The Dragon of Cripple Creek

by Troy Howell

  “And what was that, Mr. Havick?” Dillon’s second speech.

  Rex squinted thoughtfully into his tea before he spoke. “Every anniversary of my granddaddy’s death, he’d tell me. Granddaddy was mindin’ his own business, playin’ down at the pool hall one Friday night, hopin’ to add a little profit to his little bag of gold so’s he could buy a house for him and his bride and their new baby boy—my own daddy—when here comes Sharp-Eyed Joe and shoots the legs out from under him, sayin’, ‘Gimme what gold you got.’ Granddaddy says, ‘You’re goin’ to hell.’ Sharp-Eyed says, ‘Not yet, I ain’t,’ and shoots him in the intestinals. Granddaddy hunches over, but he’s got enough blood left in him to scrabble up and jab his pool stick hard into Sharp-Eyed Joe’s eye. Near took it out; broke the socket bone. Joe shoots wild and stumbles back, squealin’ like a stuck pig.”

  Rex took a long gurgling drink and wiped his mouth.

  “Well, to make a slow story quick, Granddaddy died, Joe took the gold, and changed his name to—”

  “Cotton-Eyed Joe!” I exploded.

  Rex blinked at me for a while, and Dillon and Dad were doing double and triple takes. I grinned at them with my best Girl Wonder grin.

  Finally, Rex said, “If you grind them beans any harder, sister, the leather’s gonna bust and we’ll be swimmin’ in bean soup. I’ll be pickin’ beans outta my socks from here to eternally.”

  “Sorry,” I said, letting go of my grin and my wigglies.

  “’S OK, darlin’.”

  His face a blank memo pad, Dad said, “Kat—” but apparently couldn’t remember whatever it was he’d forgot.

  Looking me over as if I’d just introduced myself, Rex said, “That’s right. Cotton-Eyed Joe, it was. His eye went white—the blind one my granddaddy gave him. That was the last crime Joe ever done. While he was servin’ sentence, somehow he broke out. Never was seen from again. Some folks say they heard his voice yellin’ deep down in the Mollie Kathleen.”

  It was my turn to take a long drink, for his last words made my head tingle. The skeleton in Ye’s chamber. Was it—?

  Dad had quit his quadruple take on me and began talking quietly with Rex.

  But I could not contain myself. I asked, “Is there any way to identify Cotton-Eyed Joe? I mean, after all these years?”

  “Now, you’re a strange one,” murmured Rex.

  “C’M’ERE.” REX WAS AT THE WINDOWS, parting the sheer curtains. “Crank your head that way,” he told us. “See them folks?”

  Through a space between buildings, we saw several people who appeared to be protesters, carrying signs. I tried to read the signs, but my glasses were fuzzy.

  “What do the signs say?” I asked.

  Rex handed me some small field binoculars that were lying on the sill. “Have a look-see yourself.”

  After focusing the lenses, I read, “‘That’s … far … enough. How … low … can … they … go?’” I turned to Rex. “What’s it all about?”

  “See where they are?”

  I looked again; they were near the hoist house. “The Mollie Kathleen!”

  “That’s right, sister. And what’s the Mollie Kathleen got that they ain’t got?”

  The answer was obvious.

  “How low can they go?” said Rex, raising an eyebrow. “Seems somebody”—the word came out singsong—“started this fancy talk about the mine not ownin’ the gold ’cause it’s outta their reach—legality-wise, that is, and geographically-wise, too. Bein’ people’s always tryin’ to find a way around things to get what they want, the idea caught like wild fire, and they run with it. How low can they go and That’s far enough, meanin’ if there’s gold way down deep, it’s first come, first served.”

  I was stunned. As wide open as my mouth fell, I’m sure my gold tooth was showing up loud and clear. I was that somebody. I had come up with the idea. Just a short while ago.

  “Look at it this way: If a juvenile can find a chunk of gold, anybody can. Everybody can.”

  “But … but …” I shook my head in a daze.

  “Ain’t you heard the news?” Rex asked us.

  Our faces told him otherwise.

