The Dragon of Cripple Creek

by Troy Howell

  Approaching the door cautiously, I heard movements inside, humming like a hornet’s nest. As I was about to peer in, a man came flying out, knocked me against the wall, and another man followed. The dark stranger! He tackled the first man, who went down on the chair cushion he clutched, and together they rolled down the hall.

  A feather floated in front of my face, black with orange flecks, along with rustic-smelling cologne and something at least 80 proof.

  Eye-to-Eye’s hat was off and he was straddling the back of the other intruder, a long-haired man in ice-blue jeans and a white T-shirt, who snorted and squirmed. From out of nowhere, Eye-to-Eye yanked a rope and, quicker than a finger snap, tied the man’s wrists to his ankles. Then he leaped up, saying, “Ye-haw!”

  As he turned to retrieve his hat, which lay just beyond my feet, Dillon and Dad came up the stairs, astonishment and fear on their faces.

  Dad yelled, “Hey!” and bounded forward.

  I don’t know what he would have done, but here was his daughter, and here were two thugs, and he wasn’t going to have me mauled.

  Swiftly grabbing his hat, Eye-to-Eye pulled a card from the inside band and offered it to Dad, saying, “Ain’t you never seen nobody hog-tied?”

  Dad looked at the card, looked at him, looked at the captive on the carpet, and looked at me. “Are you all right?” he asked.

  I nodded firmly. “I’m all right.”

  Dad said to Eye-to-Eye, “What is this? What’s going on?”

  Eye-to-Eye grabbed the man’s hair and thrust his face toward us. His face was nothing out of the ordinary—just plain-Jane, Joe-homeowner vanilla. Maybe this was the face of greed. Not a monster, just a guy off the street. Well, almost. As I looked into his eyes, I saw how hollow they were, like staring into drinking straws.

  “Business first,” said Eye-to-Eye. “Dude’s breachy.”

  “Excuse me?” said Dad.

  “Breachy. He’s known for breakin’ out.” He tipped his hat, gripped the man’s hair tighter, and dragged him down the hall.

  Never have I heard such a colorful string of cussing—before that time or since—particularly when they hit the stairs. You could tell how many steps there were—I winced at every count: sixteen total.

  We examined the man’s card.

  “THIS IS JUST THE BEGINNIN’,” SAID REX. HIS raised eyebrows put hound dog furrows in his forehead. He had removed his hat respectfully, and his close-cropped hair matched the tan of his skin. With his black hat off, his eyes were the color of molasses.

  He had returned in no time, and now sat on the radiator under my window, which gave him not only a view of the street but the highest position. Dad sat in the stuffed chair, after having put it and its cushion back in place, and Dillon and I sat on the box springs of the bed. I clutched my bag on my lap, hastily packed for the third time.

  My room looked like a hurricane had swept through. The bathroom door had a hole punched in it the size of a fist, the mattress slumped against a wall, and the nightstand lay on its side.

  Rex had apologized, saying, “Comes with the turf. You mess with someone, things get messy.” Then he’d added reluctantly, as though he would have rather taken full claim for the damage, “But it wasn’t all me.”

  As soon as we had entered the room, I noticed the coffee cup was missing, and yelped. Not looking my way, Dillon put his finger to his lips. I immediately went through my heap of belongings to see that my journal was safe, and it was.

  “Yup,” said Rex, surveying the room. “Keepin’ the law … minus the order.” He explained that he had been on the man’s tail since the rumor of gold hit town. “That joker and me goes back a ways. He’s the type that thinks crime pays so you gotta show ’em what the pay is.”

  He cracked his knuckles and I thought, Broken ribs.

  “Crazies,” he said. “You get a little fame, a little fortune maybe”—a sidelong glance at me—“you get crazies of all kinds scratchin’ at your door.” He leaned forward. “This is just the start.”

  Dad shifted uncomfortably, which meant he was about to speak. He looked at his watch. “Well,” he said, “the crazies will have to keep scratching. They won’t get anything from us.” (Dillon and I exchanged looks.) “We’ll be leaving shortly.”

  Rex held up a hand. “The cops’ll have a few questions.”

