The Dragon of Cripple Creek

by Troy Howell

  “… provided they hand over the gold and say where the exit is.”

  No comment from Rex.

  “Well?”

  “Well’s deep.”

  “You know where these people are, Havick. You know where the gold is—”

  “Hold on, there, Solicitor!” I could picture Rex pulling on reins. “Your client’ll let the Grahams off, you say. Won’t press charges. How about if you turn that gun around?”

  “Gun!” I whispered, alarmed.

  “He means metaphorically,” Dillon whispered back. “Figure of speech.”

  “The Grahams won’t press charges,” Rex was saying, “provided one thing.”

  Silence. He was playing the lawyer’s game—provided what one thing?

  “Provided,” said Rex, when Blair didn’t respond, “they keep the gold and get on with their lives.”

  “They wouldn’t stand a chance in court.”

  “Oh yes they would, and well you know it.”

  More shuffling of papers.

  “We have a reliable witness who claims you have the gold, Havick.”

  “As reliable as a lame horse.”

  “She’s been with the Empire Hotel ten years. She’s an upright citizen of Cripple Creek.”

  “As upright as a wet spaghetti noodle. Sees messages on rocks.”

  “Oh? What kind of messages?”

  Dillon shook his head at that, and Dad’s mouth went tight. I wasn’t sure what the problem was, but there was something in Rex’s statement they didn’t like.

  Rex didn’t answer the question. “Faces in clouds …” he rambled. “You know the type: Saint Anthony and UFOs and Strawberry Fields …”

  “What kind of rocks, then?”

  Now I understood. When Rex had said “messages on rocks,” it was too close to admitting that the cleaning woman—the witness—had seen the gold nugget. If she had seen the gold nugget, Rex had, too.

  “Rocks in the head,” said Rex.

  • • •

  They went at it a while, Rex dodging the lawyer’s questions, Blair jabbing away. When Blair suggested he might wait around for the Grahams to return from dinner or from gold digging, Rex said, “Not on my turf, you won’t.”

  We heard the door close and their muffled voices continuing outside. Dad eased open the bedroom door and stood there, looking this way and that, and staring up at the ceiling fan. He looked at his watch, blew out his breath, and said, “We’re stuck here until that sneaking attorney goes. He’s stalling to see if we’ll show up.”

  WHEN, AT LAST, THE SILVER SHARK SLID OUT of the driveway, we were breathing a little easier.

  Rex poured himself another dose of syrupy black tea.

  “He’s ready to serve,” he told Dad. “He had papers.”

  “On what grounds?”

  “Conspiracy. Theft. It’s the usual preemptive strike. Sterling ain’t satisfied with silver, if you get my drift.”

  I asked Dillon quietly, “Serve? Grounds? Prewhative?”

  “Serve means take us to court,” he explained. “Grounds is what they’d blame us with. Preemptive means ahead of us, before we sue them.”

  I remembered now—I’d heard those terms being tossed around after Mom’s accident. I shook my head. “But we wouldn’t sue them. Hey—who’s them anyway?”

  Rex had overheard me. “The Mollie—” he began, then gave me a startled look. “Where’d you get your brain waves, child?”

  “You mean I’m stupid?”

  “Just the opposition of that, smarty gal!” He was beaming at me. “Sterling didn’t name his client. Didn’t show me the papers, neither. He may be makin’ the whole thing up. For his own self inner rest.” He looked at me a while longer, but his eyes started to deepen. Then he turned to Dad, he lowered his voice, and switched his tune—something about another offer, a better offer, an offer we couldn’t “refute.”

  Dad, surprisingly, disappointingly, was listening.

  Dillon was wearing his sideways smile, which meant he was conjugating the verb to think. He whapped my shoulder, motioned me to follow him, and went out onto the deck.

  I hesitated.

  This could be it. My time of reckoning. But I’d been considering for some time that I should tell someone the truth. Dillon was first choice. He may call me insane, but he’d already heard the “D” word—I’d said it in a room full of spectators, right into a TV camera, and he knew it was written in my journal.

  To tell of Ye, or not: That was the question.

  I stepped outside.

