said Dan. ‘That'd be perfect!'

‘Cave entrances can be invisible from the surface,' said Pollo. ‘Last year Will and I found one that turned out to be a huge wintering cave for bats.'

‘I nearly broke my neck,' said Will. ‘I dropped straight down into it. The opening was smaller than a car tyre.'

‘Gee willakers!' said Dan. ‘If I could show Twig a cave like that it might make him think twice about this “family gift” rubbish.'

‘You're going to tell Twig about your iPad too though, aren't you?' said Will.

‘And the rest,' added Ash, ‘like your shopping in town and your secret passion for school uniforms.'

‘If we sorted out the portal business first, maybe I could kind of ease my way into all that stuff,' wheedled Dan.

Ash sniffed.

‘I reckon we should go find a cave right now,' said Will. ‘Then Dan's got no more excuses.'

‘I don't like caves much,' said Pollo. ‘They're pitch black and they smell funny – like old tin cans.'

‘Since when are you squeamish?' said Will.

‘Since I didn't bring my torch,' said Pollo. ‘I hardly thought I'd be needing one.'

‘Like you told me yesterday – a good investigator is always ready for action.' Will grinned smugly and patted his backpack. ‘Good news! There's a torch in here!'

Pollo groaned. ‘Oh, alright. With a bit of luck you'll get stuck in a cave again and I'll have something to write about in my column.'

‘That's the spirit!' said Will. ‘What about you, Ash?'

‘I was going to go back in,' said Ash, waving a hand towards town, ‘but I'm in no hurry. Mum will be busy all day today anyway.'

Dan jumped up and grabbed his canvas bag. ‘Gee willakers! I've never done anything like this before. It's almost like we'll be, you know, hanging out.'

‘Remember, Dan,' said Ash, ‘Twig could still be right about your ancestor finding a portal.' She broke off a leaf and nibbled on it. ‘Even if he's wrong about you and you are completely ordinary – which would seem to be the case.' She looked at the sky dreamily. ‘If I were an alien, I'd like it here.'

‘You're a nutter,' said Dan.

Pollo elbowed him. ‘A nutter who knows the country well enough to help you find your cave.'

Scritch!
The spade dug into the summer-baked earth, harder and rockier up on the top of the hill than in the gorge below.
Thunk!
Its load joined a large pile of dirt at the base of a granite outcrop.

At the end of the spade was a woman dressed in a sweat-soaked khaki uniform, topped with a limp, grubby silk scarf. Pearls of sweat on her forehead rivalled two large pearls glowing on her earlobes. She straightened, wiping her brow with a gritty forearm, leaving a swipe of mud. She let the spade fall and from her shirt pocket pulled out a lipstick in a tiny shiny case.

Balancing on a boulder at the foot of the outcrop was a tall beefy fellow with wavy oiled dark hair and all the manly assurance that a liberal splashing of Wild Man cologne could bestow. He, too, was khaki-clad,
with the addition of a pocket-studded hiking vest. A large gold watch on his hairy wrist flashed in the sun. He studied a map – photocopied pages pieced together with sticky-tape. He looked up, a finger holding his place.

‘I never thought we'd be doing this much digging, Pooky. How about I take over again?'

Pooky studied the strip of mirror in the lipstick case and repaired the coat of Cherry Charm on her lips. She plucked her shirt away from her skin. ‘It's this ugly ranger's uniform, Curly.' She flopped onto the boulder next to him. ‘It's putting me out of sorts. I mean, I don't mind working up a sweat every now and again, but wearing this ugly trash?'

Curly nodded sympathetically. ‘It's tough, Pooky-doll. But we've gotta play along with Mayor Bullock for a bit – just till we get our hands on this loot of his. If he says to tog ourselves up as park rangers, it's best we do – even if there's not a soul for miles around.'

‘Except that loony near the bridge earlier on,' said Pooky.

‘That old hippy?' said Curly. ‘He doesn't count.'

‘I still wish you'd given him a shake-up,' muttered Pooky. ‘He was asking for it – lurking in the bush and catching me taking a tinkle.' She rested her head on
Curly's shoulder, twirling the hairs curling from beneath his collar.

‘Sorry, Pooky-doll, but I wasn't gunna risk drawing any attention. It's a once-in-a-lifetime break, this job! I give a bloke my card at the casino and next thing he calls us up to go get his family treasure. It's like taking candy from a baby!'

‘Too unfit and lazy to get it himself,' said Pooky.

‘Too important to get dirty,' said Curly.

Pooky laughed. ‘Course, we don't know for certain it's treasure yet. It could just be family history stuff, like he claims.'

‘This old map? All the cloak and dagger stuff? The dough he's paying us? It's treasure alright.'

‘We'll send him a postcard from Paris!' said Pooky. ‘With our bill!' added Curly. They tipped backwards on the rock, laughing.

Curly took Pooky's hand and kissed a blister on her palm. ‘I'll dig from here on, Pooky. You're the brains – you study the map. Work out the best route outta here once we've loaded up the booty!'

As Curly set to work with the spade, Pooky donned a finely woven hat. She smoothed the map out on the rock and frowned over it, her lips moving minutely as she read its lettering. The next time Curly stood and
stretched, she waved him over.

‘Say, Curly?'

‘Uh-huh?'

Pooky tapped the map with a long, lacquered nail. ‘How old is this thing?'

‘The original's real old. Nineteenth-century, the mayor said. Some lady who runs a second-hand shop donated it to this new tourist place he's building.'

‘Hmmm. See all these long wavy lines with the squiggly little bushes either side?'

Curly leaned in to see. ‘Uh-huh.'

‘Do you think that could be the gorge we crossed over on our way up here? Before they built that old railway bridge?'

