Sammy Keyes and the Curse of Moustache Mary (14 page)

After that, we tiptoed into the house, but Dot's parents were wide awake, sitting next to each other on the couch.
Anneke's head was in one lap and Beppie's head was in the other, and both girls were sound asleep. Mrs. DeVries whispers, “Glad you girls are back.”

Dot says, “Sorry it took so long.”

“That's all right—New Year's only comes once a year.” She scoots forward to the edge of the couch and cradles Anneke in her arms. “Thanks so much for having Stan and Troy call. You'll have to tell us more about the fire in the morning.”

Dot looks at the clock and asks, “Aren't you staying up?”

Mr. DeVries shakes his head. “We watched the ball drop on TV.”

“But that's in a different time zone…!”

He picks up Beppie. “It's all relative,
ja?
” He smiles and says, “Pleasant dreams.”

Dot's mom gives her a kiss on the forehead. “Your father put a flashlight out there for each of you, but you're still welcome to sleep inside if you'd like. It's getting pretty cold, so maybe long johns are in order?”

The minute they're gone, Dot whispers, “Anyone else want some
oliebollen?
I'm starved!”

Well, I was, too. We all were. So we sat around the table eating powdered-sugar grenades, talking first about Pioneer Village and Taylor's party, and then about Mary's cabin and what we were going to do the next day about the missing gas can. And when every last crumb was gone and we were all talked out, Dot looks up at the cuckoo clock on the wall and says, “It's almost midnight, should I let him out?”

Holly asks, “Let who out?”

“Cuckoo.”

Now this is no shoebox cuckoo clock. It's as massive as a moose with antlers to match. And it seemed that a clock like that would bark or growl or
roar,
so I said, “Sure!”

Dot jumps up and pries down a little metal lever, then stands back. “Hope it doesn't wake up Mom and Dad!”

We stood there, watching the big hand tick toward the little hand, and when they were both pointing straight up, out pops the bird crying, “Cuckoo!” twelve times.

It
was
loud—really loud. Not quite a roar, but close. And when the bird went back in for the last time, Dot pried up the lever quick as can be and we all busted up.

Now you may think it's not much of a celebration, eating fried grenades and watching a wooden bird roar, but it was the best New Year's I'd ever had. I was with my friends, and we were happy just to be together talking and cuckooing in the New Year. And when I thought about Heather and Tenille and all the people at the Briggses' house, imagining what they were doing right then, I was really glad I wasn't there.

We hung around a little longer, then Dot passed out long johns and we brushed our teeth and went to bed. And I know I
should've
been tired, but I wasn't. I was wired. And long after Dot and Holly and Marissa had fallen asleep, I was still lying there in the dark, thinking about everything that had happened. About the fire and the gas can, and what I was going to say to Officer Borsch in the morning. About Lucinda and Penny, and Kevin and Dallas. About the Murdocks with their zitty butler and
their steamy tempers. And Casey. My brain wouldn't stop coming back to Casey. And every time it did, my stupid cheek would tingle. Right where he'd touched it.

Now, I'd much rather think about police and pigs and pioneer people than some guy, so when my brain just wouldn't behave itself, I decided to give it something else to do.

I dug Moustache Mary's journal out of my stuff, scrunched inside the sleeping bag so my head was covered, and clicked on the flashlight.

At first, it was way too bright, but after rustling around for a bit I got comfortable, and before you know it, I was on the high plains with Mary heading west.

And really, it was the most amazing thing I'd ever read. Some of the entries were really short. Like:

But in others she wrote about the people she was traveling with—the emigrants—and her hopes and fears for the “fertile and earthly paradise” she'd heard missionaries and mountaineers talk about. And it didn't take long for the name Murdock to appear.

Lucinda had told the story just the way Mary had written it, except reading the story in Mary's own hand sent
shivers through me. It's like I could hear her voice; could practically see Lewis Murdock rip the moustache off her lip and hear him cry, “Impostor!”; could feel her tiredness after walking twenty miles beside the wagon train, and her worry that Ezekiel was “worn to the bone.”

There were words and phrases that, at first, I didn't understand, or didn't recognize right away because of the spelling but, after a few pages, started making sense. Like:

I knew grouse was a bird, but I didn't realize that chips were dried buffalo poop until I was pages and pages into the journal, and then I still couldn't quite believe it. I mean, burning poop to heat your soup doesn't sound too appetizing to me.

