The Treasure of El Patron (3 page)

Frantically he searched for Cowboy. When he spotted him he gave the sign to go up and tried not to panic as he headed for the surface. It was all he could do to resist the urge to shoot to the top.
Stay calm
, he told himself.
Breathe deeply and don’t rise any higher than the air bubbles from your tank
. Tag knew that if he went up too fast he might get the bends and become paralyzed, or die.

In the boat, Cowboy helped him lift his tank off his back, then whipped off his own tank. “What happened down there?”

Tag showed him his thumb. “Nearly lost it to a bloody moray.”

“That’s it.” Cowboy threw his hands up in disgust. “No more night diving for us. Anything we want to see we’ll just have to find in the daytime.” He flipped open the first-aid kit and grabbed a roll of bandages.

“Take a look at this.” With his good hand, Tag pulled the antique spoon out of his pocket and held it up. “Thanks to Gamell’s maps and the old admiral’s records, I think we may have found the hiding place of
El Patrón
.”

Tag opened the gate to his backyard and stepped in. A big ball of white fur hit him in the chest. “Hey, watch it, Ghost!” Tag patted his big, shaggy mutt. “I’m glad to see you too, boy. You been keeping an eye on things?” The dog whined and wagged his tail vigorously.

Tag glanced at Cowboy. “Want to come in for a while?”

Cowboy set his tank next to the compressor on Tag’s back porch. “No, I better get home, mate. It’s getting late. My dad’ll be having fits.”

“Okay. I’ll see you tomorrow, then. Come by the bait shack when you get the day’s catch cleaned. Maybe we can close up early and get started looking for the treasure.”

“We’re going down tomorrow?” Cowboy raised one eyebrow and pointed to his friend’s thumb. “What about that?”

“Aw, it’s nothing. By tomorrow it won’t even hurt.”

“If you say so.” Cowboy bounded down the steps. “See ya.”

Tag waved goodbye to his friend, scratched Ghost’s ears one more time with his good hand, and went inside.

The white-roofed house was small, with only two bedrooms, a kitchen, a bathroom, and a tiny living room. The lights were out, which meant his mother still wasn’t home from work. Not that he expected her. During the summer months she always worked late.

He flipped on the light switch in the kitchen and headed for the refrigerator. Careful not to touch anything with his injured thumb, he pulled out some leftover fish chowder and heated it on the stove.

When he had finished eating, Tag cleaned up his mess and settled down on the worn, overstuffed couch with his father’s diary and the spoon he’d found.

The diary was precious to him. He’d found it in his dad’s gear after his dad had died, and had never shown it to anyone. The only person he’d ever told about it was Cowboy. He especially didn’t want to tell his mother because she worried enough about his “preoccupation” with his dad’s last dive.

It wasn’t written like most diaries, in which routine daily events were recorded. This one was a log of “finds.”

Since before Tag was born in Bermuda’s Smith’s parish, his father had always worked for someone else, going on whatever diving expedition paid the most money. On his final dive, he and his good friend Thomas had worked as partners, searching for their own lost treasure.

Normally Tag loved to pore over descriptions of the salvage operations, imagining what it must have been like to work with so many diving crews, searching through old
wrecks for buried treasure. But this time he skipped to the end of the entries.

Tag’s mouth fell open. It had been right there all the time and he’d missed it. His dad had left him a clue,
hole reef
. Before, because the diary was so water-damaged and words and letters were smeared or missing, he’d thought the entry said there was only one coin on the
whole
reef. But his father had been talking about the exact same place Tag and Cowboy had been today—a small round
hole
in the side of the reef.

So they
had
found it.

But now what? If the reef had grown over the wreck, how would they ever get to it?

Tag’s thoughts were interrupted by the sound of the front door closing. He slid the diary and spoon under a couch cushion and jumped up to help his mother with the heavy sack she was carrying.

She gratefully handed it to him while she
kicked off her shoes and pulled the scarf out of her long, blond hair. “Harry down at the café sent you some of his cassava pie and … Tag?”

Tag stopped halfway to the kitchen and turned. His mother’s blue eyes looked worried.

“What happened to your thumb?” She pointed at the bloodstain on the white bandage.

“Oh, that. It’s no big deal. Cowboy and I were diving off the Tiger Head and I ran into a little trouble with a moray.”

His mother dropped wearily into a nearby chair. “The Tiger Head? That’s where your father …” Her voice trailed off.

Tag put the sack on a low table and walked over to her. “I was careful, Mom. Cowboy and I aren’t exactly amateurs, you know.”

“Neither was your father … or Thomas. I know I can’t ask you to stop diving. It’s in your blood. But couldn’t you at least choose another place?”

Tag hated to see her upset. He knelt by her chair and decided it would be in everyone’s
best interests for him to stretch the truth a little. “Don’t worry about it, okay? One place is as good as the next as far as I’m concerned.”

