Isabel's Texas Two-Step by Annie Bryant

Author:Annie Bryant
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Aladdin
Published: 2008-08-17T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 10

Swing Yer Partner

The excitement over our discovery was making me shake inside. I don’t know how long it took me to sketch the drawings, but I felt Ricardo and I did a good job documenting the find without disturbing it. Although I had Elena Maria’s camera with me, I took only three photographs. I remembered from our class trip to Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts that using the flash might harm the ancient artwork, but I had no choice. We needed something better than my drawings to explain this. I split the wall art into two photos, and took a close-up shot of the items in the sand. Here I was, shooting prehistoric pictures drawn by ancient people. Again, my fingers began to tingle.

Eventually, though, I was tired and thirsty. A strange energy buzzed through me. Ricardo and I worked well together. He had some decent guesses when I couldn’t figure out an image. When we were done, we squeezed slowly back through the tiny crevice and plopped ourselves in the exact same spots as before, near the entrance to the cave. I couldn’t take it anymore.

“Here,” I said, dumping the stuff out of my purse and shoving it at him. Sorry, Katani, I apologized silently.

Without a second thought he pushed the purse in on the sides to square it up, then extended his arm outside as far as he could, soaking his sleeve beyond his shoulder. “Brrr! Cold!”

But he continued to hold out his arm until the purse filled with rainwater. I watched in amazement. “Drink, drink fast,” he said when he retracted it. “It’s not water-tight.” Ricardo was turning out to be the kind of person that you would want with you during a disaster.

I rapidly gulped a couple of swigs and passed it back to him. He filled it again and drank, then filled it and passed it to me. We went through several rounds before he complained about his wet sleeve again.

“Thank you. That really was a great idea,” I admitted.

With my belly full of water, I started to relax. We tried to estimate about how long we’d been trapped in the cave. It was hopeless. It could have been four hours or six, or more. The rain fell steadily, but the thunder and lightning eventually faded. I soon forgot about the pictographs and my family and fell asleep.

I felt my ankle shake. Ricardo was nudging me. I rose and pushed the hair out of my face.

Ricardo shone the flashlight at something outside. “Come look at this.”

The fog of sleep would not lift. I blinked. I knew where I was, but something had changed. The rain sounded a little lighter, but it wasn’t over. Outside it was still pitch-black.

“Hurry up!” he whispered.

I weighed two hundred pounds with sleep, but I crawled over to him anyway. I squinted in the light and saw two ugly forms. A couple of armadillos rooted at the base of a shrub, shielded from the rain by the foliage.

“Mission accomplished,” Ricardo said.

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