Dead Man's Hand (Caden Chronicles, The) (4 page)

A
t half past eleven the alarm chirped on my phone, jarring me awake. The corner porch light outside my window cast yellow highlights across the ribbed slats of the empty bunk above my head. I sat up, cringing at the sound of creaking bedsprings. In the adjoining room, Dad’s snoring momentarily stopped. I sat silently, legs dangling over the side of the bed. A coyote howled in the distant hills. The light on my phone dimmed just as Dad’s locomotive exhalations resumed. I quickly wedged my feet into my sneakers and thumbed the latch on the window.

Clouds moved over a crescent moon, snuffing out stars. In the distance a low ridge at the base of the mountain range jutted skyward, forming a dark backdrop against the silhouette of
rooftops and a church steeple. I slipped on my hooded sweatshirt, placed my palms on the windowsill, and swung my legs out, dropping into dense weeds. Unfolding the map from my back pocket, I used my phone’s screen to illuminate the route from our bunkhouse to Boot Hill.

The marshal’s willingness to deputize me had been a favor to my parents. I could imagine Dad saying, “Humor him, Marshal. The boy’s fourteen and bored.” Regardless of what I did, no matter how many cases I solved
before
the authorities arrested the culprit, my parents still saw my amateur detective work as a hobby and me as their little boy—even if I was almost as tall as Dad.

When I reached town, I circled around the back of the saloon, taking the route Marshal Buckleberry used on his way to the office. Near a rack of trash bins came the sound of rustling and clanging, but when I peered back, the noise stopped.
Cat? Coyote? Bear?
Moving with more urgency, I followed the back road out of town past adobe huts advertising (in large letters, the misspelling clearly visible in my phone’s lighted screen) AWTHINTIC NATIVE AMERICAN CRAFTS FOR SELL. The road wound around a cluster of large teepees before turning off into a field of scrub brush, cactuses, and small trees. At last I came to a dry riverbed. Large boulders lay scattered about. I aimed the screen of my phone at a sign nailed to a tree. WELCOME TO BOOT HILL: NO FIREARMS A LOUD.

A loud? You kidding me?

My amused reaction at yet another misspelling was interrupted by the sound of heavy breathing coming from the
bushes ahead of me. I dropped into a crouch, unsure of what I’d do if the noise proved to be a bear. All I could remember from my quick online research in preparation for the trip was that bears could weigh as much as seventeen hundred pounds, and because they were too heavy to climb trees, they often attacked in defense of their territory.

The labored breathing grew louder. I slunk behind a scrawny pine, wishing I’d brought a bell or whistle or my dirt bike. A bulky figure took shape in the shadows, its massive haunch pushing past pine branches.
Six feet, at least. And that’s on all fours!
I rose onto the balls of my feet, ready to bolt and knowing that even if I did, I was a dead man. No way I could outrun a beast like that.

The snapping of twigs and animal sounds intensified. The beast paused in a clearing and lifted its head as though sniffing the air for prey.

“What are you doing out here?”

Her voice, coming so close, sent my heart to pounding in my chest. I whirled to find the girl from the alley standing a few feet behind me.

“I could ask you the same thing,” I shot back, still trying to tamp down the panic.

“Uncle Walt said I should keep an eye on you.” She walked into the clearing, took the horse by the reins and tied it to a sturdy pine. “What are we looking for?”

“We?”

“You thinking of sneaking into the graveyard?”

“Keep your voice down,” I said.

“Relax, there’s no one around. I checked.” She’d changed
from her western attire into jeans, a jacket, and hiking boots. She nodded toward a series of large boulders. “Planning on using
that
trail?”

“Is there another way to the graveyard?”

“No. But it can be tricky.” She stepped past me. “And dangerous. I better go first.”

The route—less a trail and more of a goat path—zigged and zagged up the steep grade. Annie scampered along with bobcat quickness, soon leaving me far behind. I wondered how anyone could carry a casket up such a rocky trail, but then maybe Boot Hill was like everything else in this dead town—for show only. After carefully working our way along a slope of loose, pellet-sized dirt, we reached a flat area about thirty yards wide and nearly as long. A single gnarled tree stood in the middle of the graveyard among weathered headstones. The markers jutted up from the ground like broken teeth, forming a snaggletooth grin.

