The Dragon of Cripple Creek

by Troy Howell

  “Wait one minute,” he said, unlocking the door.

  Dillon said, “Oh, we weren’t going to—”

  He looked at us with such mournfulness, we went in anyway.

  • • •

  It had to have been serendipity.

  There was a free tourist map, which showed the town and the mine and part of the outlying area, and there was string, lots of it, rolled into a haphazard ball. But there was one hitch: The string came with a kite, a long, serrated, serpentine orange-and-pink kite. A dragon kite. Willie wouldn’t give us the string without it. Said he was trying to downsize, get rid of everything in the shop that had been there forever.

  “You’ll be the envy of Cripple Creek,” he wheezed. “Dragons are the next big thing.”

  THE STREETS WERE LOOKING FAMILIAR; the faces, fortunately, were not.

  “We’d better hurry,” I told Dillon in my closed-mouth way. “We don’t want another search-and-rescue melodrama.”

  He nodded. “Even if Dad gets Nellie running again, the old gray mare ain’t what she used to be. We have, like, fortysome hours left. Into twelve hundred miles that’s—”

  “Still possible.”

  “Depending on how long-winded your dragon is.”

  “Dillon, it’s not—”

  “Pardon me,” he said with a tip of his head, which was too Rex-like for my comfort. “Ye.”

  We weaseled through traffic.

  Then he said, “You know—”

  Funny how two harmless words can sound suspicious. I gave him a warning look.

  “—Dad doesn’t believe in dragons,” he said. “Rex doesn’t, either. They’ve both heard the wacky word circulating and haven’t asked you a thing about it. It’s total nonsense to them.”

  Tightening my mouth, I waited for his conclusion.

  “It’s the gold that’s real.”

  I stopped. “Are you implying that Ye is not?”

  “Gold is golden,” he said with a sudden ugly delight.

  “Admit it, Kat. It would solve it for us. Rex is right: We’d be set for life.”

  “Dillon! I can’t believe you’re saying this! The gold is Ye’s!”

  Glancing at the pedestrians he reached out and pulled down my brim. “Your tooth is showing.”

  “Your greed is showing. Who’s side are you on?”

  “Kat. Don’t get shook. I’m just being sensible.”

  “I’m being compassionate. And moral. The gold is Ye’s. Gold that once was a dragon! Don’t you get it?”

  He shrugged, and if there’s anything I hate, it’s a shrug of indifference. I was furious. I felt like getting physical, so I pulled out my spoon.

  Then he said something that came out much too easily. “What good does the gold do him? According to you, he just sits there day after day after day.”

  “What is wrong with you!” I yelled.

  “I’m beginning to wonder the same of you. Because, really, what good does it do him?”

  Ignoring the fact we were now in the center of the street—there were no cars … not yet—I fumed, “All right, mister sensible idiot brother!” I stressed “idiot” to make sure he knew it was italicized, underlined, and in capital, bold red letters, with arrows all around it. I pointed the spoon at him, my voice rising like a bird. “What good does it do? What good does it do?”

  He tried to be playful, lifting his arms in surrender. “Is that spoon loaded?”

  “Tell me—what good does it do you to sit day after day after day with Mom?”

  Playtime was over. Dillon’s arms fell. His face went bone-white under his black cavalry hat.

  “That gold could be Ye’s mom!” I said. “Or his granddad! Or—”

  “OK, Kat,” he said quietly. “I get it.”

  We moved off the street and onto the sidewalk.

  But it was too late.

  HAROLD THE YOUNGER WAS PLEASED WITH himself. That’s pleez-duh, as in, pretty, with sugar on it, and, duh cop finally done sumthin’ right.

  We, of course, couldn’t have been more displeased, and that included the dragon kite perched on the seat between us, who was all bent out of shape. A ride in a patrol car would have been exciting under other circumstances, but as it was, I was feeling anger, humiliation, and anxiety for Ye. I was also wondering, Would we go directly to jail?

  Harold assured us that any suspicious-looking characters—and that included paper dragon contraptions and people in black hats—who jaywalked or violated a city ordinance, or were engaged in any other dubious activity, were to be taken in for questioning. The dragon kite would be used as evidence.

