Broomsquatch

The Completely True and Not at All Made Up Tale of The Broomsquatch

Each year, on the first full moon after Halloween, my grandmother would leave a stubby bottle of Coors Banquet Beer and a pack of Kool Menthol 100s on our porch for the Broomsquatch.

"The Broomsquatch," she'd say, "must be appeased."

And with that, we were sent to bed to ponder the true nature of the Broomsquatch. The next morning was always the same. The beer bottle was empty, and three or four stubbed out Kool Menthol filters would be scattered on the porch. Grandma would carefully place the cigarette butts into the empty bottle and then chuck it into the trash without further comment. The Broomsquatch never left the bottle cap.

We all knew the legend. The Broomsquatch lived in the Community Ditch -- the irrigation canal that still twists through most neighborhoods in the City and County of Broomfield. In the old farming days, the Community Ditch brought life-sustaining water to the parched farmlands of Broomfield. But at night, the Community Ditch took on a more sinister air. We were never allowed to play there after dusk. "The mosquitos," Grandma would say. But we could tell from the tremble in her voice and the fear in her eyes that she was afraid of something far more menacing.

The summer when I was ten years old, my best friend was a fella named John "Stumpy" Pepys. Ol' Stumpy knew the story of the Broomsquatch about as well as anyone in town. And he and I would spend long summer afternoons making up tales of the Broomsquatch robbing banks, ripping up farmers' mortgage papers, and anonymously giving the cash to orphanages. Our Broomsquatch was a chaotic force for good. And, sure, he might bust up a couple grain silos or bend the axle on a tractor in the course of doing good, but collateral damage came with the territory. ‘Squatches gonna squatch.

Grandpa would encourage our wild tales of Broomsquatch daring-do. He'd listen to our stories and belly-laugh when the bad guys thought they'd gotten away with their evil deeds only to find they'd made the fatal mistake of locating their hideout too close to the Community Ditch. Right at the moment that they were cackling over a crime well done, The Broomsquatch would appear and serve a heap of tractor axle-bending frontier justice on the black-hatted villains.

Grandma, however, wasn't so encouraging. Whenever Stumpy would start up on a Broomsquatch tale within her earshot, she'd hush us with a sharp look. "Children ought'n go messing with forces they know nothing about," she’d snap. And then she'd leave the room or send us off on some chore far away from the Community Ditch.

One summer afternoon Stumpy and I were wandering up toward Superior. We meant to find the source of the Community Ditch. Stumpy claimed it started in a crystal cave at the base of the Flatirons. And that just off to the side of the cave was the lair of the Broomsquatch. "It's full of gold doubloons, pieces of eight, and enough rare gems to make a pirate green with envy!" Stumpy was saying.

We were playing at a ditch gate in the general vicinity of today's Flatirons Mall when Stumpy yelled, "Hey! Look at that!" He jumped down off of the gate and quickly disappeared around a bend in the ditch. It suddenly became deathly quiet.

"Stumpy!" I called out. No answer.

"Stumpy, stop your teasing. It's nearly dark!" Still no answer.

After what seemed like an hour but was probably only a minute or two, I heard Stumpy yell, "Gold! I found gold! We're rich. Rich, I say!!!" And he laughed like Long John Silver, Jean Lafitte, and Blackbeard all rolled into one. I could hear metal coins clinking against one another as he shouted. I quickly scrambled around the bend in the ditch and found Stumpy on his knees in front of a mostly buried grain sack full of rusted old beer bottle caps. It must have been buried there for fifty years. The dirt had eroded away like the ground around a triceratops skull. And the burlap of the grain sack had worn open to reveal the treasure inside -- rusted old Coors Banquet Beer bottle caps. 

Stumpy ran his hands deep into the trough of riches, scooped them up, and poured them back down in front of his eyes as wide as saucers. And as something caught his eye around another twist in the Community Ditch, he pointed away from me and said, "Hey! I think there's more downstream!" Stumpy jumped up like Douglas Fairbanks and leapt around the bend. Then all was silent once again.

I scrambled up the side of the ditch to get a better view of where Stumpy'd run off to. At the top of the bank I ran straight into Grandma in her horse-drawn gig. I was face-to-face to Maisey, Grandma's trusty mare. And, while Maisey didn't budge an inch, I was so startled I nearly jumped back down into the ditch.

"Get in the cart. It's nearly dark." Grandma commanded.

"I can't, Grandma. Stumpy's still out there, somewhere!" I pleaded.

"Stumpy can find his own way home." Grandma said flatly. And it was settled. I had no choice but to climb up into the gig next to Grandma or else I don't know what would have happened next.

"Stumpy!" I yelled as I climbed in the gig. "My grandma's here to take us home!" No response. "Get up here right now or you'll be walking all the way home!" I yelled again. Still no response other than a slight gust of night air picking up as the sun set.

That night shortly after dinner there was a knock at the door. It was Elizabeth, Stumpy's big sister. "Ma sent me over to see if Stumpy was havin' dinner with you folks," she said matter-of-factly. "Stumpy!" she yelled into the house, "You best get down here. Ma's angry something fierce!"

"Come in, child" Grandma said, taking Elizabeth by the hand. "Stumpy's not here. He didn't have dinner with us."

At that Grandma turned to Grandpa and said, "Jeb, you best get your coat. You can walk Miss Elizabeth home and help Stumpy's father find that little rascal."

Then she turned away from Elizabeth and spoke back to Grandpa in a much softer voice, "And Jeb," she said, almost in a whisper, "You best take your shotgun."

To be continued...

It was nearly 10 p.m. by the time Grandpa and Mr. Pepys had organized the search party. After much pleading, I was allowed to go out with Grandpa on account of I was the last person who saw Stumpy before he’d disappeared. There was no moon, and the light from our lanterns was quickly absorbed by the inky blackness of the night.

There were 15 or 20 people from Broomfield assembled. Most were the parents of our school friends. But the de facto leader of the group was Hurk McHurk. He was older than Grandpa. And Hurk had about as many legends about his own exploits as the Broomsquach did. Some said that Hurk was raised by bears in the foothills above Boulder. Others said he was raised by bears in the foothills above Golden. Still others said that Hurk was raised by bears on the plains near Platteville, which is unlikely because there aren’t any bears over there.

We followed the Community Ditch out toward Superior, calling out Stumpy’s name almost every step. The men took turns wading through the ditch looking for any sign that Stumpy might have passed through the area.

Every ten minutes or so, Hurk would hold up his right hand, and the whole party would freeze. Sometimes Hurk would drop to his hands and knees and give the ground a big, healthy sniff. Other times he’d put his cheek to the dirt and ear to the ground. He’d close the eye furthest from the ground and gaze down the ditch path. After about 30 seconds he’d stand back up, brush the dirt from his pants, spit, and say “Hmmpphh!” Then we’d all start walking and shouting for Stumpy again.

Hurk was a man of few words, but many noises. This made it especially poignant when he sidled up to me and began asking me questions.

“Did ya see anything, um, strange before he disappeared?” Hurk asked. 

“Just the beer bottle caps,” I replied. “But that’s not really very strange, I guess.”

“Did ya see what kind of beer is was?”

“They looked like Coors caps, Mr. McHurk”

“Did ya smell anything?” Hurk asked, turning to me and putting his face into mine.

“No. Not that I remember, sir.”

“Hmmpphh!” Hurk said. Then he spat again. 

Around 3 a.m we got to the spot where Stumpy had disappeared. The bends in the Community Ditch were easily recognizable, even in the dark.

“I was standing here,” I said. “And Stumpy was over there.” I pointed to where Stumpy was standing before he found the bottle caps.  “And then he went around the bend, there.”

I ran all the way around the bend and lost sight of the entire group. I reached the spot where Stumpy had found the bottle caps, and I looked back behind me at the bend. For a moment I felt like I was all alone in the dark. But then a few seconds later I saw the lanterns of the group file around the bend. They started walking toward me.

I turned to locate the grain bag full of bottle caps, but they weren’t in the circle of light cast by my lantern. Everywhere I looked there was just the ditch bank. No bottle caps anywhere.

“They were right here,” I cried incredulously. “Really! They were right here!”

I looked down at the undisturbed soil. There was no evidence that anything had been buried or removed from the area. But I knew this was exactly where Stumpy was kneeling when he plunged his hands deep into the pile of bottle caps. Soon a few members of the group spread out around me trying to find the bag.

“No!” I said. “They were right here, I tell you!”

“You’re sure this is the spot?” Hurk asked, even though he knew the answer.

“Absolutely, sir!” I cried back.

“Show me exactly where, boy!” Hurk commanded. “I want to know the precise location, down to the inch!”

I got down on my knees in the same position that Stumpy was in. I looked back to the bend where I had been standing when Stumpy had disappeared. I turned a little bit to the right and lined myself up. And that was it. I was kneeling exactly where Stumpy had been kneeling.

Hurk pulled me up by the collar and pushed me out of the way. Then he knelt down in that exact spot. He put his palms flat on the ground and then plunged his face directly into the dry, dusty soil. He gave a great big sniff through his nose, inhaling the dust from the soil. He moved to the left about four inches. When he lifted his head, you could see an outline of dust on his face. Then he plunged his face into the ground again and gave a second great inhalation.

At that he started digging in the soil with both hands like a dog. Once he’d gotten down about three to four inches, he reached into the hole with his thumb and index finger and tweezered something out of the soil.

He held it up to his eyes and yelled, “Light!”  

Mr. Pepys put his lantern down next to Hurk’s face. Hurk was holding a cigarette butt, burned down to the filter. In small, green type around the end of the butt was a single word, “KOOL.”

“It’s him!” Hurk replied. And he flicked the cigarette butt into the ditch. To the east the sky was beginning to lighten for the sunrise.

# # #

Meanwhile, Grandma took a lantern out to the barn. She hung it on a high hook so it illuminated the main part of the barn floor. She then picked up a hoe and scratched a perfect circle about 10 feet in diameter into the dirt floor in the center of the barn.

Grandma knelt down, placed her palms flat on the earth, and took a great, big sniff. She moved to the left about 3 inches and did it again. Then she dug into the earth with both hands. About six inches down she located something hard and wooden. She dug around it and was quickly able to loosen it from the earth.  It was a small box about six inches wide and shallow, like a cigar box. But this box didn’t have any markings on it. It did have hinges, though. Grandma blew the dirt away from the hinges and opened the box.

Inside the box was a corn husk doll in the shape of a man. It was dark brown. Grandma lifted the doll out of the box, held it to her heart with both hands, closed her eyes and bowed her head. After a minute, she returned the doll to the box. Before she closed the box she reached into her dress pocket and retrieved six Coors Banquet Beer bottle caps. Very precisely, and with great deliberation, she placed the bottle caps in a circle around the doll. Then she carefully placed the box back in the hole and covered it with dirt.

# # #

Just after sunrise on a small hill located about where the Lafayette Wal-Mart stands today, Stumpy awoke next to a tree. He stood up, brushed the dirt from his pants and took his bearings by looking at the mountains and then at the rising sun. He looked back at Long’s Peak to gauge where he was. Then he started trekking south toward home.

He certainly had a story to tell. But he had absolutely no idea what would happen if he told it.

To be continued...

“I ain’t no snitch,” Stumpy said. “I didn’t tell them nothing!”

