Perusina, Perusino, and Franz in Tambogrande

The first mango fell squarely on Perusino's head.

"Ouch." He held it up. "If this is a welcome gift: I'll take another one, but please with a warning."

Then the second mango fell.

This time he ducked. The fruit whizzed past him, hit a tin bucket, and went PLONK!

Franz jumped half a meter high. "The tree is shooting!"

Perusina squinted. In front of them, mango trees stood in long rows. Their leaves hung tiredly. The ground was cracked. An irrigation canal ran between the trees. Or rather: It should have been running.

It was dry.

A girl with a yellow scarf around her neck came running. "You have to help! The canal is empty. If no water comes today, we'll lose the young mango trees."

"I'm Perusina. That's Perusino. And that's Franz."

Franz just stepped on a mango, slipped, and landed with all four paws in a basket of limes.

"I'm officially busy," he mumbled.

The girl's name was Camila. Her father farmed a small plantation near Tambogrande. In the past, she said, much of it had been dry here. Only with water from the San Lorenzo system did the fields turn green. Mangoes, lemons, bananas. "But since this morning, nothing has been coming."

Perusina knelt by the canal. Something glittering lay in the dry mud.

Perusino leaned over it. "Gold?"

Franz sniffed. "Metal dust. And mango. And someone lost their bad temper here."

"You can smell bad temper?" Camila asked.

"With adults, almost always."

They followed the tracks along the canal. After a few minutes, they found a spot where fresh earth had been piled up. Someone had opened a small side canal and diverted the water. Not to the mango trees. But away from them, behind a row of low hills.

"Someone wants to hide water there," Perusina said.

"You can't hide water," Perusino said.

Then they heard a gurgling sound.

Behind the hill, water was splashing into an old basin. Next to it lay shovels, sacks, and a box labeled "Caution." The writing was crooked, as if someone had painted it very quickly.

Franz poked his nose into a sack. "Stones. Metal dust. And... oh!"

He sneezed so violently that he fell backward into an empty wooden box. The lid clapped shut.

"Franz?"

A muffled voice came from the box. "I've discovered a secret room."

Perusino lifted the lid. "That's a box."

"A very small secret room."

Suddenly, there was a crack behind them. A man with a dusty shirt emerged from the shadow of an old tambo, an abandoned clay resting place. He held a shovel.

"You have no business here."

Perusina stood still. "You're diverting the water."

"Only for a short time," the man said. "There's more value under these hills than in your trees."

"Gold?" Perusino asked.

The man didn't smile. "Perhaps."

Camila clenched her fists. "For that, you let our mangoes dry up?"

The man reached for the box of papers. Perusina was faster. She snatched a crumpled plan and ran.

Now things got wild.

Perusina sprinted through the mango trees. Perusino yanked up an irrigation sluice, but it was stuck. Franz jumped on the lever, slipped, hung there for a moment like a wet scarf, and shouted: "I'm giving it my all!"

The lever gave way.

Water shot into the old canal.

Perusino was caught by the first wave at his ankles, spun around once, and plopped down into the mud.

"I wanted to sit down anyway."

The man ran after Perusina. Camila threw a tarp in front of his feet. He stumbled, caught himself, and kept running.

Perusina jumped over a ditch. The plan fluttered in her hand. No treasure was marked on it. Only a spot with a red cross, directly under the roots of the oldest mango trees.

"He wants to dig there!" she cried.

By the old trees, there was already a shaft. Half open. Boards over it. Water now flowed back into the main canal, but the shaft began to collapse at the edges.

Franz heard it first. "The ground is cracking!"

Camila ran to her little brother, who was standing at the edge of the shaft, curiously looking in.

"Get away from there!" Perusino shouted.

He lunged forward, grabbed the boy by the shirt, and rolled with him to the side. At the same moment, a board slid into the shaft and disappeared with a dull crash.

The man dropped the shovel.

Perusina held up the plan. "This is not a treasure. This is a danger."

Camila pointed to the mango trees. The water reached their roots. Slowly but surely. The dry ground began to darken.

Perusino pulled a mango from the mud and wiped it on his sleeve. "So the treasure isn't underground."

Franz nodded seriously. He had a lime on his head. No one knew since when.

"The treasure hangs on the trees," Perusina said. "And it flows in the canal."

Then another mango fell.

This time it hit Franz.

He blinked. "Tambogrande just agreed."