Broomsquatch

“Get crackin’, boys,” Grandma yelled up to us. “It’s nearly sunrise!”

Grandma had a special chore for Stumpy and me this morning, so she asked Stumpy’s parents if he could stay at our house overnight so we could start work bright and early.

It had been more than two weeks since Stumpy and I raced down into an abandoned mining tunnel and somehow found ourselves in the lair of the Broomsquatch. King Arthur, the white dog given to us in the valley of the Broomsquatch, was part of the family now. Grandma definitely likes him more than Grandpa does. And sometimes I think she even likes that mutt more than she likes me. And King, well he was just about the most independent dog I’d ever met in my life. He was more like a house guest than a pet. And Grandma certainly did nothing to dispel him of that notion.

The news about the disappearance of Mr. R. H. Peabody of the Amalgamated Mining Trust was the talk of the town. We even had a reporter from Denver asking folks in Broomfield if they saw his private Pullman car that day -- as if someone as important as Mr. Peabody would take a detour to Zang’s Spur on his way to Glenwood Springs.

After fixing us both an extra-large helping of flapjacks, Grandma handed us our jackets and gave us the instructions for our special chore.

“I need you boys to head down to Eldorado Springs. It’s important that you get there by sunrise,” Grandma said.

“By sunrise?” Stumpy exclaimed. “Why that’s in less than half an hour. We’ll never make it in time.”

“Take a tunnel,” Grandma said matter of factly, as if we knew all about some secret tunnel to Eldorado Springs. “And take King. He knows the way, and he’ll keep you from lollygagging on the trip.”

King’s ears perked up at the mention of his name. And I’ll be darned if he didn’t sit up just a little straighter, again, when he heard that he’d be in charge.

“I want you boys to go down to Eldorado Springs,” Grandma continued. “Sit yourselves down right there at the mouth of the canyon -- somewhere near the pool. Be sure to get there by sunrise, and let me know what you see. I’d go myself, but I’d no sooner step foot in the town limits than old Gabby Johnson would spot me and start spouting her frontier gibberish theories about President Harding’s death. That woman and her ideas. Anyway, no one’s gonna pay no nevermind to two boys and their dog. So you just keep it that way. And you be sure to tell me everything that you see down there.”

“How will we know when to leave?” Stumpy asked.

“Oh, you’ll know,” Grandma said. And she patted King on the top of his head. “Now you three get along. You don’t want to miss anything.”

We headed west toward Eldorado Canyon. It would be about a day’s hike at the rate we were going. I was still sore about Grandma putting King in charge of our little party.

“Take King, he’ll know the way,” I said in a bad imitation of Grandma’s voice. “He’ll stop your lollygagging.”

Hearing this, King started to growl real mean and low, like I’d never heard him growl before. 

“What is it, King?” Stumpy asked. But I knew what it was. King was mad at me for making fun of Grandma. And as soon as Stumpy saw King’s ice blue eyes glaring up at me, he understood, as well.

Stumpy looked up at me, and raised both eyebrows. Then he said, “Well, I guess it makes a certain amount of sense that Grandma put King in charge. When you think about it, in dog years he’s probably older than the both of us put together. And there’s no arguing that he’s the most sensible of the three of us.

With this, King instantly relaxed and became our lovable dog once again. All of his menace drained away, and he went back to leading us down a path in the general direction of Eldorado Springs.

Soon King took a sharp right turn and we followed him down a slope toward a stand of bushes near the Community Ditch. And just like the last time, there was a mine opening directly behind a couple scrub oaks. I’d passed this slope a thousand times, and I know there wasn’t normally a mine opening there. Grandma wouldn’t have let me play around here if she’d thought I’d get lost in a mine.

King quickened his pace, and soon Stumpy and I had to jog to keep up. Without losing his stride, King shot straight into the mine opening. Stumpy and I were close behind.

The inside of the tunnel was dark, but there was just enough light to see. It was just like the last time. We couldn’t tell where the light was coming from, it was just there. And it drained all the color away until everything was just a different shade of gray. The walls of rock were uneven, but smoothed over, like the inside of a railroad tunnel once you get past the opening. It was cooler in here, and slightly damp.

Stumpy and I stopped to look around, but King kept right on going down the length of the tunnel.

“Hey, King! Wait up!” Stumpy yelled. Then he took off running to catch up with the dog before we lost him. I immediately followed.

Rather than being a straight shot, the tunnel gently curved left so that you couldn’t see more than 30 or 40 feet ahead. King disappeared for a second, but once we started running, we could keep him in our sights as we traced a great arc. King never slowed down, and he never looked back. Soon, Stumpy and I were sprinting just to keep up. 

I kept thinking that there was no way that we could sprint all the way to Eldorado Springs -- that’s more that ten miles from Broomfield. And I was starting to get winded after little more than a minute.

We started to catch up to King Arthur when he took a hard right turn and disappeared directly into the wall of the tunnel. Stumpy and I stopped at the place where he vanished and looked around dumbfounded. He was just gone. There were no forks in the tunnel and no other way out. The walls here were just gray and smooth, too, just like the rest of the tunnel.

“What the heck?!” Stumpy cried. And we both just stood staring at the place where King vanished into the wall.

Suddenly we heard a quick, “Woof!” And King Arthur stuck his head straight out of the rock wall and glared at us with those ice blue eyes. He was mad at us, again. And as soon as we saw him, he pulled back into the wall and was gone.