Relief washed over her face. “Good. Want me to take a look at that thumb?”

Tag shook his head. “It was just a little nip. Cowboy cleaned it up real good. It’ll be good as new by morning.” He stood and moved to the sack. “Now, weren’t you saying something about cassava pie?”

“What took you so long?”

“Long?” Cowboy tried to look offended. “So that’s the thanks I get for working my tail off just so you can hurry over to Tiger Head and be live bait for some hungry moray.”

“Very funny. Besides, that’s not going to happen this time.” Tag held up two large salted fish. “These are my insurance. The first one is for the moray that nipped my thumb yesterday. I’m bringing the second in case he has any friends living down there with him.”

“So what are we waiting on? Let’s get going.”

“I can’t. Your tourists still haven’t brought my poles back.”

“
My
tourists?”

“You remember, those two guys you sent here who didn’t know anything about fishing, Davis and Spear.”

“I remember, but—” Cowboy broke off as they heard the sound of a moped engine. “Looks like ‘my’ tourists are coming. Want me to disappear?”

“No. They saw you in the boat with me last night. Anyway, as soon as I get the poles, we’re out of here.”

Only one moped pulled up to the bait shack. This time Davis was alone. The stocky man passed the poles to Tag and waited while the boy put them away.

“Is there something else I can help you with, Mr. Davis?”

“As a matter of fact, I was wondering if you boys might be able to do something for me. Yesterday, when my friend and I were out near the reefs, we accidentally dropped something
in the water. Since neither one of us dives, I was hoping I could hire you to find it for me.”

Tag rubbed the back of his neck. “I don’t know. We sort of had other plans for today.”

“Excuse us a minute.” Cowboy took his friend’s arm and propelled him to the back of the shack. “We’re going down there anyway, right?” he whispered.

“Right.”

“Why not make a little money while we’re at it?”

“We won’t need any money if I can figure out how to get to that wreck.”

Cowboy sighed. “Okay, then let me make the money while you look for the treasure.”

“Have it your way. But you have to get rid of them as soon as you find their stuff.”

“No problem.” Cowboy moved to the counter. “My friend and I would be happy to dive for you, Mr. Davis.”

Tag steered his boat in the wake of the blue-and-white outboard directly in front of him. “Did those guys tell you what they dropped?”

Cowboy shook his head. “Davis said it was extremely valuable and he’d rather not say what it was. We’re supposed to recognize it because it’s wrapped in a yellow plastic bag. He’s already given me a deposit. If we find it, he’ll give us more.”

“The sooner we find it the better. Those two guys are weird, if you ask me. Why wouldn’t they want us to know what’s in the bag?”

Davis and Spear stopped near the edge of the reef. Tag anchored a few yards away. Davis cupped his hands and yelled, “We think it’s somewhere around here.” He pointed to the area in front of his boat.

Tag and Cowboy checked their equipment and rolled over the side of the boat into the ocean. The water looked completely different in the daylight. At night it had been pitch black and ominous; now it was a beautiful clear blue. The sand was a pale bluish gray and the fish were bluish green.

When the boys reached the bottom, they searched the left side of the reef, moving in a zigzag so that they wouldn’t miss anything. Near the end of the reef Tag stopped and looked for the small hole where he’d found his treasures the night before. He swam by it twice, wishing they hadn’t agreed to dive for Davis and Spear.

Tag moved to Cowboy and tapped him on the shoulder, shrugged, and gave the thumbs-up sign. Cowboy followed him to the top.

They surfaced near the left side of Davis’s boat. The bald man leaned over. Beads of sweat clung to his head. “Did you find it?”

“We searched this whole side carefully. There’s nothing here.”

Spear slammed the side of the boat with his fist. “I told you we shouldn’t have hired kids,” he said angrily.

“Shut up.” Davis turned to the boys and mopped his forehead with his shirtsleeve. “Perhaps we made a mistake about the location. It’s hard to be sure out here. Everything looks the same. Would you mind looking around the other side?”

Tag rolled his eyes. He wanted these people gone so that he could get back to the treasure.

Davis pulled out his wallet. “There’ll be a bonus in it for you. Say … fifty bucks apiece.”

Tag looked at his friend. Cowboy’s eyes were pleading with him to say yes.

“Oh, all right. We’ll go down again. But this is the last time.”

They swam to their own boat, changed to their reserve air tanks, then dropped back to the bottom. Halfway around the reef they both spotted it at the same time. The mystery package was wrapped in yellow plastic as Davis had said. But something was attached to it.

Tag lifted it a few feet off the bottom. Sand drifted up and clouded his vision. When it was clear he could see that a deflated rubber buoy was attached to the yellow package with heavy string.

Cowboy took one side of the package and gave the sign to go up. Tag shook his head. He didn’t want to give them the bundle until he knew what was in it. From the looks of it, it had been dropped in the water on purpose, not accidentally.