  I rolled my eyes. Not again! I’d had it up to here with the cops. I said, “We’ve already—”

  Dillon cut me off. “Mr. Havick—”

  “Rex, please.”

  “Mr. Rex. How do we know you’re not one of the crazies?” He let that sink in for a second. “How do we know this isn’t your way of getting into the room without getting caught? How do we know you and that other guy aren’t a team and just put on a command performance? How do we know you don’t have the gold?”

  Rex was grinning. Except for a tiny chip in the shape of a horseshoe on a front tooth, his teeth were perfect and white. “If I needed a partner, it wouldn’t be that cow pie! Pardon the French Canadian. It’d be somebody coyote smart, like yourself.”

  “Flattery,” Dillon said in his driest voice.

  “What may be flattery is the fat honest truth.” Rex darted his eyes to the street. “Huffman’ll vouch for me.”

  “We’ve met Huffman,” said Dillon. “He’s not so clever that you couldn’t fool him, either.” He spoke with the confidence he had gained from his disappearing gold trick. But had it disappeared for good?

  Dillon said, “Mr. Tex—”

  “Rex.”

  “Tell me some more truth—skinny or fat, whatever. Was there a cup of coffee in this room when you stepped in on the French Canadian cow pie?”

  Rex was still grinning. “I like that,” he said. He dropped his grin. “Coffee cup … No, don’t think so. There’s trash in the bathroom. You could check that.”

  I beat Dillon to the bathroom and fell to my knees. The trash was mine, of course, and there was the cup.

  Empty.

  IT SEEMED NO MATTER HOW I TRIED, MY plans always fell like a house of cards.

  The gold was gone.

  Just like Mom’s pearl.

  I thought I was stuck with Chief Huffman for life. He walked in looking like he was trying not to look bored. Huffman and Harold and the uniformed lady: It was like the king, queen, and jack repeatedly popping up in your opponent’s hand.

  When the cards were down, it looked like this:

  Rex, ever the vigilante with an eye out for trouble, had been trailing this man, alias the Ghost, nicknamed Earp (not Wyatt, but earp as in, Pazz me the—earp!—bottle), who’d been trailing us from the evening before. While Dillon and I were in the café and Dad was loading the car, Rex had followed the man to the hotel and to my room. The Ghost had convinced the housekeeping woman it was his room she had cleaned, and she had moved down the hall. Rex burst in as the man was rifling the room. They tussled, Rex put the hole in the bathroom door where the man’s face had been a split-whisker before, the man dove for the chair cushion, and that’s when I showed up. Meanwhile, Dillon had joined Dad at the car, and together they had returned to look for me.

  Dad asked Rex the question I was trying to avoid. “Did he get what he was after?”

  Chief Huffman was quick. “What was he after?”

  “You tell me,” said Dad, equally quick. He and the chief had a staredown, in which Dad was working hard at the fine art of firmness.

  The chief broke the stare by saying, “I think that’s for Katlin here, or Dillon, to tell.” He was playing his cards carefully. “What was he after?”

  We played dumb.

  The chief turned to Rex. “Havick? Any ideas?”

  Rex removed his hat and rubbed his stubble. “Usually, it’s somethin’ valuable,” he said, playing innocent. “Jewelry or cash.” He cut his dog eyes at me. “You didn’t have none, did you, darlin’?”

  I stuck my hands in my pockets and shook my head.

  Chief Huffman cleared his throa
t. “Let’s put it this way, then. Is anything missing?”

  Before I could think up an answer, Rex asked, “What’d your search of the Ghost turn up?”

  Harold the Younger spoke out of turn, saying, “Nothing at all,” earning another notch on Chief Huffman’s nightstick, I was sure.

  “Harold!” the chief growled, then asked Rex, “Did you pat him down?”

  “I did, and just like Harold here, found nothin’.”

  So. The man hadn’t taken the gold. Or if he had, he’d hidden it fast. I looked at Rex, who was fidgeting with his hat. He had a spark in his eye. Was he telling all he knew? Could it be that he had taken it himself? I mulled this one over, knowing that corruption wears badges sometimes.

  Dillon was thinking hard—I can always tell by the half smile on the left side of his face. Did he know where the gold was? Had he somehow hidden it again without my knowledge?