Instinctively, Stumpy reached out to the place where he last saw King, and his hand passed right through the wall, just like King’s head.

“This way,” Stumpy motioned, and he entered the solid rock wall behind King. 

I had no choice, so I followed. It didn’t look or feel any different once we passed through the wall. One second the wall was there, but once you walked through it, it just disappeared. This passage was much shorter than the tunnel. And King was already at the other end. Stumpy and I jogged to catch up, and we could see daylight coming into the tunnel and King was casting a shadow on the tunnel floor. We quickly followed him out of the mine, past a couple scrub oaks, and on to a rocky hillside. We hadn’t run but maybe a quarter mile, yet I could see the mouth of Eldorado Canyon and Eldorado Springs Pool not a thousand feet ahead of us.

King stopped to let us catch our breath. He was panting pretty hard, himself. The sun hadn’t quite risen here, yet. The tops of the Flatirons were shining with golden light, but the sunlight hadn’t reached the base of the mountains. What do you know...we had made it to Eldorado Springs before sunrise, just like Grandma asked. We could see people moving around the town. Some were tending to the pool while others were rising from their cabins to watch sunlight push the night shadows down from the tops of the Flatirons.

Stumpy, King, and I quickly descended the small hill and positioned ourselves on a boulder at the opening of the canyon next to South Boulder Creek. From here we could see the comings and goings of the people working at the pool. And we’d be able to see anyone who showed up on their way into the canyon for a hike.

While Stumpy and I sat on the boulder, King walked into South Boulder Creek and took a long drink to cool off. Suddenly, from the porch of a house down the path a woman about Grandma’s age started yelling, “Get that dog out of the creek. It isn’t safe!” And she started running toward us. King looked up, tilted his head at her for a second, and then stepped neck-deep into the cool water.

“Stop him!” The woman cried. She was a very fast runner, and almost on top of us by now. “The water isn’t safe!”

Stumpy and I stood up from the boulder, and King ambled out of the creek to meet the woman. He waited until she was right with us before he gave himself a big shake and sent water spraying all over the three of us.

“Ahhh!” the woman cried and backed up, as she’d been hit with acid instead of water off a dog’s back.

I thought she was going to make a big fuss about getting wet from King, but she quickly returned to her original mission of getting us away from South Boulder Creek. “Come over to my porch, and I’ll get you boys and your dog some nice, clean water,” she offered.

We sat down on her porch, and found that we had a nice view of both the pool and Eldorado Canyon from her house. And we were in the shade, as well. The woman disappeared inside her house and quickly returned with two large glasses of water for us and a bowl of water for King. Stumpy and I greedily chugged the water, but King turned his nose up at the bowl and dropped into a heap, pointing himself directly at the opening of the canyon.

The woman never introduced herself, but I felt sure that this was Gabby Johnson, the woman Grandma wanted to avoid in Eldorado Springs.

“Now where are you boys from?” she asked. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you around here before.”

Stumpy must have also guessed that this woman was Gabby Johnson, because he answered right away, “Casper, ma’am. We’re down visiting my uncle in Longmont for a few weeks.”

“How did you boys get to Eldorado Springs from Longmont?” she asked.

“We hiked,” I interjected. 

“All the way from Longmont? In the middle of the night?” the woman asked sharply. She clearly didn’t believe me.

Now, I know that I should always leave the lying to Stumpy. And I started to fumble to find a way out of this one when Stumpy quickly interrupted, “No, ma’am. We hitched a ride with a delivery man heading to Golden this morning. We jumped off south of Boulder. We just hiked from that ridge over there.” And Stumpy pointed directly to the scrub oak where we exited the mining tunnel. Stumpy had a way about him of telling just enough of the truth to get out of any situation. I decided to stay quiet for a while.

“Well, it’s good to get some clean water, even after a short hike. Do you like it?” She asked.

“Yes, ma’am, very much,” Stumpy said. “Thank you.”

“Well, you drink that water. And stay away from South Boulder Creek if you know what’s good for you,” she continued. “I’ve seen men from the government here checking into the water looking for that Mr. Peabody. Oh, you boys probably don’t know, being from out of town. But Mr. R. H. Peabody of the Amalgamated Mining Trust disappeared in this canyon two weeks ago.” 

At this point she got up quickly and retrieved a small stack of newspapers from her front room. She handed them to me and Stumpy. Each paper featured a big headline about the search for Mr. Peabody. I’d seen some of them in the store in Broomfield. But she managed to get newspapers from all across the state. The Denver Rocky Mountain News had the best picture of him. It took up most of the front page under the simple headline, “MISSING!”

Mr. R. H. Peabody was the richest man I’d ever seen. In the photo he was wearing a fancy suit and standing on the back of his own, personal Pullman car. This woman was telling us all about how he probably went missing right here in Eldorado Canyon. And from the evidence, she said, it looked like he just shot right up off of his seat, nearly destroying the roof of his railcar on the way out.

“He sure made a mess getting out of that railcar,” she said. And then she added, more quietly, “Or something made a mess getting in.”

“What’s that?” Stumpy asked. “We heard all about Mr. Peabody’s disappearance in Casper. But I never heard about anything getting into his railcar.”

