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THE REAL ADVENTURES OF JONNY QUEST

Synopsis: Jessie follows where Jane seems to be leading her.

Categories: E

"Blood Money" - Chapter 5

by Eric R. Umali

"Painted Desert"

Grandpa Doug let out a low whistle.  He leaned back from the kitchen table, where the traditionally huge breakfast sat halfway through the meal.  "That's some kinda yarn, Jessie."

"I'd just really like to know what this is all about, Grandpa Doug."

"I certainly don't blame you, honey."  Doug took a long sip of his coffee.  "Can you describe that butte you saw again?"

"About two hundred, two hundred fifty feet high.  It was kind of circular, and the top was very level, with a little scrub."

"You said the desert was colored?"

Jessie nodded.  "At first I thought it was a trick of the light, but now that I think about it, it was really the rocks themselves."

"Does it ring any bells, Grandpa Doug?" asked Jonny.

"Sounds like the Painted Desert to me.  It's up north in the Petrified Forest National Park up North, and it has some buttes like the one she saw."

Hadji leaned forward.  "Do you think this dream is a request that we find this place?"

"It seems as good a place to start as any," said Jessie.

"Now you three know I'm gonna have to get in touch with your dads before you go rushin' out chasin' ghosts."  Grandpa Doug smiled.  "Though, I wouldn't blame you if you wanted to get an early start."

"Thanks, Grandpa Doug," Jonny said, "but we'd need to get in touch with my dad anyway."

Hadji agreed.  "We would need his access to satellite pictures of the desert, and if the butte does not have a trail, we will require a helicopter."

A voice interrupted.  "And just who'd be piloting that chopper?"

The four at the table turned suddenly towards the door.  Filling the open door was the tall, lanky frame of Race Bannon.  Race was followed in by Dr. Benton Quest, both men smiling broadly.

"Dad!"

"Dr. Quest!"

"Dad!"

"Benton," drawled Grandpa Doug.  "Race.  Nice of you two to drop by so unannounced."

"Sorry, Doug," said Benton, taking a place behind his son's chair. "But my schedule cleared up all of a sudden, and we decided to surprise the kids."

"Well, you both are always welcome, you know that."

"That's very kind of you, Doug," said Race, helping himself to a cup of coffee.  He took a drink.  "Now what's this talk about a helicopter ride in the Painted Desert?"

Slowly, Doug's, Jonny's and Hadji's eyes all turned to Jessie.  She sighed, and told her story.  About an hour later, both Race and Benton were still shaking their heads.

"It's an amazing story, Jessie," Benton said, crossing his arms as he considered the facts.

Race nodded.  "I've done some checking up on the Bannon family tree before, and I doubt I found anything linking us to Calamity Jane.  If I had, I'd remember."

"Then it may just be this family's 'weirdness magnet' factor kicking in," Jonny offered, "and rubbing off on Jess."

"Given some of the stories I've heard," said Doug, "I wouldn't doubt that."

Jessie stood.  "There's only one thing to do, I guess.  We could be at the park in no time, and it wouldn't be hard to find a helicopter if we needed it."

Doug chuckled.  "It looks like the decision's been made, son."

"It seems so."

**********

It was well into late afternoon when the group arrived at the foot of the butte.  While still at the ranch, they had found a few likely ones from satellite pictures, and were told by the National Parks Service that several of the larger buttes had foot trails leading to their plateaus.

Doug insisted on coming along.  "I'm not one to miss out on the end of a good story," he said, before leaving a few instructions for his ranch hands in his absence.

They were at Petrified Forest National Park in a few hours.  Once there, it was a simple matter to hire out a jeep, and they had brought the rest of their equipment from the ranch.  The six of them piled in, and drove across the dry, dusty ground towards the groups of towering buttes.

Jessie drove, eyes rarely leaving the horizon to glance at the road, following a pull she couldn't quite put her finger on.  As the afternoon wore on, they passed a few buttes that fit the bill, but Jessie drove by them without sparing the rocks a second glance.  Finally, as the sun entered its last few degrees, Jessie slowed.

"That one," she said, pointing.  About a thousand yards away, was a nearly perfectly cylindrical butte, rising almost three hundred feet up.  Unlike its cousins they'd passed, it stood away from any other formations, isolated.  Circling its steep sides they could see the spiral of a trail, carved and beaten into the rock more than an century before.