It had been three weeks since he’d vanished, and this was the first time that his mother had let him out of the house without his big sister watching over him. So, of course, the first thing that Stumpy wanted to do was to go back to the place where we’d found the bottle caps.

Once we were completely sure that no one was following us, we headed off down the Community Ditch toward the Flatirons.

“When I got near town,” Stumpy said, “Mrs. Johnson picked me up in her wagon and gave me a ride the rest of the way. She said that folks would be plenty happy to see me, and she rode so fast that half the hay blew out of her wagon.”

“After that,” Stumpy continued, “my Dad, the Sheriff, and Mr. McHurk were grilling me pretty good for more than an hour. But I didn’t tell them nothing.”

Mr. Pepys was happy enough just to have his boy back. He was a bit dirty, but otherwise without a scratch. Sheriff Williams quickly marked it down as a boy returned home safe. But Hurk McHurk wasn’t satisfied. He pressed Stumpy to tell the story over and over, to see if he’d trip up. But Stumpy was an old hand at lying. “The fewer details, the better.” he’d say. “That way you can keep your story straight!” 

Hurk McHurk kept asking if Stumpy had seen anything strange or unusual, and Stumpy just kept saying that he fell and knocked himself out. When he came to, it was night time and he accidentally walked north a couple miles. At sunrise, he saw the mountains, got his bearings, and was able to head home.

Hurk McHurk didn’t believe his story for a second. As he made Stumpy recount his tale for a fourth time, ol’ Hurk loudly smacked the table hard with his hand and said, “Come over here, boy. I want to smell you!”

“That’s enough!” Mr. Pepys said. And he snatched Stumpy out of the chair and took him straight home to his mother.

Now Stumpy insisted that we head back to the exact spot where I’d last seen him that night. It was quite a hike. Once we were a good ways out of town, Stumpy started telling me what really happened.

“I fell into quicksand!” he said.

“Quicksand?” I yelled.

“Lower your voice!” Stumpy commanded. “Somebody’s bound to hear you screaming ‘Quicksand! Quicksand!’ all over the place, and we’ll be caught. Yes, I tell you, it was quicksand, alright!”

Stumpy told me all about how he’d seen a second half-buried sack of gold, er… bottle caps a little farther down on the same side of the ditch.  So he jumped from his spot and ran around the bend. He figures he was about fifteen feet from the second sack when the ground under him fell away. Before he could even cry out for help, he slipped down to his waist in the newly formed hole. He tried to catch himself by grabbing a clump of weeds. But as soon as he’d gotten a good grip on the weeds, the roots pulled out of the earth and he shot down the hole. He fell about twenty-five feet until he hit the ground hard. 

Stumpy had fallen into an abandoned mine.

He landed on top of a small boulder and twisted his leg something awful. “I tried to stand up, but I couldn’t move my left leg,” Stumpy said. “I tried to pick it up by pulling on my knee with my hands, but the pain in my shin was hurting so bad I had to stop. I’m sure it was broken.”

I looked over at Stumpy. He was having no trouble hiking down the ditch trail. “Looks like you got better fast,” I said. 

“And how!” Stumpy replied.

After he fell, he lay there looking up at a patch of red sunset sky through the hole in the roof of the mine. It wouldn’t be long until sunset. He yelled his head off for help, but no one ever came. He was alone, and it was almost dark. 

After a while, he could see stars in that patch of sky showing through the hole, but their light was too faint to illuminate anything inside the mine. He wailed his head off until he couldn’t yell anymore. Then he caught his breath and pondered his situation. He figured he’d have to wait here until I brought help, but he was also worried that maybe I’d fallen into the mine, as well. So he hollered for me both directions down the mineshaft. There was a little echo, but nothing more.

“After what seemed like hours,” Stumpy said, “I smelled something. Something real bad. It was kind of a familiar smell,” he continued, “like a wet dog, a dead ‘possum, an old campfire, and stale beer all mixed together.”

“Like my dog, Rex,” I asked, “when he sits by us at a campfire?” I asked.

“Way worse than Rex,” Stumpy replied. “And it was getting stronger. I had to cup my hands over my nose, the smell was getting so bad. Then I smelled something even more familiar.”

“What was it?” I asked. I’d stopped walking to ask the question, but Stumpy didn’t stop marching down the ditch trail. So I had to run to catch up with him.

“It smelled exactly like…” Stumpy said slowly, “menthol cigarettes!”

“Like the ones grandma smokes?” I asked.

“Yes!” Stumpy replied. “Exactly like the ones your grandma smokes.”

As Stumpy looked up at the stars through the hole in the top of the mine, some of them began to slowly disappear. The shadow blocking the starlight took the shape of a man. He was standing directly above Stumpy now. But he couldn’t see the man’s face.

“Then he reached down with his big, hairy arms,” Stumpy continued, “and he picked me up like I didn’t weigh nothing at all. The pain in my leg was like fire!” Stumpy said. “And then this man took me about fifteen feet down the mineshaft to a clearing. He leaned me up against the side of the mine. And, very carefully, he straightened my leg out. It hurt a little less after he did that.”

“But how did you get out of there?” I asked. “Why didn’t you tell anyone about the man?”

“Because of what he did next,” Stumpy said. “No one would believe me if I told them. I don’t even know if I believe it, and I was there!”

“After he set me down,” Stumpy continued, “he turned around and closed up the hole in the mine! I heard him snap a supporting beam from the wall and bury it into the ground directly under the hole. Then with a single leap, he jumped up through the hole in the roof of the mine.”

“Whoosh!” I said, involuntarily, imagining a hairy strongman springing up twenty-five feet, out of the top of the mine and into the Community Ditch.

“Then he must’ve picked up a giant boulder,” Stumpy said. “He capped that hole in the roof of the mine with one drop of the boulder. All the stars went out at once, the earth shook, and I could feel dust and sand settling down on my skin from the quake. Then I could hear scraping sounds coming from the ground above me. I guess he was covering the area up.”

“And removing the bottle caps!” I said.

“How’d you know about that?” Stumpy asked.

“Because when I took the search party back there that night, there wasn’t a bottle cap to be found,” I replied. “I’m sure they all thought I got the wrong place, because I was just a kid. But I know I was in the right spot.”

“You were right,” Stumpy said. “About ten minutes later, the man returned. He smelled like he did before, but also sweaty. Real ripe. Then I heard him drop a couple bags of bottle caps on the ground further down the mine.”

“He got real close,” Stumpy continued. “I could tell by the smell that he was standing right next to me. I heard him rustle around and pick something up. Then he struck a match against the wall of the mine, and the whole place lit up like a million suns all blazing at once. He pulled the match close to his face, and he lit up a cigarette with both hands. He inhaled deeply, and then blew the match out with a giant breath of smoke.”

“What’d he look like?” I yelled? “Did you recognize him?”

“I didn’t get a good look because that match was so darn bright to my eyes,” Stumpy replied. “But after a couple drags, he pulled out a second match, struck it alight against the side of the mine, and held it out over me as he looked me up and down. He could see me now in the light of the match. But I could see him, too, as he held the match over my broken leg and poked at it gently with his other hand.”

Stumpy paused for a second and took a deep breath. I couldn’t stand it any longer. “And?” I said. “What did he look like?”

“He didn’t look… human,” Stumpy responded. I gasped.

“He was more bear than man, and more ape than bear,” Stumpy went on. “He was nine feet tall, easy, and muscular enough to snap that supporting beam from the side of the old mine. I could see the beam propping up the bottom of the boulder that he’d dropped in the hole in the roof. And I could see the marks on the wall where he’d snapped off the wooden beam. He was covered head-to-toe in a matted, brown-black fur. And he clearly didn’t care for baths.”

“Did he hurt you?” I cried.

“No,” Stumpy replied. “I actually think he helped me. He blew the second match out and finished his cigarette. With each deep inhale, the cigarette lit up his face in a red glow. I could tell he was thinking hard about something. He wasn’t looking at me, but he wasn’t looking away, either. When he got to the end of his cigarette, he flicked the butt away from us, and I watched it fade to black on the ground.”

“After that,” Stumpy continued, “he held a bottle up to my mouth and made me drink something. It was a thick, sweet kind of medicine. I began to feel woozy almost immediately, and he went to work on my leg. He spread something gummy on the break, and my leg began to feel really warm. As he rubbed the medicine into my leg, the pain began to lessen. After about 30 seconds, he stopped and wrapped my leg in some kind of animal pelt. The fur was soft and thick. It was about the size of a skunk’s pelt, but it didn’t smell. Or maybe I just couldn’t tell because his smell was so strong. I never got used to his smell.”

“Then what happened?” I couldn’t believe what Stumpy was telling me. But I knew it was true. He’d never make up a lie with so many details.

“I don’t know what happened next,” Stumpy said. “I guess I fell asleep. And I woke up a little bit north of the Highline Lateral canal. I was sleeping under a tree, and the sun was coming up. I was dirtier than a hog, but my leg was perfectly fine. You wouldn’t know that anything had happened. I just started walking south until Mrs. Johnson found me and hauled me into town.”

At that moment, Stumpy and I realized that we weren’t alone. Someone had crept up behind us on the trail, and I was too enthralled in Stumpy’s tale to notice. Before we could even turn around, a pair of strong hands came down and grabbed us both by the collars.

“Now we’ll find out the real story!” Hurk McHurk yelled as he grabbed us. We tried to run, but there was no escape. He jerked us around, and we could see that he was wearing his Colt .45 Peacemaker on his hip. And he looked just angry enough to use it.

Hurk pushed us off the trail and lead us about a quarter mile down to his hay wagon. “Get in!” he hollered. And we jumped in the back of the wagon.

“You’ll tell us the real story now, Stumpy Pepys!” Hurk yelled back as he snapped the reins down on the pair of horses at the front.

“Where are you taking us, Mr. McHurk?” Stumpy yelled as we began to pick up speed and bounce down the trail.

“We’re just taking a little trip back to the Grange Hall,” Hurk yelled back. “Don’t worry. You’ll be home by dinnertime. I’ve got some people that want to talk to you, Stumpy.”

“Who would want to talk to me?” Stumpy asked.

“Just myself and a couple of my friends,” Hurk replied. “We got a sort of a private clubhouse hidden in the basement of the Crescent Grange. We like to call ourselves The Benevolent Order of the Broomsquatch.”

To be continued…

When we got near the Crescent Grange, Hurk put some flour sacks over our heads and led us down a cellar stairway and through an underground corridor. I don’t know where the stairway entrance was actually located. But judging by how far we twisted and turned through the corridor, it must have been a hundred yards away, at least.

“Watch yer step!” Hurk said. He carefully steered us into the stairway and only let go when he could tell that we had our footing. Even though we were being kidnapped, Hurk was still looking out for us.

He made us sit down back-to-back on wooden chairs. We were on some kind of platform about a foot off the ground. Before taking the sacks off of our heads, Hurk tied us up by attaching a long rope to the back of one of the chairs and then circling us about six times to wrap the rope around us. 

“That’s not too tight, is it?” He asked a couple times.

