Jacob called a cab to take them to the airport. Using the notes app on his phone, he recreated what he had seen on the paper. Then he turned it so the others could see. It was just three words: DIE ROOF HEARTLAND.
“That’s it?” Emma asked. “That was the whole clue?”
“What if there was more but you could only see it under blacklights?” Max said.
“Luckily for us, they didn’t have blacklights in the 1800s,” his sister teased him. “These three words must mean something.”
“The heartland is what people call Middle America, isn’t it?” Jacob asked.
“Yeah, but it seems like Galt was Canadian, since he hid his clues in Canada,” Emma said. “The heartland could be Scotland, but in those days that would have been a trip that lasted months. I don’t think he would have gone home just to hide a clue.”
“Could it be where Levi is buried?” Max asked.
“Good guess,” Jacob said, “but he wasn’t dead when Galt made the clues. He was on the run from the police.”
“Maybe it’s an anagram?” Emma wondered.
“What’s that?” Max asked.
“You know, when they mix all the letters up to make new words,” she explained.
“Maybe!” Jacob started breaking the words up on his note app, trying to find different combinations. At the same time, Emma found a website online that would solve an anagram for her. But when she inserted the word, the website gave her thousands of different possibilities. Some of them made no sense at all. “HER ORA DEFLATION?” she read with a laugh. “HOT ALOE INFRARED?”
“Railroad,” Jacob yelled, excited, holding out his work to show them. “End of the railroad!” He punched the air in excitement.
“You did it!” Emma kissed him in celebration. Max pretended to be sick, and Emma laughed and gently punched his arm.
“Are we really going to go to British Columbia?” Emma asked. “Your mom must be freaking out.”
Jacob checked his phone. “Eight missed calls,” he admitted. “And a whole bunch of angry, worried text messages.” He ran a hand through his hair, thinking. “But that woman has the clue. And I don’t think it’ll take her very long to crack, either. We have to get there before she does…or all of this was for nothing.”
All three teenagers slept on the eight-hour overnight flight across the country. They were exhausted from their long search, and from the danger they were in. Max dreamed of arriving at the site and wrestling the evil woman for her gun. He was a hero! Emma dreamed of a police chase through a dark city. She held the treasure in her hands, but when she looked down, she saw it was Max she was holding in her arms. Jacob dreamed of his father. In the dream, his father was just a teenager himself. “It’s a family legacy,” he told Jacob. “You understand.”
Les trois adolescents dormirent pendant les huit heures de vol qui les amenèrent à l'autre bout du pays. Ils étaient épuisés par leur longue recherche et par le danger qu'ils avaient couru. Max rêvait d'arriver sur les lieux et de lutter contre la femme maléfique pour lui prendre son arme. Il était un héros ! Emma rêvait d'une course-poursuite policière dans une ville sombre. Elle tenait le trésor entre ses mains, mais lorsqu'elle baissa les yeux, elle vit que c'était Max qu'elle tenait dans ses bras. Jacob rêvait de son père. Dans son rêve, son père n'était lui-même qu'un adolescent. « C’est un héritage, disait-il à Jacob, « tu comprends. »
“But it’s my birthday,” Jacob said. He was holding a balloon that read ‘16’ on it.
« Mais c'est mon anniversaire », dit Jacob. Il tenait un ballon sur lequel était inscrit « 16 ».
“Here. Happy birthday.” His father handed Jacob a box.
“Tiens. Joyeux Anniversaire.” Son père tendit une boîte à Jacob.
Jacob unwrapped the box. It was a wooden chest with a puzzle lid. When Jacob opened the box, it was empty. He looked up, but his father was gone.
Jacob déballa la boîte. C'était un coffre en bois avec un couvercle en forme de puzzle. Quand Jacob ouvrit la boîte, elle était vide. Il leva les yeux, mais son père avait disparu.
Getting to Revelstoke was easy, but getting from there tothe site of the Last Spike was another thing. There were no tourist buses taking people to the site, and they couldn’t rent a car because they were under 25.
“We could hitchhike,” Jacob suggested.
“No way.” Emma shook her head firmly. “I’m not getting into a stranger’s car with Max. Besides, we might need to get away fast. We can’t just hang out waiting for a lift and hoping that woman doesn’t show up while we’re there.”
“Good point.” Jacob sighed and rubbed his face. He was still exhausted. Sleeping on the plane hadn’t exactly been comfortable, and he was feeling guilty about just how much he had spent on plane tickets. If they couldn’t find this treasure, his mom was going to ground him forever. And he would have to pay back every penny, which would probably take him a whole summer of full-time work.
“How far did you say it was?” Emma asked. “Maybe we could walk.”
Jacob typed the two places into his map app and groaned. “Forty-five minutes to drive…eleven hours to walk or bike!”
“Taxi?” Max suggested.
“What if they don’t want to wait around while we find the clue?” Emma asked. “We’ll be in the same position as if we hitchhiked.”
“Lyft, maybe?” Jacob said. “We can negotiate with the driver before we leave for them to stick around and get the fare back . I bet it would be worth it, so they don’t have to drive back with no fare.”
“Lyft, peut-être?” dit Jacob. “On peut négocier avec le chauffeur avant de partir pour qu’il nous attende afin d’avoir aussi la course du retour. Je parie que ça en vaut la peine, comme ça il n’aura pas à repartir pour rien.”
“Good idea!” Emma brought up the ridesharing app and typed their destination in. She used the ‘round trip’ function to write the Revelstoke airport as their destination and drop-off point. A few minutes later, it dinged to announce that someone had accepted the ride. Emma called the driver, explained that they wanted to see the site and would be about half an hour, and negotiated an added tip to cover the extra wait time.
