Lantern Sam and the Blue Streak Bandits (25 page)

All the remaining seats for the first ride were filled with local kids, the winners of a “Why I Want to Ride the Blue Streak” essay contest sponsored by the park, and
when we were all secured in our seats, the ride operator shouted, “All aboard!” which made me think of Clarence and Sam.

Ellie noticed that the smile had disappeared from my face. “Are you sure you’re not afraid?”

I scoffed. “No, I was just thinking … never mind.”

Our heads jerked back as the Blue Streak came to life beneath us, and a cheer rose up from the crowd, which had formed a line that stretched far into the distance. Slowly at first, then gradually building up speed, we slipped into a pitch-black tunnel leading to the steep incline that would take us nearly a hundred feet into the air.

As we rumbled along in the dark, the kids in the back seats screamed.

Suddenly I felt a hand on my shoulder. At first I thought it was Ellie, but I soon realized it couldn’t be her; there was just enough light for me to see that both of her hands gripped the bar in front of her.

“Hiya, kids,” said a pair of familiar voices.

I spun around and got my first good look at Sally and Thomas, the former students of Judge Ambrose’s school. Well, that’s who I
expected
to see, anyway. What I
actually
saw, however, sent a chill up my spine. The wigs and fake mustache may have fooled everyone else, but there was
no doubt in my mind that I was face to face with my old friends Connie and Ty.

“Good to see you again,” said Ty, grabbing me firmly by the arms. A second later, Connie did the same to Ellie, who screamed so loud that it hurt my ears.

“That’s okay; scream all you want,” said Connie with an evil laugh. “Everyone’s expecting it.”

The kids behind us took Ellie’s scream as a cue and added more of their own.

“You didn’t really think you’d seen the last of us, did you?” Connie asked as we twisted and turned through the tunnel. “Do you have
any
idea how much time and effort went into planning that heist? Weeks.
Months
. We had every angle covered. We knew what train you’d be on and which compartment you’d be in. We knew your rich little mommy would have the jewels with her, even what color bag they would be in. It was foolproof.”

“But then Dick Tracy Jr. came along and threw a monkey wrench into the works,” said Ty, squeezing my arms even harder. “And we can’t let you get away with that. What kind of criminals would we be if we did? Huh? Huh?”

“Even dumber than I thought,” I said, not quite loud enough for Ty to hear.

“I thought you were in jail,” said Ellie.

Connie laughed again. “Sometimes it helps to know people in high places. You kids are pretty smart, but you weren’t quite clever enough to figure out that the famous, respectable Judge Ambrose, who taught me everything I know, … is my daddy. We didn’t even make it to the jail in Erie before we were free. Daddy told them it was all just a misunderstanding, and here we are. In fact, we were probably here before you!”

We were approaching the end of the tunnel, and even after just a few seconds in the darkness, the light was so bright that I had to blink a few times in order to focus.

As we started up the hill, I fought to get loose from Ty’s grip, but with only one good hand, it was useless. “What are you going to do to us?” I asked.

“You like rides, right? We’re going to give you the ride of your life,” said Connie. “Don’t worry; we’ll wait until we’re going really fast, so it’ll be
lots
of fun for you. According to Mr. Vettel, we’ll hit sixty at the bottom of the first hill. Wheeee!”

“You’re going to … throw us off?” said Ellie. “That’s murder!”

Clackety-clackety-clack
went the cars of the Blue Streak as we rose higher and higher.

“Funny, the way I remember it was that you two were showing off for all those kids in the back, and then … 
whoosh! Me and, uh, Sally Oatley here tried to help you, but it was too late.”

“You’ll never get away with this,” I said, still twisting and turning in Ty’s hands. He wasn’t about to let me go.

I looked at Ellie. “Whatever you do, don’t let go of that bar.”

“I won’t,” she promised. She glanced at my cast. “What about you?”

“I’ll be all right.”

The steepness of the track pushed me against the seat, making it harder and harder to fight back. As we approached the highest point on the track, the car slowed dramatically, like an out-of-breath climber struggling to reach the summit of one of those mountains in faraway places with names like Katmandu or Tanganyika. A quick glance over the side made me dizzy; it was a long, long way down. I needed a plan, and I needed it
fast
.