If anything, the rope was too loose. And with the hoods removed, we could see that it was more of a velvet braid than a real rope. Stumpy and I could’ve gotten out of there just about anytime we wanted. But I was curious to learn more about this Benevolent Order of the Broomsquatch that Hurk had mentioned. Plus, he had promised that we’d be home by dinnertime, so I guess we could play along. And who knew that the Crescent Grange had a basement? This was turning into an adventure of the first order!

When Hurk finally pulled the four sacks from our heads, I couldn’t believe my eyes. We were in a windowless room about the same size as the Crescent Grange. Quilts hung from the walls showing scenes of townsfolk, farms, horses and sometimes an ape-like creature! Each one looked like some kind of a story. Sometimes the townsfolk were fighting the ape-man, who I took to be the Broomsquatch. But other scenes showed him defending the people by fighting off bears and black-hatted villains. In some frames, the Broomsquatch was shown riding a giant black horse. Other scenes showed him digging deep under ground.

“His Eminence and the Wardens of the Broomsquatch will see you now,” Hurk said. He was wearing a brown robe and a mask over his eyes that kind of made him look like an owl. He walked over towards one of the walls, picked up a small gong from a table, and struck it three times, gong-gong-gong. Then he picked up a kind of bishop’s staff carved out of a single piece of wood. There was an ape’s head carved at the top.

From behind one of the quilts stepped Hurk’s brother, Kirk McHurk, and four or five other folks. They were all wearing masks and robes similar to Hurk’s. Kirk wore a headpiece topped with small, three-point deer antlers. I guess Kirk was “His Eminence,” which kind of made sense. Instead of being raised by bears, the rumor was the Kirk was raised by lawyers. Some said they were patent lawyers, while others said they were criminal defense lawyers, and well... you get the idea.

Kirk sat on a worn wooden throne, and the Wardens of the Broomsquatch sat on two benches placed on either side of him. Everyone stared straight ahead, directly at the two boys.

“Awww. Did you have to tie them up, Hurk?” Kirk complained.

“No names when we’re in the Grand Lodge! I am the Outer Guard, your Eminence,” Hurk snapped back at his brother.

“Did you have to tie them up, Outer Guard?” Kirk pronounced it sarcastically.

“The bylaws stipulate that all apprentices must…”

“I know. I know,” Kirk replied. Then he turned to us and asked, “Are you boys alright?”

“Yes, Mr. McHurk,” we both replied.

“You know that you can leave at any time, right?” he smiled and gestured toward a tapestry that was probably covering the way we came into the room, er…, the Grand Lodge.

“We want to stay,” Stumpy yelled. “We want to learn more about the Broomsquatch. I think he saved me. I think he fixed my leg.”

“We want to hear all about that, too, Stumpy,” Kirk said. “But first we need to take care of some business. Hurk tells me that you boys want to become BOBs.”

“Bobs?” both Stumpy and I questioned at the same time.

“BOBs. Bee Oh Bees. That’s what we call the apprentices in the Benevolent Order of the Broomsquatch. BOBs. Get it?” Kirk smiled.

Stumpy spoke up. “Mr. McHurk, well the OTHER Mr. McHurk, the, uh…, Outer Guard,” Stumpy gestured to Hurk, “he grabbed us off of the Community Ditch trail, stuck flour sacks on our heads, dragged us here, and tied us to these chairs!”

“Jeez, Hurk!” Kirk yelled, “You could get in real trouble for that!” There was some murmuring among the Wardens of the Broomsquatch.

“It’s OUTER GUARD!” Hurk yelled, and he pounded his staff into the floor.

“It’s OK!” I said, “We know that Hurk, er… Outer Guard, was just foolin’. So we’re just playing along, too. Ain’t we, Stumpy?” 

“Yep. We want to be BOBs!” Stumpy hollered. “We know we can leave. Look!” And at that, Stumpy pushed the velvet braids up over our heads and shoved them to the floor. “What do we got to do to become part of your club?” Stumpy asked.

“Well, it’s a simple ceremony, really,” his Eminence said. “You answer three questions. You put your hand on the Red Book and swear a blood oath. Then I read to you the history of the Broomsquatch from the Red Book.”

“What’s the Red Book?” Stumpy asked.

Kirk became quite serious as he gestured to the warden on his right, who was now holding a large, ornate, red leather-bound book. It looked like it was a thousand years old. The cover had no words. Instead there was an image in gold of an ape-man etched deep into the red leather. 

“The Red Book is the most most important relic of the Benevolent Order of the Broomsquatch,” Kirk said.

“The Red Book,” he continued, “has been the repository of stories of the Broomsquatch for generations. This is what you swear your oaths upon. And, Stumpy, this is where you will add the story of your own encounters with the Broomsquatch.”

“Swear me in!” Stumpy hollered. “I want to learn all about the guy who saved my life!”

# # #

At the same time that the boys were in the basement of the Crescent Grange becoming BOBs, two bandits were meeting up in the shade under a large tree behind the pickle factory.

“You got the rags?” the first bandit asked, looking around to make sure that no one had followed them to the meeting spot.

“I got ‘em. You got enough kerosene?” the second bandit responded.

“Ha! Yeah,” the first bandit responded. “I have enough kerosene to burn down a mountain...or a grain silo.” And they both laughed. The first bandit stuck a cigarette in his mouth and struck a match alight on the side of his boot.

At that exact moment a giant black horse, nearly twice the size of any horse they’d ever seen, reared up from out of nowhere. Its neigh was a scream of anger from the depths of hell itself. Before they knew what hit them, the rider lassoed a rope around the bandits and began to ride in circles lashing them to the tree. Tighter and tighter the rope clenched them until the rider stopped directly in front of them. They couldn’t make out his features because he was silhouetted by the setting sun. But he was nearly twice the size of an ordinary man, and quite hairy. There was a smell, too, that overpowered their senses. 

The first bandit’s match fell from his hand and into the dry grass near his feet.

To be continued…

Stumpy tried to make himself as comfortable as he could in the tollbooth given the circumstances. He used to think that being a toll collector was the worst possible job anyone could have. He takes the money, smiles and waves at every car full of people heading somewhere to do something. But he remains in the same spot, frozen in place. He never goes anywhere.

On this particular Christmas Eve at the dead center of the twentieth century, Stumpy found himself in a job that he now considered worse than a toll collector -- he was the toll collector on a turnpike that hadn’t even opened yet.

Recently, there’d been some vandalism to the construction equipment they were using to build the Denver-Boulder Turnpike -- something that never happened in Broomfield when he was growing up. So the construction company hired a night watchman. Enter John “Stumpy” Pepys, son of Broomfield, World War II veteran, jazz drummer, and soon-to-be the first tollbooth attendant on the Denver-Boulder Turnpike. The service building wasn’t finished, yet. But the toll booths had electricity and heat, and the east-bound booth had a telephone. So that’s where Stumpy would drop his lunchbox and newspaper five nights a week.

A few years ago, Stumpy was fighting to keep democracy safe for the world. Now he was keeping bulldozers safe from bored teenagers. It wasn’t exciting work, but it was steady. And the truth be told, he needed that since he got out of the Army in ‘46. There was the promise to be hired as a full-time attendant when the turnpike finally opened, and maybe that’s not such a bad job after all. He’d seen combat during the war, and a bit more combat since coming home. After all, there are worse things for a guy than a steady paycheck and some peace and quiet.

By 9 p.m. on that Christmas Eve in 1950, the whole town smelled like manure, which has always been a sure sign that we were about to get a snowstorm. As the wind blew from the east it brought the moisture and the smells of the pastures in Greeley up to the foothills. Both were starting to fall on Stumpy a few minutes later as he started the Sunday crossword puzzle.

“Perfect,” Stumpy said aloud to no one in particular..

As a child growing up in Broomfield, snow always meant adventure of one kind or another. And all that snow when he was growing up seemed just perfect for sledding and snowball fights and rolling up into snowmen. The snow was different back then, he thought to himself.

Stumpy put down the newspaper and listened intently as the fluffy snowflakes began to fall. This type of snow always came in near silence, creating a natural sound-proofing that muted everything. He always loved how quiet and peaceful the world became when this particular type of snow started falling.

Stepping outside the tollbooth, Stumpy caught some of the fluffy snow in his gloved hand and marveled at the patterns in the giant, overstuffed snowflakes. He blew the flakes from his hands and made a quick inventory of the equipment that was parked below the brand new underpass they had built for the turnpike.

Convinced that the bulldozers remained secure, Stumpy returned to the warmth of the tollbooth and brushed the snow from his coat. Before resuming the crossword puzzle, he looked down the road toward Boulder. The concrete on this stretch was finished, and the snow accumulated evenly on the smooth road surface. It was an unbroken white ribbon that ran from his tollbooth to the crest of a small hill about half a mile in the distance.

These days, snow like this reminded him of the army, the 45th Infantry, and serving in Europe towards the end of the war. There wasn’t any snow at Anzio, but Bavaria was a different story. It must have snowed every day in April and most of May there in 1945.

It was snowing that day in late April when Sarge lead them them outside of Munich to liberate a German prison.

“People in town say there’s a jail out there that the Germans abandoned,” Sarge said. “Just another one of Adolf’s messes that we gotta clean up. Docs say these folks are hungry, but they don’t want us to give them any of our food on account of it might make them sick. The medics got a plan to feed them slowly.”

“More proof that C-rations are against the Geneva Convention,” one of the soldiers shot back at him.

“Our job, you knuckleheads, is to secure the place. Capture any krauts leftover, and make it safe for the docs and MPs to come in and sort this mess out,” Sarge continued, clearly not thrilled by the fact that looking after a bunch of common criminals was now the responsibility of the 22nd Regiment.

The march to the prison was short, and it was snowing those big, fat, quiet snowflakes that Stumpy liked. The men’s boots crunched a sharp rhythm in the snow, and they quickly created a hard-packed path leading through the forest toward the prison.

Then the stench hit them like a wave. Stumpy saw the men in front of him break formation while they clutched their noses and stumbled for a few steps. Their march cadence quickly broke down, and the line of men nearly halted in the snow. Stumpy was a farm boy, and he knew what death smelled like. He’d smelled it too many times since landing at Anzio, but this was more intense. This was something he didn’t know existed.

As they came out of the forest, they saw a great railyard. And behind it a camp the size of Camp Barkeley where they’d trained in Texas. They were marching toward a line of rail cars. Behind those, stood a guard tower, and then the endless rows of barracks lined out into the distance behind the barbed wire walls.

“This ain’t no jail,” Sarge said from the front of the column. “This is something else,” 

Stumpy hated that station. And he couldn’t wait to move on. The clean up work there was some of the most gruesome he’d seen in the war. He tried not to think about it, and he never spoke about it. It was odd that those memories came flooding back so vividly this evening. 

“It must be the snow,” Stumpy said out loud. “Merry Christmas to me.”

The days after the war were a blur. Stumpy was unhappy in the army, and unhappy after he got out. He gigged on drums in jazz clubs in New York for a while. But not much came of that. And now, after more years spent out of the Army than in it, he found he’d drifted back to his hometown. But it wasn’t the same. They were putting a strip of concrete right down the middle of town, for starters. And there was talk of building a new Levittown in the fields he used to play in as a boy. They’d be tearing down the grain silos before long, and then would anything be left?

A sound outside the tollbooth jolted Stumpy from his memories. 

