Menace at Mammoth Cave. Mary Casanova

      chapter 1

      Rumblings of Trouble

      STEEL ON STEEL, brakes squealed as the train slowed to a stop. The trip from Cincinnati had been long, but they’d finally arrived at Mammoth Cave.

      Kit gazed out her passenger window. “Aunt Millie! There’s Charlie!”

      In his familiar brown cap, her brother waited under the awning of a whitewashed building edged with bright red flowers.

      “Must be feeding him well,” Aunt Millie said. “They’ve put some meat on his bones.”

      Kit had to agree. Her eighteen-year-old brother looked different in the months since she’d last seen him—older somehow.

      She tugged her suitcase from the overhead bin, and when the conductor opened the door, she was waiting on the top step, eager to hop off.

      A wall of hot, humid air greeted her.

      “Welcome to Mammoth Cave Hotel, young lady!” a gray-haired porter boomed, grabbing her suitcase.

      “We’re not staying at the hotel,” Kit said, tugging it back again. She and Aunt Millie had scrounged enough pennies together for a round-trip train ride, but they didn’t have extra for a hotel.

      “My apologies, Miss.” With that, the porter turned to the next passenger.

      In the throng of tourists, Kit felt herself swept up from behind by two strong arms around her waist, twirling her. “Charlie!” she squealed, as one shoe went flying, then the other. “My shoes!”

      By the time Charlie set Kit to the ground again, Aunt Millie held Kit’s shoes in hand.

      “Am I next?” Aunt Millie joked.

      Charlie laughed. “If you’d like, Aunt Millie.”

      “I’d better keep my feet on the ground,” she said with a laugh, “but thank you kindly.”

      Charlie grinned ear to ear. “I can’t believe you’re both here.”

      Kit put her hands on her hips. “Anyone who uses the word peculiar in a letter to me should know it will make me extra curious. You have to tell me what you meant!”

      Charlie laughed. “There’s time enough, Kit.” He picked up the two suitcases, then trotted off ahead. “Follow me, ladies.”

      Hurrying behind Charlie, Kit could practically recite his letter from memory. He’d said he was working at one of four camps at the park, and that each camp put out its own newspaper filled with bits of work news and jokes. Then he’d written, “But, honestly, there are some peculiar things going on around here lately. It’s what doesn’t get in the papers that’s most interesting.”

      Kit wanted to know more, but she held her tongue and followed him through a gravel parking lot to a rusty red Ford truck.

       “This truck belongs to Joe, one of the guys at camp,” Charlie said. “Rents it out for fifty cents a day.”

      “I’m happy to cover the cost,” Aunt Millie said.

      “I’ll help,” Kit added.

      The Depression had hit everyone hard in the past few years, but it seemed to Kit that things were finally starting to get better. Dad had finally found part-time work at the airport. Mother had taken in boarders, whose rent had allowed Kit’s family to keep their house. And one of the programs President Franklin Roosevelt had launched—the CCC, or Civilian Conservation Corps—had given men like Charlie a job. Each month, Charlie sent home twenty-five dollars of his dollar-a-day pay.

      Now it was August 1934, and Kit and her aunt were coming to stay for ten days with Aunt Millie’s childhood friend, Miss Pearl, who lived near the Mammoth Cave area where Charlie was working with the CCC.

      Charlie tossed their luggage into the truck bed. “Before we head out, I’m going to show you something you’ve never seen before.”

      They trekked after Charlie down a path into a hollow. Beside the path, a creek gurgled and flowed. Tall oak and beech trees cast shadows of dappled green and gray. The air cooled degree by degree as they descended. Excitement tiptoed up Kit’s spine. Was he going to show them the “peculiar things” he’d mentioned in his letter?

      As they came around a bend in the path, a sign read: “Historic Entrance.” A bit farther on, a cluster of tourists gathered.

      Kit stepped up to a railing. Below, a dark hole gaped like the mouth of an underground monster. Its throat was deep, and it shot out a continuous blast of cold air. A steep set of steps dropped toward its mouth and then leveled off into a path that extended deeper into darkness.

      Goose bumps rose on Kit’s arms. She watched as a group of tourists gathered around a man with a helmet and flashlight. “If anyone has a bad heart or is afraid of close spaces, you might want to skip this tour,” he began.

      Aunt Millie shook her head. “I don’t think people are meant to go belowground. It’s unnatural.”

      Charlie laughed. “Yeah, strange things live down there. Fish without eyes.”

      “Creepy!” Kit said, and made a mental note to find out more. “Did they find fossils of woolly mammoths here?”

      “It’s called Mammoth Cave because it’s so huge,” Charlie said. “It’s the largest underground cave in the world.”

      Kit stared. A carpet of ferns surrounded the mouth of the cave. Water trickled in rivulets toward the entrance, then fell off to its side and disappeared belowground. It was scary, but not enough to keep her from wanting to see inside.

      “Come on!” she said, heading toward the cave opening. “What are we waiting for?”

      “Hold on!” Charlie laughed. “You have to have a guide, and there isn’t enough time now. I still need to get you to the Thatchers’ and then get back to camp with the truck.”

      “Oh, but we’re so close,” Kit begged.

      “Don’t worry, Kit,” Charlie said with a smile as he turned away. “You’ll see it before you go back home.”

      Reluctantly, Kit pulled herself away from the beckoning cave. She hiked up the hollow and into the baking light of day.

      …

      As Charlie eased the truck down a steep road toward a wide ribbon of water, Kit hoped the brakes would hold. “This is the Green River,” Charlie said, parking at the water’s edge. “Camp’s on the other side.”

      Kit looked around, puzzled. The road simply stopped at the riverbank, and there was no bridge.

       “How do we get across?” she asked.

      Charlie pointed to a flat-bottomed boat that was just pulling away from the opposite shore. “That’s how,” he explained. “It’s a ferry. You ride across right in your car!”

      The boat glided up to shore, and a man in coveralls lowered a ramp. Charlie drove the pickup onto the ferry and parked. Then the man turned a crank that pulled the ferry along a cable that stretched from one bank to the other. The moment the ramp touched ground on the opposite side, Charlie drove off the ferry and up the winding road.

      “You act like you do this every day,” Kit said.

      “Because I do. I ride across with other workers,” he replied. “We work all over the park. I’m going to show you our base camp.”

      The road wound up the hill, past farm after farm, some boasting herds of cattle and sheep, some with fields of towering corn, ripe for picking. Other farms looked hard-hit, their fields brown, their barns and houses crippled with age.