Sammy Keyes and the Curse of Moustache Mary

  “They didn't want to wear out their pack animals. In one stretch they went days without water, and when they finally came to some, it tasted so bad that they couldn't get the livestock to drink it. And since the animals were dehydrated, they made coffee out of it to disguise the flavor so the animals would drink it.”

  Dot's mom wrinkles up her forehead. “They wouldn't drink the water, but they'd drink coffee? That must've been some pretty foul water.”

  “And then a couple of days later they got trapped in a rainstorm where it thundered and lightninged and sleeted so hard that they were blinded and soaked and blown over by the wind. So they went from dehydration to having so much water that they had to float their wagons across a river.”

  “Those things floated?” Holly shakes her head. “You'd think they'd go down like a rock.”

  “Yeah, you'd think. But Mary wrote how they tacked buffalo hide to the bottom of the wagon, took off the wheels, got everything inside up as high as they could, and then floated it across. Some of the cattle got spooked and a couple of the emigrants lost everything, but Mary's wagon was fine.”

  Dot's dad says, “Buffalo hide. Now isn't that resourceful?” Then he asks, “Did she write anything about Indians in that journal?”

  “Lots. They got attacked a few times, and once the Indians lit a brushfire to spook their livestock so they'd run off and be captured. But she also writes about Indians who traded with them, and others that were helpful. It was the Murdocks she was afraid of. Much more so than the Indians.”

  Mrs. DeVries shakes her head and says, “It seems that if you'd gone through hardships like that you'd find a common bond. I can't imagine living that way. These people walked two thousand miles to reach their destination. Two thousand miles!”

  “Mary says something in the journal like ‘the only reason they can feign honesty is because there's nothing to steal, and the only reason they're industrious is because their choice is work or starve. ’ At first, she calls them ‘Mr. Murdock’ and ‘the brother Murdock,’ but about a third of the way through she starts calling them ‘the evil Murdock clan, ’ and says something like ‘They were just after the mother lode and were wanting to get rich by hook or by crook.'”

  Dot's dad says, “People can have different motivations for making the same journey, ja?”

  Mrs. DeVries says, “Still, I think it's a shame.”

  I'd been talking so much that I hadn't really eaten any thing. So while they're discussing the Huntleys and the Murdocks, I stuff away like a squirrel before winter. And right when I'm good and double-cheeked, there's a sharp knock-knock-knock on the door.

  Now maybe living illegally at Grams' has made me jumpy when it comes to people knocking unexpectedly, because I sure jumped. And when I jumped, I choked. And then I started coughing. And coughing and coughing and coughing.

  Mrs. DeVries says, “My goodness!” and Dot adds, “Are you all right?”

  My face is red and my eyes are watery, but I'm so grateful not to have sprayed the place with apple mush that I nod and say, “I'm fine.” Then I whisper, “Who do you think's at the door?”

  A light bulb comes on, boing! over Marissa's head. “You're worried that it's Casey!”

  I want to say, “No, I'm not!” but the words won't seem to come out. Instead, I turn a darker shade of red. I point to the gaps and holes in my long johns and say, “Look at me, okay? I'd be worried if it were the dog catcher!”

  We all laugh about that, but the minute Mr. DeVries comes back into the room and looks at me, I about choke again because there's no doubt about it.

  Someone's there to see me.

  FOURTEEN

  I look to Dot for help. “I can't go to the door like this!”

  Mr. DeVries says, “I wouldn't keep him waiting if I were you.” He looks at his wife. “It's a police officer.”

  “A police officer?”

  I whisper, “Did you guys already call about the gas can?”

  They all shake their heads.

  Mrs. DeVries asks, “What gas can? What is going on, Margaret?”

  Dot stands up and follows me to the door, saying, “Nothing bad, Mom. Don't worry.”

  Mr. DeVries lowers his voice. “Well, he appears to be in ill humor—I wouldn't keep him waiting.”

  It was Officer Borsch, all right. And I could've been dressed in a fancy formal for all the attention he paid my long johns. No Hello, no I'm sorry to intrude, Sammy. He just jumps right in with, “You promised me.”