Clackety … clackety … clack-e-ty
, and we leveled off, nearly stopping as the cars behind us caught up. And then …

Down, down, down we plunged as gravity took over, pulling our car toward the earth at sixty miles per hour and slamming my head back against the seat. Fortunately for us, Connie and Ty were completely caught off guard by the suddenness and the violence of the acceleration, and they
lost their grips on Ellie and me for a few seconds as they were flung back into their seats.

Unfortunately, however, there was nowhere for us to go—and besides, we were pinned into our own seats by gravity. We hit the bottom of the first hill and immediately started flying up the two “camelback” hills, when Connie and Ty recovered enough to come after us again. As the kids in the back cars all screamed in unison, completely unaware of what was going on in front of them, our enemies pulled themselves toward us, clutching and grabbing at our flailing arms.

To my horror, even though Ellie screamed, punched, scratched, and bit at her arms, Connie somehow managed to hold on and began to pull Ellie out of her seat. I had no choice but to give up my own fight with Ty and wrap my arms, cast and all, around Ellie’s legs, doing everything I could to keep her in our car as we roared down the second hill.

Ty was better prepared for that one, and he used the situation to his advantage, getting his arms around me and his hands locked together. Grunting loud enough to be heard over the clanking of the wheels and the screaming of the kids in the cars at the back, he yanked me completely out of my seat as I continued to hold on to Ellie. As he dragged us both over the back of our seat and on top of him, I kicked
and twisted, trying to break free, but instead found myself with my legs and feet hanging over the side of the car, which was still speeding around the track and climbing the third hill.

When Ty saw that I was already halfway out of the car, he stopped pulling and started pushing me over the edge. “Let the girl go!” he shouted to Connie. “I’ve got them both!”

I looked up just in time to watch the blood-red scarf that had been tied around Connie’s hair flap violently and flutter away on the wind. She tried to let go of Ellie, but once again she underestimated the determination of a ten-year-old who was tired of being pushed around. Ellie threw her arms around Connie and held on for dear life.

“Help!” I screamed, panicking as I felt myself slipping backward toward the tracks and the ground far below. Connie’s scarf caught my eye again—its rippled red silk looking exactly like a puddle of blood.

The Blue Streak is known as an “out and back” roller coaster. After the first set of hills (the “out” part of the ride), the track takes a hard, 180-degree right-hand turn and heads back to the starting point. The “out” and the “back” parts of the ride are side by side much of the way around, and as I looked farther down the track while still struggling to find something—anything—to hang on to, I saw
something … well, to call it unexpected is just too much of an understatement: it was simply unbelievable.

Running—no,
sprinting
—toward me along the wooden railing that separated the out and back sections was Lantern Sam, who hadn’t used up all nine of his lives after all!

The sound of his voice inside my head convinced me that I wasn’t seeing things.

“Hang on, kid!”
he shouted. Timing his leap perfectly, he then launched himself as if from a catapult at the cars of the Blue Streak, which began plummeting downhill again at more than fifty miles an hour.

And for the second time in as many days, poor, dumb Ty looked up just as seventeen razor-sharp claws and the needle-like teeth of a demented, screeching feline soared through the air, aimed right at his head.

“What the—” Ty yelled. He threw up an arm to shield his face, but it was too late. When you’re going sixty miles per hour and you collide head-on with the business end of a ten-pound cat who is flying through the air at twenty-five miles per hour, the results are
not
pretty.

Screaming in pain as Sam dug into him yet again, Ty was forced to let me go, and I pulled myself back into the car just as we reached the bottom of the third hill. The four of us, plus Sam, already packed like sardines in a seat built for two, were slammed against the left side of the car
as we raced around the long banked turn that began the return part of the ride. With Ellie still plastered against her, Connie tried to help Ty by swatting at Sam, but the harder she hit him, the more his fur flew and the deeper his claws sunk into her helpless partner and the louder
he
screamed.

“Who
is
that cat?” Connie cried, her face covered in cat hair. “Aaa-chooo!”

Finally, we came out of the turn, the line of cars behind us straightening out as we headed into the long stretch of smaller ups and downs leading back to the starting point. Ty was up on his feet, pulling at Sam, when I spotted a large bucket (left behind by the painters who were still at work painting the miles of lumber that supported the Blue Streak) directly ahead of us and hanging only seven or eight feet above the tracks!

“Sam!” I shouted. “Look out!”

