The Case of the Deadly Desperados Read online

  Western Mysteries, Book One

  Caroline Lawrence

  G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS

  An Imprint of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS • A division of Penguin Young Readers Group.

  Published by The Penguin Group.

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10014, U.S.A.

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  Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England.

  Text copyright © 2011 by Roman Mysteries Limited.

  Illustrations copyright © 2011 by Richard Russell Lawrence.

  First published in Great Britain in 2011 by Orion Children’s Books, a division of the Orion Publishing Group Ltd.

  First American edition published in 2012 by G. P. Putnam’s Sons, a division of Penguin Young Readers Group, 345 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10014. G. P. Putnam’s Sons, Reg. U.S. Pat. & Tm. Off. The scanning, uploading and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  Published simultaneously in Canada. Printed in the United States of America.

  Design by Marikka Tamura.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Lawrence, Caroline.

  The case of the deadly desperados / Caroline Lawrence.

  p. cm.—(Western mysteries ; bk. 1) Summary: In 1862 Nevada Territory, after finding his foster parents murdered and scalped, twelve-year-old Pinky Pinkerton, son of a railroad detective and a Sioux Indian, inherits a valuable deed and must hide from dangerous Whittlin Walt and his gang of desperados. [1. Mystery and detective stories. 2. Disguise—Fiction. 3. Orphans—Fiction. 4. Racially mixed people—Fiction. 5. Nevada—History—19th century— Fiction.] I. Title. PZ7.L425Cas 2012 [Fic]—dc23 2011013305

  ISBN 978-1-101-56029-7

  To my friend Penny,

  who started me on this dusty trail when she gave me a copy of True Grit, by Charles Portis

  Contents

  Ledger Sheet 1

  Ledger Sheet 2

  Ledger Sheet 3

  Ledger Sheet 4

  Ledger Sheet 5

  Ledger Sheet 6

  Ledger Sheet 7

  Ledger Sheet 8

  Ledger Sheet 9

  Ledger Sheet 10

  Ledger Sheet 11

  Ledger Sheet 12

  Ledger Sheet 13

  Ledger Sheet 14

  Ledger Sheet 15

  Ledger Sheet 16

  Ledger Sheet 17

  Ledger Sheet 18

  Ledger Sheet 19

  Ledger Sheet 20

  Ledger Sheet 21

  Ledger Sheet 22

  Ledger Sheet 23

  Ledger Sheet 24

  Ledger Sheet 25

  Ledger Sheet 26

  Ledger Sheet 27

  Ledger Sheet 28

  Ledger Sheet 29

  Ledger Sheet 30

  Ledger Sheet 31

  Ledger Sheet 32

  Ledger Sheet 33

  Ledger Sheet 34

  Ledger Sheet 35

  Ledger Sheet 36

  Ledger Sheet 37

  Ledger Sheet 38

  Ledger Sheet 39

  Ledger Sheet 40

  Ledger Sheet 41

  Ledger Sheet 42

  Ledger Sheet 43

  Ledger Sheet 44

  Ledger Sheet 45

  Ledger Sheet 46

  Ledger Sheet 47

  Ledger Sheet 48

  Ledger Sheet 49

  Ledger Sheet 50

  Glossary

  Ledger Sheet 1

  MY NAME IS P.K. PINKERTON and before this day is over I will be dead.

  I am trapped down the deepest shaft of a Comstock silver mine with three desperados closing in on me.

  Until they find me, I have my pencil & these ledger sheets and a couple of candles. If I write small & fast, I might be able to write an account of how I came to be here. Then whoever finds my body will know the unhappy events that led to my demise.

  And they will also know who done it.

  This is what I would like my tombstone to say:

  BORN IN

  HARD LUCK,

  SEPTEMBER 26, 1850

  DIED IN

  VIRGINIA CITY,

  SEPTEMBER 28, 1862

  “YE ARE ALL ONE IN CHRIST JESUS,” GALATIANS 3:28

  R.I.P.

  My foster ma Evangeline used to say that when God gives you a Gift he always gives you a Thorn in your side to keep you humble.

  My Gift is that I am real smart about certain things.

  I can read & write and do any sum in my head. I can speak American & Lakota and also some Chinese & Spanish. I can shoot a gun & I can ride a pony with or without a saddle. I can track & shoot & skin any game and then cook it over a self-sparked fire. I know how to cure a headache with a handful of weeds.

  I can hear a baby quail in the sagebrush or a mouse in the pantry.

  I can tell what a horse has been eating just by the smell of his manure.

  I can see every leaf on a cottonwood tree.

  But here is my Problem: I cannot tell if a person’s smile is genuine or false. I can only spot three emotions: happiness, fear & anger. And sometimes I even mix those up.

  Also, sometimes I do not recognize someone I have met before. If they have grown a beard or their hair is different then I get confused.

  That is my Thorn: people confound me.

  And now my Thorn has got me killed.

