The Misadventured Summer of Tumbleweed Thompson

“Well, Eugene Appleton, I was just speaking with your Ma about you, and now here you are. Isn’t that a splendid coincidence? Come on in!” She stepped aside, allowing me in.

“Here you go, ma’am,” I said, handing her the pouch.

“Why, thank you,” she said, shooing me forward into the parlor and down into an armchair. “It was a good thing I was cleaning this morning.” The house was still chilly, and I kept my coat on as the widow scurried about, straightening tables and chairs, swiping the dust from end tables, and removing stray teacups, then vanished into the kitchen.

From where I sat, the house seemed a lot like the widow herself—clean and presentable, but in desperate need of some freshening up. Stuffing poked through one of several holes in my chair, and I poked it back inside with a finger. Yup, as Ma liked to say, the widow had done her best, but life was winning.

“I’m a little short on sarsaparilla,” she called from the kitchen. “Would some cocoa do, along with your ginger snaps, of course?”

“Sure!” I called back. I wandered out into the front hall. Then, I froze.

Standing in the hallway was the very same dresser I had helped Wendell move out onto the porch that morning, the one he was having delivered. As I surveyed the other downstairs rooms, there were other pieces, like the dresser, which looked brand new, mixed in with the older items, like my leaky chair.

“Where’d you go?” the widow called from the parlor. I dashed back into the room, finding my seat in a hurry and stuffing my hands into my coat pockets for warmth. As I did, I felt my hands brush cold metal. I pulled my hand out and found the locket Charlotte had given me the night before.

Without warning, the widow’s tray fell with a crash. “Where did you get that locket?” she asked, her eyes wide.

“It’s nothing. I mean, we just found it up on Mosquito Ridge the other night.”

“Mosquito Ridge,” she repeated. “May I…may I see it?”

I pulled the locket out and placed it in her hand. She ran a thumb gently over the glass covering the photograph.

“What is it?” I asked. “Do you know her?”

“You might say that,” the widow said. “That woman is me.”

If I was the dramatic type, I would have gasped. The woman in the locket—so glamorous and full of life—looked so unlike the tired, gray-haired widow before me. Then, I remembered the initials on the back in silver script— “MS.” How could I have missed it?

“Marjorie Springfield,” I said.

“That’s right,” she whispered. “That locket belonged to my Rubicon. I haven’t seen it in years. Lost it somewhere along the way.”

Still clutching the locket, Mrs. Springfield sat down across from me. “It was a gift for our first wedding anniversary. That was back during our halcyon days, you could say.” She sighed. “I believe I told you how he was the finest sharpshooter in the Army of the Cumberland.”

“You did,” I said.

“Well, there’s a bit more to the story.”

“Does it have to do with Mosquito Ridge?”

“Part of it does,” she said. Her eyes were wet with tears. “Toward the end of the war, his lungs got real bad, something to do with gunpowder and coal dust. I never really understood it all. In every letter he sent, he would tell me how hard it was getting for him to do his job. He tried to get a medical discharge, but the Army wasn’t having it. They needed him, and the conflict was getting thicker by the day. Every time he’d ask, they’d say yes, then postpone the date. Finally, he realized, they weren’t going to let him out until the war ended. Back at home in Iowa, I was getting so lonely. I could just feel myself slipping away, day by day.”

Her voice quivered, and she set her saucer on the table.

“Well, the war finally ended in sixty-five, and he came home. But he was far from the Rubicon I knew before he left. He couldn’t shake that sickness, and he couldn’t find steady work on account of it. At some point, we decided to strike out West to find a new opportunity. So we settled down here in Rattlesnake Junction.”

“Right in this house,” I said, looking around the parlor.

“Actually, we got into town and Rubicon got some work logging. His lungs were doing better then, and the money was steady for a year or so. He’d been talking the whole trip about building a cabin for us. So, once things were stable, that’s what he did. Looking back, it darn near took every last ounce of starch out of him. But we moved up to Kingman Hill around seventy or so.”

“Kingman Hill?” I asked.

“Folks call it Mosquito Ridge these days.”

“Mosquito Ridge?” I said. “You lived up on Mosquito Ridge. There’s a cabin up there?”

“Sure is. A pretty little spot. We were right smack in the woods, but you take the path out the back door about a quarter-mile, you’d find yourself out on the loveliest hilltop in all of Colorado. That’s where we lived,” she said.

“How come you don’t live there anymore?” I asked.

“I can’t go back,” she said. “The place is haunted.”

“Haunted?” I shivered.

“In a manner of speaking. After the cabin was built, the logging work went bust, and Rubicon was back where he’d started— looking for work and in no condition for hard labor anymore. He tried raising some cattle up there on the hill. But there was this band of rustlers who came through a couple of times and cleaned us out. Rubicon was able to scare them off with some traps, even shot at them a couple of times. Finally, one night, we were lying in bed, and he said to me, ‘Marjorie, I’ve been thinking. If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em. What do you think about that?’

