Dead End in Norvelt Read Free

flintlock blunderbuss and the noise and smoke scared the Inca army and Pizarro jumped on Atahualpa and held a sword to his neck and in that very instant the entire Inca empire was defeated. Amazing!
    Pizarro then held Atahualpa hostage for a ransom of gold so the Incas brought Pizarro piles of golden life-size people and animals and plants—all sculpted from solid gold as if the Incas had the Midas touch while they strolled through their fantastic cities and farms and jungles and everything they even gently brushed up against turned into pure gold. But no one will ever again see that life-size golden world because once the conquistadors got their greedy hands on the gold they melted it down. They turned all those beautiful golden sculptures into boring Spanish coins and shipped boatloads of them back to the king and queen of Spain, who loved the gold but wanted even more.
    Pizarro then raided all the temples and palaces and melted down the gold he found and sent that back. Still, it wasn’t enough for the king and queen. Pizarro even dug up the dead when it was discovered that they were buried with gold. He had their jewelry melted down and sent back to Spain. But it still wasn’t enough. So Pizarro’s men forced the Inca people to work harder in the gold mines. They melted the gold ore and sent that back to Spain, and when there was no more gold Pizarro broke his promise and strangled the Inca king. He turned the Inca people into slaves and they died by the thousands from harsh work and disease.
    Finally, one of Pizarro’s own men sneaked up and stabbed him to death because he thought Pizarro was cheating him out of his share of gold for helping to conquer the Incas. Gold had driven the conquistadors crazy and they ended up killing themselves and all of those poor Incas. It was a really tragic story. I just wished I had been with Atahualpa and his army when the conquistadors fired off that blunderbuss. I could have told Atahualpa that I had fired off a rifle too and that it was scary, but not to panic. Then we could have ordered the Inca army to capture the gold-crazed conquistadors and saved the Inca civilization, and history would have been different. If only …

 
     
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    I must have fallen asleep because I was dreaming of Pizarro’s crazed men melting down the golden statues of people into a big pot like when you melt a plastic army man over a burner on the stove when your mother isn’t looking. That’s when my alarm clock went off. It was five in the morning. I knew I had set it for six, but after I fell asleep Mom must have reset it. I was just going to roll over and go back to sleep when she tapped my shoulder and whispered, “Jack, are you awake?”
    “I’m dreaming of gold,” I moaned. “Lots of gold.”
    “Stop dreaming,” she ordered, and pinched my toe. “And hurry up. Miss Volker has probably made your breakfast already. She’s been up for hours.”
    “I thought I was grounded,” I said nasally, and plucked out my bloodied nose plugs.
    “I’m just loaning you to her for a while,” she explained. “When you finish with her come straight back home. Understand?”
    I understood.
    When she left I pulled on the same sweaty clothes I had peeled off the night before. I didn’t care that there were bloodstains spattered down the front of my shirt because every shirt I owned was decorated with bloodstains. I glanced at my hair in the mirror. My brown curls stood up on my head like a field planted with question marks. There was no reason to brush it. The question marks would just stand up into exclamation points and then wilt back over into question marks. Besides, I was a boy. It is okay to be a boy slob because moms think they still have time to cure you of your bad habits before you grow up and become an annoying adult slob for someone else.
    “Change that nasty shirt,” Mom ordered when she spotted the crusty bib of dried blood across my chest.
    I looked down at my shirt. “Hey, how