Ben was looking at the barrels and stopped at a certain one and said, "Why would the captain be guarding this certain barrel?"
Serenity watched him gently rip the mummified captain's fingers off the barrel and break it open, pouring some gunpowder out before he saw a tan parcel.
"What's that?" said Serenity, a little too loud. Everyone looked up from their barrel except Riley who was having a hard time with an unplugged barrel of streaming gunpowder.
Everyone gathered around him while Riley let Serenity stand in front of him. Ben opened the package to reveal a small box, and as everyone held their breath, Ben opened the box to see it was holding a small, delicatly-carved pipe. Ben held it up with wide eyes examining it.
"What is that?" whispered Serenity, her eyes also wide.
"Is it a billion dollar pipe?" said Riley, leaning over Serenity to get a little better look.
"It's a Shoshone pipe," said Ben, turning it for a better look.
"Is it a million dollar pipe?" Serenity rolled her eyes and asked; "May I?" she held her hand out to hold the 2,000-year-old pipe. Ian intercepted them by putting his hand in-between them.
"Ben, how do you trust her to hold this? Do you promise not drop it?" Ian asked her like she was four.
She clenched her fists and Riley moved his hands from her shoulders to her arms so she won't, as she would put it, 'send his brains sky-high'.
"Promise?" Ian looked at her suspiciously. She opened her mouth to blow him off, but Riley physically restrained her while Ben gave her a look as to 'say it and you will be with your parents'.
Serenity sighed and and muttered unaudible words. Ben relaxed and handed her the pipe.
"Ben, the little brat never promised!"
"That I did, you don't understand the Dakota language." She pulled the pipe out of his hands and examined the pipe.
As she rolled the piped over her fingers, she heard Ben say to Ian "Don't you ever call my niece a brat."
"Look, this has writing on this part." She was pointing to the stick part of the pipe where it was very ornate. She gave it back to her uncle and he looked at it carefully. "
Serenity, you might want to look away." He quietly said this as he pulled his switchblade out of his pocket. Serenity's eyes went wide and she turned and buried her face into Riley's chest.
Ben pricked his thumb with the tip of the knife until blood flowed freely. When Ben gasped from the sharp prick, Riley could feel Serenity shake with fright of the red liquid and the thought that her uncle is hurt.
Ben smeared the blood over the part of the pipe that came off easily from the larger part of the pipe. He opened his blank notebook he carried with him everywhere and rolled the blood on the paper, revealing a poem, but before Ben said the poem, he touched Serenity with his non-bloody hand, letting her know that it's all right to look again.
Everyone looked at the bloody writing, but to almost everyone, it was inlegible, like a forigen language. Finaly, Serenity got the chance to read it aloud, traslating the dialouge from Shoshone to English:
The legend writ
The stain affected
The key in Silence undetected
Fifty-five in iron pen
Mr. Matlack can't offend
Everyone looked at each other with question in their eyes. "It's a riddle." Said Ben, thinking hard.
Serenity's eyes darted to and fro thinking of the riddle, and then her eyes lit up with an idea.
"I need to think," said Ben, walking to one of the barrels and sat down repeating the verses, as he was saying it, he kept saying things that he thought that would be important.
As he was repeating the third line, Serenity said, "The key in Silence undetected?" when she said silence, she pointed to herself, showing Ben she knew something. Ben nodded only she could see and then continued the ideas through word of mouth.
"There's something, maps have legends and keys." Said Serenity, at the same time as Ben, but a little different. Ben went on.
"Ok, a map, an invisible map…" "What do you mean, invisible?" said Ian, getting frustrated of not getting what is going on.
"The stain effected could refer to a dye or something like that paired with a 'key in silence undetected' could make the undetectable detectable…"
"Unless the key is…" Serenity was going to finish his sentence, but Ian's bodyguard interjected "Prison."
Serenity and Ben looked at each other with a confused look.
"Chicago. Look, I can do it too. Squiggle." Retorted Riley, making fun of the guard.
"Like he said, 'Fifty-five and iron pen' an Iron Pen is a prison."
"Uncle, he has a point," said Serenity to her uncle, then she turned to the guard.
"…But not the right point." Ben sighed and went on.
"But the main writing tool was iron gall ink, the pen is…just a pen." Serenity thought for a moment.
"If it's just a pen, then why say iron pen?"
"'Cause it's a prison." snapped the guard. Serenity sighed and let her head drop.
"Wait, the iron doesn't describe the ink in the pen, it describes…what was penned…it was firm, it was mineral…no, it was firm, it was resolved…it was resolved…Mr. Matlack can't offend…" he looked up at Serenity, wondering if she figured it out.
She shook her head and slightly shrugged her shoulders.
"Timothy Matlack was the scribe for the Continental Congress,"
"Wait, he was a calligrapher, not a writer." said Serenity, not getting where this was going. Ben nodded.
"To make sure he couldn't offend the map, it was put on the back of the revolution that he transcribed…" Ben could see a light-bulb go on in Serenity's eyes.
"Serenity, what was a revolution fifty-five men signed…" she shook her head, not believing that the answer was always there.
"The Declaration of Independence…oh my god…"