The Dragon of Cripple Creek

by Troy Howell

  He might even be too weak.

  The machines dropped out of sight.

  More shouts behind me, more distant.

  I rounded the crags that led to the road. The machines were there, rolling downward on armored treads. I eyed the operator’s head inside the glass cab. A stone’s throw away.

  I plunged my hand into snow. I felt for a rock—groping, grabbing nothing but mud. I pulled my hand out.

  The ring was gone.

  The earthmovers slowed on the slope. They neared the place where Ye lay.

  I moaned, grubbed in the snow, wailed. “The ring or a rock? The ring or a rock?”

  I found neither one.

  I got up again.

  The first machine jerked forward. It crunched along near the cave’s mouth. Its blade hit a boulder that burst. It jolted on a bump. The operator turned his head as if to say, What was that?

  I raced ahead, ready to pounce on the huge metal sting that drew a line in the snow.

  The first machine revved and continued down the road. The second one advanced, jumped, stopped, and raised its sting. The sting went up, loomed over me, pointed down.

  I was close. I reached out my arms.

  The machine jumped forward and rolled on.

  Into the pit they went.

  THE SNOWFALL HAD CEASED.

  “He’s gone,” said Dillon, who had caught up with me.

  I was gazing at the sky, at a warm spot in the clouds. I said nothing.

  “Only snowdrifts inside.”

  I said nothing.

  “So he wasn’t harmed,” said Dillon.

  I shook my head once.

  The warm spot in the clouds flared like a beam far out at sea, and the dream I’d had, back in Cripple Creek, after Ye had flown away, came to me again. I saw him in flight, pointing to a distant shore, flying toward the light, and the wind was in his wings.

  “These are big drifts,” said Dillon.

  Then the beam blazed crisp and became the sun. The sun bathed the scene all around me, a diamond-drenched Wonderland.

  It bathed my face.

  I turned to see it bathe the hollow behind me, and bathe the high drifts, and bathe Dillon, who knelt beside them.

  It bathed the gold nugget he held.

  HE KNELT UNASHAMED AND UNMOVING, but for his trembling, gold-heavy hand, tears streaming down his face.

  “Oh, Kat!” he cried.

  “I know,” I said.

  Someplace warm, Ye had told me. Too far away. Why hadn’t I known what he’d meant?

  Circling the snow-covered mounds, I traced the outline of a dragon. The mounds were crumbled along the edges, the highest ones rising in the center. I followed the line of his tail, curled tight like a seahorse. I followed the shapes of his legs, which he had gathered up beneath him.

  I came around to his head. I got down on my knees. I brushed away the snow, as I once had brushed away his soot.

  There was his golden snout, broken in places.

  I kissed him as I’d once hoped to do.

  And for a moment, I could not lift my head from his. A sob shook me hard, and I let it return, slowly, slowly, like a wave. More sobs came, more waves.

  I took a steady breath and brushed away more snow.

  There was his eye, shining pure gold.

  I got up and faced the light. The spot in the clouds was closing, an amber slit in the sky.

  A dragon’s gaze.

  I gazed back through my tears.

  Snow was falling again.

  THE WHITE TRUCK WAS COMING. BEHIND that, the all-terrain.

  We were standing in front of the cave, and I had tossed snow back on the exposed gold patches.

  The truck went on by, heading into the gulf, but the all-terrain stopped. The woman and Dad got out.

  “OK, kids,” said the woman, who had a combative face. “Time to go.”

  Dad’s face was confusion and fury, held hostage by the need of self-control. “Did you find it?” he asked in his public-announcement voice.

  “Find—” said Dillon, still in shock from discovering Ye.

  “Mom’s ring,” I said quickly, just as Dillon said, “What?”

  Dad gaped at me loose-jawed, then at the woman, who was nodding her head in approval and looking less combative. This had to have been a sequel, and I’d missed out on Part One. But that was just fine—I must have said the right thing, because Dad’s fury was gone.

  “See, it was important,” he said to the woman, though he seemed more surprised than she.