  I shake my head and ask, “What did I do?”

  He cocks his thumb toward the porch, motioning me to step outside. So I follow him out the door and down the steps, until we're in a small clearing of dried grass and oak leaves. He stops and looks around a little, then puts his hands on his hips. Right above his gunbelt.

  Marissa, Dot, and Holly are hanging back on the porch, kind of behind me, Officer Borsch's squad car is parked off the side of the road beneath an oak tree behind him, and I'm standing in a patch of dead grass in swooshy hearts and floppy high-tops facing the Borsch-man like we're set for a duel.

  I ask him, “What?”

  “I'm debating doing you a favor.”

  “A favor? Okaaaaaaay. Could you maybe explain that a little?”

  He looks at me, kind of snorts, then looks down, shakes his head, and snorts again. “I intercepted a complaint.”

  “A complaint? What kind of complaint?”

  He takes a deep breath. “That someone was nosing around the fire site.”

  “Someone? And right away you figured that someone was me?”

  Officer Borsch shakes his head and says, “Sorry, but it sounded like you to me. Are you saying it wasn't?”

  “Well, we didn't disturb anything…”

  “Hmmm!” He nods like, I knew it!

  “Really! We didn't!” I scowled at him. “Who complained, anyway?”

  He hesitates. Then he admits, “I don't have that information.”

  “Oh, but you believe them over me…!”

  “Look, Sammy. Just stay off the Huntley property—is that clear?”

  “But Officer Borsch!”

  “I'm serious, Sammy. Aside from breaking your word to me, you have no business going over there.”

  I take a step forward and say, “I did not break my word to you. I stayed out of the way. I didn't bug the firemen, and I didn't go snooping around…well, not much anyway.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “It's true! Look, Lucinda wanted us there, and we would've left right after she fell asleep, only then we found the gas can and…”

  “What gas can?”

  “The empty gas can that still smelled like gasoline. And for once I wasn't going to touch the evidence. I was going to get you instead, but when we went to the house to ask Kevin to use the phone, nobody came to the door. And when we finally went back to where the can had been, it was gone.”

  While I'm talking, his face is falling. And I can practically hear him thinking, Oh no-no-no, not again…, because he's getting the picture that a little click of the heels is not going to send me back to Kansas. He says, “Gone? As in somebody took it?”

  I nod.

  “Are you sure?”

  “I'm sure.”

  He looks up to the porch, and Holly says, “It's true. Every word.”

  “How much time elapsed?”

  “Between the time we found the can and the time we realized it was gone?”

  “That's right.”

  “Twenty minutes?” I look to the others. “You think that's right?”

  They shrug and nod, so I say, “More than fifteen and less than thirty.”

  “So why didn't you call me when you got home?”

  I sigh and say, “It was late, and then we had some other minor emergencies over in Pioneer Village to take care of. I was going to call you right after we got done with breakfast.”

  One of his eyebrows arches up. “You weren't tangled up in that mess out on Wagonwheel Road, we
re you?”

  “What mess?”

  “Never mind.”

  Just then I hear someone behind me gasp, and when I turn around, both Dot and Marissa have their hands in front of their mouths, and Holly's got “Uh-oh!” written all over her face. I look to where they're staring— past Officer Borsch, past his squad car, out to the dirt road—and there, with my skateboard under his arm, is Casey.

  I about died. And maybe it was stupid, but the first thing I tried to do was hide. And since we were in a clearing and the only thing to hide behind was Officer Borsch, that's what I tried to do. Trouble is, he kept moving. And when he finally managed to ditch me, Casey had walked over, and there we were, face to face.

  He doesn't say hello. He doesn't laugh at my swooshy long johns or floppy high-tops. He just shoots a glance at Officer Borsch, then says through his teeth, “I can't believe I stuck up for you!”

  Now I'm embarrassed and baffled. “What…what do you mean? Why are you so mad?”

  He says, “As if you didn't know,” then turns and marches off. With my skateboard.