  • • •

  He had plopped down into Rex’s sagging cowhide chair and propped his feet on a small, stone mushroom-shaped table.

  I went to the railing. The sun was lowering its face below the mountains, the hours were dropping with it. Two full days remained, and the last of today. Twelve hundred miles. Still possible, but not favorable.

  Not favorable for Dad. Therefore, not favorable for us.

  Favorable for Ye.

  Provided …

  Provided I could persuade Dad to stop at the Warrens. For I had expanded my plan. I wouldn’t just return the gold; I would crawl back to his cavern. I would warn him of the danger. It wouldn’t be long before hordes would be swarming his tunnels, destroying his chamber, stealing his gold. Perhaps even—

  Slaying the dragon.

  Yes, I needed help.

  I turned to Dillon and said, “About the dragon—”

  “I was waiting for that.”

  “YOU NEED A BACKUP PLAN,” HE WAS SAYING.

  “I’m not good at backing up,” I said. “No better than our car.”

  “A backup, you know, as in, If at first you don’t succeed … try this.”

  “Try what?”

  “The backup plan.”

  Dillon had accepted my story and hadn’t called me crazy. As I related it all, he listened respectfully, attentively, if not a little intrigued.

  But better than that—

  When I got to the part about Mom’s ring, he hung his head and closed his eyes. It was hard for me to watch, just as it was hard for him to hear anything about Mom, so I watched the sun set as I talked. When I had told him everything—my burden gone at last—his head was still down, his eyes were still closed. I was sure he was shutting in more than he was shutting out.

  “Dillon?” I asked.

  A pause, then, “Yeah?”

  “Do you believe me?”

  A longer pause, then he raised his head. “Kat, if I’m going to believe that somehow, by some slurpy kiss of fate, we’ll be spared the poverty we’re in, I may as well believe in dragons—this dragon, anyway—and I may as well believe he can live forever.”

  I sighed, then slowly said, “Dillon?”

  “What, Kat?”

  “Do you believe Mom could wake up?”

  An even longer pause. So long I watched a cloud turn from gray to golden by degrees, absorbing the light of the sun, now out of view. I turned back to him, blinking away the brightness, wishing he would remove the boulders and beams he had heaped up inside himself.

  Then he spoke. “If I’m going to believe in dragons,” he murmured, his eyes reflecting the gold of that cloud, “I’ll believe anything for Mom. I’ll believe she rides the stars at night, the winds at day. I’ll believe she’s never been happier in all her life. I’ll believe the angels sing all her favorite songs. I’ll believe she’s carried in arms of love.”

  The sadness and joy I took from his words filled my head and spilled out my eyes. The word Mom had not passed his lips since that dreadful day.

  He had said it. He had said it just once, but he had said it.

  Then he ducked his head again, his shoulders began to shake, and a tear darkened his sleeve. I reached out to him, but he waved me away. I went inside and watched from the kitchen window. His body shook for a long, long time. He fell to his knees and rocked back and forth, moaning and clutching his head.

  At last, after an agonizing, sou
l-thirsty dry spell, my brother wept.

  I crossed out both plans, buried my journal in the bearskin blanket, and sat up in bed. Buckboard wagon, I should say.

  Yep—we had spent the night with Rex.

  “Hand me the fortune fishbowl, will you?” I asked Dillon.

  It hadn’t been a bad night, considering. Considering the yellow lava lamp made me think of dragons writhing, turning to gold. (I switched the lamp off.) Considering the rays of light coming from the holey cactus cast a creepiness over the room. One misty ray struck the snakeskins, which shivered like skinny ghosts. Another hit a blood-red jewel on one of Rex’s hats. Another highlighted a black knothole in the paneling.

  When I studied that knothole, I could swear an eye studied me back. I got up to examine it—nothing. I stuck my finger all the way in—nothing. Then I felt a slight breeze. I thought of Rex and our first encounter in the Empire Hotel. Eye-to-eye. I decided I’d ask him in the morning, “Rex, did you see me looking at you through that hotel keyhole?” and I’d watch for a flinch.

