Blood and bones. What a combination. I was getting ready to pass out. I bent over at the waist to get my blood flowing back to my brain and found myself counting to ten, out loud. I used to do that when I was a little kid to distract myself from my many cuts and scrapes.
“One … two … three …”
But Early corrected me. “The ones have disappeared.”
“Four … five … six …”
“There’s only been one five in the last one hundred digits.”
“Seven … eight … nine …”
He looked at the body in its shroud. “That’s not Fisher, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
“Ten.” I stood upright, still feeling a little wobbly but not falling over.
“Of course it’s not Fisher. But who is it?”
“Take a closer look,” said Early.
“You do it.”
“You do it.”
This time I wasn’t going to give in. Besides, Early already seemed to know the answer.
“Early, who is it?”
“It’s Martin Johannsen.”
“What? It can’t be. He disappeared over fifty years ago.”
“Look what’s pinned on his jacket.”
I didn’t want to look. But I had to. Early had looked already, and he’d survived it.
I reached out my hand and pulled down Early’s red jacket, just far enough to reveal a blue one. There, pinned to its breast pocket, was a Civil War medal. And there was a bullet hole ripped through his jacket, just below the medal. A piece of paper stuck out of the pocket. It was a receipt. 1894 Winchester Rifle—$18.00.
Early drew the jacket back up over Martin Johannsen and smoothed the wrinkles out as carefully as if he were tucking the dead boy in for a good night’s sleep.
“Who would have done this to him?” I asked. “Shot him, I mean, and then left him here all laid out?”
“It was an accident.”
That’s the way it was with Early. So sure about everything. No maybes. No guessing. No speculation.
“Okay, I’ll bite. How do you know it was an accident? Maybe young Martin here walked in on somebody’s wrongdoing. Maybe there was a band of hooligans dealing in whiskey or gambling, and they couldn’t risk Martin running off and giving away their hideout. So they did him in. Or maybe Martin got in the middle of some kind of brawl, and two ne’er-do-wells decided they’d rather shoot him than each other.”
Early didn’t answer.
I crossed my arms over my chest, feeling a sense of satisfaction at having poked a few holes in Early’s assessment of what had happened to poor Martin Johannsen. Taking his silence as a rare acknowledgment of defeat, I decided to be a good sport and let it go.
“Well, there’s nothing we can do for him now,” I said.
“His mother is waiting for him. We have to take him home.”
“That’s a nice thought, Early, but I don’t know if we’re exactly the right people to be moving his bones.”
“Who else is going to do it?”
Now it was my turn to be a few words short of an answer. Poor Martin Johannsen had lain here for more than fifty years, and we were the ones to find him. Maybe that did leave us with some sort of responsibility to him.
“Okay, but we can’t just sling him over our shoulders and carry him out of here. Let’s take the Civil War medal. It must belong to Martin’s father, and we can give it to Mrs. Johannsen to prove that we found her son. Then somebody else can come back for his … remains.”
Early carefully removed the medal from Martin’s jacket pocket. He looked at me as if sizing me up, then reached a decision.
“You wear it, Jackie.” He reached over to pin it on me.
I took a step back and held up my hand. “Just put it in your pocket.”
“But this is a medal for bravery. It doesn’t belong in a pocket.”
“Then you wear it.” The medal belonged to someone else. Wearing it would feel like an honor that was unearned. And unwanted.
“I’ve already got Fisher’s dog tags. They’re important. You need something important too.” Before I knew it, Early had the medal pinned on my jacket, and that was that.
“All right. Now let’s get moving before …”
“Before what?”
“I don’t know.” I felt uneasy. “Before Martin here jumps up and wants his medal back.” Early and I began making our way back through the tunnels and caves, toward the waterfall. But something was working its way through the series of cogs and wheels that turned in my own brain. Something was missing.
“What’s the matter?” asked Early. “You don’t really think Martin is going to want his medal back, do you?”