  And I try running after him, but I can only shuffle in my shoes, and there's no keeping up with him. I call, “Wait! Casey, wait!” but he's gone. Gone gone.

  I turn, and there are Marissa, Dot, and Holly, in a huddle on the porch with their eyes cranked completely open while Officer Borsch squints at where Casey disappeared from view. He says, “What's that boy's name?”

  “What's his…? Casey.”

  “Casey what?”

  I snap, “I don't know…,” because I don't, but even if I did, I probably wouldn't tell him. I mean, I've seen that look in Officer Borsch's eye before, and even though I had no idea why Casey was acting so schizo, I sure didn't want him tagged with a jaywalking citation. Or one for walking on the wrong side of the road. Or for riding around without a helmet.

  Officer Borsch doesn't whip out his ticket book and pen, though, he just mutters, “Popular this morning, aren't you?” then clears his throat and says, “You were telling me about a gas can?”

  But something's clicking in my brain, and I'm not really ready to go back to thinking about vanishing gas cans at the moment. “You said Wagonwheel Road? What ‘mess’ were you talking about?”

  He studies me, then says, “The usual New Year's Eve blowout. We get complaints all the time, but this one involved minors in possession.”

  “Of alcohol?”

  “Among other things.”

  “Was it at 6324?” I turn to Marissa and ask, “Is that right? 6324?”

  She nods.

  Officer Borsch says, “I don't have the exact address. I just learned about it this morning in briefing.” He eyes me. “These friends of yours?”

  “Not exactly. But it is important to me. How about a name?”

  “I probably shouldn't say—though it'll be in tomorrow's paper. Maybe I could just confirm?”

  For a second I just blink at him. I mean, this is Officer Borsch. King of Cannot. The Man Who Mentors Mules. Mr. Bobby-by-the-Book. And he's finding it in his heart to bend the rules. For me.

  I hold my breath and say, “Briggs?”

  He nods. “The Doctor and the Missus aren't going to be able to cry their way out of this one.”

  “Are you saying this has happened before?”

  He scowls. “Let's just say that they have their hands full with that son of theirs.”

  “Which one? Karl? Taylor? Ben?”

  “You seem to know the family better than I do. Why don't you tell me.”

  Looking at him, I could tell he wasn't about to volunteer. So I ripped through the possibilities in my mind. Ben was oldest, so it made sense that he'd had the time to get into trouble with the law. But he seemed a lot different from the other two. More responsible.

  Taylor was only in the eighth grade, so how much trouble could he have gotten into yet?

  Course I was in the seventh grade, so forget that theory.

  Then there was Karl. He sure seemed like a hothead, and even though he was only in the tenth grade, he acted a lot older. Rougher.

  But what bothered me about that wasn't Karl. It was Brandon. What was Brandon doing being best friends with a guy who smoked dope and drank and had, well, cabaña parties?

  But my brain was far enough away from my heart to know more than I wanted it to. I looked at Officer Borsch and said, “Karl.”

  And what's Officer Borsch do?

  He nods.

  All of a sudden it hits me why Casey was so mad. I turn to Marissa and say, “Heather!”

  “What about her?”

  “She must be telling everyone I called the police!”

  Officer Borsch says, “You were there?”

  “For a little while, yeah. We went to get my skateboard back but…”

  He frowns at me. “And you saw what was going on?”

  “A little. We stayed way away from it, though.”

  He's still frowning. “Ever think maybe you should've called?”

  Well, that clamps my kisser. And I stand there looking back and forth between Officer Borsch and my friends, wrestling with the thought of doing that. I mean, it never even occurred to me. Those people in Taylor's backyard were like adults to me. The boys shaved, and the girls were all, you know, primed and painted. And the fact that inside, Heather and Tenille were drinking, well, they were Heather and Tenille—there's nothing any policeman's going to be able to change about that.

  Officer Borsch says, “Regardless. There's a lot of unhappy parents this morning, but at least none of them are making arrangements at the morgue. I'm more interested in that gas can. What do you say we take a ride over to the Huntley property and try to straighten this out.”