  Using Dad’s reappearing attorney trick, I said our attorney would be the one to define who exactly was engaged in dubious activity. But when Harold asked if we paid our attorney with gold, the attorney disappeared.

  Harold was returning by way of the mine district, slowly cruising along as if he had nothing to do till kingdom come.

  “I think he wants to show us off,” Dillon whispered. “Catch of the day.”

  “No talking back there,” said Harold.

  The scene outside was as thick as thieves, and Harold’s pleasure faded. The crowds had become so dense that his cruising came to a halt. I jumped when someone slapped the trunk of the car, and Harold said, “Hey!”

  Another slap. Some laughter.

  Turning to us, Harold said, “Keep your seat belts fastened,” and got out. He went around the back to confront the hecklers. I thought it was nothing serious until he shouted an order, whipped out his book, and stormed into the crowd.

  Dillon was unbuckling his seat belt, saying, “Get out, Kat!”

  I needed no prodding. I unbuckled, got out, and ran.

  THE MOLLIE KATHLEEN GOLD MINE HAD gone from missing-person crisis to county fair. The yellow police tape I’d seen on TV had been replaced with heavy white rope, and a gold banner waved from the top of the hoist house.

  I pushed back my hat to read it.

  I guess the more exclamation points you put after something, the more exciting it’s supposed to be.

  We felt reasonably safe in the mix, and decided we’d head back to Rex’s for refuge. Harold, as far as we knew, wouldn’t know where to look. His car was down the road and one block over, and we would ditch our hats and the kite—which Dillon had become fond of—if Harold came into view. I was glad to be out of the cop car but sad to be above ground, as far from Ye as ever. I was blaming Dillon for the failure of Plan Sideways. If he hadn’t challenged me in the middle of the street …

  Most in the crowd were would-be gold diggers—men, women, and even children—carrying the how low can they go? and that’s far enough! signs tacked to shovels and picks. There were the ever-present mom-’n’-pop-arazzi and a pesty TV crew. Vendors sold wares from vans, trailers, pickup trucks, and scooters. Besides shovels and picks, they sold bandannas, flashlights, water bottles, candy bars, bags of nuts, copies of a Field Guide to Rocks and Minerals, coils of rope, topographical maps, and a photo-op with a burro. The burro wasn’t smiling—that was just his way of trying to remove the gold foil someone had wrapped around his tooth.

  There were environmentalists, identified by their lime-colored caps with the name Green Group on them.

  There was the Romantic Arts Mythological Society, whose members wore unbuttoned shirts covered in green glitter with the tails cut to a tapered point. Under their open shirts, black T-shirts showed a medieval-looking beast with a spiraling horn coming out of its head and the acronym RAMS, printed in white.

  Sitting at a card table on the sidewalk were a man and woman, representatives of KYDS, Keepers of Youth Defenses and Safety, offering pamphlets that addressed child-safety issues.

  “Here you go, miss,” the man said to me, holding out a pamphlet. “This explains our organization.”

  The woman said, “What would you do if you fell down a mine?”

  “Hurt myself,” I said.

  She looked at me tenderly. “Yes, dear. I know ex
actly what you mean. We live in a dangerous world.”

  Dillon took the pamphlet, saying, “Thank you,” and nudged me on, trying really hard to be incognito.

  “Nowww …” said a gangly, gawking man who had stepped alongside us, “… you look like the type who believes in dragons!” His glittery green shirt fluttered in the breeze he created, and he strode as if to avoid scampering rodents. “Quite the kite you have there!”

  Dillon tried scrunching “quite the kite” into “not quite the kite.”

  “Ever read The Hobbit?” the man asked cheerfully.

  “Saw the cartoon,” I said.

  “Saw smog in Kansas City,” said Dillon.

  “You saw … ha! That’s funny—Smaug, smog!” He slapped his thigh, which seemed to wobble. “Good enough!”

  “Good enough for what?” I asked.

  “To qualify for membership in RAMS! I can tell that you’re fantasy people!”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “You’re mistaken. Dragons are real.”

