“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…