Aunt Dimity Goes West Read online

  The eager-puppy look in his eyes was irresistible. I stuffed the fax into my carry-on bag and decided to go with the flow.

  “I’m sure I won’t,” I said reassuringly. “And, please, call me Lori.”

  “Annelise will do for me,” Annelise put in. “Sciaparelli is a bit of a mouthful for everyday use.”

  Rob tugged on Toby’s trouser leg, and Toby squatted down to look him in the eye.

  “We know a pony named Toby,” Rob informed him importantly. “Do you know any ponies?”

  “Are you a cowboy?” Will asked, cutting to the chase. My sons were not known for their reticence.

  “Not exactly,” said Toby, “but your father told Mr. Auerbach that you like cowboys, so I’ve brought an essential piece of cowboy equipment for each of you.” He reached into his day pack and brought forth a pair of bandanas, one red and one blue. “Which one of you is Will?”

  “I am,” said Will, stepping forward.

  Toby promptly knotted the red bandana around Will’s neck and the blue one around Rob’s, thus effectively distinguishing one twin from the other. I gave him full marks for cleverness.

  “Would you call a bandana equipment?” Annelise inquired.

  “Absolutely,” Toby replied, standing tall. “Pull a bandana over your nose and you’ll breathe easier during a dust storm. Tie a damp bandana around your forehead on a hot day and you’ll avoid sunstroke. If a rattlesnake strikes, a bandana makes a good tourniquet.”

  “Useful things, bandanas,” Annelise agreed.

  The boys were gazing up at Toby as if he held the keys to a kingdom of thrilling adventures, but I stared at him, aghast. What kind of vacation included dust storms, heat stroke, and deadly snakes in its itinerary? It sounded as though Bill had sent us on a survival course instead of a jolly family holiday.

  “Are you all right, Lori?” Toby asked, noticing my expression.

  I let out an embarrassingly high-pitched giggle, for which I immediately apologized.

  “Sorry,” I said. “Too much caffeine.”

  “You should avoid caffeine while you’re here, for the first few days at least,” Toby advised. He delved into the main compartment of his day pack and handed a bottle of water to each of us. “Water’s your best bet. It’ll help you adjust to the altitude as well as the dry air. There’s lots more in the van, so drink up. And by the way,” he added, straightening, “local time is seven forty-seven P.M., and yes, it’s still Tuesday.” The corners of his eyes crinkled charmingly as he grinned. “It’s easy to lose track of time after crossing so many time zones.”

  “Your boots are all dirty,” Will commented, peering interestedly at Toby’s hiking boots.

  “It’s pretty muddy up in Bluebird,” Toby explained. “It snowed two days ago, and we’re still waiting for the last few drifts to finish melting.”

  “Snow?” I said, horrified. “In June?”

  “We had snow in July a few years ago,” Toby said cheerfully.

  “But we’re not dressed for snow,” I protested. “And we didn’t pack our winter coats.”

  “Yes, we did,” said Annelise. “They’re in the brown suitcase. Bill thought we might need them.”

  “Bill knew about the snow?” I exclaimed, rounding on her.

  Toby quickly intervened. “I’m sure Mr. Auerbach told your husband to pack clothes for all seasons, Lori. Mountain weather is pretty changeable. It’s best to be prepared for everything.”

  I silently added frostbite to my lengthening list of holiday hazards.

  Toby hoisted the day pack to his shoulders and reached for my carry-on bag.

  “I can manage, thanks,” I said, backing away a step. Aunt Dimity’s journal and Reginald were in my bag. I wouldn’t let Annelise carry it, much less a total stranger.

  “I guess we’re all set, then.” Toby looked down at the twins. “Are you buckaroos ready to head for the hills?”

  Will and Rob nodded eagerly and took hold of Toby’s outstretched hands, hoping, no doubt, that he’d take them straight to the nearest rattlesnakes. They seemed mildly disappointed when he informed them that we were going instead to the parking garage. I signaled for the skycap to follow, and we set off, with the three boys in the lead.

  It felt good to stretch my legs after the ten-hour flight, but the parking garage was a long way away from the Arrivals barrier, and I was soon struggling to keep up with the trio ahead of me. The twins seemed fine, if a bit pinker than usual, but Annelise and I were red-faced and gasping before Toby noticed that we were lagging behind.

  “Sorry,” he said, slowing his pace. “It’s the thin air. You’ll get used to it.”

  I took a swig from my water bottle and plodded on, thinking darkly of Mr. Barlow’s cousin and wondering how long it would take to be airlifted from Bluebird to Kansas.

  We arrived, eventually, at a sleek, streamlined black van liberally spattered with reddish mud. It held three rows of comfortable seats, and it was equipped with four-wheel drive, heavy-duty suspension, a high clearance chassis, and many other features I associated with bad roads.

  “Great,” I muttered hoarsely to Annelise. “There may be no air to breathe, but at least there are plenty of potholes to look forward to.”