  I grin at him and say, “Um…Isn't that a little out of your jurisdiction?”

  He sighs. “It seems, Samantha, that I'm picking up some of your bad habits.”

  I laugh and say, “Okay, but I have to get dressed first.”

  He eyes me. “That would be a very good idea.”

  So Marissa, Holly, Dot, and I run off, and when we're ready, we find him in his car, talking into his radio. He ten-fours and then blinks at us. “You're not all coming…”

  I say, “Oh yes we are…!” and before he can argue, we've piled in for our first adventure of the New Year.

  FIFTEEN

  The world was at the Huntleys'. A fire-department Blazer, a police car, two fire-department pickup trucks, Dallas' motorcycle, and a silver Town Car that said SUPERSTAR REALTY on the back doors. Officer Borsch squeezes his cruiser alongside the Town Car and parks, half off the driveway.

  “You girls stay put. I'm going to try to explain the situation to Mr. Huntley and see if he'll allow you to show me where you saw that can.” He powers down the windows a few inches, then gets out and says, “Stay!” like we're a pack of dogs he doesn't want escaping.

  We gawk out the windows for a while, but there's not much to see because everyone seems to be down at the cabin. So after a few minutes of talking about the police car and the gadgets all over it, Marissa and Dot start talking about Casey—how cute he is; how no guys they knew would go through all that trouble to try and deliver a skateboard; how I've got to straighten things out with him because no guy does what he did unless he likes you. And I do my best to change the subject back to who-doyou-suppose-burned-down-Mary's-cabin, but they're seriously tuned in to the Love Channel, and my remote control is just not working.

  And pretty soon I'm on beyond arguing with them, so they start talking about me like I'm not even there. Then Marissa says, “Well, it sure beats having a crush on Brandon.”

  That turns my tuner. “What!?”

  Marissa looks at me. “Sorry.”

  “Who says I have a crush on Brandon?”

  “You don't have to say it.”

  “Marissa, he's in high school!”

  She shrugs. “So?”

  “So he's way too old for me!”

  “C'mon, Sammy—if you can't tell us
, who can you tell?”

  Nobody. It was too stupid. It had always been too stupid. Which is why no matter what she said, no matter what she thought, I could not, would not have a crush on Brandon McKenze. “Can we talk about something else? You guys are making a monster out of a mouse.”

  “Squeak! Squeak!”

  “Eeeek!!!”

  I roll my eyes and say, “Oh, shut up,” and before they can say anything back, there's a tap-tap-tap on the window.

  We all whip around and there, peeking in at us with a little smile on her face, is Lucinda. She opens a door and says, “So glad you girls came by. Why don't you come out?”

  I say, “We uh…we have direct orders not to.”

  “You do, do you?”

  “Officer Borsch says someone complained about us being here.”

  “Well, I certainly didn't complain! I wonder who did?”

  “Maybe your nephew?”

  Lucinda frowns, but doesn't say a word.

  Holly says, “Officer Borsch is trying to get permission to let us show him where we found a gas can last night, but he's taking a long time coming back, so I don't know if Kevin's going to let us or not.”

  Lucinda doesn't know anything about what's happened, so we have to tell the story all over again. And when we're done, she says, “Get out of the car.”

  “But—”

  “Get out. I don't care what your police friend says, I don't care what my nephew says. This world is full of nitwits and leeches, and there are plenty of them assembled here today. They talk to me like I'm five years old, then pat my hand and walk away. They'd rather talk to someone who doesn't know a tree from a toadstool than take the time to gather some background to figure the situation out. I told 'em it was the Murdocks. I told 'em what Dorene and her ma said, but none of them seem to want to listen.”

  We scoot out of the car, but Dot says, “We're still going to be in a lot of trouble if Officer Borsch comes back and we're not here.”

  “Why?” Lucinda asks. “This is my property, and if I say you're welcome, you're welcome. I'll have to have a talk with Kevin when this tribe decides to leave, but for right now I want you to show me just where you found that can. If they won't get to the bottom of this, I will.”