“What now, Deputy?”

I studied her smile in the emerging moonlight. “We’ll hide in those rocks at the base of that cliff.”

Tall, wet weeds slapped against my pant legs as I walked through the gate of a wrought iron fence toward the bunker of rocks tumbled together at the base of the cliff. The sheer rock face rose several stories above us and formed the western flank of a mesa that overlooked the town.

“You’re not worried about being trapped up here without a way out?”

“I don’t expect to be seen,” I said, squeezing past her.

I worked my way around the maze of jumbled rocks and
finally settled on a place behind two round boulders. From the gap between the rocks, I could see the rows of headstones, a tilting fence, and the trailhead upon which we had climbed.

“What about me?” Annie asked, trying to push her way close.

“You watch from the other end. And don’t talk so much,” I whispered. “We may not be alone.”

Annie took a position about ten feet away, just under a low shelf that protruded from the cliff. She had to squat to remain hidden by the moon’s shadow. I felt confident she wouldn’t be seen. I peeked at my phone. Two minutes ‘til twelve. I blew into my hands, warming my fingers.

“Your birthday really the fourteenth?” she asked in a strained whisper.

“You need to stop talking.”

“We should friend each other.”

“Hush!”

A sliver of yellow moon emerged from behind the clouds. Nearby an owl hooted. I kept my eyes fixed on the trailhead, refusing to look to my left even as I heard the sound of Annie shuffling in my direction. Gradually I became aware of her warmth next to me. In school I almost never stood this close to a girl. In the cafeteria line, sometimes, but this was different. I found myself listening to her breathing, watching her heated breaths congealing into fists of gray mist as the cool air settled upon us. I still wasn’t sure how she’d known I would be at Boot Hill. Sure, she
could
have followed me. Maybe it’d been her I heard banging into the trash bins back in town. But it made more sense that she’d planted the note. Question was, when
would she have had time? She hadn’t been at the stagecoach when we’d arrived, and my knapsack hadn’t been out of my sight except when Mom and Dad and Wendy were unloading the car and I was in Lazy Jack’s. Unless she was the one I’d seen exiting the barn.
But what are the odds that she and Jesse James wear the same type of shirt?

On the other side of the graveyard, rocks skittered away. Footsteps approached. Our hideout suddenly seemed small and exposed. Annie sucked in a breath, tensing up. She looped her arm into mine, and with our faces close together, we peered out across the graveyard.

“Listen, if anything happens,” I whispered, “I want you to run back to town as fast as you can and get your uncle.”

Annie hugged my arm tighter and said nothing.

A dark figure appeared, slowly moving through the gate toward the lone tree. He led a horse by the reins, the clomping of hooves muffling our own excited breathing. Looping the reins over a low branch, the stranger struck a match against the side of his boot and lit a small camping lantern. The mantle swelled, growing bright and illuminating the yellow bandana covering the lower half of his face.

“Is that him? The guy you saw in the barn?”

I clamped my hand over her mouth.

The man—and I felt confident it was a man—strolled past the first row of graves and paused, making a slow three-sixty turn before stomping down the weeds and carefully placing the lantern on the matted area. Once more he hesitated as if listening. I knew he heard my heart beating. A base drum would’ve made less noise. Annie nibbled on my finger. I removed my hand from her mouth.

“Don’t you ever do that again,” she hissed.

“Then please be quiet.”

The man approached his horse and fiddled with cords and knots and, dropping into a half crouch, rolled something long and as large as a man’s body onto his shoulder. Staggering under the weight, he walked back toward the lantern and dumped the heavy object onto the grass. In the glow of the lantern I could almost make out the shape of a head and shoulders pressing against the black plastic.

“Oh, this is bad,” Annie said, her voice shaking. “When Uncle Walt said you witnessed a murder, I thought he was kidding.”

“Will you pleeeease stop talking,” I said, my voice barely audible.

The stranger walked back to his horse and returned with a collapsible shovel. I guessed the recent rains had made the ground soft because within minutes the man had dug a shallow trench. He leaned on the handle and, using the shovel like a fulcrum, rolled the body into the grave.