  But morning had come and Rex had gone. He’d left us a note:

  He hadn’t talked Dad into staying—with the workhorse not running and all the lodgings filled, we’d hardly had a choice.

  Rex said if I reconsidered his offer, he’d fly us to San Francisco. Fly! Hours instead of days. That was the offer he’d been working on. An offer you couldn’t refute.

  I looked up the word in the dictionary on the shelf near his desk. Refute—to prove to be wrong. I couldn’t argue with that. His offer sounded right to me. I’d reconsider it, say no, and still he’d have to fly us to San Francisco.

  My two plans hadn’t worked.

  With Dad tinkering on the car far into the night, and Rex bagging down on the deck—to keep an eye on things, he said—we couldn’t sneak out.

  When Dad finally gave up, he got the dead-horse couch, Dillon the beanbag chair, and I the buckboard bed. In my condition, they said, I needed a bed, and I admitted every inch of me still felt the hard-edged law of gravity.

  • • •

  So, there we were, mid-morning. Dillon was alive and talking, sitting sidesaddle on one of the wagon wheels with his feet locked in the spokes. I sat with the fishbowl in my lap, pulling up fortunes and reading them out loud.

  “‘You are beautiful and—”

  “Kat,” said Dillon. “I’ve been thinking. Because you’re not.”

  “—bright.’”

  “You say you’re afraid—”

  “‘You jump at every opportunity.’”

  “—you’re afraid this dragon—”

  “It’s Ye!” I fussed. “Not this dragon!” I pulled another fortune. “‘You are calm and serene.’”

  “Ye, then. You’re afraid he’ll be shot or trampled or hung—”

  “Hanged,” I corrected. “‘Life—”

  “Killed, anyway.”

  “—is what you make it.’”

  “—but can Ye be killed? If he’s going to live forever?” I dropped my fortunes.

  “Think about it, Kat. Will the pearl spare him from dying only a natural death, or any kind of death?”

  I dropped my jaw. “Dillon … I …” Why hadn’t I thought of that myself? Why did he always see things I overlooked?

  “There may be no cause for worry,” he said. “If this dragon cannot die.”

  I was too bewildered to correct “this dragon.” I was too bewildered to think. I ran my hands through the slips of fortunes, looking for an answer.

  THE DENVER POST WOKE DAD UP. LITERALLY.

  He had fallen asleep in the cowhide chair, deck side—at peace with the galaxy for one brief moment. Dillon, working on what he called Plan Sideways, was looking through Rex’s cubbyholes for a flashlight. I was standing at the kitchen window, munching some trail mix I’d found, when a beat-up little car sputtered down the drive. From the car’s window, an arm flung out a newspaper, which smacked Dad in the head.

  He jerked upright, shouting, “It’s over!”

  We were out the door in a snap.

  Dillon retrieved the paper while I consoled Dad, saying, “It’s just the paper.”

  Just.

  Dillon glared at the headline, slapped the paper and said, “This is the Denver Post. The Denver Post!”

  I peered past his shoulder and read:

  I didn’t read any further. I didn’t want to. Little Girl Lost and gold-toothed girl and poor deluded girl—I’d had enough of that. Rose’s thorns cut deep, and Reporters Roundup was well into the game.

  How far would it go?

  “It’s just startin’,” Rex had said.

  Well, I thought, how ’bout if it just started endin’? I wanted to go home, have my own bed, my own pillow—

  It hit me like a dump cart in the Mollie Kathleen.

  There was no home to go home to. Not even a stable.

  We were homeless.

  “IT’S GETTIN’ BIGGER.”

  Rex was back.

  Just as Dillon and I were about to enact Plan Sideways, which involved slipping out the door for a “stroll,” Rex strode in. He wore a new hat, which he patted, saying, “Like my somber-O?”, went straight to the TV, and hit power.

  “… and in regional news,” a newsman was saying, “today at the Mollie Kathleen Mine, more gold seekers gathered for another day of protesting. A spokesperson for the group asserts that the mine does not own gold outside their designated property.” The spokesperson’s head came up, spotlights gleaming on his face. “It’s our belief that the hidden exit is on public land,” he said, “and is therefore open to any who wishes to search for gold. By law, there are limits to vertical property, to a mining claim. Check it out. How low can they go?”