  “It wouldn’t have been a problem, Mr. Graham, if you’d have told me.”

  Dillon was still adrift, while my mind was hard at work.

  “Dad,” I said. “It could be anywhere starting from up there”—I pointed to the top of the road—“to somewhere here.” I motioned down the road from where we stood. “My hands were so cold, the ring slipped right off.”

  “That happened to me once,” said the woman, who looked even less combative, “when I helped my son build a snowman. It was my wedding ring.”

  “Did you find it?” asked Dad.

  “Yes,” she said.

  Dad looked a little embarrassed.

  “Oh … oh,” said Dillon, as if he’d just got the punch line of a joke.

  “OK, Mr. Graham, I’ll give you a little more time.” She scanned the stretch of road. “Good luck.”

  THAT WAS A FRIDAY. ANY OTHER DAY OF the week and it would not have worked. There would have been laborers on the grounds, and another raging gold rush. It would have been quarry turned corporate site turned chaos turned crime scene.

  We’d still be beggars.

  And Ye would not have liked it.

  But the next day was Saturday, then Sunday. Two days to collect the gold, with no one in the way.

  It was hard, but the hardest was the sadness. With every step, every sack slung on my back, I pictured my glorious, greathearted friend.

  It took eighteen carloads with the backseat down, sixteen to eighteen sacks per load, thirty to forty pounds per sack. Dad had got thirty-four gunnysacks from several feed stores, and while one of us filled them one by one, two of us hauled them to the car. The workhorse wasn’t an Oreamnos americanus—a mountain goat—so we had to park at the top. Dad and Dillon then drove to the storage unit, unloaded the sacks, and returned. To make room for the gold, they had to clear the unit out, and ended up putting our furnishings along the highway, for people to take if they wanted.

  By Sunday afternoon, our furnishings were gone.

  • • •

  As I filled the sacks, I had time to think and argue with myself. I played back the previous day.

  After the heavy machinery had been parked inside the pit, after the white truck had picked up the drivers who rode back with hardly a glance at us standing in front of Ye’s nook, after Dad had found the ring—

  Yes, it was Dad who had found it. I was grateful that he had. For his sake more than mine.

  Dillon and I dared not leave the cave area, for fear the gold would be uncovered, so we pretended to look there for the ring. But first, I had directed Dad to the spot where I’d lost it, scored an X in the muddy snow, and said, “Start here.” As he searched and searched, explaining to the woman that it had been his wife’s ring, and her mother’s before her, and in this very place his wife had last worn it, before giving it to her daughter, his daughter, Kat Graham, right over there, who started the new gold rush.

  “He needs a sacred burial,” I whispered to Dillon.

  “We can’t cremate him,” said Dillon. “He wouldn’t burn—he’s solid pure gold.”

  I said nothing, out of a reluctance to talk grim details.

  “We can’t bury him. Between the two of us, we’d end up with broken backs and bent shovels, or bent backs and broken shovels.”

  “Same thing,” I said.

  “We could use one of those dozers down there,” he said. “Dig a deep enough hole that no one could find him.”


  A lone, belated cricket cried from a nearby rock, agonizingly slow. “Hey, cricket,” I called. “It’s too cold for you to be out.”

  “But then, eventually he’d be discovered, with all these building plans.”

  I sighed. “Dillon—”

  “I wonder what Ye would have wanted.”

  “Dillon, I know what he wanted.”

  Dillon, kneeling in the snow, paused.

  “He made me promise.”

  Dillon said slowly, “OK.”

  “Promise to take any gold I might find.”

  Again, “OK.”

  “He said to use it well.”

  The snow suddenly went black. I clutched at Dillon for support. Whats and hows and whys buzzed around in my head. Ye had done this all for me! He knew he was going to die! He had planned the whole thing out, including the message in the tin!

  He had given me himself. What greater gift could there be?

  “Kat, are you all right?” Dillon had me by the shoulder.

  I breathed in deep and nodded. The snow became bright again.

  “That settles it,” he said. “A promise is a promise. You’re bound to him for life.”