  “I’ll be a paisley-patterned horned toad.” He dropped the curtains, picked up the TV remote, and hit power. A cartoon came up; he scanned the channels, got the weather, a black-and-white western, a few soaps, a hallelujah gold-and-glory sermon, a crime solver, a jewelry commercial, a football game, and three talk shows. Leaving the TV on one of the talk shows, he hit mute and said, “That there’s a local channel. Just missed the top-of-the-clock news. It’ll come back around.”

  He straddled an arm on the couch. “Yup. Thanks to that gimme-the-gold flix, the one with all them itchy fingers reachin’ for their golden opportunity. And thanks to Rose Thorn-in-the-Bud Robbins.”

  “Her!” I exclaimed. “What’d she do?”

  “Not much—yet. She’s been after the big story for years, the one that’ll send her to the broadcasting big top. She’d do anything to get there.” He paused, looked at the time on the microwave, and said, “Y’know, folks, the questions are stackin’ up. What’re you doin’ for dinner?”

  Dad said, “You still haven’t explained why you brought us here. It’s getting late—”

  “You’ll be needin’ dinner sometime or another, right?”

  Dad frowned. “We haven’t even had lunch yet. Really, Rex—”

  “It’s on me, then. I’ll call in the order. Take just a minute. You can eat whilst I explain.”

  • • •

  The Digs, Grub ’n’ Grog, was right next door, due east, as Rex put it. To the west, on the other side of his apartment, was Mile High Ice Cream, where he said we could go for our “just desserts.” And directly below was an antique shop—he pronounced it “antikky”—called the Owl’s Nest. Dillon asked if he owned the shop, and I wondered the same, considering all the old stuff in his apartment and the fact he lived above it.

  “Hail Mary, no! That’s Ken Carpenter’s. But I barter there on the whimsy.”

  The grease-stained bag that a ponytailed guy delivered to the door had the digs printed on it in sand-colored ink and a symbol of a miner’s pick.

  Rex plunged in his hand and pulled out four big burgers, one by one, and passed them around. Then, gripping his own, he said, “Bless this humble abode and this awesome, mouthwaterin’ chow,” and chomped down.

  The three of us ate in silence. I was back in my crater, worrying about Ye.

  With chock-full cheeks, Rex asked, “Whad-da-ya think?”

  Dad nodded, while Dillon said, “Kind of chewy … long-horned steer?”

  Rex shook his head. “This,” he said, swallowing his last bite with a satisfied rotation of his head, “is the Bill Cody Camptown Ladies Sing This Song Doo-Dah Doo-Dah Buffalo Burger.”

  We stared at him.

  “Big furry backs, beady black eyes, itty-bitty horns.” He stuck two fingers behind his head.

  Dillon said, “They still kill buffalo?”

  “Hey, bigger beasts have died.”

  Bigger beasts. That slowed my appetite way down. Brought it to a halt. I couldn’t swallow. I couldn’t finish the poor buffalo. Ye was bigger than a buffalo. More threatening by size alone. Not to mention his smoke and wings and claws and tail. The look in his eyes goes straight to your soul.

  Would they kill a dragon? Like all the other dragons?

  You bet they would.

  “BACK TO RAMBLIN’ ROSE,” REX WAS SAYING, while I was trying hard to untie the knot in my stomach. He tucked his chin and looked at me from under his burnt brown eyebrows. “Promise me you won’t beat her with your spoon?”

  “I … How’d you know about that?”

  “Saw it stickin’ out your back pocket like a jackrabbit’s tail.”

  I’d totally forgot it. That made me a thief all over again, though taking a spoon from a hotel was nothing compared to taking gold from a dragon.

  Or putting his life in danger.


  “I’ll start with your satchel,” said Rex. “Which you left it behind.”

  That didn’t help me any, either.

  “I’d heard about the hoedown at the Empire,” he said, “and by the time I walked in, which was through the delivery doors off the back of the restaurant—”

  “That’s how we got out,” said Dillon. “After taking the elevator. The stairs were impossible.”

  Rex nodded to him, then continued. “Here’s Rose, sittin’ in a low-light corner of the bar, kinda’ slinky, readin’ this”—he threw a glance at me—“book.”

  “No!” I could have blasted out of my crater.