“Oh, they don’t let them print it in the newspaper,” the woman said even more quietly now. She looked around for eavesdroppers, dropped her voice and whispered, “But I know people. I know people who know things.”

As soon as she said this, King let out a little whimper and dropped his head on the porch audibly. Stumpy smiled a little, but encouraged her to go on.

“First the police showed up,” she said. “And that was just your ordinary, everyday manhunt. Standard operating procedure, you know. They figured they’d find him, or parts of him, somewhere in the canyon.”

“But then, after a week,” she continued, “there was still no sign of him. That’s when US Government men showed up.”

“How do you know they were from the government?” Stumpy asked.

“Well, who else would they be!” she replied. And then she went on, “Two days after that, the government men brought people in from the university with them,” and she motioned toward Boulder. “They tested the water. And they took a lot of samples back with them. I asked them what they were up to, but they were tight lipped. ‘Research’ was all they’d say.” And she gave a disbelieving wave.

“What do you think happened to him?” Stumpy asked.

“Well,” she said, her voice barely audible, “Like I said, I know people. And those people know a lot more about what goes on up the canyon than they let on.” Her eyes were as wide as saucers now. 

By now, the mouth of the canyon was bathed in golden morning light. Suddenly, King Arthur jumped up and started barking something fierce. He was pointed directly at the mouth of Eldorado Canyon. The three of us stood up, but we couldn’t see a thing. King kept barking louder than I’d ever heard him bark before.

A strong breeze was kicking up, and it began to create a dust cloud in the town. Wind chimes sounded loudly, and we could hear the sounds of horses neighing and bucking in their stables.

The wind started to roar, and the three of us reflexively lifted our hands up to protect our faces from flying debris. Loose garbage cans were blowing down the street, and the trees swayed wildly. I looked around for a funnel cloud because I was sure that we were getting hit by a tornado.

King Arthur stood resolute, barking like mad at the mouth of the canyon which had become completely engulfed in swirling dust. We could no longer see South Boulder Creek or even the great slabs of mountain that formed the walls of Eldorado Canyon.

The bright morning had gone dark, and the winds seemed to be blowing all of the dust and debris directly into the mouth of Eldorado Canyon. King Arthur’s growls and barks got louder, as if he were trying to drown out the sound of the whipping wind.

That’s when we saw what King had sensed the whole time. In the middle of the swirling cloud of dust that filled the opening of the canyon we could just barely make out a figure walking out of Eldorado Canyon.

The wind was whipping dust and dirt into our faces as the figure staggered through the swirling vortex. King Arthur was barking his head off, but he stayed with us, positioning himself exactly between the figure and Stumpy, myself, and Gabby Johnson. Whatever was coming, King Arthur was going to do his best to protect us from it.

The figure held his right hand away from his body, pointing it at the ground. He wasn’t holding anything. A thick vine wrapped around his arm and twisted around his entire body several times. As the figure stumbled out of the swirling wind, we could begin to see him more clearly.

He was a man, quite tall, but definitely only a man. He was wearing a suit, but it was filthy and torn, and his pants were nearly shredded below the knees. He didn’t so much walk as stumble. His right hand was tangled in the vine and he stretched it in front of him, as if to catch himself if he fell. We could now see that the vine was attached to something on the ground. It was leading him out of the vortex. There’d be a sharp jerk of the man’s right arm, and then he’d stumble to catch up with himself. In this way he was able to stagger out of the swirling wind.

As he pulled clear of the vortex, we could see that the other end of the vine was attached to a skunk! And a rabid skunk, by the looks of him. His fur was patchy, and the moment we could see the skunk, we could also smell his scent in the wind.

King Arthur continued to bark, and Gabby Johnson yelled over the sound of the wind, “It’s a bum!”

Stumpy grabbed the newspaper from my hand and pointed sharply at the front page. He looked back to the figure attached to the skunk and said, “That’s Mr. R. H. Peabody of the Amalgamated Mining Trust!”

And, sure enough, it was Mr. Peabody. Here in front of us, emerging from the center of a small tornado stood the richest man in Colorado, Wyoming, and probably a couple other states, too. He was filthy and tattered, and he was being led out of Eldorado Canyon by a skunk.

Soon the wind began to die down, and it seemed like the whole town was gathered around in a big circle with Mr. Peabody and the skunk in the center of it. King Arthur had stopped barking, and the wind stopped so quickly that a silence fell over the entire scene.

The silence was immediately pierced by Gabby Johnson pointing and screaming, “Skunk!”

Almost on cue, the skunk broke loose from the vines and shot Mr. Peabody directly in the chest with one final spray before scampering off into some bushes near South Boulder Creek. Mr. R. H. Peabody wobbled, but stayed upright. From the look and smell of him, that wasn’t the first skunk spray that he’d endured during his trek out of the canyon. Still, no one approached him.

Finally, we could hear him croak, “Some water… Ahh, the pool.” And he turned to stumble toward the Eldorado Springs pool. This startled the crowd -- the folks of Eldorado Springs were quite proud of their swimming pool. And there was no way they were going to let a man wash off his skunk spray in their pool, even if he was the richest man between here and California. This prompted a deputy carrying a blanket to approach him.

“Ah, Mr. R. H. Peabody, I presume,” the deputy said.

Peabody simply nodded in acknowledgement.