He looked around through the glass of the tollbooth windows. The snow was heavy now, and visibility was diminishing. The smell of Greeley was stronger than ever, but there was something else. A smell that was at the same time much worse, but also somehow comforting. It was a smell that Stumpy fondly remembered from his youth. And as soon as it registered in his brain, Stumpy ran out of the tollbooth and searched up and down the snow-covered highway.

He found a line of giant footprints in the snow passing right next to the tollbooth and traveling toward Boulder. How had he missed him? Stumpy followed them at a full sprint, but quickly lost the trail about 150 feet from the tollbooth. Stumpy knew exactly who this was. And furthermore, he knew that if this guy didn’t want to be found, there was nothing he could do about it. So he turned around and trekked back to the tollbooth.

As he reached the underpass, he saw that a bundle had been left upon the concrete barrier in front of the tollbooth. It looked like an old Army blanket rolled into a ball. When he reached it, he found a black and white puppy wrapped up against the cold in a stinky, old blanket. Stumpy scooped the entire bundled up in his arms lugged it into the warmth of the toll booth.

Once inside, he uncovered a shivering, half-starved pup wrapped the blanket. The dog was groggy, as if he’d been asleep in the blanket. Stumpy sat on the floor next to the heater and pulled the pup into his lap. The dog gave him a cold lick on his chin. Stumpy smiled and wrapped the stinky old blanket around both of them to share his warmth with this pup. Stumpy could feel the sharp outline of the dog’s ribs -- he barely had any meat on his bones at all.

As Stumpy spread out the blanket, three flattened, rusty Coors Banquet Beer bottle caps fell out and clanged to the floor. They’d been completely flattened and looked like coins at first glance. Stumpy smiled and set them on the counter by the toll window. 

“I guess he was our first paying customer,” Stumpy said to the dog.

After a few minutes, the pup stopped shivering and Stumpy smoothed the old blanket out in front of the heater to make a bed for the dog, who quickly laid down to bask in the warmth. Stumpy reached over for his lunch box, unscrewed the cup from the top of his thermos, and filled it with water for the pup.

“Let’s start slowly, buddy, OK?” Stumpy to the dog. “You’re safe now.”

The dog quickly drank a full cup of water and half of a second cup before he stopped to look back up at Stumpy. This was the first time Stumpy noticed his tail wagging. 

“Now we’re getting somewhere.” Stumpy said, and he gave the dog a quick pat on the head.

Reaching into his lunchbox, Stumpy scooped some cooked rice into the thermos lid and then tore up some small pieces from the chicken that he’d brought for dinner. The dog licked his chops, but waited patiently for Stumpy to finish preparing the meal. Once Stumpy set the cup back in front of the pup, he quickly devoured the meal, not stopping until he’d licked every grain of rice from the cup and the floor of the tollbooth.

“That’s good for now,” Stumpy said. “We don’t want to overdo it and get you sick.”

The pup seemed to understand, and he returned a grateful, if still hungry, look back. Stumpy scooped the dog up and pulled him to his lap. Despite being thin as a rail, the pup was now full of energy and playfully licking at Stumpy’s face while Stumpy patted and stroked the dog’s thick, black fur.

Sitting in the tollbooth with his new friend, Stumpy noticed a light down the highway towards Boulder -- the same direction that the footprints led. About a half a mile away, Stumpy could make a set of car headlights traveling down the closed highway.

“What now?” Stumpy said to the dog, thinking that this was the busiest closed highway he’d ever seen.

Stumpy and the pup watched patiently while the headlights slowly grew larger as the vehicle crept slowly toward them from the west.

When the car reached the underpass it pulled to a stop next to the tollbooth. The driver’s window rolled down to reveal a woman about Stumpy’s age. Stumpy slid the tollbooth window open. They just looked at each other for a moment.

“Is this the lane to cross the Golden Gate Bridge?” The woman asked in a mock serious voice. “How much is the toll?”

“Lady, what are you doing here?” Stumpy hollered back. “This highway’s not open yet.”

“Well, that would explain the terrible road maintenance,” she replied.

Stumpy bit his lip to stifle a laugh. This was serious business. “This is serious business!” he said. “You’re trespassing.”

“I’m not trespassing,” the woman replied. “I’m here to pay my toll. How much is it?”

“We’re not open yet!” Stumpy responded.

“But if you’re not open yet, why are you sitting here collecting tolls on Christmas eve? Are you planning on charging Santa a toll for his sleigh this year?” She asked. Then she tilted her head sideways and looked at Stumpy. The pup tilted his head sideways, as well. 

“I’m not a toll attendant,” Stumpy responded. “I’m the night watchman.” This woman was clearly putting him on. But who sent her, he thought.

“Right.” she continued. “You’re the night watchman who sits tollbooth in the middle of the night collecting change?” she asked, pointing at the three bottle caps sitting on the counter between them.

“Oh, this isn’t money,” Stumpy said, picking up the bottle caps. “These are beer bottle caps that my friend left.”

“Oh, so I get it,” the woman said. “You’re supposed to be taking tolls, but you’ve closed the highway on Christmas even in order to have a private highway booze party with your friends. I should think the Colorado Department of Transportation would be very interested in learning what goes on here,” the woman continued. She quickly stifled a smile. “I’ve read warnings about these shenanigans in the Saturday Evening Post, but I never thought I’d see them so close to home.”

“Lady…” Stumpy started, but he could no longer contain his laughter. He let out a big smile and said, “What the heck are you doing here?”

No longer indignant, the woman smiled back at him and laughed. “I don’t know, myself, quite honestly. I was driving back to Arvada from a rather boring Christmas party in Louisville, and some guy directed me this way. When I realized I was on the new highway, it seemed easier to follow this down the hill to the exit than to turn around and risk getting stuck in the snow. I was praying that the road was finished down to here. I think it might have been a college prank. The guy was wearing an oversized fur coat.”

“A big guy?” Stumpy asked.

“Yeah, probably a football player,” she replied. “You know him?”

“Yes, I do. But I haven’t seen him in a long, long while,” Stumpy said, a bit wistfully.

“Well, you should keep better track of your friends.”

“We’ll get you back to Arvada in a jiffy. What you want to do is take this clover leaf around to the overpass. That’ll get you out to 120th Avenue. You can catch Wadsworth about a half a mile down.”

“Thank you,” the woman replied. “Nice dog. What’s his name?”

“I don’t know,” Stumpy said. “I just found him tonight. He needed a warm spot and some food, and I had both.”

“Lucky dog,” the woman reached her arm out of her car and scratched the pup under his chin. The dog liked this very much. “He looks like some kind of a shepherd mix. You should just call him Shep,” she said. “It’s simple and to the point. It seems to fit him.”

“Shep,” Stumpy said. “That does kind of fit. What do you think, Shep?” Stumpy asked, at which Shep buried his face into Stumpy’s chest in approval. “Then Shep it is!” Stumpy said.

“And you,” the woman asked. “Do you have a name, yet? Or do I need to name you, as well?”

“Honestly, I’d be a little afraid of what you’d call me,” Stumpy replied. “The name is John Pepys. My friends call me Stumpy.”

“Your friends call you Stumpy, and you’d be afraid of what I’d call you?” The woman replied. “I will call you John.”

“Do you have a name?” Stumpy asked.

“Yes,” the woman replied. And then stared at him blankly.

“And it is?”

“Sarah.”

“Do you have a last name, Sarah?” Stumpy asked.

“I do. But we’ll just stick with Sarah for now, if that’s OK with you, Stumpy,” Sarah responded.

Stumpy laughed again at this whole madcap conversation. “Be careful on these roads, Sarah. Nothing around here is plowed until you get to 120th Avenue. And there’s no guarantee that will be plowed when you get there.”

“Thank you, Stumpy.” She said. I’ll take it slow. It’s not far, now.”

“Here,” Stumpy said. And he wrote down a phone number in the margin of a newspaper page, tore it out, and handed it to Sarah. “Here’s the number for the tollbooth. Give me a call so I know you made it home OK. If you don’t call in half an hour, I’ll radio for a snow plow to go looking for you.”

Sarah accepted the slip of paper and grabbed the pencil from Stumpy’s hand. Above the number she wrote “Shep & Stumpy.”

“I’ll take this,” she said. “And I’ll call you when I get home. I will let it ring once and hang up. That way you’ll know I’ve made it safely, and you can call off your search party.”

“It’s a deal,” Stumpy said. “Merry Christmas.”

“Thank you, John,” Sarah said. “And Merry Christmas to you. And you, too, Shep!”

And with that, Sarah rolled up her window, drove up the snowy cloverleaf and circled over to 120th Avenue. Stumpy followed her tail lights as far as he could and determined that she was making slow but steady progress home.

About 25 minutes later the phone rang loudly. Both Stumpy and Shep had drifted off to sleep, and the ringing startled both of them. After the first ring, Stumpy reach down and patted Shep on the head. “It’s OK, buddy. That’s just Sarah letting us know that she made it home alright.”

After the second ring Shep gave a short bark at Stumpy that seemed to say, “Well pick it up, stupid.” 

After the third ring, Stumpy finally picked up the receiver. 

The bandits struggled to free themselves from the rope that lashed them to the tree as a small fire began to smolder at their feet. The first bandit noticed the smoke and flames and tried to stamp the fire out, but it was just out of his reach. Silhouetted in the setting sun a short distance away, a giant hairy man on a great black horse watched them intently.

From behind the bandits they heard the screen door from the pickle factory squeak open and then snap closed. Slow, careful footsteps crunched the dry grass as someone drew closer to them. The bandits saw the giant figure’s head jerk towards the sound of the door and then follow the footsteps as they methodically drew closer to the bandits.

“Just who do you think you are,” Grandma’s voice crackled harshly, “interrupting a meeting of the Merri Mix?”

The Merri Mix was a ladies-only social club that had been around as long as Broomfield itself. Their meetings often featured seasonally-appropriate costumes and food, as well as lively discussions of the issues of the day. One of their favorite activities was to stage mock weddings, where the ladies dressed up as the bride, the groom, and the wedding party. Nearly every woman in town was a member.

But no one knew that the Merri Mix was also capable of dispensing their own brand of frontier justice whenever the situation called for it. And this particular situation was screaming for it.

Grandma carried a galvanized bucket full of pickle juice. The acrid vinegar smell cut through the scent rising up from the growing fire just out of reach of the bandits’ feet. She carefully set the pail down on the dry grass next to the bandits' kerosene can. Grandma carefully took in the situation, then turned and nodded at the giant hairy man on the horse. He nodded back to Grandma, snapped the reins, and was off into the sunset like lightning.

“I don’t recognize your faces,” Grandma said to the bandits tied to the tree. “You boys aren’t from around here, are you?”

“Untie us, you old biddy!” the first bandit snarled. “What was that guy? He could have killed us!” The small fire began to grow, stoked by the gentle breeze from the east.

“Just what are the two of you doing hanging around the grain silos with so much kerosene?” Grandma asked, ignoring the first bandit’s insults.

“I said untie us you old maid!” the first bandit yelled again.

Grandma was unfazed. She looked at the bandits, and then looked over to the grain silos by the railroad tracks. In an instant she had sussed out their plan. 

“You two don’t look smart enough to have cooked up an idea like this on your own,” Grandma said, startling both men with her directness. “So who sent you?” 