“If we hurry we can reach his horse before he can,” Annie said.

“And why would we do that?”

“To catch him, of course. Don’t you want to know who it is?”

“Sure,” I said, turning toward her. “But I don’t want to die finding out. We’ll wait for him to leave and dig up the body. I can snap pictures with my phone. That’ll convince your uncle I’m telling the truth.”

Covering the grave took less time than digging it. The stranger stomped down the dirt and then, rather than going
back to his horse as I’d expected, he wandered to the edge of the cemetery. With his spade he scooped up large clumps of grass and carefully placed the sod over the grave. Dousing the light, he strolled to his horse and hooked the lantern over the saddle horn.

Stars blazed bright against the blackness. Gaslit streetlights from Deadwood’s Main Street provided an amber hue against the black hills. The mysterious stranger stood with his back to us, his silhouette framed against the night sky. I half expected him to light a cigarette and blow smoke rings, pull out a harmonica, and play a melancholy cowboy tune. Instead, he placed his hands on his hips and arched his back, stretching.

After a few seconds I realized I’d stopped breathing. So had Annie. The sight of him so close and obviously armed with a revolver had turned us into statues.

At last he gathered the reins and walked his horse under the archway and back toward the trail, his head bobbing side-to-side until he disappeared.

I exhaled.

“How long do we wait?”

I hesitated before answering Annie. I wanted to make certain the man was gone.

“A while,” I replied.

“You planning to dig up that body with your hands?”

“If I have to, yes.”

“Wouldn’t it be easier if we just went back and told Uncle Walt?”

“Told him what? That there’s a body buried in Boot Hill? Isn’t that sort of the point of a graveyard? All I need is a picture
of the face. That should be enough to convince your uncle I’m not crazy.”

“Nick?”

“He still might not believe me though. Might think I staged it.”

“Nick!”

“For all I know that could be your uncle we just saw. Which means if I show him the pictures he’s going to know—”

“Nick, I think there’s someone …”

I caught movement out of the corner of my eye, pivoted, and leapt backwards, tumbling into Annie. If I’d jumped a half second later the shovel would have split my skull. The blade whooshed past and clanked against the rocks. I rolled onto my elbow and tried to stand but my attacker pounced, grabbing my jacket and bouncing my head off shale so hard that it felt like he was trying to crack a walnut.

He’d come at us from my right and slightly behind, slipping through a narrow slot where the base of the cliff joined the rocks. Somehow he’d remained below the brow of the graveyard and crept back and around, apparently moving very quickly.

He raised his fist to pound my face. As he did, I bucked and swung my legs, clipping him behind and just above his ankles. He fell hard, releasing a loud “harrumph.” Annie yanked away the bandana, gasped, and grabbed my hand, pulling me away just as the killer lunged for my collar. We made no effort to keep quiet, sprinting back across the weeds, jumping over headstones and the iron fence. We went skidding and tripping down the trail, bouncing off a cactus and a bush and making a horrible racket.

When we reached the dry creek bed, I followed Annie down the gully, coming out on a service road. Her horse stood in the small cluster of pines just where we’d left it.

“Ride back to town and don’t stop until you reach the stables,” she said, thrusting the reins into my hands. “Put her in the corral. I’ll come by later and bed her down.”

“Come on, we’ll both ride her. The two of us don’t weigh that much.”

“She’s nursing a sore tendon, and I don’t want to chance it,” Annie countered. “I’ll follow this road and walk back to town. Hurry, before he catches you.” Before I could stop her, she fed my foot into the stirrup, adding, “Try not to fall off. If I’m lucky, he’ll see you riding away and follow. Now go!”

“But what about the marshal? We have to tell him what we saw.”

“My uncle can’t know about this.”

“What? Why?”

“Not a word. Not to anyone.”

“But I have to tell the marshal.”

“Especially not him. I’ll find you in the morning and explain everything. Now ride!”