  Did anyone know? Could anyone be trusted?

  As Chief Huffman and his posse filed out the door, the chief beckoned Rex with a jerk of his head.

  Rex took a look out the window and donned his hat. “So long, folks. Like I said, this is just the beginnin’.”

  “WHAT’S HE MEAN BY THAT?” I ASKED DAD when Rex was gone.

  The answer came as a made-for-TV voice crooned outside the room, “A-a-and here she is! The gold-toothed girl!”

  A TV camera peeked around the doorway, a young man came with it, and a small crowd collected behind him, cramming the hall.

  “It’s confirmed then?” asked the voice, a voice I’d heard somewhere before. “Mr. Graham? It was gold the thief was after?”

  A face that matched the voice, lipsticked and rouged and gold-crested, sprouted from behind the man behind the camera. It was the reporter I’d seen on TV and at the Warrens, who drove the red luxury car.

  She must have taken Dad off guard with her warbling, for he took a step back, fumbling his words.

  “I … there was a … you see …”

  “May I come in, Mr. Graham? You’ve been through so much, I know. I think you deserve to tell your side of it.” She wasn’t waiting for an invitation, but advanced while she spoke and began closing the door behind her. This raised a protest from the onlookers.

  “If you all keep quiet while I conduct this interview …” she said to them.

  They murmured agreeably, and she left the door open. Clearly, she was set on commanding the situation, sink or swim.

  She swam, smilingly. “Mr. Graham, Kathleen—”

  “Katlin,” I said with my mouth nearly shut. Why she irked me I wasn’t sure, but I was sure she was up to no good. If this was journalism—

  “Of course. I’m Rose Robbins, KOLT-TV.” She gave me a firm but feminine handshake, and I predicted her fingernails were thorns in disguise.

  Dad offered her the chair.

  “I’ll stand, thank you. I won’t take much of your time, which, I understand, is short.”

  How she knew that, I could only guess. Perhaps she had seen our packed bags in the car. So far, all of her shots had hit something. One had hit Dad’s voice box: He was as mute as mud.

  “Kathleen, may I start with you?” Again, she didn’t wait for an answer but dove right in. “Tell me: How did it feel to fall down a shaft in the darkness? You didn’t have any light, did you?”

  I looked to Dad for a last call for help. Too late: He had taken the chair himself, in silent submission. I think he was on the point of collapse. I looked to Dillon, hoping he’d come to my rescue, but he had blended into the background, perhaps brooding over this whole mess, specially me losing Mom’s ring. I wasn’t in any mood to spill my story, but the camera was aimed at me, and an audience was waiting. I had to do something.

  I said, “It wasn’t exactly a walk in the park, I can tell you.”

  “Yes,” Rose responded. “Tell us, please. It was a walk in the dark, wasn’t it?”

  Yep—thorns all right, underneath her pink petals. Well, I could scratch, too. “A stumble in the dark.” I said. “A rumble, tumble, jumble.”

  With a sly smile in her eye and her voice, she said, “Now, that’s an apt description. As you stumbled, rumbled, tumbled, and … what was that other word?”

  I was beginning to hate her. “Fumbled,” I said forcefully.

  “Jumbled in the dark, that far underground, what kind of thoughts did you have? How did you feel?”

  “I had deep thoughts and I felt with my hands.”

  A few snickers from the hallway, and the camera panned the crowd. Dad squinted at me as if his daughter had become a complete idiot. Dillon didn’t look at me at all.

  “Is that how you found the gold? By feeling with your hands?”

  Blam! Double-barreled, first shot. But a miss. I’d expected something like that, and figured she had another cartridge waiting. What she didn’t know was that I’d been through this already with Dillon and Dad. I wasn’t falling into that trap.

  “Did I say anything about gold?” I asked.

  “You don’t have to, Kathleen. We’ve all seen it.”

  I raised my head. “Then why do you ask?”

  “How you knew it was gold,” she said. “And where you found it.”

  The camera was back on me, zooming.

  I raised my head higher. “The how and the where is not your business.”

  “So it was gold you found,” she said triumphantly. “Not a pretty paperweight.”