  Ledger Sheet 2

  IT ALL STARTED THE DAY before yesterday, on September 26th. I came home from school & walked into our one-room cabin to the smell of scalded milk & the sight of things thrown everywhere. I closed the door behind me & stepped forward. It was only then that I saw my foster parents lying on the floor in a pool of blood.

  They had both been scalped & they appeared to be dead.

  I ran to Ma first. She was holding the big iron skillet and it had some hair & blood on it, so I guessed she had put up a fight.

  As I stood there looking down, her eyelids fluttered and she opened her eyes and said, “Pinky?” Pinky was her nickname for me. It is short for Pinkerton.

  I crouched down beside her. �
��I’m here, Ma.”

  She said, “Is Emmet alive?”

  I looked over at Pa. He was not breathing. His eyes were closed & he had a peaceful smile on his face. He also had a hatchet buried in his chest. I swallowed hard.

  “No, Ma,” I said.

  “He was a good man,” she said. “I will see him walking the Streets of Glory before too long.”

  “Don’t talk that way, Ma. I will fetch Doc Finley from Dayton.”

  “No.” Her voice was faint. “There is no time. I’m dying. Your medicine bag. The one your other ma gave you.”

  “I do not think my medicine bag can help you now, Ma.”

  “No. I mean . . . that’s what they were after.” She gave a kind of sigh and I thought she had gone. But then her eyes opened & she gripped my hand tight. “It holds your Destiny. Pinky, do you remember my special hiding place?”

  “Loose floorboard behind the stove?”

  She nodded. “You’re smart, Pinky. You’ll figure out what to do. Take that medicine bag and get out fast. Before they come back.”

  I did not understand what she meant at first. Then I did. “The Indians who did this might come back?” I said.

  “They weren’t Indians.” Her voice was real faint now & her skin was a terrible white. She said, “One of them had blue eyes. And he smelled like Bay Rum Hair Tonic. Indians do not wear Hair Tonic.”

  I sniffed the air. Ma Evangeline was right. Above the smell of blood, scalded milk & fresh-baked cake, I could detect the sweet scent of cloves: Bay Rum Hair Tonic. I also picked up a tang of sweaty armpits.

  The men who did this had left a few minutes ago & could return any moment. My instinct was to run, but I did not want to leave my dying ma.

  “Go, Pinky,” she said. “Take your medicine bag and get out of here before they come back.”

  I stood up & looked down at her. She would be dead in a minute. I clenched my fists.

  “I will find those men,” I said. “And I will avenge you, Ma.”

  “No,” she said. And then she said, “Pinky?”

  I could barely hear her, so I squatted down beside her again. “Yes, Ma?”

  “Promise me that you will never take another life. Not even those who killed me. You must forgive. That is what our Lord teaches.”

  “I can’t promise that, Ma,” I said. My vision was blurry. I blinked & it got clearer.

  “It is my dying wish,” she said. “You have to.”

  “Then I promise,” I said.

  She closed her eyes & whispered, “And promise you will not gamble nor drink hard liquor.”

  “I promise.”

  But this time she did not hear me.

  I stood & looked down at the bodies of my foster ma & pa. They lay next to each other and the pool of mingled blood was still spreading.

  I went over to the stove, carefully picking my way around the things that had been thrown down. A tin canister of flour had been emptied onto the floor. I made sure I stepped around it. Flour would make me leave footprints as sure as blood.

  I took the burning milk off the hot plate. Then I knelt down beside the stove & felt for the floorboard with the little knothole. I got my fingertip in there & pulled it up. I found my medicine bag & took it out. I hung it around my neck. I also found a gold coin worth twenty dollars that Ma kept for emergencies. She would not need it now, so I took that, too. I put it in my medicine bag with the other things. Then I put the board back in its place.

  Outside I heard men speaking in hushed tones. One of the porch stairs creaked.

  I knew it was them. The killers were coming back.

  I looked around the house. There were not a lot of places in that one-room cabin that I could hide.

  It seemed to me there was only one.

  Ledger Sheet 3

  OVER AGAINST THE FAR WALL of the cabin stood Ma Evangeline’s tall pine dresser. Its shelves were about half full of books and half full of plates.

  I scrambled up that dresser as fast as a squirrel with its tail on fire. When I got near the top I half turned and leapt onto one of the two big rafters of the house. I am small for my age, but I am agile.

  I was up on the rafter before the door handle even began to turn, but in my haste I had set some of the china trembling. As the front door eased open I noticed a big blue & white plate rolling along the top of the dresser.

  It slowed, hesitated, and then stopped right at the edge.

  I breathed a sigh of relief, then froze as I heard a man’s whiny voice say, “Is it safe?”

  “Yeah, it’s safe,” said a deeper voice. “They’s still dead. Come on, you big scaredy-cat.”

  “I ain’t a scaredy-cat,” said the one with the whiny voice. “That woman brained me real good with the skillet. It hurt.”