  “Kat!” Dillon rasped between his teeth while trying to steer my elbow away.

  “Dragons are … ha! That’s the spirit! We need people like you!” With two thin fingers he pulled a purple card from his green shirt pocket and gave it to me, bowing. It was a form to fill out for membership in the Romantic Arts Mythological Society. “Join the local chapter! You’d love it. We get together and dress up as fantasy characters—you know, orcs, ogres, and other phantasmagoria. We have RAMS festivals twice a year. We munch jelly beans!”

  “I told you. I don’t believe in fantasy, thank you.” I handed the card back.

  He looked confused. “But you said dragons—”

  “Are real.”

  We had stopped. Dillon was now trying to steer my elbow into a U-turn.

  “Dragons are real,” the man echoed, his expression gone sour. “You really mean that.”

  “Come on, Kat.” Dillon had found my crazy bone.

  “Not till you release my arm,” I told him. “That’s my sore arm—one of two. Now it’s my sorest arm. I’m not made of Silly Putty.”

  “Sorry,” he said, and let go.

  “Have fun playing fantasies,” I said to the man.

  “Right.”

  “I really mean that.”

  We left him muttering to himself. “Dragons are real … what a stupid girl … no imagination …”

  “Kat,” Dillon warned. “You’re going to give us away.”

  “If you tell people the fantastic truth,” I explained matter-of-factly, “they won’t believe you.”

  The noise of the multitude increased. As we made our way through, someone from the Green Group shouted, “No more digging! No more mining! Let her rest! Let her rest!”

  “Let who rest?” I shouted back, thinking—Mollie Kathleen?

  “Mother Earth!”

  Dillon began wrestling with the dragon and my arm again. The shouting stirred the gold-seeking crowd, who started up their chant, “How low can they go! How low can they go!”

  Clashing with that came some singing from the RAMS group. The thin man had rallied his members after our little dispute and stood, head and shoulders above singers and kazoo players, his hand over his heart, bleating, “All you need is lore”—brrra-ta, ta-ta-ta!—“All you need is lore”—brrra-ta, ta-ta-ta!—“All you need is lore, lore! Lore is all you need!” Mom would have recognized the melody, which was an old Beatles’ song on one of her records.

  Dillon hurried us away.

  • • •

  If it hadn’t been for the kite, parading its carefree self. No matter how Dillon carried the crinkled beast, it unfurled some fanciful part that would go fluttering past our heads or playing at our feet. Dillon threatened at one point to wad it into as small a ball as possible, which still would have been the size of a rain barrel. But there was a silent understanding between us that meant crushing it would somehow jinx Ye. So, avoiding the eyes of fellow pedestrians, we bore up under our paper pet’s frolics.

  If it hadn’t been for us looking like loonies, despite Rex’s hats. Or perhaps because of them.

  If it hadn’t been for my familiar, media-unfriendly face, the one with the famous gold tooth.

  If it hadn’t been for the kid.

  We were one street short of Rex’s when the dragon sneaked its tail across the sidewalk and into the plumed rump of a dainty dog that was prancing on a lead. At the front end of the lead was a woman who, in my view, could have used a caution: wide load sign.

  The dog yipped and the woman whipped around, unleashing a bristling spray of words—quite purposely—along with her little furry terror—quite accidentally.

  I knew the fiend’s name.

  Duchess.

  The woman didn’t recognize me, but from behind her popped—give me a dice roll and a pie in the face—the kid who did.

  “That’s her!” Lucas yelled, pointing his all-day sucker at me. “That’s the girl that took my money!”

  “What!” blurted his mom.

  We halted—our in-clothes-neato, not-so-neato anymore.

  “Hey!” said someone else. “That’s the girl—”

  “The gold-toothed girl!”

  “Hey, everybody!”

  “The girl that started it!”

  “Yip-yippity-yip! Yippity-yip-yip!”

  Dillon yanked the unruly dragon back into some degree of submission and stood up straight, expecting the worse: to be mobbed, tarred, feathered, drawn and quartered, drummed out of town, or otherwise persecuted.

  I pulled out my spoon.

  “We’re just …” Dillon stammered. “She’s my little …”

  “I want my money!”