  Blam! Right in the face. And I’d tossed her the target myself. The silence that followed was the post-gunshot kind, which leaves your ears ringing, your eyes batting smoke, and your heart one beat short. I blinked through the smoke into Dillon’s territory, but he was playing dead.

  The camera was now on Rose, who beamed through the lens and right into the homes and faces of a widescreen TV-land throng.

  “Real gold, folks,” she chirped. “One of the biggest gold nuggets on record.”

  I stopped blinking and collected myself. I pointed my chin at her. “How do you know that?”

  She ignored the remark. “The Mollie Kathleen will be proud.”

  “Where is it?” I persisted.

  The camera swiveled to me and I swiveled to meet it. All right, then. I would conduct this interview. I would work the camera and wrap up the show. I sharpened my pitch and pressed the issue. “Is it sitting on some bigwig’s desk? Are they divvying up the spoils? Wouldn’t you love to have some, Rose?”

  Wide-eyed, she declared, “Oh, who wouldn’t?”

  Narrowed-eyed, I stood up, gripping my bag. “That’s what’s wrong with your world.”

  “What is, Katlin?”

  Picturing Ye’s scorn, I said with gritted teeth, “Greed.”

  I headed for the doorway. I’d had enough. It was time to usher this Rose Parade back out to whatever feeding trough it had strayed from. The herd in the hall parted willingly for me, and I hoped they would close the gap, corralling Rose and her cinematographer. Dillon and Dad would have to squeeze through somehow.

  From behind me wafted her voice, melodic and clear. “Well, folks. You got it from the horse’s mouth. Or I should say, the cat’s. That’s what’s wrong with our world. Greed …”

  I plodded on—past faces mirthful, mocking, confused, dumbfounded.

  “… something our little gold-toothed lamb knows nothing about. Not in her world. Funny how she and her family held on to their lie as long as they could.”

  I descended the stairs, one hot jolt at a time.

  “It’s not their gold,” she taunted, following me. “They didn’t take it.”

  I reached the lobby.

  “You can’t help but wonder,” she crowed above the crowd. “Mom’s probably pacing at home, eager to open a new bank account—”

  That did it. I dropped my bag and spun on my heels. “What do you know?” I cried. “With your TV talk, scratching like a chicken for some speck to stick in your craw and spit out for”—I swept the crowd with my hand—“for viewers like yo
u!” I felt a surge of tears, but the heat of anger dried it up.

  Rose planted herself on the bottom step, too lofty for lowly me to make any impression. I backed into a chair off the lounge. That would do—I needed some height. I hoisted myself up. Better, here was a table. Ignoring a few scoffs from the gathering crowd, I scrambled up. I knocked over the chair. I knocked over a saltshaker, too, and, reaching down to right it, grabbed a spoon instead.

  I stood as tall as I could. The ceiling felt close and warm, and a brass light fixture crowned my head.

  Now I had their attention.

  “Take care, Kat,” said Rose, in a I-wouldn’t-do-that-if-I-were-you tone. “This could go national.”

  “All the better,” I said, delighted with the prospect and the acoustics. If she could chirp, I could purr.

  Leaving her stairway perch, she moved in with her cameraman. “There’s something you’d like to say?”

  Sometimes the best way to disarm your opponent is to tell a little truth. I wouldn’t say much. Just enough to show her up. I straightened my back.

  “Yes,” I announced. “There is.”

  “You’re on.”

  “The gold,” I said.

  “The gold?”

  “You’re right. It isn’t mine.”

  A stage gasp from her. “Well, I’m glad you finally admit—”

  “It isn’t the Mollie Kathleen’s.”

  Her face sank for a second. “How ludicrous—”

  “They don’t own it. They couldn’t.”

  Silence, as they all chewed on that one. I smiled. Oops Number One.

  I stopped smiling.

  “She does have a gold tooth!” someone said.

  “The gold! Show us the gold!”

  Ignoring the calls, Rose coaxed me. “So who owns it, Katlin?”

  “Well.” I swallowed. “As I was going to say, since it’s a natural—”

  Oops Number Two.

  I was going to say, Since it was a natural cavern, not a hole some miners dug, it wasn’t a part of the mine. But that would blow my “in the dark” fib. Because, how would I know it was natural or not, if I couldn’t see?