  “Page after page—I was watchin’. So, I sorta’ sidles up and says, ‘Howdy, Rose,’ and she drops the book outta sight and gets up. She says, ‘Rex, do you have the gold?’ And I say, ‘I was thinkin’ maybe you did.’ ‘That’s a joke,’ she says. ‘Well,’ I says, lookin’ down in the dark underneath where she’d dropped the book, ‘considerin’ you seem to be up on the latest …’ ‘What do you mean?’ she says. ‘You been mindin’ your own business,’ I say, ‘or somebody else’s?’ ‘My business is mindin’ somebody else’s,’ she says, and storms out, leavin’ the book and your satchel behind.” He stroked his chin casually. “I guess she got what she wanted.”

  “Got what she wanted?” I asked.

  “It’s on the news.”

  “Exactly what is on the news?” said Dad, who was eyeing the fan blade again.

  Before Rex responded, we heard voices outside. It sounded like a chant. Rex went over and raised one of the windows an inch. The chant became clear.

  How low can they go! How low can they go!

  “It ain’t over,” Rex said somberly, looking at each of us in turn. “It’s just startin’.”

  That silly phrase of his, repeating itself like one of Mom’s old broken records, wasn’t sounding so silly anymore.

  “THE PLOT DEEPENS …”

  Rose Robbins of KOLT-TV, in garish, high-definition color, red lips shining, hair sprayed gold, was looking straight into the eyes of viewers like me. Rex turned up the volume.

  “… unfolding like a fractured fairy tale. Poor deluded girl! Dragons, of all things!”

  There, posed on a table like a happy nitwit, was the poor deluded girl, waving her spoon and flashing her gold tooth whenever she opened her mouth, with the light fixture skipping around her head. Fortunately, there was no sound to the video clip, though Rose had gladly filled in the blanks.

  “But one thing is undeniable,” she said. “There’s gold in them there depths!”

  The horrifying table scene changed to the hand-groping one at the Warrens, with arms like spokes in a wheel and the gold at the hub. That scene would circle the globe before it was all over, to become the icon of the twenty-first-century gold rush.

  “Everyone wants a piece of this pie,” said Rose.

  Now we saw the protesters at the Mollie Kathleen, wandering back and forth with their signs. One detail I had missed from Rex’s window was the signposts: They were inverted picks and shovels. You could hear the chant on TV, which syncopated with the real-time one coming from outside.

  How-how low-low can-they-can-they go-go!

  “They’re lining up,” said Rose, “ready to claim what they can. Many witnesses, including yours truly, have seen the gold nugget. It’s the size of the American dream.” (Back to the hand-groping scene.) “Little Girl Lost admitted to finding it, more than one have tried to steal it, but one of several questions remains: Where is it now?”

  Her words made me so nervous, I scrambled from my crater and zipped the clothes bag shut. The nugget had teased our senses plenty, and I feared Rose would spot it through the TV screen if she looked hard enough. Pivoting in her seat, she grinned at us from a dramatic angle.

  “After the break, we’ll let you in on some astounding interviews, and let you be the judge.”

  Dad leaped up. “I’ve seen enough! It’s time to go! Kat, get your bag.” He extended his hand to Rex. “Appreciate the—”

  Rex had leaped up, too. “Hold on there, partner! We ain’t talked business yet!”

  “I’m well aware of that,” said Dad. “But I can’t imagine it’s something I’d agree to. If it’s a finder’s fee you want—”

  “Whoa!” Rex pulled on invisible reins. “Whoever said somethin’ about finder’s fees? Keep your hunk of gold. More power to you. I just happened to be at the right locale at the right o’clock.”

  “Well, thank you—”

  Rex held up his hand. “Don’t mention it.” Then he cleared his throat purposely. “But there is one thing you can mention.” He went over and lowered the window, hit the mute button on a tooth-whitener ad that featured scores of smiling people, and came back. “Here’s the deal.”

  THE DEAL WAS NO DEAL. NONE THAT DAD or I would agree to.

  After some fast talk with Dad and some slow winks at me, Rex brought it down to this: Where there was one gold nugget, there were sure to be more. Whether or not I had actually seen more didn’t matter. Just head him in the right direction, and what gold he’d find he’d split with us, fifty-fifty. Others were bound to find it sooner or later, he said, but since I knew the hidden back door, so to speak, we had the upper-vantage. We even had the upper-vantage over the mine’s owners. I think he meant upper hand or advantage. It was almost a Dillingo.