  “Show us the gold!”

  “Grab them!”

  “Make ’em talk!”

  We ran.

  With the pink-and-orange dragon crackling and snapping above our heads, we ran. With Duchess yipping in and out of our legs, we ran. With a scramble of gold-crazed chasers who were followed, I was sure, from somewhere back there, bringing up the rear, by Lucas and Wide Load, huffing, we ran.

  And a Snickers bar wrapper was stuck to my shoe.

  FORTUNATELY, OWL’S NEST ANTIQUES, RIGHT below Rex’s, was open.

  Unfortunately, Dillon had let the kite go but not the string. Theseus wanted the string. The dragon, free at last, went zooming over our pursuers’ heads, dazzling them momentarily.

  The string led right into our hideout.

  When we crossed the threshold, Dillon realized his mistake. Not wanting to lose the string, he tried biting it, breaking it, and burnishing it on the doorjamb. He ended up chucking it, ball and all, into the faces of our frenzied followers.

  The dragon zipped and dipped, and I saw it no more.

  We pulled the door shut and meandered, hearts pounding, among the antiques, looking, under the circumstances, as ho-hum as possible. Duchess had slipped in, sniffing mineral deposits and other delights from my shoes and throwing another yippy fit. We ducked behind a mirrored whatnot standing at the back of the shop, and as the first trick-or-treaters arrived, the shopkeeper met them at the door. We caught a glimpse of the man—a big glimpse, for he was a mountain. If there had been three of him, he would have been the Tetons.

  “No dogs!” he bellowed. “No running!”

  The doorway was filling up.

  “He’s … not my … dog!” someone panted.

  “Then whose is it?”

  “Don’t know! We’re looking for—”

  “Who?” he asked, and got a volley of answers.

  “Two kids!”

  “Thieves!”

  “Black hats!”

  “Girl with a gold tooth!”

  “Up front!”

  “Bandages on her hands!”

  “Broken glasses!”

  “Armed with a spoon!”

  “Say what?” said the big man. “A spoon?”

  “Never mind that! They’re wanted—”

  “Stole a spoo
n?”

  “No!”

  “Yes!”

  “She has my money!” said Lucas, who had just run in.

  The big man turned. He wore suspenders, a walrus mustache, and looked legendary. “What was it they stole?” he asked, his black eyes narrowing.

  “Gold!” said one.

  “Shh!” said several.

  “Two dollars!” said Lucas.

  “Ah-ha,” said the man. “Let me go check.” He hove out of sight behind a Louis-the-some-teenth armoire.

  Somebody blabbed, “I know I saw the—”

  A figurine crashed to the floor.

  “You break it, you pay!” boomed the man from somewhere in the southwest corner, and a few cowards left the shop whining.

  Despite the owner’s thunder and size, however, more folks filed in, suddenly in the mood to buy antiques. A woman tugged her partner’s sleeve and pointed to a soup tureen. A man examined a fire poker.

  We watched in the mirror’s wavy reflection as we crouched low on the floor. They’d point to this item or fondly touch that, while darting their eyes around. We heard Lucas’s mom call from up front, “Duch-”—puff—“ess!” and Duchess obediently trotted out from between a footstool and a chamber pot and down the main aisle, having performed below and beyond the call of duty, her feathered tail flagging in triumph. It had been a good chase.

  “You Rex’s guests?”

  The mountain man was nearly straddling us, his boots like boats, his mustache clouding our vision.

  We nodded eagerly.

  His voice was a gentle roar. “Then quick! Get up! The stairway’s behind that wall!”

  We found the stairway behind that wall and climbed into the darkness.

  REX SAT AT ONE END OF THE COUCH AND Dad sat at the other, smiling from the heights of their secret agreement. An agreement that, if Dillon was right, churned in my suspicious stomach.

  Dad patted the place between them. “Sit down, Kat.”

  It was the ol’-buddy, ol’-pal system, where the sucker sits in the middle. Nothing doing.

  “Dad,” I said. “I’m exhausted.”

  We had come up the stairs and entered Rex’s apartment through a door off the bathroom.