R
ain pelted the tin roof, its thunderous drumming prompting me to burrow beneath the covers as I chased the fragments of my fleeting vision. In my dream I rode a grizzly the size of a buffalo. The saddle kept sliding sideways, and no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t keep my bare feet in the stirrups. Each time the beast reared onto its hind legs, the saddle shifted a little further, threatening to dump me. I was certain as soon as I fell, the bear would pounce, ripping me to pieces.

In my dream I gripped the reins and shifted my weight, swaying side-to-side as the lumbering beast foraged through the forest, snarling and snapping, its paws leaving huge craters in the soft dirt. Every few feet the grizzly would twist its head,
eyeing me with dead, chestnut eyes. The yellow bandana tied across its snout had slid down, exposing its long fangs dripping with saliva.

In my dream, beyond a mossy meadow stood a blacksmith shop. A single jaundiced ray of light peeked out from the small window. Annie stood on the tiny front porch, waving as if welcoming me home from a long journey. I wanted to slow the bear but didn’t know how; I only knew that once the bear caught her scent he’d charge and rip her apart. I screamed to God, begging him to help.

Annie stepped off the porch and walked toward us as if she couldn’t see the beast under me. The bear’s thunderous growling ricocheted off the canopy of trees, drowning out my frantic pleadings. As the bear lunged for her throat I saw that she was blind. Two silver coins covered her eye sockets. The bear collided with Annie, tumbling and rolling until I found myself buried under the weight of the grizzly’s scratchy pelt.

I bolted upright in bed and kicked off the heavy blanket. The sound of rain pounded the roof, blasting away the last fragments of my nightmare.

Thunder rumbled. I swung my feet over the side and rocked forward, rubbing sleep from my eyes. Fat raindrops pelted the windowpanes, blurring the pewter dawn sky. I hit the bathroom, dressed, and walked onto the porch, pulling a rocker away from the railing. Rain cascaded off the metal roof, creating a transparent curtain of silver. Through the rain I gazed up the road toward the corral and blacksmith shop.

No bear. No mutilated Annie. Nothing but a cratered landscape of moist red earth and copper puddles.

The dream bothered me. Not because of the bear. I’d become accustomed to those kinds of nightmares. You study enough photographs of crime scenes and corpses and the gruesome images morph into a collage of graphic dreams. It was my praying that left me unsettled. I didn’t—pray, that is. And yet in my dream I’d begged God to get me off the bear and Annie back inside the blacksmith shop where she would be safe.

I sat on the porch, thinking about my midnight encounter and how close I’d come to having my skull caved in by a shovel. I also wondered about Annie. I had kept my word. I’d returned the horse to the O.K. Corral as instructed and snuck back into my room. But now I had to decide: keep quiet as Annie had asked or break my promise and tell Buckleberry that Billy the Kid’s body was buried in Boot Hill. I thought about how frightened Annie had looked when we’d split up. Why had she been so insistent that I not say a word—not even to the marshal?

Was he the one she’d seen? And if so, if he killed Billy, why tell Annie to keep an eye on me? It didn’t make sense. I thought back to the note I’d found in the stagecoach. Given how they’d parked the stagecoach beside the barn, any one of five people had access to my knapsack—Mom, Dad, Wendy, Buckleberry, and his deputy. No, six. The driver of the Charger. Seven if you counted Annie. She could’ve been skulking about without any of us knowing it.

One thing was certain. I had too many unanswered questions, and only Annie knew the real identity of the killer—and it terrified her.

A fence of fog formed along the creek, separating our bunkhouse from the main drive leading into town.

“You’re up early.” My sister stepped from her room cocooned in a blanket.

“Rain woke me. You?”

“Dad’s snoring.”

Our parents’ suite separated my closet-sized room from Wendy’s. Given the way she’d bragged earlier about the fireplace, I gathered my sister’s room had features mine lacked. Features like a shower that worked and a toilet that didn’t run constantly.

Wendy settled into the rocker beside me. “Wonder if they’ll still have the buffalo hunt.”

I glanced over and surveyed the sky. At the base of the mountain range, clouds dangled thin streamers of rain. “You remember yesterday when I was giving you a hard time about believing in ghosts?”

“I didn’t exactly say I believed in them. I just find them interesting is all.”

“Sit still. I want to read you something.”

I quietly opened the screen door to my room, stepped in, and returned with a red fake-leather book.