“Welcome to Eldorado Springs, Mr. Peabody,” the deputy said as he wrapped the blanket around the shoulders of the tattered man. “Let’s take you down by the creek here and start to get you cleaned up. I’ll have the conductor telegraph Denver to let them know we got you. There’s a heap of folks looking for you, you know.”

With the crisis averted and pool protected, the townsfolk began to disperse and murmur amongst themselves. Several were holding bandanas up in front of their noses because the stench was terrific. I found myself wishing that the vortex had left just a little breeze to move the stench of Mr. Peabody out of town, but there was no such luck. The sun was baking the mouth of Eldorado Canyon now, and the ripe smell of Mr. R. H. Peabody of the Amalgamated Mining Trust lingered throughout the town.

We took our leave of Gabby Johnson, which wasn’t difficult because she’d already scampered down to the creek edge to keep an eye on Mr. Peabody.

Stumpy, King, and I hiked back up the scrub oak on the ridge to take the mining tunnel back to Broomfield, but we couldn’t find the mine entrance anywhere.

“Where’s the tunnel entrance, King?” Stumpy asked the dog. And King just looked at him as if he didn’t comprehend a word that Stumpy was saying.

“Where’s the tunnel, boy?” I asked. King just tilted his head at me. He was back to acting like a normal dog instead of the experienced leader that Grandma had put in charge of our little gang of spies. 

Stumpy kept beating the scrub oaks back with a long stick, trying to find the opening. He figured that even if we couldn’t see it, it could still be there. Just like the opening in the wall of the tunnel that King Arthur had run through on the way here. But there was no such luck this time.

After a couple minutes, King Arthur got up and started trotting home. There was nothing Stumpy or I could do except follow King east into the rising sun toward Broomfield for what should be about a five hour hike, if we didn’t lollygag.

After about a mile on the trail, we could see Grandma’s gig on the road, and we all scrambled down and hopped in. King Arthur snuggled on top of Grandma’s feet, the way he always did. And Stumpy and I took turns telling the whole story, being sure not to leave out any minor detail or exaggerate anything beyond what actually happened. I don’t think I’d be able to overstate the stench that came off of Mr. Peabody. And this made Grandma laugh and laugh everytime we mentioned it.

“So you met old Gabby Johnson, did ya?” Grandma said smiling. “Oh, she’s a real pill.”

“She knew everything about Mr. Peabody’s disappearance, Grandma,” I said excitedly. “She had every newspaper, and she said she knows people who know things!”

“Ah, she doesn’t know spit!” Grandma cackled. “And good on you boys for keeping it that way. Lord knows what kind of tale she’ll spin about today’s incident. I can’t wait to hear how it’s related to President Harding’s death. Ha!” And with that Grandma belly-laughed and snapped the reins down on Maisey to increase our pace home.

# # #

In a basement room of the Colorado state capitol building in Denver, three men hunched over a series of unrolled United States Geological Survey maps of the land northwest of Eldorado Springs, Colorado. There was no light in the room except for a metal hanging light fixture that swung slightly on its cord directly above the table. The sway of the light caused a shimmering motion in the shadows the men cast on the walls. The room housed thousands of rolled up survey maps of the entire state of Colorado.

“There,” said Mr. R. H. Peabody of the Amalgamated Mining Trust, pointing to Eldorado Springs on the USGS map. He traced the map with his index finger through Eldorado Canyon and past Rattlesnake Gulch. He followed the thin blue line of South Boulder Creek up near Kentucky Gulch. Then he traced in a northwesterly direction past Winiger Ridge and into Forsythe Canyon, where he stopped and bent down very close to the map to examine every contour line and landmark. He closed his eyes for an uncomfortably long time, and then whispered, “What’s this place called?”

“That’s the southern end of Forsyth Canyon, Mr. Peabody,” said George Myers, the engineer for the state of Colorado. George Myers leaned in to get a better view of the topographic map. As he did so, he could smell the faint, yet distinctive scent of skunk emanating from Mr. Peabody. George Myers suppressed a grin as he thought to himself, “So the stories must be true. I can’t wait to tell Marge!”

But any amusement that Engineer Myers may have felt at that moment disappeared when, much to his horror, Mr. Peabody pulled a fountain pen from his shirt pocket and scribbled a line back and forth several times directly on the USGS map. He scrawled the line directly across South Boulder Creek between two peaks near Winiger Ridge.

“There.” Mr. R. H. Peabody of the Amalgamated Mining Trust grunted, still reeking of skunk from his journey through the valley of the Broomsquatch. “That’s where we’ll build the dam.”

Book II

Chapter Thirteen: October 9th, 2009

At 9 a.m. sharp, Nick Hastings pulled his City and County of Broomfield pickup truck into the southeast cloverleaf at Wadsworth and US-36. This was the job site, alright. A few people were already milling around, dodging prairie dog holes and informally inspecting the wrought iron fence and twin headstones that marked the grave. The low black fence still had a bit of red ribbon entwined in it from the Fourth of July decorations that had adorned the spot a few months earlier. A woman in a long winter coat was carefully removing the ribbons and tidying the grave -- the grave that Nick had been sent to exhume. Directly in front of him, a photographer had just exited his older model Subaru station wagon and was taking a couple wide shots of the activity before approaching the group.

The grave site, which sat in the center of the cloverleaf, was one of those blink-and-you’ll-miss-it kind of things that looked normal until you thought about it. What was a grave doing in the middle of an exit ramp from a highway?