Grandma reached down and picked up a large stick nearly a yard long. One end of the stick was already burning from being inside the growing fire ring started from the bandit’s match.

“We ain’t answering no questions! What’s a hag like you gonna do to us?” the first bandit laughed.

“Yeah!” the second bandit added just because he felt he needed to add something at this point.

With a single move, Grandma thrust the burning branch at the first bandit’s face and stopped it less than an inch from his nose. The bandit went cross-eyed for a second as he watched the flames and felt the heat on his eyebrows.

“That may be true,” Grandma said menacingly. “I’m just an old lady. What can I possibly do to hurt a couple strapping young lads like yourselves?” With this Grandma thrust the burning stick into the ribcage of the first bandit. He winced from the stab, but stifled his groan. He stared back at her defiantly as his flannel shirt blackened from the burning embers.

At this point, the second bandit decided to keep quiet. And in return, Grandma continued to ignore him.

She leaned in close the first bandit’s face, twisting the burning stick into his ribcage. 

“You’ll tell me where you’re from and who sent you to burn down our grain silos, or I’ll make you wish you never heard of Broomfield, Colorado,” Grandma said in calm, menacing tones. 

“Go fish!” the first bandit said and spat on the ground between them. His moment of defiance was ruined when a faint cry of fear escaped the second bandit’s mouth. Grandma’s eyes never left the first bandit, but she let a broad smile slowly fill her face as she glared him in the eyes.

Grandma stepped back, dropped the burning stick onto the ground in front of the bandits, and spread her hands in a gesture of defeat.

“Well, I guess you’re right,” she said with resignation. “What’s an old woman to do when faced with the might of two young lads like yourselves? I’ll just grab my pickle juice and head back to the Merri Mix meeting. June Hansen is giving a lively lecture about the rules and regulations for displaying the American flag.”

With this she turned, picked up the bandits’ kerosene can instead of her bucket of pickle juice, and began to walk away.

“Well, would you look at that?” Grandma said and she walked back to the first bandit. “Maybe I am getting dotty in my old age. I meant to pick up my bucket of pickle juice, but I grabbed your kerosene can by mistake.” 

Grandma lifted the kerosene can up by the handle to eye level between her and the first bandit.

“Silly me. A fine lot of good this would have done me over in the pickle factory, huh?” she said, still holding the can between their faces. “Imagine me, accidentally pouring kerosene all over our latest batch of pickles.”

With this, Grandma tilted the bottom of the can with her free hand and spilled a splash of kerosene out of the spout on to the ground.

“Oops!” she said, her eyes grew wide as saucers. Then she tilted the bottom of the can again, pouring a steady stream of kerosene on the ground. Very carefully she drew a line of kerosene through the dry grass to the feet of both bandits. When she guided the stream over their boots, they stamped and hollered that she was crazy. But this only served to splash the kerosene up on to the legs of their pants.

She ended the stream by carefully pouring a pool of kerosene into a divot on the ground about a foot downwind from grassfire that had been started by the bandit’s match. Each gentle gust of wind pushed the fire an inch or so closer to the kerosene fuse.

“Now, one more time. Who sent you? And where did you come from?”

“We’re from Fort Collins!” The second bandit cried out. “Don’t burn us! Please, lady, don’t burn us!”

“And who sent you to burn down the grain silos?” Grandmas voice was as calm as ever. From the tone of her voice, you might have thought she was asking June Hansen a question about the regulations for displaying the American flag after dark.

“I don’t know!” the second bandit yelled. “Tell, her, Amos! Tell her or we’re gonna burn!”

“Yes, tell me, Amos,” Grandma said mockingly. A small gust of wind picked up and pushed the fire closer to the pool of kerosene.

“Peabody,” Amos, the first bandit, said. “Mr. R. H. Peabody of the Amalgamated Mining Trust.”

“I’ve heard of Mr. R. H. Peabody of the Amalgamated Mining Trust,” Grandma repeated. “He’s a well respected person around these parts. He’s even got his own private Pullman car on the railroads. Why would Mr. Peabody get mixed up with a couple of hoodlums like yourselves?”

“He wants your land for the minerals underneath,” the first bandit’s tongue freed up as the flames crept closer to the pool of kerosene connected to his legs. “He figures he can buy it cheaper if you can’t make any money from farming the dirt on top. So he paid us to take care of the grain silos so you can’t sell your grain.”

“Thank you, Amos,” Grandma said in her most grandmotherly voice. “And you tell Mr. R. H. Peabody of the Amalgamated Mining Trust that he can look elsewhere. Broomfield is protected.”

“Protected?” Amos laughed. “By a bunch of old biddies and their pickle juice?”

“For starters,” Grandma responded. And she looked to the west in the direction where the Broomquatch had ridden.

Grandma grabbed the pail of pickle juice and set it down on the path of the kerosene in front of the bandits.

“In about two minutes a bunch of men will be here,” Grandma continued. “You best tell them the same story of Mr. Peabody that you told me. You tell them all about the man on the horse, but you don’t tell them about me or the Merri Mix club. You understand?”

“Uh-huh,” the second bandit said nervously. “Put that fire out now, lady. It’s getting awfully close to the kerosene”

“Oh, and one more thing,” Grandma added. “My sister lives in Fort Collins. So I’m going to ask her to keep an eye on you and let me know if you get up to any more funny business.”

Grandma picked up the bucket of pickle juice.

“I don’t normally like to talk to my sister,” Grandma went on. “I try to avoid her on account of she’s so mean.” And with that, Grandma splashed the stinky pickle juice all over the feet and legs of the bandits, diluting the kerosene with enough water and vinegar to keep them from catching fire.

As Grandma walked back to the Merri Mix meeting at the pickle factory, she gave a sharp whistle, startling the two horses tied up in front of the Crescent Grange. The horses bristled with sharp whinneys and stomps until a bunch of men in funny masks and two boys came out of a cellar door on the side of the Crescent Grange to see what the commotion was about. As soon as they calmed the horses, one of the boys noticed the smoldering fire and the two bandits tied to a tree behind the pickle factory. The group ran straight over to investigate.

Grandma returned to her seat at the Merri Mix meeting in the back of the pickle factory where she learned from June Hansen that the American flag should never, under any circumstances, be allowed to touch the ground.

# # #

That evening a Pullman car sat attached to a Denver-bound Union Pacific train in the railyard near Jefferson and Linden streets in Fort Collins, Colorado. The whistle sounds meant that their departure was imminent. 

Inside the private Pullman car a Mr. R. H. Peabody of the Amalgamated Mining Trust smoked a cigar and sipped at some brandy.

“When do we depart, James?” Mr. Peabody asked his manservant. “It smells like something died outside in the railyard. Please close all the windows.”

“The windows are closed, sir,” James replied.

“Then you tell that conductor to step on it. I want to get to Denver at a decent time.”

“Yes, sir,” James responded. He exited toward the passenger cars to locate the conductor.

Sitting outside on the roof of the private Pullman car, a certain nine-foot-tall smelly character took a deep drag from his Kool menthol cigarette. The glow of the cigarette illuminated a circle that he’d been carving into the paint on the roof of the car directly above where Mr. R. H. Peabody of the Amalgamated Mining Trust was enjoying his cigar and brandy.

Using a bent Coors Banquet Beer cap as a chisel, the creature carved a perfect circle through the maroon paint and deep into the wood of the roof of the car. Once the circle was finished, he chiseled a perfect “X” in the middle of it, directly on top of Mr. Peabody’s favorite after-dinner chair.

The train whistle sounded, and the steam engine chugged to life, gently rocking the cars into motion for their journey south to Denver’s Union Station. As the Pullman car moved closer to a circle of light thrown by a streetlamp, the Broomsquatch silently launched himself from the roof of the railcar and into some scrub bushes at the base of a tree behind some houses in the neighborhood.

Inside one of the homes, a young girl about seven years old yelled to her mother, “Did you see that? A man just jumped off the top of that railcar. I just saw it!”

“Oh, you hush with your wild stories now, Sarah,” her mother said quickly as she tucked her back into bed. “There’s no one out there. And please don’t go on about this tale or you’ll make me late for my women’s club meeting!”

We heard some sort of commotion going on outside of the Crescent Grange, and the horses were neighing wildly. So Hurk McHurk and his brother Kirk quickly ripped off their robes and pulled down one of the tapestries to expose a set of steps leading to an outside cellar door. 

I remember thinking, “Why did they bring us here through that whole maze when we could have just entered through the cellar doors?” But that thought faded as soon as we got outside and I could tell that something was seriously wrong. The horses were so frantic they were in danger of hurting each other. And the air didn’t smell right.

“Fire!” Stumpy yelled, pointing over to the trees behind the pickle factory.

Myself, Stumpy, and a few of the men of the Benevolent Order of the Broomsquatch who were not busy calming the horses, ran over towards the flames. Stumpy and I ran as fast as we could, and we soon pulled well ahead of them. 

As we got closer we could see that there were two men tied to the tree that was closest to the fire. And they didn’t look like very nice men, either. Reflexively, I went to untie them.

“Hold up!” Stumpy yelled. “Help me stamp out this fire, first. Leave those men be. They look like they’re tied up for a reason.”

“Shut up, kid!” Amos, the first bandit, yelled at Stumpy. And then to me he said, “Yeah. Untie me, quick!”

I stepped away from the captive men and began stamping the fire out with Stumpy. The fire around the men had been doused already, but the flames further away from them were starting to pick up in the breeze. As we stamped out the flames there was an unmistakable tang of pickles and vinegar in the smoke.

The men arrived quickly and helped us stamp out the rest of the smoking embers.

Seeing that the grass fire was under control, Kirk McHurk turned his attention to the two men. Just like Stumpy, Kirk was in no hurry to untie them, either.

“Maybe,” Kirk said to the two men, “maybe you can tell us who you two are? I’d also be interested in knowing how it is that you find yourselves tied to a tree behind a pickle factory.”

True to Grandma’s instructions, the men faithfully retold their plans to set fire to the grain silos. They spoke about how they were thwarted by a great, hairy man on a great, black horse. But through all of this, there was no mention of Grandma or her threats.

“Well, that’s a good description of what you did,” Kirk McHurk replied. “But that doesn’t exactly explain why you did it. Someone paid you to do this, I take it?”

“Yessir,” the second bandit replied. “Mr. R. H. Peabody of the Amalgamated Mining Trust. That’s who paid us.”

Kirk was shocked to hear this. As a lawyer, he was well aware of Mr. Peabody and the role that Amalgamated Mining played in the state. But he was equally shocked to hear his name coming out of the mouth of a common criminal like the one tied up in front of him. Why, Mr. Peabody owned his own Pullman car.

The men from the Benevolent Order of the Broomsquatch asked no more questions about how the bandits had come to be tied up to this tree next to a grass fire. But the questioning continued about the role that Mr. R. H. Peabody played in all of this. And the bandits were more than happy to tell them all that they knew about it.

Just then I noticed Grandma standing outside the back door of the pickle factory, looking directly at Stumpy and myself. She threw her head a little bit to one side to beckon us us over. As we started walking toward her, Grandma very slightly nodded at the galvanized bucket that was lying on the ground near the bandits. Written on the side of the bucket in paint worn thin from years of use were the words, “BROOMFIELD PICKLE FACTORY” and a faded yet accurate painting of a dill pickle. This labeling served to clearly identify the owner of the bucket to both those who could read and those who could not.