“Where’d you get that?” she asked, eyeing the Gideon Bible.

“In my dresser when I checked it. Weird thing is, someone has marked it up. Here, let me show you.”

I opened the book to the dog-eared pages and read Wendy the sections marked with a yellow highlighter. The verses mentioned ghosts and dead people communicating with witches and mummies staggering out from tombs.

“It’s like someone
wanted
me to find this, you know?”

“Or maybe they just forgot to take their Bible home with them.”

“It’s a complimentary copy. See?” I pointed to the gold embossing on the back cover advertising Campfire Cowboy Ministries and their web address. I asked Wendy, “Is there one in your room?”

Wendy shook her head. “I got a basket of candy, fruit, and nuts. Oh, and a small poetry book that I just love.”

“Listen to this.” I opened the Bible to one of the marked pages. “
The bodies of many holy people who had died were raised to life. They came out of the tombs after Jesus’s resurrection and went into the holy city and appeared to many people.”

“So?”

“Don’t you see? It’s like
Night of the Living Dead
. There’s a whole section in here about people becoming vampires.”

“Really? Show me!”

Wendy leaned over and I pointed to a section talking about a group of guys eating flesh and drinking blood.

I said, “Maybe this ghost nonsense isn’t so far-fetched after all.”

Mom peeked out and warned us to keep it down, that Dad was still sleeping.

“Hey, Mom, you’re not going to believe what Nick just told me. Now he thinks there
are
such things as ghosts.”

“I didn’t say that.”

Mom stepped onto the porch and gently closed the screen door. Noticing the small red Bible she said, “I don’t know that I would necessarily believe everything you read in
that
book.
Back then people knew a lot less about science and how the world worked. It’s been my experience that if you try to have a reasonable debate with someone who takes the Bible literally, they end up calling you an overeducated elitist who doesn’t believe in God.”

“Wow, Mom. I’ve never heard you talk about anyone like that.”

“Please understand, son. It’s not what’s
in
the Bible that bothers me. It’s what it does to people. They just seem to lose the ability to reason and think for themselves. But if I’d known coming here would have raised these sorts of questions, I’d have voted for Las Vegas.”

“I’m glad we didn’t. I’m having a blast now that there’s a murder to solve.”

“He means a gun blast,” Wendy said.

Mom peeped over her shoulder, then back at us. “Dad’s up. Guess I better hop in the shower before he uses all the hot water.” Mom turned to go inside and added, “You know, Nick, there’s no way to prove that what’s in the Bible is true or not.”

“I know, Mom.”

“Or that there is a God. What I’m saying is, you can gather all the clues you want, but in the end, it’s just a matter of believing something you can’t prove. I would think you of all people would have trouble with that.”

Mom returned to her room. Wendy followed, leaving me alone on the porch to make sense of the bizarre Bible verses.

As I thought back to my nightmare, an oppressive dread settled over me. I remembered it had started with me in the barn near where I’d seen the Dodge Charger. The stall doors
were open. Fresh sawdust covered the floor, emitting a sweet, woody smell. I’d been standing there burrowing my bare toes in the sawdust when I felt something sticky on the balls of my feet. When I lifted my leg I saw I’d been standing in a puddle of blood. I followed the trail into an empty stall. Annie’s horse lay on its side, a large gash in its left hindquarter. Next to the animal was a worm-eaten sign, similar to the one we’d seen at the base of Boot Hill, except instead of faded painted letters, someone had drawn a smiley face in blood—a crude circle with two beady eyes and a crooked smile. Beneath the sign and next to the horse lay Annie’s sombrero. There was a single bullet hole through the front. I knew better than to look under it—I knew what I’d find when I did. I peeked anyway. Annie’s silver-coin eyes peered up at me, her face pale, lips gray. In her mouth were the keys to the Charger.

I gazed across the silver puddles toward the O.K. Corral with a brooding sense of dread. Whoever it was that we’d seen in the graveyard had followed me home. They had waited in the darkness and invaded my dreams, chasing away the bravado I’d felt the evening before when the marshal had deputized me.

Question was, were they still following me, or was a phantom killer stalking me?