This grave, of course, was the final resting place of none other than Shep the Turnpike Dog. The legend goes that Shep wandered onto the job site during construction of the Denver-Boulder Turnpike back in the early 1950s. And then he just stayed. The toll booths had to be manned twenty-four hours a day, and even the most hardened toll collector isn’t going to turn down canine companionship in the wee cold hours of the morning. Dogs make everything better, Nick thought. 

Old Shep died in 1964, and they buried him here in the middle of the cloverleaf. He got a wrought iron fence, two grave markers, and someone even anonymously decorated his grave on holidays. Now it was 45 years later, and the task fell to Nick Hastings to exhume the remains. The federal stimulus money had finally come through, and the old, wobbly bridge over the turnpike was going to be replaced before it fell on some unsuspecting commuters.

Nick’s job today was to move the fence and gravestones from the cloverleaf to the grounds of the Broomfield Depot Museum about a mile to the north. This suited Nick just fine. It was light duty, as far as he was concerned. But he didn’t much care for the next part, where he had to dig up the remains and hand them over to the old veterinarian to cremate them. 

Nick pulled on his work gloves and grabbed a shovel and toolbox from the back of his truck. By now a crowd of about a dozen people had assembled around the grave. The woman who had removed the ribbons from the fencing was now stooped low and pulling a few weeds from the gravesite itself. “In twenty minutes I’ll be digging that ground up,” Nick muttered, too far away for anyone to hear him. “But go for it, lady.”

It was unseasonably cold and misty this morning, and the assembled crowd were mostly wearing winter coats. On Nick’s second trip back from his work truck he saw a dark SUV pull slowly onto the shoulder from US-36. A middle-aged man hopped out of the driver’s side and retrieved a wheelchair from the back. He snapped the chair open and carefully helped an elderly man climb down from the rear passenger seat. The man pivoted slowly into the newly opened wheelchair. An elderly woman sat motionless in the passenger seat, intently watching the scene at the gravesite.

Nick made quick work of the fence. He had it disassembled and folded into the back of his pickup in about ten minutes. He dug up the gravestones and left them on the side of the grave for now. Then Nick looked up at the gaggle of people and asked, “Should I dig him up now, or do you want to say something first?”

“Go ahead and dig him up,” the woman who removed the ribbon said. “It’s a cold one today.”

“Is he...is he in a box, or a bag or somethin’?” Nick asked.

“That’s the funny thing,” the old vet piped in. “No one seems to remember. Just dig lightly after about a foot until you find something.”

The dry, hard-packed earth was tough at first, but Nick found what he was looking for about two feet down. His spade hit an old wooden crate and splintered a piece of wood from one of the cross supports. Nick cleared the top of the box and dug out the dirt a couple inches around each side. Then he got onto his knees, reached into the freshly dug hole and began to pry the box loose from the soil.

“Hold on! I need to document this for the archives,” a young woman, about Nick’s age, interrupted as she pulled a small digital camera from her coat pocket.

“Smile, Nick!” she called, as the flash popped and caught a picture of Nick turning his head awkwardly toward her with his mouth three-quarters open and his eyes closed.

“Oh, your eyes were closed. Let me take another!” she yelled.

Nick brushed the top of the box clean with his gloved hands, tilted himself toward the camera, and gave a warm, wide smile which instantly transformed him from a disaffected city worker into an active participant in the history of Broomfield.

“That’s more like it,” the woman said happily and she clicked the shutter, and there was another pop of the flash. She took a couple seconds to review the results and exclaimed, “That’s one for the archive!”

Nick nodded, still smiling, and returned his attention to the job of exhuming a dog buried on this spot about the same time that The Beatles played Red Rocks. 

Teresa Thompson was the woman with the camera. Everyone called her “Ray.” Nick went to school with her. They weren’t friends, but Nick liked her. She was always nice to him. A lot of those honor roll types never gave him the time of day. But Ray was on a group project with Nick in a history class freshman year about Sherman’s March to the Sea. They got an A, and Ray said “Hi” to Nick in the halls ever since.

After college, Ray came back to Broomfield to run the Depot Museum. She was always in the paper giving talks dressed up as the pioneer women of Broomfield and telling stories about the Grange Hall or the pickle factory. If it happened in Broomfield, Ray knew about it. And she could tell you the stories for hours. Truth be told, Nick thought, some of those stories were pretty cool. He especially liked the one about the “greatest horse in the world.” Some rich guy in Broomfield a hundred years ago bought a horse from France or Germany or somewhere. Nick forgot the details. But the guy calls this horse “the greatest horse in the world,” and people go nuts for it. They made postcards of the horse and everything. Folks a hundred years ago got pretty excited about the strangest things, Nick thought. Then he remembered that he was in the middle of a small crowd of people digging up an old dog on a cold rainy day. “People don’t change,” Nick thought. “Not that much, anyway.” And he turned his attention back to freeing the box from the earth.

“Mind he doesn’t nip you,” the old vet chuckled. “Old Shep was a rascal.”

Nick looked up from the hole, smiled at the old vet, and wiped some sweat from his brow. He noticed the older man in the wheelchair. The other man from the truck had pushed him about halfway up to the gravesite. They didn’t seem to be in any hurry, so Nick turned back to his task at hand. The elderly woman stayed behind in the car, still watching intently. No one in Nick’s group paid any attention to them.