As Stumpy and I casually walked toward the back door of the pickle factory I snatched the bucket from the ground and carried it back over to Grandma. None of the men noticed a thing.

“Thank you for retrieving my bucket, boys.” Grandma said.

“Were you over there, Granda?” I replied. “The bandits didn’t say anything about you. But this bucket is from the factory.”

“Never mind about that right now.” Grandma said. “This town is in trouble, and those two idiot bandits are just the beginning. So we’re going to need all the help that we can get.”

“We can help!” Stumpy cried back to Grandma. “We can help fight the bandits right alongside the Broomsquatch!”

I was worried we’d get a lecture from Grandma because of this exclamation from Stumpy. Grandma never like to hear us talk of the Broomsquatch. But her response wasn’t what I expected.

“That’s right,” Grandma said directly. “You both will need to fight next to the Broomsquatch if we want to save the town. Are you willing to do that? It might be dangerous.”

I don’t think that Stumpy and I had ever heard anything more wonderful than this in our entire lives. “It might be dangerous” was exactly the kind of excitement that we were looking for that summer.

“We’re ready,” I responded. “Ain’t we, Stumpy?”

Stumpy cried, “Yes!” and nodded vigorously.

“Then I need you to leave right now, boys. The way might still be open.” Grandma spoke quickly and more quietly than before. “I need you to follow the exact path that the Broomsquatch rode when he left. Look carefully for the tunnel entrance to the mine just over that rise.” Grandma pointed to a small hill to the west of the pickle factory.

“But there’s no mine entrance over there!” Stumpy replied.

“You go quickly and look carefully, Stumpy,” Grandma responded. “And you’ll find it. Believe me on this, boys. You’ll find it. Once you get inside, you need to follow it west as far as you can go. He’ll take care of the rest.”

“What are we looking for, Grandma?” I asked.

“I can’t tell you, exactly, boys,” Grandma responded. “It’s different for different people. But you’ll know. Just remember to go west.”

“West,” Stumpy and I repeated in unison.

“And, here.” Grandma said, pulling something from her pockets. “This is the most important thing of all. Keep these in your pockets at all times. Whatever you do, don’t lose them!”

At this, Grandma handed us each three Coors Banquet Beer bottle caps. They were rusty and old and a bit scratchy on the sides. Stumpy and I jammed them deep down into our front pockets.

“Now go, quickly!” Grandma said, “while it’s still open.” And she pushed us off into the direction that the Broomsquatch rode. West.

The men from the Benevolent Order of the Broomsquatch took no more notice of us. They were busy interrogating the two bandits who were still tied to the tree. The second bandit was doing most of the talking at this point. And the first bandit, Amos, was starting to look bored with the entire situation.

Once we got over the rise and we could no longer see the pickle factory or the men, Stumpy and I began to look around for a mine entrance.

“There’s no mine entrance over here, Stumpy. We’ve been playing in these fields since we were five years old. We’d have seen it.”

“Just keep looking,” Stumpy said. “If your Grandma says it, I believe her.”

We stumbled down the hill toward the setting sun. We weren’t quite running, but we were letting gravity pull us down the slope without fighting it because Grandma had stressed how we had to hurry.

“There!” Stumpy said, pointing to some scrub oak at the bottom of the hill.

“That’s just a big old bush,” I replied.

“No, behind it!” Stumpy yelled, and he took off running.

There was something dark directly behind the stand of bushy oak. It was hard to see the trunks in front of it. It was definitely a hole. And it was so dark that it seemed to be pulling the light and color from the outside world directly into it, like an open drain at the bottom of a tub.

Stumpy ran at full speed, and I couldn’t catch up with him until we were nearly at the mouth of the mining tunnel. I stopped short to take a good look around, but Stumpy never broke stride and ran directly into the tunnel, brushing some leaves off of the scrub oak in the process. I quickly followed Stumpy in because I didn’t want to lose him.

Once inside, the air was much cooler and quite still. Stumpy didn’t stop running even when we entered the mine. The tunnel wasn’t straight. It made an immediate curve to the right, so I had to keep running as well so as to not lose sight of Stumpy. It became much darker once we rounded the curve and we could no longer see the mine entrance. So I yelled to Stumpy to stop.

“Wait up, Stump! I gotta let my eyes adjust,” I hollered.

At that, Stumpy finally slowed his pace. He stood there panting in the grayness. I don’t think I’d ever seen him run so fast in his life. And I don’t think I’d ever seen him so out of breath.

“It’s getting too dark. We’ll need torches,” I said as Stumpy took deep breaths of air to recover. “I’m going to walk back to the entrance and grab a few dead branches of oak and some dry grass. We can fix up some torches from that.”

“Good,” Stumpy said as he leaned against a tunnel wall almost recovered. “I’ll be right as rain by the time you get back.”

As I walked around the curve back toward the entrance of the tunnel, I was surprised by how far we’d traveled since we entered the mine. I thought it was just 40 or 50 feet -- enough to get inside and lose sight of the opening. As I walked back I lost sight of Stumpy around the curve, but I never saw the mine entrance. I must have walked 200 feet down the tunnel, and the grey light wasn’t getting any brighter. There wasn’t any sign of the opening anywhere.

“Hey Stump!” I yelled down the tunnel. “Can you still hear me?”

“Roger that!” Stumpy yelled back. He was just out of sight around the corner.

“Can you come here? I got something to show you.”

There was no response, but I could hear Stumpy’s footfalls crunching quickly on the loose gravel of the tunnel floor. 

“What the heck?” Stumpy cried when he got around the curve so that I could see him. “Where’s the mine entrance?”

“It should be right about where you’re standing,” I replied. “I should be standing outside right now.”

Stumpy and I both looked for other passages to the left and right, but there was nothing. There were no other passages in this tunnel. Stumpy even looked up to see if we’d somehow fallen in from above. But there was nothing.

Still, it wasn’t completely dark even though there were no discernable sources of light. The entire mining tunnel was bathed in an even, gray light that seemed to come directly out of the walls. It wasn’t noticeably brighter in either direction. And there wasn’t any color at all. Stumpy’s red flannel shirt looked gray and my blue dungarees were just a darker gray. It was like we were in a Hollywood movie, but one of the scary ones with Frankenstein and the Mummy.

“Well,” Stumpy said, “Your Grandma said to go west. And I guess we’ve got no other choice at this point. I suggest that we start heading west before we get so confused that we forget which way west is.”

And with that, we set off down the mining tunnel in our original direction. 

To be continued...

We hadn’t walked very far down the tunnel before we realized that something wasn’t right down here. Instead of getting darker as we went farther in, the light remained constant wherever we walked. We didn’t have any shadows, and the light seemed to be coming directly out of the rocks in the walls. 

The tunnel was wide enough for us to walk side by side. The ground was quite flat, and it seemed to be a straight shot due west. Stumpy and I said nothing to each other. We just trekked on silently.

I couldn’t say exactly when the moth appeared. Maybe after a mile, or it could have been three. There were no landmarks to measure by. It was a safe bet that we were still headed west toward the mountains, that was all. The moth looked like a Miller moth. It was gray like everything else down here, and it fluttered in the direct center of the tunnel maybe twenty feet in front of us. The moth was traveling in the same direction and the same speed as us, so it just stayed there fluttering in our path as we walked. Its flight was hypnotic, and you could hear the sound of its wings quietly zipping on the air in front of us. The moth bounced and weaved in the random motions of an insect around a campfire. But with all of this he also traveled purposefully. He moved west leading us toward the mountains. And while he darted and flitted up, down, and in all directions, his forward progress was steady, just like ours.

By now I couldn’t take my eyes off of the moth. His existence underground seemed quite normal, and we calmly walked through the tunnel, which was straight as an arrow. Stumpy was next to me the whole time, but I never turned to him. I knew he was there, and I knew that he was alright. I didn’t even think to look away from the moth. And this is why it’s so strange that I didn’t notice how the moth had turned into a crow.

We were now following a crow through this dim, gray tunnel. The crow flapped and glided in a much more streamlined flight than the moth. And just like the moth, he always stayed about twenty feet in front of us. The buzz of the moth’s wings was replaced with the whooshing sound of wind in our ears. I wondered how a crow could fly so slow as to stay in front of us. I turned to Stumpy to ask him how a crow could fly so slowly. That’s when I saw that the tunnel walls were zooming past us. We were moving through this mine at the speed of the crow. He wasn’t flying slowly; we had sped up. There was no sensation of running or flying, and no rush of air against our faces, just the movement forward through the tunnel. And the crow would flap flap flap and glide smoothly, always twenty feet ahead. Always leading us west.

I wanted to ask Stumpy how this could be happening, but I couldn’t form the words. I turned back to face the crow and followed him through the gray tunnel.

I have no idea how much time passed at this point. Time didn’t matter. We were supposed to follow the crow, so we followed the crow. That was it.

I turned to look at Stumpy again, and saw that he was staring straight ahead, intently. Images began to appear on the walls zooming behind him. They weren’t painted on the walls. Instead, they moved with us as we traveled down the tunnel. It was as if a movie was being projected onto the walls as they zipped past.

I heard a train bell and the sound of a steam locomotive starting up from a station. The steam filled the tunnel as the image of a Pullman car appeared on the wall. I could feel the steam on the skin of my face as we moved through it. The train was replaced by Grandma’s gig pulled, as always, by Maisey. She was traveling down the Community Ditch trail. And Grandma was driving Maisey as fast as she could go. They climbed over a rise, and I could see the direction that they were headed. They were going west toward the mountains.

I saw a running coyote and then a bounding bear. The bear was replaced by a flock of ducks taking off from a pond. All of the animals seemed to be startled and running from something. In front of all of these images, Stumpy still stared straight ahead at the crow.

I looked forward, and the crow had become a Cooper’s hawk. The slow glide of the crow had been replaced with the sharp movements of a hawk on the hunt for prey. The sound was different, too. It was low and constant, like there was a giant hornet’s nest just out of sight.

I turned my head sideways toward Stumpy, and I could tell that we had sped up again. The walls were a complete blur. An image of Grandma appeared. She had her back to us. She had a chicken on the stump and a cleaver in her left hand. I saw her place the chicken’s head on the top of an upturned log and chop it off with one fell swoop. I’d seen Grandma do this a hundred times, and lately she’d been saying that she was going to hand this work off to me. To tell the truth, I wasn’t looking forward to it. Grandma picked the chicken up from the log and turned around to face us. It was Grandma’s dress and Grandma’s old cooking apron alright. But the head wasn’t Grandma’s at all. It was domed and hairy. And the face looked like an ape. This was the Broomsquatch we had told tales about all those times. But he wasn’t friendly. He was menacing, angry and snarling, and he held the headless chicken in his right hand and the still bloody cleaver in his left. And he was staring out of the cave walls directly at Stumpy and myself, as if he could actually see us trespassing in his world.

Suddenly, Stumpy reached over and grabbed me. “Look out!” he yelled, pointing straight ahead.

When I looked down the tunnel the Cooper’s hawk was gone. The Broomsquatch was standing still directly in the center of the tunnel in front of us. The Broomsquatch had his left hand raised to say “Stop!” And we were hurtling directly toward him, unable to stop or even slow down.