  In more ways than you know, I thought.

  • • •

  At the end of that backbreaking day, as we slumped on the tail end of the workhorse, we went from small talk, like, was the snow safe to eat, to big talk, like, how much gold do you think it is.

  By default, Dad became a believer. At first, he refused. He considered the overall form of the gold to be unremarkable and saw no dragon there. The gold must be either some century-old pirate’s cache or a quirk of nature, he said. After all, there it was, in a cave in a quarry.

  “A marvel of nature, you mean,” said Dillon.

  But Dad had to justify taking it from this place. When I contended that the gold wasn’t part of the land no more than a bird was part of a tree, that settled it.

  Still, he was astonished. He walked with a foolish grin, up and down the rutted path. Once, his face rumpled like a child who doubts his own existence. Once, his face filled with expectancy, as if every myth in the world would come true.

  But he astonished us both on Sunday.

  He had picked me up at the Home. In the light of an emerald-green dawn and the orange glow from the instrument panel, I saw something I’d not seen in eons. I saw my long-ago Dad. His eyes were alive, as if he had a purpose now that sadness couldn’t stain.

  Dillon raised his eyebrows as I climbed into the car, which meant, Now hear this.

  “I’ve been thinking,” Dad said. “But it all depends on you, Kat.”

  “Me?” I said, still unwilling to let my sleepiness go.

  “It’s your gold—you found it.”

  “Well, it’s yours, too, you know. You’re my father.”

  He looked pleased. “We can afford this place.”

  That jerked me awake.

  Dad’s face got dreamy. “I can picture it as a park. The pit would be a lake. We’ll plant weeping willows.”

  “You’re buying it?” I said.

  “Corey—the woman who owns the place—wants to wash her hands clean of it. She’s had trouble from the start. The contractor’s not coming through, the investors are waffling, she has better properties to manage.”

  I looked over at Dillon, whose eyebrows remained upright.

  “Yes,” said Dad, meditatively. “A place where people can come, where they can be at peace.”

  I didn’t know what to say, so I nestled into the warmth of the dream.

  “I’ll bring your mother there.”

  “THAT’S ALL,” I SAID, AND TIED THE GUNNYsack closed.

  Dillon held the light. He flashed it around the shallow cave, to be sure there was no gold left. “What about that?” he asked, spotlighting the gold by my side.

  I eased myself up, massaging my old knee injury. “I’m keeping that one.”

  “Why is that one special?”

  I didn’t answer at first. I picked the gold up and weighed it in my hands. It was larger than a human heart, yet similar in shape. Something about it agreed with me.

  “It just is,” I said.

  But I knew—it was how a dragon heart would look.

  • • •

  Before carrying the last sack to the car, we stood in the cave’s mouth.

  There was one smudge of rust in the western sky, from either downtown Richmond or an industrial plant. But high overhead the stars shone bright.

  I didn’t know how to feel, I didn’t know what to think. But I knew a wonder was still a wonder, though you’ve seen it in lamplight and flashlight and daylight and starlight, you’ve touched it and walked with it and pressed it to your ear and felt it in your soul—and lived it in your dreams. I hurt in some place that I couldn’t touch, a hurt that would never heal, no matter how many pools of tears I cried.

  I gazed up, awed by the spangled skies, the rush of the Milky Way.

  “Dillon?”

  “Hmm.”

  “Point it out to me.”

  He looked up, covered the light with his hand, orange and skeletal, and studied the stars. “OK,” he said. “Find the North Star, the Little Dipper. See?” He uncovered his hand and waved the beam across the constellation. “Now look.” He shut the light off and pointed. “There—just below it.”

  “That’s Draco?”

  “That’s Draco.”

  Later, I would write in my journal: I am but a spark in time to Ye.

  • • •

  When we reached the car, Dad had it running to keep it warm. As we loaded the bag, a figure passed by. Dillon shone the light—it was a man, homeless by the look of his scarecrow limbs. He stopped and turned, blocking the glare with his arm. Dillon lowered the light.