He spun his head around just in time.
“Mrrraa!”

Instead of jumping down into the car from Ty’s shoulders, though, he leaped
up
, groping wildly for the rope and tipping the bucket over in the process. In an instant, gallons of whitewash poured over Ty’s head and then spilled onto Connie, Ellie, and me—and then it just kept on coming, coating all those screaming kids in the back cars! I turned around in time to see Sam dangling from the bucket, and I
swear this part is true: Lantern Sam was smiling from ear to tattered ear.

In the meantime, the Blue Streak barreled over the last couple of bumps, gradually slowing as we pulled into the loading area with the front seats empty and the four of us still crammed—and dripping with whitewash—into the second row. The crowd, cheering enthusiastically as we came into sight, turned strangely silent when we got closer.

A million shouted questions hit us almost as suddenly as the paint had, but Ellie and I ignored them and jumped out of the car and onto the loading platform.

Ellie pointed at Connie and Ty—beaten, bloodied, and soaked through with paint—and announced, “They tried to kill us!”

“Aaa-chooo!” said Connie.

Mr. Strasbourg and my father, along with a number of other men, moved in and grabbed Connie and Ty, who were too defeated—again—to put up much of a fight.

“Don’t let him go!” I said, pointing at Judge Ambrose, who was trying to sneak away. “He’s part of it.”

Two uniformed policemen blocked his way, and the judge turned back to face us, a resigned look on his face.

The master of ceremonies, still in his Uncle Sam suit, ran up to us, pointing at Connie and Ty. “Who are these
two?” he asked. “One of our employees just found Thomas Stapleton and Sally Oatley tied up in a shed.”

“They’re Connie and Ty,” said Ellie. “And they’re wanted by the FBI. Judge Ambrose is her
father
. He planned the whole thing. He’s nothing but a big crook.”

“That’s right,” I said. “We caught them on the train last night, but then
he
let them go. He was mad because we spoiled his plan to steal the Blue Streak, so he sent them out to kill us. And they almost did, but then …”

Every eye in the crowd was on me. Should I tell the truth—that Lantern Sam was the reason Ellie and I were still alive—or should I tell them a story that they would actually believe?

“They were trying to throw us off the roller coaster, but when Ty stood up, he hit his head on a paint bucket.” I paused, checking the faces around me, and decided that they all believed me. “And, uh, that’s about it.”

Then there was lots of handshaking (there would have been hugs, but I was still covered in whitewash) and congratulating, and finally the master of ceremonies convinced everyone that it was time to clean up the Blue Streak and give everyone in the crowd a chance to go for the ride of their lives.

“How about you, Henry?” he asked. “Another ride?”

I couldn’t believe that I was saying it, but I smiled and said, “No, thank you. I think I’ve had enough for one day.”

“That was perfect, kid,”
said a voice inside my head.

“Sam?” I said aloud. Luckily, no one seemed to hear. I searched the area but didn’t see him.

“Behind you,”
he said.
“In the tree.”

He was stretched out along a branch of an elm tree, and I took a few steps toward him. “I thought you didn’t like trees.”

“I don’t. But I wanted a good seat to see how you were going to handle everything. You did great, by the way. Kept my name out of it.”

“You have to answer one question,” I said. “Last night. The Shoreliner. That bridge. The gorge. I
saw
you.…”

“Was there a question in there?”
Sam asked, his green eyes twinkling.

“What happened?”

“I must have counted wrong,”
he said.
“All that time, thinking I’d used up eight lives when obviously that wasn’t the case. That time in the barn, when I was just a kitten … I guess that one didn’t count. Or maybe it was the time with the lantern. When you get right down to it, how do you know which ones count? Take last night, for instance. Does it count? Sure, from your point of view, it looks like it, but it wasn’t really so bad. When I went through that door, I’ll admit it: for a few seconds, I thought I was a goner. I skipped along the
edge of the tracks and then went right over the side of the bridge. There was nothing but air between me and the creek and all those pointy rocks. Or so I thought. Lucky for me, they were doing some work on the bridge up near the tracks, and the workers had safety nets in place, just like at the circus. The wind must have blown me back under the bridge, because I hit one of the nets dead center. I bounced around a bit before finally coming to a stop. Then I crawled back up to the tracks and waited for the next train to come along, which I hopped.”