As Nick worked, he noticed Ray quietly pulled her camera out of her jacket pocket, but she kept it low at her side so no one would notice. When a small gust of wind came up, Ray turned and secretly snapped a picture of the man in the wheelchair and his entourage. Then, just as deftly, she returned the camera to her pocket without anyone noticing.

Ray looked around to be sure that no one had seen her. That’s when she caught Nick’s eye and cracked a wry grin. She gave him a wink and turned to the woman who had cut the ribbons from the wrought iron fence. “Nancy, do you think our mystery person will continue to decorate Shep’s grave when he’s at the depot museum?”

“I should hope so,” the woman replied smiling. “It’s quite the tradition.”

After a couple tugs on the wooden crate, Nick managed to free it from the earth. Nick set the crate to the side of the hole and brushed cakes of hardened, clay-rich soil from the box. He looked up at the assembled group of dignitaries, awaiting his next instructions. And they just mostly looked back at him, unsure what to do next, themselves.

Ray said nothing, but she snapped another photo.

The old vet broke the silence, “Great! Would you mind just popping him in the back of my car, and I’ll take him from here?” he asked.

Nick carried the crate over to the vet’s station wagon and loaded Shep into the back. The veterinarian thanked Nick warmly, shook his hand, and climbed into his car. Turning back to the gravesite, Nick could see that the rest of the crowd had dispersed. Nick thought it was all a little anticlimactic, and that maybe there should have been more of a ceremony or at least some solemn words. 

Ray gave Nick a wave from about 30 yards away as she opened the door to her car. Nick waved back. She pulled out her camera and took a picture of Nick. Then she turned slightly and took another photo of the man in the wheelchair. After that, she climbed in her car and drove off.

By the time Nick returned from the vet’s station wagon, the pair from the SUV had finally managed to dodge the prairie dog holes and roll up to the gravesite. 

“Morning,” Nick said and nodded. “I’m afraid you missed the show. What there was of it, anyway.” Nick started to load a shovel full of dirt to fill in the hole. He saw Ray’s car drive off, but he could swear that she was craning her neck to see what was happening at the gravesite.

“Keep digging,” the old man in the wheelchair rasped at Nick. It wasn’t a request. It was a demand.

“I’m sorry, sir,” Nick replied. “But I’ve got to fill this hole in and get the rest of this stuff to the museum.”

“Keep digging!” the old man said again, his voice was stronger and clearer this time. He must have been a hundred years old. The skin on his face and hands was as thin as tissue paper and spotted with age. He looked so fragile. Nick thought that a strong wind might just blow him to dust.

“Please,” the middle-aged man pushing the wheelchair interjected. “My father’s traveled a long way. Can you humor him...er, us?”

“Why not?” Nick said, and he tossed the shovelful of dirt aside. “What am I going to find down here, treasure? If it’s treasure, I want my cut,” Nick joked. He dug his spade in the grave and removed a generous amount of earth.

“A foot,” the old man rasped impatiently. And Nick wasn’t sure if he was supposed to dig down another foot or if he was about to discover a human foot buried in the soil. Reflexively he checked the feet of both men to make sure that they were intact. Nick then glanced to the SUV where the old woman sat impassively in the passenger seat. She raised an oxygen mask to her face and drew in a deep breath, all the while never taking her eyes off of the scene unfolding in the middle of the clover leaf.

Nick dug down and soon something loose and metallic scraped against his shovel. Gold metal flashed in the dirt when he pulled back his spade, and for a second Nick thought that he actually had found a buried treasure. He reached into the hole and pulled out a handful of loose dirt and old, rusty Coors bottle caps.

Nick smiled and shook the dirt from the three bottle caps in his hand. “Is this what you’re looking for, old man?” And he showed him the Coors bottle caps.

“Hands.” The old man commanded. And Nick knew exactly what to do next. He dropped down to his knees and began to dig out dirt and bottle caps from the grave site. “Like a dog,” Nick thought.

Reverently, almost ceremoniously, Nick carefully placed all of the bottle caps into a small pile. After several handfuls, his hands scratched against a fabric covered in dark grease. It was so slick that Nick couldn’t get a good grip on it. So he dug around the whole object, maybe a foot in width, grabbed it with both hands, and was able to hoist the whole thing out of the ground. Bottle caps rattled back into the hole as he brushed the dirt and caps from the outside of the fabric.

Whatever this thing was, it was wrapped in several layers of greasy canvas. It was decayed and worm-eaten, but mostly whole. Nick unwrapped several layers of the greasy canvas until he found an old flour sack more or less intact. He could feel through the sack that it was an old, hardbound book. Maybe a Gutenberg Bible or some other valuable antique. Nick began to look for a way to open the sack, but it had been sewn tightly shut at the ends like a Christmas gift.

“No!” the old man said. “Don’t open it.” Nick began to hand the sack with the book to the middle aged man, and the old man refused. “No. It’s yours now. Call him. It’s time.” And at this the man began to cough and wretched forward violently. “Call him!” he shouted through his coughs.

“That’s it, Dad,” the middle-aged man said, “We’re getting you back into the warm car.” The middle-aged man quickly wheeled the coughing old man around and started towards their car. The old woman sat in the passenger seat impassively.

“But wait!” Nick yelled back. “What do I do with this? Who do you want me to call?”