And Mary talked about people dying like it was something that happened every day. In one entry she says,

So I kept trying to figure out what a “rut” was. And then a few pages later I realized that it was the path left by wagon wheels. I had to stop and think about that a minute. I mean, what a choice—being dug up and scalped or having your grave run over again and again by wagon wheels.

Mary did mention the gold. Several times. Sometimes
she called it “the coins,” sometimes “the gold,” and once she called it “our family treasure.” And she thought that the Murdocks “were envious over it” because they had seen “the weight of the satchel” when she'd used a piece to trade for supplies at a post in Fort Hall. After that she kept it “secreted from those scoundrels” and felt it best that even Ezekiel didn't know where she'd stashed it.

So there
was
gold. And sometime after I read about supplies being scarce and Mary being “sorry for having to shoot” Lewis Murdock for dipping into her barrel of flour, I started wondering if it was the flour he was after, or if maybe, just maybe, he was searching for her gold.

I read the whole journal, cover to cover. And on the last page was the riddle Dallas had mentioned. It was all by itself, and in handwriting that was still Mary's, but not as smooth and flowing. Like it had been added later, when she was much older. I kept re-reading it, trying to make sense of it:

The next thing I know, Dot's flipping back my sleeping bag saying, “Sammy…Hey, Sammy…Are you going to sleep all day? Breakfast is on the table.”

“Wh…what?”

She sees my flashlight and says, “Have you had that thing on all night?” Then she sees the diary. “You were
reading
in there?”

The last thing I felt like doing was getting up. But after I grunted and pulled the bag back over my head, Dot says, “You were going to call Officer Borsch, remember? First thing in the morning?”

That was true. And part of me was mad at Dot for saying it because she
knew
it would get me out of bed. I flipped the cover off and moaned, “You're a brat.”

She laughs, “I just don't want you to miss out. Mom made
appelflappen
.”

“
Appelflappen?
Let me guess…that's some kind of flying Dutch apple?”

“Ha, ha. C'mon, they're great. They're like apple pancakes, only round like a ball, and you eat them with jam. You can have them with syrup if you want, we've got syrup…or just powdered sugar…or jam, syrup,
and
sugar…or even—”

“I'm coming, all right? I'm coming.” I raked my hair back and flipped it through a rubberband, then reached for my clothes.

“Oh, don't worry about that—you look fine.”

Now the long johns Dot had lent me weren't ones I'd have picked out for myself. I didn't mind so much that they were old and tattered and missing buttons. And underwear-white is pretty standard when it comes to long johns, so it wasn't
that
. It was the swooshing red hearts that went from head to toe that looked ridiculous. On me, anyway.

And during the night I had been glad to wear swooshyhearted underwear. They'd kept me nice and toasty. But they weren't exactly the kind of thing I'd want to
socialize
in.

I said, “It'll only take a minute…”

She grabs me by the arm and yanks. “Good grief, Sammy. My brothers are over at Marko's, my parents are in their robes…everyone's waiting!”

So I shuffle into the house with my high-tops dangling laces, double-checking to make sure all those swooshy hearts are fastened in places where they might be trying to further embarrass me.

When we get to the dining room, sure enough, everyone's waiting with a fork in one hand and a knife in the other, looking like they're going to start pounding the table for food. Especially Anneke and Beppie.

Mr. DeVries sees me and says, “At last!” and the minute Dot and I slide into our chairs he proclaims,
“Smakelijk eten,”
and everyone digs in.

Marissa says through a mouthful, “How come you were so zonked?”

Dot answers for me. “She was up all night reading that diary.”

Holly asks, “Really? Was it any good?”

All of a sudden I didn't feel tired anymore. “It's the most amazing thing I've ever read. It's almost spooky.”

“What do you mean, spooky?” Marissa asks. “Cause of the ghost?”

“No. Because it feels so real. It's like going back in a time machine or something. I mean, Lucinda told us how
Mary passed herself off as a man, and about the trouble she had with the Murdocks, but she didn't talk about the
trip
. It was treacherous! And the farther they got from Missouri, the worse it got. They didn't ride in the wagons, they walked
next
to them.”

Dot asks, “Why?”

“They didn't want to wear out their pack animals. In one stretch they went days without water, and when they finally came to some, it tasted so bad that they couldn't get the livestock to drink it. And since the animals were dehydrated, they made coffee out of it to disguise the flavor so the animals would drink it.”

Dot's mom wrinkles up her forehead. “They wouldn't drink the water, but they'd drink
coffee?
That must've been some pretty foul water.”