‘I'd say so, Pooky-doll. Why?'

‘I'm a bit worried.' She traced with her fingernail. ‘This here's the gorge and this here's the town and this big cross here's the treasure, right?'

‘Yep. At the top of the hill here under Mustang Rock.'

‘So why is the gorge back that way then?' Pooky pointed over her shoulder down to the valley from which, hours earlier, they'd climbed. ‘Map says the gorge should be on our left, not our right.'

Curly bent closer. Pooky wiped a splat of his sweat from the paper, then rotated it a hundred and eighty
degrees. ‘I have to say, Curly, the map makes more sense to me this way round.'

‘Let me see that,' said Curly taking the map. He paced around the hilltop, turning the map like a steering wheel.

‘Curly-honey, that key the mayor gave you at the Federal Hotel – did he say what it was for exactly?'

Curly lowered the map and shrugged. ‘He just gave me a big wink like I already knew, so I didn't want to look dumb and ask.' He patted his hiking vest. ‘It's right here.'

Pooky took the map back and squinted at it. ‘Maybe we should be digging where there's some kind of lock – a gate or something. Maybe the key's for that.'

‘Would make sense. I can't see no gate round here though.'

‘I hate to say this, Curly-honey,' Pooky pointed across the valley, ‘but I think we should be over there somewhere. I think we've been digging on the wrong side of the gorge.'

Dan, Pollo, Will and Ash crunched along Diamond Jack's Trail, the sun, fiercer now, boring through the gaps in the trees that arched above them. Dan skipped ahead and fell back to the group, skipped ahead and fell back, like a sheep dog. When they reached a place where the trail split, they stopped.

‘Which way?' said Dan. ‘What about going to the cave you fell into, Will?'

‘It's off limits now,' said Will. ‘It's protected. A massive colony of endangered bats – Southern Bentwings – hangs out in there every winter.' Will grinned. ‘
Hangs out
. Get it?'

Ash and Pollo smiled but Dan looked puzzled. ‘Get what?'

‘Never mind,' said Will. ‘It wasn't that funny.'

Dan nodded slowly. ‘I think I see. Is your use of the term “hangs out” humorous when applied to bats because bats hang upside down when they're resting?'

‘Well, yeah, kind of … but I didn't expect … I wasn't really trying to …' Will's explanation petered out.

‘I've got a joke,' said Dan. ‘A proper one. And it's just right for this occasion. I read it in my joke book last night. I brought the book with me today, just in case, because in the introduction it says that telling jokes makes you popular.' Dan looked around the group. ‘Would you like to hear a proper joke?'

The other three looked at one another awkwardly. ‘Sure,' they murmured.

Dan rummaged in his bag and produced the book. ‘It's on page forty-one.' He turned to the page, cleared his throat and read: ‘How do crazy people go through the forest?' He looked at them intently. ‘Can you guess?'

Pollo, Will and Ash shook their heads.

‘Do you want more time?'

‘Just tell us,' said Pollo.

‘They take the
psycho-path
,' said Dan. ‘You see, it's a warning that forests might have scary people in them. I was thinking that if I read it to Twig it might make him stop wanting to live in forests.'

‘But that's not what it means!' said Ash.

‘You just don't get it, that's all,' said Dan.

‘Perhaps next time just tell the joke,' said Ash. ‘Don't explain it.'

‘Next time,' muttered Will, ‘how about –'

Pollo clapped her hands. ‘So! Where does everyone think we should start? We can't show Twig the bat cave. Like Will says, it's off limits.'

‘Diamond Jack got killed up there,' said Will, pointing to the rising track. ‘Maybe the entrance to his gang's hideaway is round here?'

‘Or maybe it's miles away,' said Dan, ‘and that's why Diamond Jack got caught.'

Ash looked up from a green beetle she was studying on the palm of her hand. ‘I know a cave. I waited out a storm there once.'

‘You did?' said Will. ‘That's amazing … I mean, interesting.'

‘Has it got an opening so small you'd miss it unless you knew it was there?' said Dan. ‘Because otherwise, I'm telling you, Twig won't be the slightest bit convinced.'

Ash sighed. ‘It's what you want. It's on the other side of the gorge. I pass it on the way to my favourite rock.'

‘Excellent,' said Pollo. ‘Then we know where to head. Operation Portal is ready to roll!'

They were nearing the old railway bridge when Dan stopped and brought them into a huddle. ‘Twig likes foraging for fungus around here,' he said, ‘so we've got to be extra quiet. He can't know about Operation Portal until we're good and ready. Right now, he thinks I'm off looking for crickets.'

‘Crickets?' asked Will.

‘Some types don't taste too bad cooked up.'

Will and Pollo stared at him.

‘I told you my life wasn't normal.'

They moved softly. As they neared the gorge, away through the trees they could faintly catch the sounds of Twig picking out a tune on his ukulele.

They reached the bridge. Ash pointed and whispered. ‘It's up the hill on the other side.'

The massive timbers of the old crossing were pitted with age, and its iron girders orange with rust. Either side was a ten-metre drop to the damp floor of the gorge. Vibrant green bracken and spiny reeds ribboned along what in winter was a trickling watercourse. Now black puddles glinted in the sunlight that fingered down through the foliage. They watched a snake slide between puddles and out of sight among the reeds.

‘We should go single file,' said Pollo. ‘Keep to the middle.'

Ash scampered across, her feet barely touching the timbers. Will went next, then Dan, then Pollo.

‘Follow me,' said Ash. ‘It's through the bush up that way.'

‘I can't believe this is happening!' said Dan. ‘I'm exploring with a gang! It's like I'm in a book!'

‘I thought you hated the forest,' said Ash.

Dan shrugged. ‘For some reason it looks nicer now than it did before.'