The Misadventured Summer of Tumbleweed Thompson

Acrow cawed from atop its church steeple perch as I lurked in the shadows, waiting for eleven o’clock. The full moon cast a chalk-white light over the outlines of the buildings around the green. From up the street the distant tinkle of music could be heard from the saloon, but all was still and quiet around me. The crow cawed again, and a breeze whipped past, prickling the hairs on the back of my neck. I shivered. The night was getting colder by the minute.

Incredibly, Ma and Pa didn’t blink an eye when I told them my plan of poking around Mosquito Ridge with Tumbleweed in the wee hours of the morning. I had strategically begun by filling them in on the Widow Springfield’s sad story, from locket to lung disease. I had also left out Charlotte. When I finished, Pa had even dug out his old Bowie knife, which was safely in a sheath on my hip. Maybe things were starting to change in the Appleton household.

A few ticks before eleven, I caught sight of two shadows approaching across the green. The taller one raised his hand in greeting.

“You ready, Eugene?” Tumbleweed hissed.

“As ready as I’ll ever be,” I said.

“That’s the spirit,” he said. “Still waiting to see if you’ve got the right stuff when push comes to shove.”

I felt the prick of his words, remembering the nervous tingle which had plagued me the entirety of our night with the Clean Shave Gang on their keelboat, when Tumbleweed had first laid down his challenge. It seemed most of the brave things I had done in his company so far had been by accident, or out of desperation. When would that change?

Charlotte stepped out, and I was suddenly at a loss for words. She wore a dark green cloak with the hood framing her face. The light of the moon falling across her face was quite a distraction from the job at hand. “Let’s go,” she said. “I just know there are more clues out there.”

“If we don’t get moving, we’ll never get to the ridge by midnight,” Tumbleweed said, breaking into a jog.

I jogged after him. “What’s so special about midnight?” I asked.

“You’re kidding, right? It’s always midnight when the ghosts come out. They’re waiting for the witching hour to go forth upon the earth spreading panic and discord.”

I was pretty sure Tumbleweed had lifted those phrases out of one of my Dead-Eye Dan novels, but I let it go. We headed up North Street and plunged into the woods, weaving through dense forest, over hills, and down steep gullies. When I felt the smooth rock bottom of the gully underfoot, I knew we had reached the base of Kingman Hill. Charlotte appeared beside me, eyes gleaming in the moonlight. “Sorry for roping you into this,” I said.

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“Well, Tumbleweed’s here for the ghost, and I made a promise to the widow. Why are you out this late?”

“Isn’t it obvious, Eugene?” she asked, smiling.

I shook my head. It wasn’t. It really wasn’t.

She grinned and socked me on the shoulder. “You’ll figure it out eventually. Look—Tumbleweed’s gone ahead. He must have spotted something.” She raced away, leaving me to ponder her words for a moment before I scrambled up the stony slope after her. I followed the orange glow of Tumbleweed’s lantern until I reached him standing beside Charlotte. They were staring at a spot in the woods where the trees thinned.

“What is it?” I asked.

“Looks like a cabin,” Tumbleweed said.

“No way!” I cried. Let’s go.”

“Right-o,” Tumbleweed said. “So what’s the plan?”

“If that’s definitely her cabin, then our best bet for finding a clue about Rubicon Springfield—”

“Or his ghost,” Tumbleweed interrupted.

“Right,” I said. “The best place to search is the cabin.”

“Then here you go,” Tumbleweed said, handing me the lantern. “Lead on.”

I slipped into the woods, hearing twigs snap behind me as Tumbleweed and Charlotte followed. Soon, I reached the near side of the cabin and crept toward the front window. It looked deserted. Heart pounding, I moved to the front door and opened it a crack. It creaked wider, then slammed shut in a gust of wind. I stumbled backward, and a hand steadied me.

“Easy, Gene.” Tumbleweed plucked the lantern from my hand and slipped through the front door. I hesitated. “What are you waiting for? Nobody’s home.”

“We can’t just break in,” Charlotte said.

“It ain’t breaking in if nobody lives here.” Tumbleweed said.

I had to agree. I took a deep breath and followed Tumbleweed inside. But I was wrong. There were two cots stuffed into the main room, with a bedroom visible beyond. To our right sat a small table and a cookstove in the corner. A pot sat on the stove, and there was a nearly full washbasin between the two cots. A bundle of clothes lay on the floor next to the nearest cot. Flannel shirts and dungaree pants were visible at the top of the heap.

“See. Someone does live here,” Charlotte said, edging backward toward the door. “I don’t know about this.”