I could hear both Stumpy and myself scream in anticipation of the unavoidable impact. But at the moment of collision, everything disappeared -- the Broomsquatch, the images on the walls, and even the tunnel walls themselves were gone. Instead of hurtling westward, we were now free falling in total darkness and complete silence.

Sometimes Stumpy’s screams mixed with mine and cut through the silence, then it would go completely quiet again. There was no feeling of wind at all. I could see our arms and legs flailing as we fell, completely helpless. And when we screamed loud enough at the same time, we could break through the blanket that dulled our senses.

We splashed down into a pool of water, impacting hard and pushing down deep. I spread my arms and legs to slow my dive under the water, but I could feel Stumpy slide past me, swimming deeper into the pool.

The water was icy cold like a mountain stream. The shock of hitting the cold water at speed shook me from the dream world of the mine tunnel, and I literally returned to my senses. I heard a great splash of water as we hit the surface. I felt the smack of the surface on my face and skin. And I felt the cold water instantly penetrate my clothes as our momentum pushed us way down under the surface of the water. Still deep underwater, I was able to open my eyes to see Stumpy waving for me to follow him deeper still.

The water was crystal clear, and I could see quite well under the water. There was a light at the bottom of the pool, only about twenty feet from where we were suspended. The momentum of the fall had stopped, and my natural buoyancy was pulling me up, away from Stumpy and the light. So I had to swim with all my strength to follow him.

The light was coming from a cave entrance -- really just a hole in the rocks in the bottom of the pool. I could see beer bottle caps spread around carelessly on the bottom, and they were concentrated toward the cave opening. Inside the opening, a brilliant, gold light, as bright as a sunrise, streamed out. I could feel the warmth of the light on my face and arms.

Stumpy was halfway there, and I swam harder through the cold water, unsure if I had enough breath left to make it before I passed out. Stumpy reached the entrance and grabbed onto a solid rock with his right hand. He stretched his left arm back to me to shorten my distance to the opening. I swam for his hand with all my might, fighting my body’s natural need to inhale.

The light began to fade and go purple when Stumpy made a stab at my hand, grabbed it, and yanked us both through the cave opening.

We broke through the surface of the water just as we traveled through the cave opening. We both inhaled deeply, coughing and steadying our breathing. After several deep breaths, I was able to take stock of our surroundings.

We were outside in a deep ravine somewhere in the mountains. The ravine walls were too steep to see any high mountain peaks, so I couldn’t get any bearings. We were floating in a calm eddy next to a mountain stream. Once we caught our breath, Stumpy and I instinctively looked down to find the cave opening that he’d just pulled me through. We both knew it wouldn’t be there, but we looked anyway. Stumpy dove straight down, his wet shoes broke the surface for a second as he dove.

Stumpy popped up a few seconds later.  “Nothing,” he said. “But I did find these.” And he opened his palm to show me two Coors Banquet Beer bottle caps, rusted just like the ones that Grandma had given us. “I reckon we might need them,” Stumpy said.

We pulled ourselves out of the eddy and into a small clearing at the side of the stream. I could see a well-worn path that followed the stream through the mountains. We did everything we could to dry off. We shook like dogs. We took our shirts off and wrung them out. And we poured the remaining water out of our shoes.

“Here.” Stumpy said, handing me a bottle cap. “Better keep this with the ones your Grandma gave us. I reached into my pocket to find the three bottle caps from Grandma, and they were gone. Stumpy had the same realization at the same time. Again, we didn’t talk about it much. It just seemed like exactly the sort of thing that should have happened. 

“I guess we’ll need these last two bottle caps to get home,” Stumpy said. “Let’s build a fire and dry off.”

“Thanks for saving my life down there,” I told Stumpy. “If you hadn’t grabbed onto my hand, I think I was a goner.” 

“Do you really think we could have died in there?” Stumpy asked.

“Yeah,” I said. “I do. I think we got lucky, Stump.”

Stumpy didn’t say anything to that. He just looked at the rusted Coors Banquet Beer bottle cap in his hand. Then he shoved it deep into his pants pocket.

“We’ll build a fire, first,” Stumpy said. “Our first priority is to get dry so we don’t catch pneumonia.”

“Then what?” I asked.

“Then we’ll find out why we’re here, I suppose,” Stumpy replied. And we both set out along the path looking for dry kindling to start a fire.

To be continued...

We gathered a couple small logs and plenty of kindling and dry grass. Stumpy reached expectantly into his back pocket and pulled out two wooden strike-anywhere matches. He’d carefully covered the heads of the matches with candle wax for precisely this situation. I guess I made fun of him at the time, but I was starting to get cold. And those two matches were a beautiful sight when he pulled them from his pockets and we saw that the wax had not rubbed off.

In short order, Stumpy scraped the wax from one match head with a twig. He struck the match on a flat rock and lit the wax on the twig as a sort of small torch. With burning sticks in both hands, Stumpy quickly lit as much of the dried grass on fire as he could, all the while gently blowing on the flames to encourage the fire. It worked perfectly, and in no time we had a small fire going. Stumpy and I foraged for two larger logs and dropped them on the fire as it grew.

We stripped down to our skivvies and draped our clothes over a nearby bush to dry. Only then did I realize how exhausted I had become. I could barely keep my eyes open when I stretched out next to the fire to get some rest. I could see Stumpy doing the same thing. The last thing I remember before falling asleep was looking up at the crisp, blue autumn sky at the opening of the ravine above us. It was a beautiful fall afternoon. And I thought it would be fine to sleep outside now that we had a strong fire to protect us from the cold and curious wildlife.

I slept deeply, without dreams or stirring. When I awoke, it was nighttime, but I could still see quite well due to the bright moon which was nearly full. The fire had grown to twice the size it was when I fell asleep. It was well tended, and I was quite warm and comfortable. I was about to thank Stumpy for this when I noticed that he was still fast asleep next to me. He hadn’t moved an inch. But he had a brown deer hide thrown over him for warmth. Still groggy from sleep, I realized that I had the same kind of animal fur stretched over myself. I could tell that Stumpy’s eyes were open. But when I tried to call out to him, I couldn’t make a sound. I tried to lift the deer hide blanket, but I found that I couldn’t move, either. I glanced back to Stumpy, but he wasn’t looking at me. Instead, he was looking at something on the other side of the fire. I followed his gaze, and that’s when I noticed the woman.

She looked a lot like Grandma, but much, much older. She had long, white hair past her shoulders. And she was blind, or she must have been. Her eyes were both covered in milky white cataracts, and she stared directly into the fire. She sat cross-legged, except she didn’t quite touch the ground. She floated about three inches above it. I couldn’t see anything holding her up, but there she was about three inches off the ground.  She was well illuminated by the fire, and I could clearly see the ground underneath her as she sat motionless. To her left, a large white husky dog relaxed on all fours on the actual ground at her side. The dog was attentive, but not threatening. He seemed to be waiting for her next command.

The blind woman began to chant very slowly. Her voice was incredibly frail and weak.

From the land, we call
from the sky, we call
from the river, we call
from the Earth, we call

As she chanted this over and over again, I suddenly noticed a figure standing in the trees about twenty feet behind her. He was smoking. He completely blended into the shadows except when he raised the cigarette to his mouth and took a long drag. I have no idea how long he had been standing there. He just stood there listening to the blind woman’s chanting and finished his cigarette. A putrid smell began to waft over us. It was a combination of skunk, decaying animal, and menthol cigarette smoke.

After four or five repetitions, the blind woman stopped chanting, and the large figure moved forward into the light. Fully nine feet tall and covered in a matted brown fur. He stopped next to the woman’s dog and flicked his cigarette into the campfire. The white dog looked up at him, not alarmed, but simply acknowledging his presence. The Broomsquatch extended a hand toward the woman and lightly touched her shoulder in greeting. Then he reached down to the white dog and gently scratched him on the neck behind his ear.

The Broomsquatch stood up again and walked over to Stumpy. Stumpy was awake, but just like me, he couldn’t move a muscle. I could tell from Stumpy’s eyes that he was more curious than afraid, while I had never been more terrified in my life. The Broomsquatch crouched down over Stumpy, pushed the deerskin back and carefully examined the leg that Stumpy had broken when he fell into the abandoned mine. The squatch gently turned it left and right, inspecting it from every angle. After he seemed satisfied with how well the break had healed, he carefully stretched the deerskin back over Stumpy’s leg.

Then the Broomsquatch turned to me.

The blind woman spoke again, but this time in a wheezy and unnatural tone. It was much louder than her chant, and it was almost as if she was talking while inhaling instead of exhaling, “This other one, I have met before. But you are new to me.”

The Broomsquatch crouched down next to me and placed his large hand gently on the top of my head and closed his eyes for several seconds. His hand was soft and very warm. But his smell was overpowering.

“I know your kin. And I am indebted to her,” the blind woman continued in her unnatural wheeze.

At this, the Broomsquatch moved his hand from my head and lightly touched my shoulder in the same way that he had touched the blind woman’s. Then he stood up and faced the fire directly. He raised his arms to the sky and let out an eardrum piercing howl. It started low and guttural, but then it built up into a scream that echoed off of the ravine walls, like a fire horn. After he stopped the echoes continued to ripple through the ravine, slowly fading away.

That’s when I noticed the herd of elk. They stepped from the dappled moon shadows of a glade and stood facing the Broomsquatch. There must have been seven or eight total. They just stood there, all of them staring directly at the Broomsquatch.

Three mule deer stood in the stream in much the same pose. They all faced the Broomsquatch, motionless. From up above I saw a hawk wheeling down towards the campfire. He landed somewhere behind me. And even though I could not turn to see him, I knew that the hawk was looking directly at the Broomsquatch.

Still, I couldn’t move. So I have no idea how many animals were frozen at that moment in time, facing the Broomsquatch.

After a long pause, the woman spoke again in her backwards, inhaling wheeze. “These boys are our friends.” With this the Broomsquatch lowered his arms and gestured to Stumpy and myself on the ground.  “Allow them safe passage back to the world of men.”

With that, the Broomsquatch turned and walked back into the shadows from where he’d come. Once he was out of the firelight, he just disappeared. I didn’t see any movement, nor could I hear his footfalls. It was as if he’d just evaporated into thin air.

The blind woman remained three inches off the ground, legs crossed, completely still. Over the course of a full minute, she just faded away, never moving a muscle. At first I could see the outlines of the trees behind her. And then after a few seconds, I could only see her outline. Finally, she was just gone. A breeze began to pick up. We could tell from the sky that the sun was beginning to rise, even though the ravine was still deep in the grip of the shadow of night. Gradually, all of the natural sounds the mountains returned. I didn’t realize that the whole world had gone completely silent until I heard the fluttering of aspen leaves, the calls of birds at sunrise, and the buzzing insects again.

Whatever was paralyzing us was receding at the same time. Soon we could move our arms and legs again. It was an achy sensation, like waking up first thing in the morning. Without speaking, we shook the numbness out of our limbs and put the rest of our clothes back on. They were perfectly dry and much softer than they were after Grandma washed them.

“Hey,” Stumpy said suddenly. “She left her dog.”