“Call him!” The old man managed to yell one more time. And then he collapsed into a fit of coughing.

Nick stood at the grave, holding a heavy, old book wrapped in a flour sack, and carefully watched as the middle aged man swiftly loaded his father into the car. He soothed his coughing, and then quickly packed up the wheelchair.

All this time the old woman stared directly at Nick with the oxygen mask again held to her face. It wasn’t a menacing look, Nick thought. But he couldn’t tell what she wanted. The middle aged man put the SUV into gear and began to merge back into traffic. Loose gravel spun out from underneath the tires as the SUV accelerated quickly.

As they drove off, Nick saw the old woman pull the oxygen mask away from her face. And she was smiling.

After dropping the wrought iron fence and railing off a the Depot Museum for restoration, Nick Hastings was climbing into his truck when Teresa Thompson, or Ray to just about everyone in town, called to him from the front door of the depot. 

“Thanks for all your help today, Nick!” Ray called.

Nick smiled and gave Ray a wave in return.

“Oh, Nick,” Ray asked. “Do you have one more minute to help me with something?” She had exited the depot museum and was walking to a spot around the side where Nick had left a neat pile of the remnants of Shep’s gravesite. Nick climbed down from the truck and met Ray near the pile.

“Who was that man who came to the gravesite after everybody left?” Ray asked.

“I don’t know,” Nick answered honestly. “He didn’t say who he was.”

“Well, what did he want?” Ray asked.

“I…” Nick stammered. “I’m not really sure.” 

At this point Nick could have shared every detail of the encounter with Ray. He could have even said that he had something that feels like a Gutenberg Bible wrapped in fabric and a King Soopers bag full of ancient Coors bottle caps on the passenger side floor of his work truck. But something made him stop. He trusted Ray. He liked her, even. But he wasn’t ready to share his find. Not yet. At least not until he unwrapped the book. And, after all, the old man seemed to specifically want Nick to have whatever it was that he dug up under Shep. If it was of historical significance, Nick decided, he’d hand it over to Ray and the museum after examining it. But for all Nick knew it was a crazy old man’s old Sears catalogs wrapped up for safekeeping and hidden under a dog’s grave in a highway cloverleaf.

“What did he say to you?” Ray asked, sensing that she wasn’t getting the whole story. Ray always did have a nose for news.

“Again…” Nick paused, “Not much. I told him that he’d just missed all the action – if that’s what you could call it. And that we’d already found the dog. And that there wasn’t anything else to see but me filling up the hole.”

“And what did he say to that?” Ray asked, squinting her eyes a little bit and looking at Nick more than a little suspiciously.

“Nothing.” Nick replied. “I mean, he just started coughing something awful. And then his son turned him around and got him back into their car.”

“How did you know that man was his son? Did he tell you that?” Ray pounced.

“I guess I just assumed it,” Nick replied. “No, wait. He called him ‘Dad’ after he started coughing. That’s how I knew. Then they got in their car and drove off. It was all kind of strange.”

“Yes, I’ll bet it was,” Ray replied.

“I mean,” Nick smiled. “Not as strange as digging up a dog that’s been dead for 45 years and buried in a highway cloverleaf. You know.”

“Umm hmm,” Ray smiled. “I guess ‘strange’ is a relative term in Broomfield.”

“Well, you take care now, Ray,” Nick said and turned to leave. “Be sure to call me if you need any help moving Shep’s grave markers.”

“Oh, Nick,” Ray shouted after him. “You’ll be sure to let me know if you remember anything else that the old man said to you at the grave, won’t you?”

Nick smiled. “Absolutely, Ray. You’ll be the first to know.”

And Nick climbed into his truck and drove straight to his apartment where he quickly deposited the cloth covered book and the King Soopers bag full of bottle caps on his kitchen table. Then he headed back to work for the day.

#####

After work, Nick texted his sister that he was staying in tonight & he wouldn’t be meeting the gang at the bar.

His sister, Tracy, didn’t text back—she called. “What do you mean you’re not meeting us? Sam’s got a pitcher of Coors Banquet and a glass with your name on it. No one else will drink the stuff.” Nick could hear the jukebox and the Friday night crowd gathering.

“You’ll just have to manage without me,” Nick replied. “I’m a working man. And I’m tired.”

“Only crazy people stay home on Friday nights and watch the History Channel, Nick,” Tracy warned.

“But there’s a Civil War marathon…” 

“Spoiler alert,” Tracy said, “The North wins. Now get your butt over here and drink this beer so Sam doesn’t have to pour it back into the horse.”

“Maybe after Gettysburg,” Nick replied. “We’ll see how I’m feeling.”

“If you miss any more Fridays, Nick, I’m going to send you to see a doctor. Are you still coming over for dinner tomorrow?”

“Free food, heck yeah!” Nick said.

“O.K., Loser. You get your beauty rest. Sam will just have to settle for beating you at darts tomorrow.” Tracy snarked.

“See you tomorrow, Dork,” Nick answered lovingly.

Nick set his phone down and waited. If he didn’t get a call back in two or three minutes, he was in the clear.

He surveyed the bounty from Shep’s grave arrayed in front of him on the table. The great book, still bound in cloth, sat in front of him. But he first turned his attention to the bottle caps. He dumped the King Soopers bag onto the table in front of him. The caps were caked in dirt, rusted, and decaying. He grabbed a couple of the shinier ones and cleaned them off in his sink. And they were exactly what they looked like. Rusty, old bottle caps.

