Doubtful Canon by Johnny D. Boggs Read Free Book Online

Southern Pacific, where we’ll board the train and ride to Stein’s. Y’all want to join me, y’all come here right afore that time. And don’t tarry ’cause we gots to catch that westbound. But I wants all three of you. I ain’t one to leave no young ’un behind and have him, or her, spill my story and have ever’ high-grader and bushwhacker between Tombstone and Mesilla chasin’ my gold. Y’all savvy that?”
    Our heads bobbed.
    “It’s a right smart of money I’ve offered to share,” the stranger continued. “I been generous, as be my nature. But if a one of you tells anybody, even the nearest priest, I’ll figger you done betrayed me, and I slits the throats of those who try to cheat Whitey Grey.”
    With that, he stood. “Ten tonight. All of you, or none of you.”
    He moved with surprisingly quickness through the Lady Macbeth’s entrance, turned the corner, and vanished.
    Ian Spencer Henry rose, peeked around the corner, and, with a shrug, turned to me. “I figure we’d give Jasmine two extra cents,” he said.
    “What?” I asked.
    “If we go. Instead of one of us getting only sixty-six cents, I figured you and I would give up a penny. Sixteen hundred and sixty-six dollars and sixty-six cents for you and me, Jack, but Jasmine gets sixty-eight cents. I did that in my head, too.”
    “I’m not sure any of us will get any money.” Rising slowly, I tested the ankle Ian Spencer Henry had kicked.
    “You don’t believe his story?” Jasmine leaned forward, gathering the remnants and trash from the albino’s meal.
    “I have some investigating to do,” I explained and started to leave the mine.
    “But I want to go!” Jasmine cried out. “Don’t stop us.”
    “Yeah,” Ian Spencer Henry said. “You’ll ruin everything, Jack. Get our throats cut or something. That ghostly man is right. Sixteen hundred dollars, that’s more money than we’ll ever see around here.”
    I whirled back toward my friends. “Why does he want three kids with him?” That question had troubled me since hearing the albino’s proposition.
    “Because,” my two comrades sang out in unison.
    “Because why?”
    “Because…is all.” Ian Spencer Henry stared at his feet. Arithmetic problems he could solve with ease, but this proved a different type of equation.
    “Likely, he thinks he can cheat us,” Jasmine said after a moment’s reflection. “And for some reason, he needs us.”
    “Nobody needs a twelve-year-old,” I said, and thought of my father. Plagued by doubt. That kept proving to be my undoing, the way I saw things. Earlier, I had been so mesmerized by the stranger’s story, I would have done anything to believe him, would have gone with him in an instant, but now he was gone, and with it had departed my resolve to follow him. Perhaps some form of sanity, or reason, had rooted itself in me.
    “You’re a ’fraidy cat,” Ian Spencer Henry taunted.
    “Yeah,” Jasmine agreed, both of them sounding like the children they were. The children we were.
    I let out a long sigh, peered around the corner to make sure Whitey Grey had indeed gone, and shook my head. “No, I’m not. I want to go more than any of you, but I’m not going into that desert blind. I just think things through is all. You know that, the both of you. You want to get left behind in Doubtful Cañon? You want to die of thirst? Killed by bandits? And have you thought about how we can explain our disappearance? We can’t just walk out of here with that man.” I jabbed a finger at Ian Spencer Henry’s chest. “Your pa will come looking for you!”
    He snorted and spat in contempt. “My pa still thinks I’m attending the subscription school, Jack. He don’t know nothing except rocks and figures.”
    “Doesn’t know anything,” I corrected, ever the teacher.
    “And my ma doesn’t care a fip for me. She’s too busy.” Jasmine put both hands on her hips, glaring, daring.
    “And your pa….” Ian Spencer Henry stopped, and