"Bonne idée!" Emma ouvrit l'application de covoiturage et saisit leur destination. Elle utilisa la fonction « aller-retour » pour indiquer l'aéroport de Revelstoke comme destination de départ et de retour. Quelques minutes plus tard, une notification annonça que quelqu'un avait accepté la course. Emma appela le chauffeur, lui expliqua qu'ils voulaient visiter le site et qu'ils seraient là dans environ une demi-heure, puis négocia un pourboire pour compenser le temps d'attente supplémentaire.
Fifteen minutes later, they were all getting into a big black truck. The driver was in his late sixties, with a huge salt-and-pepper beard and a smile that was almost as big.
“Welcome to Revelstoke!” he said. “Sightseeing today?”
“Yeah, we’re just…huge fans of the railroad,” Jacob said. The lie sounded bad even to him, and the driver definitely gave them a strange look.
“Where are your parents?” the man asked.
“At the hotel,” Emma said. “They weren’t interested in seeing the Last Spike, but they told us we could go on our own.”
“You know it won’t be cheap,” the driver warned them. “There and back and the tip for the wait?”
“They’re divorced,” Jacob said. “We’re here with Dad and his new girlfriend. We could ask for anything and he would say yes.”
The driver laughed at that, a big laugh that shook his whole body. “Oh, yeah. I’ve been there. I’m on my third wife.” He chuckled as he turned the car on .
As they drove, the driver chatted with his passengers. Emma, Max, and Jacob were too tired to answer much, but he didn’t seem to mind. He kept up the conversation for all of them. His name was Pete and he was a retired oil patch worker. He had made a fortune over the years, he told them, but lost half of it every time he got divorced. He had left the north of B.C. to retire in Revelstoke, and he drove Lyft mostly for the company—and to get out of his wife’s hair!
He talked about everything from the oil industry to his five kids to the effect of climate change on B.C. wildlife. He was especially worried about the mountain pine beetle. The lack of cold winters meant they weren’t dying off, and they were destroying a lot of the trees. Revelstoke relied on forestry and tourism, so it was a big problem. It kept him busy for ten minutes, and then he was on to the next topic.
Il parla de tout en commençant par l’industrie pétrolière jusqu’à ses cinq enfants et des effets du changement climatique sur la faune de B.C. Il était particulièrement inquiet par le dendroctone du pin ponderosa. Le manque d’hivers froids faisait qu’ils ne mourraient pas, et qu’ils détruisaient beaucoup d’arbres. Revelstoke dépendait des forêts et du tourisme, donc c’était un gros problème. En parler lui prit environ dix minutes, et puis il changea de sujet.
Finally, they reached the turn off for the Last Spike. Pete pulled into the parking lot. There were a few other cars there, but it wasn’t too busy. “I’m just going to have a little nap,” Pete told them. “You take your time. And be mindful of the tracks—there’s a train coming back in a few minutes, and those things are killer.”
“Thanks, Pete,” Emma said.
They got out of the truck and looked around. The gift shop was a cute little red building with white trim, designed to look like an old-fashioned train station. There was even a line of track in front of it, just for show. A huge red train caboose sat off to one side, with signs inviting tourists to explore it. A chain-link fence separated the tourist attraction from the actual railway that Pete had warned them about. There was also a huge stone cairn with a sign explaining what the Last Spike was.
The trio went over to the sign. It read, “The 100th Anniversary of the Driving of the Last Spike was Commemorated Here.”
“This wasn’t here when Galt left his clues,” Emma said. “So what was?”
“That’s what I’d like to know,” a familiar voice said.
All three kids spun around.
“No!” Jacob cried.
It was the woman. She had been standing behind the cairn—hiding? Waiting for them? Her gun was out, but she had it low to her side so that no one would be able to see her. Even if they could, there was no one outside with them. The other tourists were in the gift shop, and Pete was probably sleeping in his truck.
C’était la femme. Elle était restée derrière le cairn—cachée? Les attendant? Elle avait sorti son pistolet, mais elle le tenait bas, sur le côté afin que personne ne puisse le voir. Même s’ils le pouvaient, il n’y avait personne dehors avec eux. Les autres touristes étaient dans le magasin de souvenirs, et Pete dormait probablement dans son camion.
No one was coming to save them.
Personne ne viendrait les sauver.
“Believe it or not, I’m glad you’re here,” the woman said. “I was worried you might not show up.”
“Why would you want us here?” Emma asked.
“Because I can’t find the damn clue,” the woman snapped. “I’ve been here for three hours. The cairn was only built in 1985, so it can’t be there. I checked the caboose and the gift shop. You had better figure it out. Or I’ll start by shooting the kid.” She pointed the gun at Max.
“You really are a monster,” Jacob snapped. “You’re just like Levi Boone Helm.”
The woman laughed. “Helm? Oh, kid. I’m not related to Helm.”
“But you said this treasure was your birthright,” Jacob said.
“It is.” The woman drew up tall and proud. “My name is Melissa Galt. My ancestor was Frances Galt. He built all of these. Made these puzzles. Created this gift for Lucy Helm. And what did she do? She murdered him. She didn’t want to share the money. It wasn’t until Frances was dead that Lucy realised they were supposed to work together to find the clues. She died young before she could even solve the puzzle box. But not before she got married and gave birth to her son…Richard Melville.”
Jacob stared at her. “What did you saying?”
“That’s right.” Melissa grinned. “You’re the descendant of the murderer and cannibal. Your ancestor was Levi Boone Helm.”
