The chalkboard outside the dining room announced possible storms later that day.
Violet read the breakfast menu printed below the weather forecast. “‘Contest Special—Native-Stone Buckets and Star Ruby Muffins.’”
“We’re having dirt for breakfast?” Benny said. He liked playing in the dirt, but he didn’t want to eat any!
“Today is the last day of the contest,” said Grandfather. “Everybody will need a hearty meal before going to work.”
The Aldens sat down at their table, greeting Sybil, Jonathan, and Donald.
Henry noticed that Donald and Sybil looked tired, as if neither had slept very well.
Maybe, he thought, one of them was up late, digging around the flume.
The waitress brought glasses of ruby-red grapefruit juice.
“How would you like your Miner’s eggs?” she asked, pen poised over her pad.
Jonathan grinned. “How about Hard as a Rock?”
Violet giggled. Jonathan was always telling jokes! How could he be the thief?
After eating eggs, Star Ruby cranberry muffins, and cups of Native-Stone Bucket granola, the Aldens walked down to the flume.
Cecil Knight was busy at the booth, collecting entry fees and handing out pre-spaded buckets.
Donald was in line in front of the Aldens.
“I know what you do,” he accused Mr. Knight. “You salt those so-called native-stone buckets! You put a star ruby in some kid’s bucket, just to make me lose the contest!”
Donald’s voice was loud. Whispers rippled through the line.
“That is not true,” Cecil said reasonably. “I run an honest operation here, just as my parents did when they bought the mine fifty years ago.”
“It seems awfully funny that that kid—” Donald jerked his thumb toward Jessie— “found a star ruby when no one else has found one since 1988.”
“Everyone has an equal chance,” Cecil said. “That’s the fun of panning. Now, what will you have today, Mr. Hodge?”
Donald ordered seven native-stone buckets.
While Grandfather was buying a “rainbow” bucket for each of them, Henry watched Donald walk down to the flume.
How did Donald know the last star ruby found at the Ruby Hollow Mine was in 1988? he wondered.
“What’s supposed to be in a rainbow bucket?” Jessie asked Jonathan as they picked up trays.
“Rubies, sapphires, emeralds, pink sapphires,” Jonathan replied. “Stones the colors of the rainbow.”
After two hours of panning, Henry found an emerald and Benny found a blue sapphire. Jessie’s bucket yielded a pink sapphire. Violet was delighted to find a purple stone called an amethyst. Purple was her favorite color.
When their buckets were empty, the kids cleaned up at the pump.
“I have something to check out,” Henry said in a low voice. “Let’s go back to the main building.”
“You know who’s missing here?” Jessie observed as they put their trays back on the stack. “Sybil.”
“You’re right,” said Benny. “She’s always down here working. I wonder where she is today.”
Away from the flume line, Henry told the others about Donald’s remark. “How did he know when the last star ruby was found here?” he said.
“Maybe he read about it—there are a lot of newspaper articles on the wall in the lobby” said Violet.
“There’s Sybil,” Benny said.
The older woman carried a Ruby Hollow laundry basket up the path to the Laundromat. A white shirt dropped off the pile, but Sybil hurried on, unaware.
Benny ran ahead and picked up the shirt. He started to call out to Sybil when he noticed something.
“What is it?” asked Jessie.
“Look,” he said. “The sleeve is ripped. Do you think that piece of cloth we found would fit?”
“Good thinking!” Henry praised. “Jessie, do you have that scrap with you?”
Jessie pulled the cloth from her pack, where she kept the warning note and the list from Jonathan’s notebook. She placed the scrap over the rectangular-shaped tear in the shirt.
Violet squinted. “It doesn’t quite fit. One side is too long.”
Henry held the shirt up to the light. “The material doesn’t match.” He pointed to the faint stain on the scrap. “This shirt doesn’t have any stains.”
“So it’s not a good clue,” said Benny, disappointed.
“We could be on the right track,” Henry said. “Sybil had a lot of white clothes in her basket.”
“I wonder if there’s a stained shirt in her laundry,” Violet mused.
“We have to watch her,” said Jessie. “And Donald and Jonathan. It’s hard to watch all these people when they are in different places. I wish they would stay in one spot!”
“That may not happen till this evening,” said Violet with a sigh. “When the contest is judged.”
“We have to find the ruby before then,” Benny stated.
During lunch, Cecil Knight announced that the flume would close at five that evening, so the contest could be judged at six.
Jessie was glad. With only a few hours to find a special stone, everyone spent the afternoon on the flume, including Sybil, Donald, and Jonathan.
To make the time pass, Jonathan started telling jokes.
“Where do cows go on vacation?” he said to Benny.
“I don’t know,” Benny said. “Where?”
“Moo York!”
“Bad!” Violet declared, giggling. “But funny!”
“Where does a two-thousand-pound elephant sleep?” Jonathan asked.
“I give up,” Benny said. “Where?”
“Anywhere he wants!” said Jonathan.
“I have one!” Benny said. “Where do rocks sleep?” Without waiting for anyone to guess, he blurted, “In a bed of rocks!”
“That’s pretty good!” said Sybil, chuckling.
Jessie thought about Benny’s joke. In a bed of rocks. It reminded her of something. But what? The thought nagged at her while she rinsed and sorted her stones.
After a while, she heard someone say, “Uh-oh.”
Donald Hodge pointed to the sky.
Black clouds had formed over the mountain. Thunder grumbled. The weather forecast had been right on target.
Cecil Knight ordered, “Get inside! Get away from the water until the storm is over!”
“These mountain thunderstorms sure come up quickly,” Grandfather said, herding the children up the trail to the main building.
Hot chocolate and oatmeal cookies were served in the dining room while the storm rumbled around them. Lightning flickered above the trees and sheets of rain dashed against the windows.
“I hope that library in town doesn’t get hit again,” said Violet.
“This isn’t a very bad storm,” Cecil Knight reassured her. “The sun will be shining again before we know it.”
Within minutes the sky lightened and the downpour slowed to a drizzle.
While people chatted over hot chocolate and cookies, Jessie went over to the windows. Rainwater formed a small river across the parking lot.
The runoff was pretty strong, Jessie noticed. The muddy water reminded her of something.
“Let’s go down to the flume,” she whispered to the others.
They slipped out of the dining room unnoticed and ran down the trail. Water dripped from the roof of the flume and the grass was slick with rain.
“Okay, why are we here?” Henry asked Jessie.
She handed out spades. “I think I know what the mystery digger was doing.”
“What?” asked Violet.
“Our mystery digger wasn’t trying to find something,” Jessie answered. “He—or she—was trying to hide something.”
She pushed her spade into the wet dirt of the “dump” pile where people emptied ore from their trays.
Violet, Henry and Benny began digging, too.
They didn’t have to dig long. The heavy rains had washed away most of the pile.
“I hit something!” Benny exclaimed. “My spade scraped over something hard.”
Jessie knelt down and pulled the object out of the hole, revealing a mud-caked square box.
“What is that?” asked Henry.
Jessie pried open the lid of the container. Inside, wrapped in damp tissue, was a single large stone.
“It’s the star ruby,” she proclaimed.
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