It was in that moment that I realized the reason for my uneasiness. It wasn’t that I’d stood next to a dead body—bones jutting out from pant legs and jacket sleeves. It wasn’t that we were in a series of tomblike caves beneath a massive waterfall. Strangely, neither of these was the cause of my unrest.
“No, I don’t think he wants his medal back. But I think he probably would like to have his gun back. His brand-new 1894 Winchester short-barrel carbine. And I know who has it. The catalog said it was seventeen dollars and fifty cents, and an extra fifty cents for engraving. Martin’s receipt shows he paid eighteen dollars, so he must have had his initials engraved on it. Those initials would have been engraved into the wooden stock of the gun—where someone could trace them with their fingers. I recall someone running his fingers over the stock of his gun. Someone we had an unpleasant encounter with at the Bear Knuckle Inn. I wasn’t paying much attention to it at the time, but I remembered seeing letters engraved on the stock of that someone’s gun.”
Just then there was the familiar sound of a rifle lever being cranked, and it echoed throughout the very cavern we were standing in. I stood facing the waterfall, its spray glistening on Martin’s medal, until Early tugged on my sleeve.
“Jackie, Pirate MacScott is here.”
“I know,” I said, turning around to find myself looking down the barrel of a gun. “That’s not your gun,” I said. “His initials are engraved right on it. M.J.—Martin Johannsen.”
MacScott spoke, just above a whisper. “So you think you’ve got it all figured out, do you?”
“I know enough to know that you’re holding Martin Johannsen’s rifle. You must be the boy Mrs. Johannsen said had come by to show off his new gun. She saw him with it the day Martin went missing. She said the boy’s name was Archibald.” MacScott flinched a little at hearing his given name spoken so freely. “What I don’t know is why you shot him.”
Archibald MacScott’s face flushed, and he looked as if he’d been struck with the paddle of a schoolmaster.
“He trifled with me,” MacScott said quietly.
“Trifled.” It was Early who answered. “That means ‘to treat someone like he’s not important.’ ”
“He was out coon hunting with his shiny new rifle,” said MacScott. “Acting so fine and fancy. I come along and wanted to see that gun. Just feel it in my hands. Yes, I’d gotten a gun, too. I bought it secondhand from a traveling salesman.” MacScott ran his hand over the smooth, polished wood of Martin’s gun handle, still keeping it pointed at the two of us. “But Martin’s was fine. I challenged him to a bet. My gun for his. A little target practice. He said he had a piece of paper with a bull’s-eye printed right on it. The Winchester Company sent it along with his new gun. So we tacked it up to a big sycamore tree and took aim.
“He took his shot, and I took mine. His hit the bull’s-eye. Mine went right of the mark, hitting only the tree.”
MacScott breathed deeply, caught up in his own story. “ ‘No harm done,’ he says to me. ‘You keep your gun, and I’ll settle for bragging rights.’ Then he tears off that bull’s-eye and says he’s got to get back home, that his mother will be waiting supper on him. Just like that, and he’s off. Like my gun’s not even worth taking. And I could hear him already, spreading it around to everyone that Archibald MacScott could barely hit a hundred-year-old sycamore tree. He’d probably be waving that bull’s-eye to everyone who’d take a look.”
MacScott held the Winchester to his eye. “So I took up my gun again. I was just going to whiz one past him, you see. I shot once. ‘You get back here and take my gun,’ I called after him. ‘I never agreed to bragging rights. You got no call to change our bet.’ ”
MacScott’s breath grew ragged and his voice gravelly. “He didn’t answer. ‘What’s the matter?’ I said. ‘Just ’cause you got a fancy new Winchester, my gun’s not good enough for you?’ I walked in his direction and came across the bull’s-eye first. He’d wadded it up in a ball and tossed it aside like it was nothing but a game. I walked some more.
“He was lying still when I come up on him. I’d shot him right through.”