"Well," said Race, "I don't think I need to ask if you're sure about it."

"Will we make it to the top before nightfall?" asked Benton.

"We oughta," Doug replied.  "As long as the trail is still good."

"It'll be fine," Jessie said.  She pulled the jeep off the road and brought it to a halt nearby.  Jessie climbed out and slung her pack onto her shoulders, then headed straight for the butte, all without a word.  The others followed right behind her.

The way up was slow going.  The trail was still fine, as Jessie had predicted, but was narrower than they would've liked, and so they needed to pick their way up cautiously.  Jessie grew more and more frustrated.  The closer they got to the top of the butte, the surer she was that the answers would be found there.

Finally, they reached the end of the trail just as the sun was touching the horizon.  Jessie walked to the center of the butte.

"This is it," she said, turning slowly around.

It was magnificent.  Everywhere they looked, the desert seemed ablaze with colors- reds and oranges and yellows in the main, and even slashes of blues and purples.  Some places had just a few striations of color, while some looked like dozens of paintbrushes had been taken to them.  The setting sun gave everything around an almost golden hue.

Again, Jessie began slowly moving forward again, heading west, towards the sunset and the edge of the rock.  Without looking down, she stopped just a few scant inches from the precipitous drop.  Race was just behind her, a hand on her shoulders in case she somehow decided to chase the sunset further.

In a few moments, the entire group stood shoulder to shoulder, watching as the sun sank slowly beneath the horizon.  The sky faded from its blazing tints to darker shades, until finally the clear night sky was revealed- thousands and thousands of stars twinkling above them.

After standing in silence for almost an hour, Jonny turned to Jessie.

"Anything?"

She shook her head.  "Only that I know this is the place I need to be.  Other than that, I can't say."

Race patted his daughter's shoulder.  "Maybe you just need to sleep on it.  It'll come."

Doug nodded in agreement.  "Let's set up camp, then."

Jessie spent the next few hours in a kind of trance.  While she did her share of the tasks in setting up the camp and getting the fire going, her mind was most definitely elsewhere.  Why had she been led here?  What did this woman from the past want with her, with more than a century standing between them?

*Or am I just going nuts?* she added, finally.  Rubbing her eyes, she sat and stared at the slowly dying fire for a while, then headed for her tent.  She slid inside the sleeping bag and shut her eyes.

After a few minutes, she found herself completely incapable of falling asleep.  It was the anxiety, she knew, but that didn't help.  Despite her best efforts, she was still wide awake when her watch read 1 AM.

Groaning, she got up and out of her tent.  With a huge full moon lighting the entire area, she started pacing the top of the butte, stopping every few yards to kick at the small stones lying everywhere.  After half an hour, it happened.

She kicked, and it hurt her toe.  Scowling, she kicked at the stone again, with the same result.  Jessie lowered to one knee, shining the tiny light in her watch on what she now realized was not a stone.  It was some kind of metal marker, buried in sandy ground that had hardened around it.

Jessie walked back to her tent and grabbed her pen knife.  There was a pair of boots waiting for her when she emerged.  It was Jonny.

"What're you up to, Jess?" he asked sleepily.

"I think I found something!"

At Jessie's insistence, he took his own knife and followed her.  She led him back to the marker, and they began digging.

"So what are you doing up?" she asked.

"Um, call of nature," Jonny replied.

"Charming."

Eventually, they struck something hard a few inches down.  Another ten minutes, and they had found it.  An old iron railroad spike had served as the marker, and underneath it was a heavy steel box.

Jessie and Jonny hauled the box out of the ground.  Jonny held the massive padlock out as Jessie selected another gadget from their watches' bag of tricks.  With a bright red glow, she brought the tiny laser to bear on the padlock, slicing through the iron easily.  They pried at the lid.

"What's wrong with this thing?"

"I think it's been sealed."

More minutes passed as they scraped off the thick waxy seal around the lid.  Jessie dug her knife into the crack and levered it open.

She gasped.  Sitting in a tight coil, perfectly preserved by the airtight box was a long leather bullwhip.

"I think we found what we're looking for."

TO BE CONCLUDED...