There was a silence after which Thomas said to Pluto, “She’d like to see it,” nodding his head toward one of the walls of the cave. It was a false wall.

“Well then,” Pluto said, “here.”

He bolted the plank doors of the cave opening. Then he walked over to the opposite wall. It was largely blank, except for a ladder leaning against it. He climbed the ladder and pulled on the rope hidden behind it. There was the grating noise of Sheetrock rubbing along the stone floor as the wall slid away.

Thomas held his breath. Great-grandmother stood looking. Mr. Pluto stepped to the side, his head slightly bowed. “Great-grandmother, see?” Thomas said, a dreamy expression on his face.

She stepped into the opening the wall had made, one hand on Pesty, one on her cane. “I lived to see this,” she murmured. “Great day!”

“Dies Drear did this for us,” Pluto said, “for us to save for all time.”

“Let it be!” Great-grandmother said almost in a whisper.

“Let’s go see,” said Pluto. And they went down into the great cavern.

18

“SHHH! THOUGHT I HEARD something,” Thomas said. In the treasure cavern the smallest noise seemed to hang suspended. He thought he’d heard a sound up in Pluto’s cave. Great-grandmother Jeffers had been about to read from a letter she’d found in a century-old bondage ledger. When she lifted the letter, pieces of it fell away from the rest. Gently she moved the sheets until she had two facing pages. They were part of a letter from one Pompey Redmond, a runaway slave. The letter had been delivered to Dies Drear in 1855.

“Mr. Redmond had learned to write. You can read some of the letter, Mother Jeffers,” Pluto said. “It tells a lot.”

Thomas heard the sound again. They all did this time. Mr. Pluto recognized the muffled pounding. “You’d better go see,” Pluto told Thomas. “Let that wall back to cover the opening. Make sure the wall ladder is in place. Don’t open the plank doors to my cave, but ask who it is.”

“What’ll I do if it’s a stranger?” Thomas had asked.

“Tell him I’m sick. Ask who, but don’t let him in.”

Thomas went up, did as he was told. “Who is it? What do you want?”

“It’s me, Thomas, open up.”

“Papa!” He unbarred the door. Mr. Small looked over his shoulder once and hurried inside.

“Did we stay too long?” Thomas asked. “I’m sorry. We were just talking. Great-grandmother Jeffers loves it down there. She found a letter from a slave! Papa, she and Mr. Pluto are just alike. They both just love it.”

“Bar that door again, Thomas,” his father said, grimly. He looked all around, said, “I suppose you had to bring Grandmother Jeffers here. Walking all this way—don’t you realize she’s no longer young?”

“But, Papa, she wanted to come,” Thomas said. “Me and Pesty—”

“Pesty and I,” his papa corrected.

“Pesty and I watched her every step of the way. She was fine,” Thomas said.

“She could have fallen,” his papa said scoldingly.

Thomas hung his head. Of course, Great-grandmother could have fallen. But she didn’t, he thought, because we wouldn’t let that happen, Pesty and me. “We would never let her fall, Papa,” he finally said.

“Well, I know Grandmother Rhetty when she makes up her mind about something,” his papa said. Then he changed the subject. “Show me the other way in here.”

Thomas barred the plank doors. He went over to a tapestry and held it aside. There was the opening to the narrow tunnelway that led to the horse stalls. Mr. Small knew it well. “Nobody would guess it’s here,” he said.

They took the short walk to the stalls. Thomas showed his papa the place in the back wall where Pesty and he had entered the stall. “Now it looks like somebody’s tampered with it,” Thomas said.

“I see,” Mr. Small answered. “So that’s how they got in if they got in.”

“I think Mr. Pluto believes they did,” Thomas said. “I’m pretty sure it was Macky.”

“Then let us assume that Macky got in here. That he came to worry Pluto and find out something,” Mr. Small said. “But it looks like now Pluto’s sealed the opening with sand and lime.” He shook his head. “Nobody’s coming in this way again.”

“Are you sure? Not Macky?” Thomas said, resigning himself to the fact that Mac Darrow might truly be an enemy, like his brothers.

“Not Macky or anybody else,” his papa said.

They went back into the cave. Thomas climbed the ladder against the wall. He pulled the rope. The wall made its noise and swung away.

Each time Walter Small saw the enormous beauty of it all down there, he felt an urgency inside him, knotting his stomach. Each step he took down he feared the earth might tremble, bringing everything to a crumbling end. Most of all, he feared River Lewis Darrow would find his way into this awesome place. And loot it. Lord, it could happen! he thought.

They went down the natural ramp. Thomas felt the heat of the place. The steady warmth of deep underground had not changed for at least a century they knew of. He was not to raise his voice here, for any noise might set off a cave-in.

Great-grandmother Jeffers sat in a straight chair next to Mr. Pluto behind the massive desk he used. One of the slave ledgers was open on the desk. Pesty was sitting cross-legged on top of the desk. Great-grandmother smiled as Thomas and his papa came down through huge stalactites hanging from the vaulted ceiling and stalagmites rising sharply from the cavern floor. It was always splendid night deep in the underground. Mr. Pluto had lit torches all around.

Great-grandmother Jeffers began. “Dear Brother Drear,” she read from Redmond’s letter. “Your continuing solicitation and bid for a more secure situation is most pleasing to this poor fugitive. ... I am no longer property, but am a man, and because of you. Good citizens by the hundreds gallop out to hear Douglass and to join the antislavery societies. But alas, you have slavers in numbers coming up from the southern border. I fear being forced back into cruel Kentucky. If you beseech me to come to aid in your labour, know that I shall. You spake darkly of a great underground. What might be your meaning? What plan, Brother Dies? Forgive this wretched soul and its folly of weakness ... I dread journeying the black forests that lie between me and thee. …”

Mr. Small paced back and forth in front of the desk. Great-grandmother Jeffers stopped reading. Her eyes shone with pride in the fugitive, Redmond.

“Papa, wasn’t the great underground he mentioned this treasure place?”

“So it would seem, Thomas,” Mr. Small spoke softly.

“All this time Pompey Redmond has been waiting to tell us something,” Great-grandmother said with feeling. “Would’ve been something to help him along!”

“Would’ve indeed,” Mr. Pluto said. “Not hard to see how Mattie Darrow came to be the way she is. Living the underground the way she does. Ah, the meanings of the word—’underground’!”

Mr. Small stopped his pacing. He turned to Pesty, sitting on the desk. “The time has come,” he told her. He looked at Pluto. Something in the look made Pluto get up. The dark throw flowed and settled around him like a shroud. “The time has come,” Mr. Small repeated to Pluto.

“No.” Pluto’s mouth shaped the word soundlessly.

“Thomas, we have to go now,” Mr. Small said. His hand went briskly through his hair. “Pesty, you, too. Let’s go.”

Quickly Pesty got down and stood next to Thomas. “Grandmother Rhetty,” his papa said, “Martha’s back with the boys. We saw your note. I’ll drive the car over as far as I can, and you won’t have to walk the whole distance.”

“I’ll stay right here, then, until you return,” she said, at Pluto’s side.

Pluto’s eyes glinted hard at Mr. Small. “You think I’m too old,” he said. His woolen throw spread over his arms like raven wings. “I can’t carry Mother Jeffers home in my buggy? You think I can’t protect someone … this—”