  Annelise simply nodded. She was probably conserving oxygen.

  While Toby and the skycap piled our luggage into the van’s rear compartment, Annelise and I strapped the twins firmly into the middle row’s booster seats. Once we were satisfied that the boys wouldn’t hit the roof if we encountered uneven pavement, Annelise climbed in to sit behind them, and I hoisted myself into the front passenger seat.

  Toby finished loading the luggage and tipped the skycap, but instead of climbing into the driver’s seat, he opened the van’s side door and passed a wicker hamper to Annelise.

  “Sandwiches,” he explained. “In case you’re hungry. We’ve got a two-hour drive ahead of us.”

  “Did you make the sandwiches?” Annelise asked, peering into the hamper.

  “Nope,” said Toby. “I picked them up in Bluebird this afternoon, from Caroline’s Cafe. Carrie Vyne makes the best sandwiches in the world. She packed some of her chocolate chip cookies, too. She makes great cookies.”

  Toby closed the side door, circled the van, and slid behind the steering wheel. After a brief glance at the boys, he turned the key in the ignition and called out, “Wagons, ho!”

  “Yee-ha!” they yodeled.

  Their father would have been proud of them.

  The interstate highway out of Denver was in reassuringly good condition, but the scenery left much to be desired. Although the mountains beckoned, our immediate surroundings consisted of great swathes of boring tract houses separated by forlorn-looking patches of prairie. Since there was nothing much to look at, we concentrated on the sandwiches and the cookies. They were delicious.

  “Do you know any cowboys?” Will asked hopefully, when we’d emptied the hamper.

  “I sure do,” said Toby. “They live one valley over from Bluebird, at the Brockman Ranch. Mr. Auerbach’s arranged for you two to ride there while you’re here.”

  “Will there be cows?” asked Rob.

  “Not as many as there were in the old days,” Toby said, with a reminiscent sigh. “I remember when the boys drove fifty thousand head of cattle from South Dakota all the way to Texas. It was rough going in those days. Cowpokes had to face all sorts of obstacles: floods, grass fires, storms so vicious they’d snatch the teeth right out of your mouth—”

  “Were there Indians?” Rob interrupted, enthralled.

  “Whole tribes of them,” Toby confirmed. “Most of them were friendly, but even the bad ones weren’t as bad as the rustlers.”

  “There were rustlers?” Will asked, wide-eyed.

  Toby snorted. “More than you could count, all armed to the teeth and meaner than a bear with a blistered paw. I remember one time…”

  I gave Toby an amused, sidelong glance as he went on to describe a hair-raising battle
with a gang of desperadoes. I was no expert on American history, but I was pretty sure that the great cattle drives had ended in the late nineteenth century, when ranchers began transporting livestock by rail. If Toby could remember those days, he was remarkably well preserved, but I suspected that he was simply introducing the boys to the fine western tradition of telling tall tales.

  “How high is Bluebird?” I asked, when the twins had fallen into a bedazzled silence.

  “About eight thousand feet,” Toby replied.

  “Eight thousand feet,” I said weakly. The caffeine had definitely worn off. “How long will it take us to get used to living at eight thousand feet?”

  “No more than a few days,” he assured me. “It’s normal to feel a little lightheaded at first, but if you feel a headache coming on—a serious headache, that is, as if someone were driving a chisel into your skull—let me know right away. It could be a sign of altitude sickness, and that’s no laughing matter.”

  I closed my eyes and decided that it would be much better for my peace of mind if I refrained from asking any more questions. When I opened them again, I was swaying slightly from side to side and squinting in the glare of oncoming headlights.

  The broad interstate and the wide open spaces had vanished, replaced by a two-lane highway that wound halfway up the wall of a twisting, serpentine canyon. In the dim light of the dying day, I could see a whitewater stream foaming below us, while above us pine trees appeared to cling by their root tips to whatever soil they could find in the rocky terrain.

  The road seemed to be made up entirely of blind curves bordered intermittently by bent and dented guardrails. As cars, campers, and trucks hurtled toward us out of nowhere, it became bloodcurdlingly clear to me that my husband had been both wise and farsighted to hire a local driver for us. Had I been foolish enough to take the wheel, I would have sent the van crashing into the canyon wall or plummeting into the rushing stream before we’d rounded the first bend.

  I must have flinched, because Toby noticed that I was awake.

  “Enjoy your nap?” he asked softly. He jutted his chin toward the backseats. “The others have dozed off, too.”

  “I wish I were still asleep,” I confessed, tightening my seat belt. “I enjoyed the drive more when I was unconscious.”

  “It takes getting used to,” Toby conceded, “but we’re almost there, and you wouldn’t want to miss this next part.”