  “Any spare change?” he asked. “Spare change?”

  I peered at him, while Dillon dug in his pockets. “Nope,” he said. “Sorry.”

  The man turned to go.

  “Wait!” I called. I reached into the car and pulled the nugget out, the one like a heart, the one I had set aside. I did not hesitate. I went to the man and said, “Here.”

  He gazed at the gold in my hands, his face fidgeting between a sneeze and disappointment. “No,” he said. “I mean money, spare change.”

  “Sir,” I said. “There is more money here than you could ever wish for, and more secrets, too.”

  He touched it then, with a slim brown finger.

  “Take it,” I said.

  He took it in both his hands. He gazed into as you would a crystal ball. He gazed and gazed, until understanding awoke in his eyes. He began to tremble and weep.

  “Oh, Lord!” he said. “Oh, Lord! Oh, Lord!”

  “Take it to a banker or coin dealer,” instructed Dillon. “Make sure they treat you right.”

  As we drove away, the headlights caught the man. He stood unmoving, holding the gold high as if he knew the terrible wonder that it was.

  IT WAS EARLY. THE WIND CHIMES OUT THE window hung silent in the dawn.

  I had opened my eyes realizing I was turning Mom’s ring. Ye had flown with this ring. This ring of pearl, of wind and ice and fire and mud. He had preserved it for me, for Mom, for us.

  I got up.

  The hall was quiet and the floor was cool. Room 4 was gray and moist. I entered and pulled the window curtain aside. A small pink moth flew out, circled, and flew back against the glass.

  I pulled the chair close and sat down.

  Her hair strayed halo-like around her face; her skin was like skim milk. I took her right hand and removed the rolled-up cloth that helped her fingers from curling. I slid the ring to the tip of my finger and touched my finger to her palm.

  I gazed at the pearl.

  There are things in life that are hard to define, things you feel rather than know. Things you don’t see at all, yet they’re anchored deep inside you—a cherished ache or a spot of light.

  Like a moon in a far-off galaxy, a pearl i
s shaped in secret, in a private womb in the sea. It is accidental beauty. It happens when a speck of harm invades the creature’s calm world. That world reacts, and a pearl is made.

  I gazed at the pearl and I saw no one’s face. I saw beauty. And somewhere inside, unseen, lodged a speck of harm. If not for the beauty, the harm would have spread. The creature would have suffered and died.

  So, the pearl is a promise.

  A promise to protect.

  I pressed my finger into her milky palm. I studied her face until I saw what I was looking for: my long-ago mom. The mom I’d always kept in my heart.

  “Mom,” I said. “I’m giving this back to you.” I closed her fingers around the ring. “I believe you’re still here. You’re still here with me.”

  I drew my hand away.

  In that moment, the one I had longed for with all of my might but had found so hard to imagine, her eyelids quivered like the moth against the window.

  Or a dragon in the wind.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  For any who might care to do a little mining within this book, you can take a Magical Mystery Tour and explore Wonderland—nuggets from both are scattered throughout, besides dream references from literary works. I’ve shuffled the actual mountain community of Cripple Creek to suit my story. All good fortune to the Mollie Kathleen—I’ve taken the thousand-feet plunge twice, and it still fascinates me. Contrary to Kat’s experience, it’s safe.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Many thanks to those who cared about this endeavor of mine: my daughter, Ava, who patiently attended my first gold discovery; Dan Elasky, who helped remove the story’s tarnish over cups of Hyperion espresso; retired sergeant Dan Mayer, whose police experience made Chief Huffman’s day; my agent, Sara Crowe; and my editor, Howard Reeves, who believed in me and Kat and Ye. And to Emma, who posed.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  TROY HOWELL is the cover illustrator for the bestselling Redwall series by Brian Jacques, as well as the illustrator of a number of children’s books. His work has been awarded the Educational Press Association of America Distinguished Achievement Award, New York and Los Angeles Society of Illustrators merit awards, and has also been named a Redbook Best Children’s Book of the Year. This is his first novel. He lives in Falmouth, Virginia.