“It looked deserted from outside,” I said. “Maybe we should just check around out there.”

“Nonsense,” Tumbleweed said. “If you two leave everything exactly as you find it, no one will ever know we were here. Besides, we’re not looking to take anything.”

“Where are you headed?” I asked him.

Tumbleweed slung his knapsack over his shoulder. “While you explore this fine cabin, I’ll be headed back outside going a-wandering in search of the ghost. Thirty minutes should be plenty of time. What I know of ghosts, it’ll know we’re here before we know about it.”

“Right, with its spooky supernatural senses, is that it?”

“Scoff if you will, but I heard some strange noises as we passed through the haunted woods back there,” Tumbleweed said.

“Maybe it was a lost raccoon.” Charlotte giggled, and Tumbleweed frowned at us both. “Thirty minutes,” I said.

“Thirty minutes,” Tumbleweed agreed.

Tumbleweed got a second lantern going and set it on the table. Then, he raised his lantern and strode toward the door, slamming it behind him.

I glanced at Charlotte.

“Well,” she said. “Here we are.”

“You take the bedroom. I’ll search out here,” I said. I could feel my pulse start to race. This late at night, whoever was living here was bound to be returning soon. It was a miracle we hadn’t stumbled upon them already. “And be quick.”

“Definitely.” Charlotte disappeared through into the bedroom, and I set to work moving the cots and shoving aside bundles of clothes. No clues presented themselves through the mess. I moved into the kitchen area, but the signs of life contained in the half-full pot on the stove and the jars and cans in the opened cabinets began to convince me of a painful truth: this search was looking pretty futile. According to the widow, she hadn’t lived up here in nearly five years. And someone else had moved in. What had I been expecting to find?

I stretched my back, then slumped into a chair. I’d been so caught up in my dime novel adventure stories, I hadn’t stopped to think of how crazy this whole trip was. We weren’t going to find anything, and I was going to have to tell Widow Springfield.

“What a dead end,” I called to Charlotte. “There’s nothing here.” She didn’t reply. “I feel pretty low for getting the Widow’s hopes up like that,” I continued. She didn’t answer. “Charlotte?” I called into the bedroom.

“Um, Eugene?” Charlotte called back. “Can you bring that lantern in here?”

I carried the lantern into the bedroom. The bed was shoved against the far wall, and Charlotte knelt in the middle of the room.

“Why’d you move the bed?” I asked.

Charlotte pressed a finger to her lips and pointed to a spot in front of me. “Two steps toward me,” she said.

She said nothing, only pointed again. I took two halting steps forward.

“Did you hear that?” she asked. “Go back.”

I stepped backward toward the spot on the floor she had pointed to. The board beneath my feet creaked. My eyes widened. “No way,” I said. “You think…”

“And look. The boards are a different color. Maybe even a different kind of wood.”

I knelt and rapped on the boards. “Why does that matter?”

“It might mean the old boards were pulled up, and new boards put down.”

“How do you know that?”

Charlotte raised the lantern and grinned at me. “You’re not the only one who reads Dead-Eye Dan, you know.” She held the lantern above the floor. “And look! This one feels different when I press on it. I think it’s loose. Do you have anything to pry it up with?”

I thought for a moment, then went for my rucksack. In a moment, I had pulled out the small shovel we had used the night before. “Maybe this will work,” I said. I knelt beside Charlotte, dug the end of the shovel into the crack between two floorboards, and pried backward. With a crack, the nails gave way, and the board lifted completely up at one end. I yanked on the nails, hearing another satisfying crack, and pulled the board loose. The board was still undamaged. “Perfect,” I said. “We can just pound it back when we’re done.”

“Can you see anything?”

I shook my head. “I’ll keep working. Help me pry this one up.” I went to work on the second board. When it came loose, I handed it to Charlotte.

“I see something!” she said immediately. “It looks like—”

“A trunk!” I set down the shovel and reached down into the hole in the floor. On the bare dirt below the cabin floor sat a brass-handled metal traveling trunk, like the one I had used to tote my belongings out to Rattlesnake Junction when we’d moved here.

“You think we can lift it?” Charlotte asked.

“Let’s see.” I crouched and heaved the chest up from the hole, resting it on the lip of the floorboards. Charlotte grabbed the other end, and we dragged it out onto the bedroom floor between us. I tossed the shovel onto the cot and caught my breath. Charlotte sat cross-legged beside me on the floor.

“Look at how beat-up it is. Do you think it’s his?” Charlotte whispered, echoing my own thoughts. I shook my head.