  I peeped over the edge of the big rafter and saw three men below me. They sounded like white men but they looked like Indians. Then I looked closer and saw they were white men dressed up as Indians. They were wearing canvas pantaloons, not buckskins, and their moccasins were clumsy things made of buffalo hide. They had war paint on their faces & turkey feathers in their greasy hair. One of the men smelled strongly of Bay Rum Hair Tonic. From up above I could not be sure which one was wearing the Hair Tonic but I guessed it was the man with three turkey feathers. He was leading the others across the room.

  I held on to the roof beam & tried a trick my Indian ma had once told me about. It is called The Bush Trick. If you hide behind a small bush and imagine that you are that bush, they say you become invisible. I did The Beam Trick. I pretended I was part of that beam. I concentrated real hard & prayed my Indian ma had been right.

  “I told you they wouldn’t of hid it in the outhouse,” I heard the leader say. “And now they’re dead. We won’t get no more out of them.” He went over to my pa, looked down at him & said, “Nothin can happen more beautiful than death.” Then he laughed & took the hatchet by the handle & tugged. It made a sucking noise as it came out.

  “Let’s get out of here, Walt,” said Whiny Voice. “I don’t feel so good.”

  “Yeah, Walt,” said the third man. He was tall & had a raspy voice. “Whatever you’re looking for, it ain’t here.”

  “Dang,” Walt said. (Only he used the bad word that starts with d and ends with mn.) He spat some tobacco-tinted saliva onto the floor. “It’s gotta be here. I just ain’t figured out where.” There was a pause and in that moment of silence I thought they must surely hear my heart thumping. Then Walt said, “Well lookee here.”

  I squirmed forward a little & looked down and saw what I had not noticed before. On the table was a cake with chocolate frosting & red licorice strings on top that spelled out: HAPPY 12th BIRTHDAY PINKY. It was a layer cake: my favorite. It must have cost Ma Evangeline a fortune to get chocolate out here in the Nevada desert.

  “They got a kid?” said Whiny Voice. From up here I could see the bloody patch on his head from where Ma had hit him with the skillet.

  “Course they got a kid, you fool,” said Walt. “Kid’s real ma was the one who had what we are looking for.”

  “Maybe the kid has it,” said Raspy Voice.

  “Pinky a girl’s name or a boy’s?” said Whiny Voice.

  “Boy’s name,” said Raspy. “I knew a Pinky in Hangtown. Pinky O’Malley. He was one of them Albino types. White hair and pink eyes.”

  “What about Pinky’s Saloon in Esmeralda?” said Whiny. “That’s owned by a lady. A French lady, I think.”

  Walt had taken out a fearsome Bowie Knife and was cutting himself a chaw from a plug of tobacco. He said, “Shut your traps, you two. I am trying to think.” He ate the tobacco right off that blade & chomped for a while. Then he said, “Is there a school in this flea-bitten excuse for a town?”

  “Dayton,” said Raspy. “
I think there’s a schoolhouse down in Dayton. But I saw some kids over by the church when we rode up earlier.”

  “Let’s check it out,” said Walt. “We gotta find that kid.” He started towards the door & I was about to breathe a sigh of relief. Then he stopped & turned slowly back to the stove. “Wait a minute,” he said. “I reckon someone has been here since we kilt Mr. & Mrs. Preacher.”

  “What do you mean, Walt?” Whiny Voice touched the bloody place on his head & brought his hand away fast.

  “Something here is different,” said Walt. “Somebody has taken the milk off the heat. And I’ll bet they are still here.”

  Ledger Sheet 4

  AS WALT LOOKED AROUND for the person who had taken the milk off the stove, I closed my eyes & held my breath. I pretended to be part of the rafter. The blood was leaping in my veins.

  I heard Whiny Voice say, “I think that might of been me, Walt.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yeah,” Whiny Voice said. He sounded nervous. “Ain’t nobody here, Walt. Let’s skedaddle. Townspeople will lynch us if they find us dressed like Indians with their dead scalped preacher & his wife.”

  Walt spat again. “Flyspeck town like this, I reckon we outnumber the townspeople. And we gotta find that kid. Let’s try the church.”

  I heard their footsteps going out but I did not hear the door close. After a while I opened my eyes. After a while longer I wormed my way along the rafter to the wall & used the window frame to climb down from my hiding place.

  Walt was right. Temperance is a flyspeck of a town here in Nevada Territory. It is on scrubland at the foot of the Pine Nut Mountains, between Palmyra & Dayton. Apart from our cabin & a few one-room wooden frame houses, there is a dry goods store, a livery stable & a small church with a half-built steeple. There is no saloon & no place to buy whiskey, so the name Temperance is fitting.

  The Rev. Emmet Jones, my foster father, founded this town after a day of prayer & fasting. He said he would build a town where there was nothing to tempt a person to sin. He said it would make his job easier. That shows you how little he knew about human nature. He is probably being lowered into his coffin as I write this, with a hatchet-shaped hole in his chest.