  There were supporting cheers in the background.

  “Meanwhile,” continued the newsman, “the owners of the Mollie Kathleen have released a statement claiming the mine is family-friendly and safe, and are currently making plans to expand it for a deeper, grander tourist experience …”

  A clip of Sterling Blair moving his silver-mustached mouth came on.

  Rex kicked off a boot that landed squarely on Blair’s face. “That’s a cover-up if I ever heard one! Expand, my achin’ foot! They’ll scour them tunnels till every last stone is left unturned!”

  “… not altered their decision to keep the mine closed, however,” the newsman said, “pending a complete investigation of Saturday’s incident, in which a girl strayed from the tour …”

  Rex hit mute.

  “That ain’t all,” he said, turning to us. “There’s KYDS—Keepin’ Youths Defended and Safe. They heard about your fall, Missy Sue, and wanna hold the mine responsible. There’s the Green Group jumpin’ into the feud, sayin’ no more diggin’, no more minin’, leave the land be.”

  He worked the other boot off and pitched it near the first one, underneath the TV.

  “There’s the Romancin’ Arts Mytho-illogical Society—that’s a mouthful to get out. RAMS, they call it. Sayin’ if there’s a dragon down there, we wanna see it. They’ve joined the picketers.” (He rhymed it with racketeers.) “Dressed to kill, in sparkly green shirts and long tails—”

  I said without thinking, “But the dragon’s not gr—” and stopped myself. I went to the windows to look at the gathering crowds.

  “Then the Denver Post—”

  “We saw that,” said Dillon.

  “… the Business Journal—”

  “Business Journal? What’d they say?”

  “Predictin’ a new gold rush, like what I predicted myself. Whispers on Wall Street already. Price of gold goin’ up. Say you heard it from me first, partner.”

  The sun was filtering through the curtains, shimmery like fish scales. The crowds were growing. I heard shouts, a siren, people singing, a car horn, a laugh.

  It was unreal. As unreal as Ye himself.

  “DAD’S CAVING IN,” SAID DILLON.

  Plan Sideways was well in motion.

  We
were strolling along, each wearing a hat from Rex. He’d said if we went around town, we should be “in-clothes-neato,” which, he explained, meant “dressed as who you ain’t.” (He meant incognito.) After the scenes at the mine and the Warrens and the hotel, he explained, not to mention the TV and newspapers, we should avoid being recognized. The hats were not bad fits. Mine was a black flat straw with an orange bandanna, Dillon’s a black felt cavalry with the brim flipped up on one side. We got a few odd looks, but no one troubled us. I kept my mouth shut—which is not easy when you need to talk.

  “Now that Rex has Dad, together they’ll work on you,” said Dillon.

  “No way,” I mumbled.

  “Didn’t you see the looks on their faces? As if their pockets were already gold-lined.”

  “He wouldn’t do that. Not Dad. It’s against his religion.” I stopped at a corner as the light turned green. “Anyway, he’s got to be in San Francisco.”

  “He probably thinks he can do both, at this point. Get some gold and fly to San Francisco, all in one play.”

  He steered me across the street. “You’d think Rex would have a map,” he said. “I still need a map.”

  “I bet he’s got the whole place memorized. He lives here.” If we had been at the Empire Hotel, I could have backtracked our way to the Warrens. But from this part of town, I couldn’t get my bearings.

  “And string,” he added.

  “String?”

  “You know, like Theseus and the Minotaur. To find our way back out.”

  He stopped abruptly, adjusted his hat, and pulled me into the recess of a place called Sad Willie’s Curios and Collectibles. “There was a woman staring at us, Kat. Don’t look.”

  I didn’t. I looked at a sign on the door that read, be back at—with a cardboard clock someone had drawn a sad face on, set at six. Who’d open a shop at six?

  Just as Dillon was saying, “OK, she’s gone,” Sad Willie showed up. It was obvious. He couldn’t have been anyone else, with skin like dough and watery eyes and a flannel shirt with a pocket handkerchief that was way past reviving. In other words, the kind of person that finds even laughter a pain.