“Turns out he was thinking about throwing his lot in with those rustlers. Only I didn’t know that then. He’d just slip out of the house in the morning, be gone for a few days, come back with a new dress or two for me, or a new rifle for him, and a few dozen parcels of beef and bacon. When I asked him, he said he’d done some work for some friends of his and not to worry about it. I didn’t know what to make of that. I asked him to promise me he was going to be safe. But he didn’t tell me much.

“Nearly a year of this went by, and one night, there was a pounding on our door. Rubicon got up to answer it. I sat there in bed, just listening to the whole conversation. There were three men, and they accused Rubicon of keeping money for himself. They said they were going to find it if they had to tear his whole cabin apart. But he said to them, ‘Over my cold, dead body you will.’”

She paused again, her fingers pulling at the apron in her lap. “I remember everything about that night. It was the last time I laid eyes on my Rubicon.”

“The last time?”

“When I woke up the next morning, he was gone. He had come back to bed after the rustlers—or whoever they were— came by, but he must have slipped out again in the wee hours of the morning. He’d taken our horse and one trunk of his. I went everywhere looking for him, but it was like he had just vanished into the air. That was four years ago, and I still remember the feel of his warmth against me in the bed before he slipped out that night. The best I can figure, the bad business he had gotten into with those rustlers followed him out into the woods, and…” She shivered again.

“After awhile, I left the cabin and moved down into town. I haven’t been back up to Kingman Hill since.” She pulled a handkerchief from her pocket and blew her nose. Then, she looked up at me. “He carried this locket everywhere. How’d you find it up there?”

“We turned over some soil digging a little hole,” I said, feeling my heart begin to pound faster. Wendell was always saying to make your own coincidences. What if I had stumbled upon one right here in Widow Springfield’s parlor?

“Mrs. Springfield,” I said, “My friend Tumbleweed and I are up on Mosquito Ridge all the time. Would you mind if we did some exploring up there, tried to find your cabin, maybe anything else about your husband?”

“I doubt you’ll find anything,” she said. “It’s got to be mighty overgrown up there by now.”

“We can try, can’t we?” I asked. “We were just up there last night.”

A dim gleam came into her eyes. “Well, thank you,” she said. “I’d appreciate that.”

“You’re welcome, ma’am,” I said. “I guess I’ll see you later.”

She showed me to the door, and I jogged across town, knowing exactly where I was heading. But I didn’t have to reach the Grubstake Hotel to find my objective. Underneath the elm on the town green, wearing a faded flannel and denims, was Tumbleweed. He stuffed a wrinkled paperback into his front pocket.

“There you are,” he said. “What’s new?”

“Is that Dead-Eye Dan?” I asked. “Are you—” He nudged the book deeper into his pocket. “Oh, yeah, something like that. Where you been?”

“You’re not going to believe what I found out about Mosquito Ridge,” I said. We made our way across town to the Scoggins house, and I filled him in on my conversation with the widow.

“Well, come on then,” he said. “Let’s get Charlotte and go.”

“You’re interested now? And what about your Ma and Pa?”

“Things ain’t going so well on that front, Gene. After Pa filled Ma in on the various means of employment we’ve had the past few months, she’s more convinced than ever that she’s got to join back up with Coyote Pete. I hate to admit it, Gene, but our time in Rattlesnake Junction might be coming rapidly to an end.”

I felt my heart sink at his words. I couldn’t even picture the town without Tumbleweed. But now wasn’t the time to get into that. “What changed your mind about the widow’s story?”

“The widow? Nah. I’m ten times more interested in seeing a ghost.”

“You said it yourself, Gene. This Rubicon fella just wandered out into the woods one day and was never heard from again. Plus, he died as a soul in torment, far from the arms of his lady. That all adds up to the perfect recipe for a ghost, if you ask me. Add that to the fact that he spent some time up on Mosquito Ridge, there’s no doubt. I’m new here, but I’ve heard some mighty juicy stories about the old graveyard up there. Face it, Gene: the spirit of Rubicon Springfield is haunting Mosquito Ridge, and I aim to find it.”

I shivered. It was true—folks were always talking about strange goings-on up on Mosquito Ridge. But witches and ghosts were no matter to Dead-Eye Dan. He’d once wrestled the ghost of Klondike Charlie over an old fishing spot in Wisconsin. So they weren’t going to matter to me, either. “Then you’ll help us do some hunting for more clues about Rubicon?” I asked.

“Sure,” he said. “Tonight’s the night—full moon rising over the Rockies, cloudy with the threat of thunderstorms. It’s the perfect witch’s brew of weather.” He grinned, and I could see Tumbleweed’s wild imagination spiraling toward new, unexplored territory. Trying to rein him in was fruitless. Only a trip to Mosquito Ridge in the dead of night was going to lay this to rest.