  But I was dismayed—I expected better things of Rex. I expected him to be different than all the other gold-hungry beggars.

  “Just a few more of them rocks like what your daughter found would do you for life,” Rex rhapsodized. “You can kiss your old job goodbye.”

  Dad, allowing Rex to gallop up to that point, finally spoke. “I don’t have an old job. I’m headed for a new one, if I can ever get out of this place. As to telling you what you want to know—” He turned to me. “Kat, what do you say? Want to reveal the whereabouts of the—”

  “No,” I said. “Never.” I picked up my bag and went to the door.

  Rex looked hurt and started playing with his hat. “Well, now, sister. Ain’t you shootin’ yourself in the foot here? Ain’t you doin’ your family a mis-service? Think of your hardworkin’ daddy …”

  My hardworking daddy was right by my side, looking quite satisfied.

  “I’m sorry, Rex,” Dad said, offering his hand again. “I appreciate all you’ve done. But Katlin answered just the way I thought she would. She has her reasons. I have mine. I don’t believe in get-rich-quick schemes. Hard work is what more people in this country need to be doing. Earning their keep.”

  Rex had lost his shine, like a dried hot pepper. I felt a little sorry for him, but I was feeling a whole lot sorrier for Ye.

  I said, “Thanks again, Mr. Havick,” and opened the door.

  I stopped.

  A sleek silver car had just pulled up behind ours, blocking us in. We all watched as a man in a pin-striped suit got out. His silver hair was combed straight back and cascaded over his collar.

  “Quick!” said Rex. “Back in the room.”

  “Now what!” said Dad. “Who is that?”

  “The wrong man you wanna meet.” There was an oxydox mix of respect and disdain in his voice. “Slickest lawyer in all Teller County. Rich man, baby. Sterling Blair.” He turned to me. “If my nose is sniffin’ right, it’s all about you, Goldilocks. You and your little wheel o’ fortunate.”

  “LEAVE THE DOOR OPEN A CRACK,” SAID Dillon, but Dad had already done so.

  We were in Rex’s bedroom, off his main living area. He had ushered us in using more fast talk, saying it would be tragic if we met Sterling Blair, a man capable of milking us for all we were worth, which, in my view, not counting the gold, was nothing. Later, I realized he meant information. Dad debated whether to go along with yet another of Rex’s harebrained escapades, but by the time we were through the bedroom door, he seemed to be willing to do so one last time. If what Rex said was true, the man with the silver hair could be a subtle ene
my, and Dad avoided lawyers like lice.

  Rex had latched the deck door behind us, and took his time answering Blair’s knocks. He sang, “Dinah, won’t ya blow! Dinah, won’t ya blow! Dinah, won’t ya blow your hor-or-orn—”

  I looked around the bedroom, which captivated me more than his other room had. His bed was made from a buckboard wagon, complete with wood-and-iron wheels standing shoulder-high and bolted to the floor. A bearskin blanket and two quilts lay on the mattress. On a nightstand armored with hammered-in bottle caps was a yellow lava lamp, where contorting shapes glowed eerily inside. Standing in one corner of the room was some kind of cactus, which had been lacquered and converted into a floor lamp, and light sprouted from holes up and down its height. In another corner stood a hat rack made of all types of horns—cattle, deer, antelope, even one that looked like a unicorn’s, which Dillon said was a narwhal’s—and on them hung Rex’s many hats, all of them black. A goldfish bowl sat on a piano stool by the door, filled, not with water and fish, but with hundreds of fortunes he’d apparently saved from fortune cookies. Hanging on the door where the three of us were gathered were rattlesnake skins, which rustled and hissed whenever we moved.

  We heard Blair’s voice, commanding and confident. “Caught you at last. In medias res—”

  “In what kind of what?” I whispered.

  “It’s Latin,” said Dad, “for ‘in the middle of things.’”

  “—where are they, Havick?”

  Rex’s voice was confident, too, though a little quick-on-the-draw. “Now, wouldn’t you like to know.”

  “Their car’s here. Virginia plates. Are you hiding them?”

  “They could be out havin’ dinner.”

  “Could be?”

  “Could be.”

  Some papers shuffling.

  “My client is insistent, Havick. They won’t press charges, provided one thing …”

  A pause. Blair was waiting for Rex to ask what the one thing was. He didn’t.