Nick decided it probably wasn’t worth cleaning up the rest. But he did wonder how many there were. He certainly didn’t get them all. But he retrieved every cap that he could find. The started making discrete piles of 10 caps. And he soon needed to clean off the his entire table to get them sorted into piles of 10 caps each. 

Total count: 362 bottle caps.

Nick wasn’t exactly sure what to do with this information, but he wrote it down on a notepad near his phone. Maybe the toll booth operators guzzled Coors in their spare time? Who could blame them? And, maybe they decided the best way to get rid of the evidence was to hide it under the dog buried in the middle of the cloverleaf. No one would ever think of looking there. But if then, where are the bottles?

After the bottlecap inventory, Nick swept them all back into the King Soopers bag and turned his attention to the book. He used an X-Acto knife to break the stitches of the worn fabric sewn around the book. It must have been hand-sewn, but it looked perfectly neat and professional. 

After carefully working one end of the cloth open, Nick was able to slide the book out with ease. It looked a thousand years old, and as well-preserved as the day it was buried, 45 years ago. It was bound in red leather, with lots of ornate shapes stamped and cut into the surface. The cover had no words. But there was an image in gold of an ape-man etched deep into the red leather. 

Nick opened the book and read the title page: “A Relic of the Benevolent Order of the Broomsquatch. Broomfield, Colorado” written with a flourish on the first page. The pages were well-handled. In the lower right corner there was a note in pencil which has been almost entirely erased. Nick had to hold the book up to the light to make out what had been written there. In an elementary school child’s scrawl the note had said, “Stumpy Was Here.”

On the second page there was a familiar map of the Front Range around Boulder. Like the calligraphy, it wasn’t expertly drawn. But someone had done it carefully. Nick could see some obvious landmarks such as the Flatirons, Boulder, and Eldorado Canyon.

There was considerably more detail in the area of map around Eldorado Canyon and along South Boulder Creek west of the Flatirons. Nick saw familiar names on the landmarks like Walker Ranch and Nineteen Gulch. But there were unfamiliar names, as well. Nick had hiked all around that area since he was a little kid, and he’d never heard of the Copeland Mine, for instance. 

The map was covered in different colored symbols, red asterisks, blue daggers, gold and green boxes. There was a key on the following pages. Red asterisks said “sighting.” Blue daggers said “encounter.” Gold boxes were “caps” and green boxes were “100,” whatever that meant. The symbols were all over the map, but they were heavily concentrated in Eldorado Canyon and along South Boulder Creek.

The rest of the book was filled with entries as if it was a diary or some kind of log book. Each entry started with a date, written formally, such as, “Wednesday the 18th of May in the Year of Our Lord Eighteen Hundred and Ninety Two.” But the diary entry itself was a nonsensical form of shorthand. Some entries as brief as “6 chickens & a mule,” “R.H.P. taken,” or “Pepys boy returned.” Another one said, “Tractor axle bent. Crawford grateful.” Each entry gave a location, only a few of which were recognizable to Nick. And the colored symbols were added to these entries, as well. The book was full of this nonsense.

Nick carefully read a few pages at the beginning and then skipped around reading random entries. They were all the same. They were all indecipherable.

Nick flipped to the end of the book. The pages were blank. He had to flip back about a quarter of the way in before he could find the last entry. It read “Sunday the 24th of December in the Year of Our Lord Nineteen Hundred and Fifty.” The entry was a single word: “Woof.” There was a blue dagger and a gold box. And that was it.

December 24th, 1950. That was fourteen years before the book was buried, Nick thought. Why did someone wait that long to bury the book? Why did they stop making entries? What changed on Christmas Eve 1950?

Nick had no answers, just questions. And he knew that he wasn’t going to get much further on his own. He decided to take the whole lot to Ray at the Depot Museum on Monday. He’d come clean and tell her the truth. He wanted to discover this himself before he told anyone else. And besides, Ray knew everything about Broomfield history. She’d probably know who Crawford was and why he was grateful that his tractor axle was bent. And she’d definitely know what the Copeland Mine was.

Nick carefully put the bottle caps back into the King Soopers bag. It was too late head out to see Tracy. And besides, he knew they would have kept that pitcher of Coors Banquet in the middle of the table getting warmer and warmer all night. And they’d just make him drink it if he showed up late. No thank you.

So Nick decided to turn in early. He thought he’d take a hike Saturday morning. And what better place than Walker Ranch. It had been a couple years since he’d hiked it last. And he wanted to see how well everything was recovering since the fire.

Nick pulled out his well-used topographic trail map and began to map his hike against the hand-drawn map in the Red Book. He’d go through Tom Davis Gulch. There were many symbols there on the Red Book map, especially red asterisks and blue daggers. 

Nick then began packing his gear and cleaning his water bottles for the hike when a thought struck him. He dropped his bottle in the sink and almost ran back to his kitchen table. He looked at the Red Book map position for the Copeland Mine. This area of the map had far more colored symbols than the rest. He noted the position of the mine relative to the bends in the creeks and the prominent ridge peaks. Then turned to his topographic trail map and triangulated the same position using the peaks and streams.

The Copeland Mine is at the bottom of Gross Reservoir.