And sure enough, the white husky was still there crouched on all fours. He had barely moved the whole time. He had an old rope tied around his neck in a makeshift leash. And once we noticed him, the dog stood up. The dog walked over to Stumpy, and Stumpy intuitively picked up the rope leash from the ground. Once it was secure in Stumpy’s hand, the dog began to walk with purpose. He was pulling Stumpy downstream.

“I think he’s taking us home,” Stumpy said.

“I’m glad someone knows how to get out of here,” I replied.

And sure enough, without any fuss or diversions, that white dog walked us directly out of the ravine. After a couple miles on the trail, the sun was fully up. The night had given way to the day, and we could tell that we were in Eldorado Canyon. But I’ve never seen that particular ravine before or since. Once we got to the Eldorado Springs Pool, the dog turned and led us to the train station where the spur for the Denver & Interurban Railroad cars loaded.

I’ll be darned, but that white dog never stopped walking. He jumped right up into the electric railcar and pulled Stumpy up there with him.

“The dog can ride,” the conductor said. “But you’ve got to hold that leash tight. It gets a little bumpy near Superior.”

“How much is the fare to Broomfield?” Stumpy asked. We never paid to ride the Interurban to Eldorado Canyon when you could just as easily hike or ride in Grandma’s gig.

“Fifty cents,” the conductor replied. And he had a look on his face as if he expected us to both just hand him over fifty cents. Fifty whole cents.

Stumpy looked at me terrified. We didn’t have two pennies to rub together, let alone a full dollar between us.

At this the dog started nosing Stumpy’s front pocket, the one where he’d put his last Coors bottle cap. And Stumpy started talking to that dog just as if he was talking to me. 

“There’s no way he’ll take it,” Stumpy said. But that white dog kept bumping his nose right into his pocket. Stumpy reached into his pocket to grab the bottle cap. “He’ll think I’m a lunatic if I tried to give him a…” And Stumpy suddenly pulled out a shiny half dollar coin from the pocket where the bottle cap had been.

The conductor immediately snatched the coin from Stumpy’s hand and said, “Oh, we take Liberty half dollar coins,” he said. “Don’t you worry about that.” And with this, the conductor examined the face of the coin and continued, “And this one was even minted in Denver. It looks brand new.”

I reached into my pocket for the bottle cap, and pulled out a half dollar coin as well. The conductor quickly snatched the fifty cent coin away and replaced it with a ticket.

“One-way to Broomfield. Ring the bell when we’re close in case I forget to stop. Now take your seats, boys. We’re just about ready to go.” Then he stuck his head out of the electric railcar and hollered, “All aboard!!!”

Stumpy and I found a bench at the back of the train car and sat down. The white dog relaxed directly at Stumpy’s feet as if he’d ridden the train since he was a puppy. There was a woman with a little girl a couple years younger than us on the facing bench.

“What’s your dog’s name?” The little girl said to Stumpy.

“I don’t know,” Stumpy replied.

“You don’t know your own dog’s name?” the little girl yelled incredulously.

“I just got him today,” Stumpy said. “I ain’t named him yet.”

“You should call him King Arthur”, the little girl replied.

“What? Why should I call him King Arthur?” Stumpy replied, quite surprised that his first real conversation since returning from the ravine of the Broomsquatch would be an argument with a little girl about the name of his dog.

“Because he’s as white as King Arthur flour,” the little girl fired back. “And it’s plain as day that he’s descended from royalty. Just look at him!”

And I’ll be darned if that white mutt didn’t sit just a little straighter and lift his chin just a little higher as the little girl said that he was a royal hound. We all looked at him for a couple seconds, and then the dog added a strongly affirmative, “Woof!” to seal the deal.

“Good boy, King Arthur!” the little girl said as she smiled.

With that the little girl’s mother intervened. “Now Sarah, you leave those boys alone. They look tired, and it’s still early. You boys go ahead and close your eyes. I’ll let you know when we get near Broomfield.”

And that electric train quickly rocked me to sleep just like Grandma used to in her rocking chair.

“Broomfield station!” The conductor yelled and rang a bell which roused us. Next to me, Stumpy and the white husky dog, King Arthur, also seemed to be waking up and getting their bearings.

Across from us the little girl was asleep with her head on her mother’s shoulder. Her mother was also asleep, her head resting lightly on top of the little girl’s. Neither of them woke as we got up and exited the train.

“Have a nice day, boys,” the conductor said as we stepped off the train car on the depot side of the tracks. The train rolled off toward Denver, revealing Grandma and her gig waiting for us on the other side of the tracks.

We stood there for a second, myself, Stumpy and King Arthur, just staring at Grandma sitting atop her gig. I didn’t know how she could have known that we’d be on the Denver Interurban. But at the same time, it felt like exactly the kind of thing that she would know.

“I see you got a dog,” Grandma said, nodding at King Arthur. “A dog is a sensible animal,” she continued. “Easy to follow down a path, I imagine.” Then she stared at King Arthur almost jealously and said, mostly to herself, “Not like a squirrel.”

Grandma shook her head as if clearing her thoughts and then ordered, “OK, get in!”

King Arthur ran across the tracks and jumped up to the floor of the gig. He curled around Grandma's feet and left just enough room for Stumpy and myself to step onto the gig.

“He’s soft and warm,” Grandma said. “Feels good on my feet this cold morning. What’s his name?”

“King Arthur,” Stumpy said. “

“Like the flour?” Grandma asked. And then she turned directly to the husky and said, “Hello, King.”

We rode the rest of the way home in silence.

###

Mr. R. H. Peabody of the Amalgamated Mining Trust sat in his overstuffed chair inside his personal Pullman car. The train was chugging slowly up the foothills south of Boulder as it headed toward the Moffat Tunnel and then on to Glenwood Springs, Mr. Peabody’s destination for the weekend. He looked east out of his window and had a panoramic view of the plains, as his train had already gained quite a bit of altitude.

“I don’t see any smoke out there, Dempsey” he said to his assistant, Paul Dempsey.

Standing across from Mr. Peabody, Dempsey steadied himself against the steep grade by holding on to a brass rail attached to the ceiling of the Pullman car for exactly this purpose.

“They were captured, sir, before they could carry out the plan.”

“Captured!” Mr. Peabody yelled. “How did they get captured in that whistle stop? Who caught them?”

“Our source tells us that they were captured by an old lady, sir,” Dempsey said sheepishly.

“An old lady!” Mr. Peabody yelled. “I paid for professionals, not penny-ante crooks who can be stopped by the women’s auxiliary!”

“We think she had help, sir. We’re trying to find out more information.”

“You find out. And tell me as soon as you know something more. Where are they now?” Mr. Peabody asked.

“Boulder County Jail, sir. But don’t worry, they won’t talk. And no one would believe them if they did.”

“See to it that they don’t talk,” Mr. Peabody replied. “To anyone!”

###

In a cell in the Boulder County Jail, the second bandit scooped up his breakfast greedily.

“Mmmm! Chili for breakfast. This is the life!” he exclaimed to his cellmate.

Across from him sat a large, imposing man with a vertical scar running down the left side of his face and into his beard stubble. He gave no response at all to the second bandit. He just stared at this guy slopping chili into his mouth.

“And I tell ya!” the second bandit continued. “He was nine feet tall if he was an inch. And the smell!”

###

The train pulling the Pullman car belonging to Mr. R. H. Peabody of the Amalgamated Mining Trust turned west into the south rim of Eldorado Canyon for its trip up to the Continental Divide and the newly opened Moffat Tunnel. Mr. Peabody sat alone reading a newspaper, having already dismissed Dempsey to deal with the bandits.

The train soon entered a tunnel, and the Pullman car became too dark for Mr. Peabody to read. He was used to this, having made this trip many times. And he was looking forward to emerging from this particular tunnel and seeing the amazing view from the train traveling near the top of the south rim of Eldorado Canyon.

Not far in the distance, Professor of Anthropology Harold Long and his wife, Mildred, were settling down to have a picnic lunch at the ruins of the old Crags Hotel which had burned down nearly twenty years prior. Professor Long was lecturing Mildred about the site while Mildred dutifully set out the picnic lunch that she had packed before their hike.

“See these broken bits of china?” Professor Long picked up a sliver of ceramic plate from the small rocks on the ground. “These will be studied for centuries to come so that we can better understand what this site was used for.”

“Yes, Harold.” Mildred replied as she poured coffee from a thermos.

“And the foundations will remain in place for hundreds of years, long after nature has taken back this land.”

“Yes, Harold.” Mildred responded.

To their left, high on the south rim of Eldorado Canyon, a steam engine emerged from a tunnel chugging black smoke as it pulled cars out of the tunnel onto a relatively flat grade near the top of the canyon. Visible only from the inside of Eldorado Canyon, this grade extended about a third of a mile until it entered another tunnel.

Had Professor of Anthropology Harold Long been looking at the railroad grade instead of the ground at this precise moment, he would have been able to show Mildred something of far more anthropological interest than some broken bits of china. Standing atop the cement tunnel opening as the steam engine pulled out was a humanoid figure approximately nine feet tall. As the black smoke from the engine slowly cleared, it would become obvious to anyone looking that this creature was covered from head to foot in a brown, matted fur. It held its arms down, apart from its body. Its knees were bent as it balanced carefully over the edge at the top of the tunnel entrance.

Just as Professor Long was telling Mildred that he hoped they would be lucky enough to find an original mustard ladle from the Crags Hotel flatware collection, the Broomsquatch observed a Pullman car emerge from the tunnel. On the roof of the car was carved a large circle with a perfect “X” chiseled through the center.

On seeing this marking, the Broomsquatch took a large, graceful step from the top of the tunnel on to the slow moving Pullman car. He made no sound as he steadied himself on top of the train car, which was now traversing the scenic, third of a mile stretch at the top of the south rim of the canyon.

A cool breeze mixed with coal smoke ruffled the fur of the motionless Broomsquatch on top of the train. Directly beneath him, Mr. R. H. Peabody of the Amalgamated Mining Trust set down his newspaper and looked out the window at the magnificent view that unveiled itself below him. Professor Long saw none of this as he continued scouring the ground for a mustard ladle.

Mildred, on the other hand, saw the whole scene unfold clearly in the distance. She said nothing to Harold as she watched the Broomsquatch stand motionless atop the train. He ducked slightly as the train entered the tunnel entrance at the west end of the ridge. She would report to the Merri Mix that they should monitor telegraph traffic for news about the disappearance of Mr. Peabody in the mountains along the Continental Divide.

Mr. Peabody’s Pullman car darkened as it entered the tunnel. He could see nothing, as his eyes had not adjusted from the bright sunshine outside.

Suddenly, there was a great crash through the roof. Mr. Peabody could smell coal smoke mixed with a dank smell of a dead animal. Two great arms swooped down from the ceiling in the dark and yanked him directly up from his chair and out through the newly smashed hole in the top of his Pullman car.

As the train exited the tunnel still heading west, the top of Mr. Peabody’s Pullman car now had a large, splintered hole smashed directly through the roof in exactly the same spot where the circle with the “X” had been carved.

By the time Depsey entered the car to see what Mr. Peabody wanted for lunch, the train had already pulled into a siding at the Moffat Tunnel, and Mr. Peabody had greater concerns than choosing between ham or roast beef.