  He’d barely finished speaking when the canyon opened out onto a scene of such startling beauty that I caught my breath. We’d entered a long valley surrounded by high mountain ranges. A black lake filled the valley floor, reflecting the handful of stars that had appeared in the darkening sky. The lights of a town twinkled at the lake’s western tip, like birthday candles set in black velvet, surmounted by the serried silhouettes of peaks backlit by the setting sun.

  “Welcome to the Vulgamore Valley,” said Toby. “Bluebird’s just ahead. Nice, isn’t it?”

  “It’s gorgeous,” I said softly. “Absolutely gorgeous. I didn’t expect a lake.”

  “Technically, it’s a reservoir,” said Toby. “But we call it Lake Matula, in honor of Annabelle Matula, the first woman to settle in the Vulgamore Valley.”

  “Are there fish?” asked a sleepy voice behind us.

  “Lots of them,” Toby replied. “And you’ll find fishing poles at the cabin.”

  “Good,” murmured Will. “I like fishing.”

  “Me, too,” Rob chimed in, though he sounded even more drowsy than his brother.

  When I next looked over my shoulder, they were both nodding in their booster seats, fast asleep. It had been a long day for my little guys.

  The two-lane highway followed Lake Matula’s northern shore, but trees grew right down to the edge of its southern shore. Search as I might, I could discover no glimmer of light in the forest, no sign of habitation anywhere but in the cluster of buildings to the west. It looked as though every human being in the Vulgamore Valley lived in Bluebird. Where, I wondered, was the cabin?

  The posted speed limit fell from fifty to twenty when we reached Bluebird, at the far end of Lake Matula. The town had looked tiny from a distance, but it was at least three times larger than Finch. I could tell at a glance that it differed from Finch in many other ways as well. The golden limestone used to build Finch’s houses had come from one quarry, so the village possessed a pleasing homogeneity that attracted world-class artists to its cobbled streets.

  The same could not be said of Bluebird, which seemed to pride itself on the helter-skelter individuality of its dwellings. We drove past tiny Victorian cottages, stark cinderblock huts, ramshackle wooden houses, and at least one geodesic dome. It was too dark to pass judgment on the church, and I had only the briefest glimpse of the business district, but the gas station was a brightly lit eyesore flanked by heaps of dirty snow.

  Toby turned left at the gas station onto a side street that became a dirt road at the edge of town. The stars vanished from view as we entered the dense, pitch-black forest bordering Lake Matula’s southern shore. Toby followed the dirt road for about fifty yards, then slowed the van to a crawl and turned onto an even narrower dirt road that zigged and zagged upward.

  “Lots of deer in these woods,” he explained. “I wouldn’t want to hit one on your first night here.”

  “Or any other night,” I said, and peered anxiously ahead, hoping that our bouncing, juddering headlights would discourage all woodland creatures from crossing the road.

  After what seemed an eternity, we reached a level clearing in the forest. Toby promptly shut off the engine and doused the headlights.

  “Wait here,” he said. “I’ll be back in a minute.”

  I waited nervously while he disappeared into the gloom, wondering if bears knew how to open car doors; then I shrank back, blinking, as a blinding blaze of light drove away the darkness.

  There, in the clearing, illuminated by a constellation of floodlights, stood Danny Auerbach’s log cabin.

  It wasn’t a shack.

  Five

  Danny’s cabin was unlike any building I’d ever seen. It sprawled across the clearing and climbed up the hillside like the roots of a gigantic tree, bending itself around boulders, bridging small gulleys, and encircling saplings.

  In some places the cabin was one story tall; in others it rose to three, but each level bristled with balconies, decks, and porches. There seemed to be hundreds of sparkling windows, and they came in all shapes and sizes: portholes, stars, octagons, massive sheets of plate glass, tiny panes of leaded glass. At least six stone chimneys, three weathervanes, and a flagless flagpole rose from the irregular roofline. The largest chimney belonged to the cabin’s central feature: a soaring A-frame structure, with a front wall made almost entirely of glass, that extended into the clearing like the prow of a ship.

  “Wow,” I said faintly.

  “Pretty cool, huh?” said Toby.

  “It’s…it’s wonderful,” I managed, wishing I could think of a bigger word. “It’s magical, incredible, better than I—” I broke off, pricked by a sudden suspicion, and turned toward Toby so quickly that the seat belt snapped taut across my chest. “Does a crazy neighbor live nearby? With a shotgun?”

  Toby eyed me in puzzlement. “The Auerbachs have owned the south side of the valley for five generations, Lori. They’ve never allowed anyone else to build here. Our nearest neighbor is Dick Major, and he lives at the edge of town, where the dirt road begins.” Toby pointed to the east end of the cabin. “My apartment’s behind the garage, and I don’t own a shotgun.”

  “Just checking,” I said, and settled back, relieved to know that two of my biggest worries had failed to materialize. The cabin wasn’t a dilapidated shanty, and I wouldn’t have to deal with a crazy neighbor. So far, so good, I thought. Now we’ll see about the drains.

  Toby restarted the engine, drove past the central A-frame, and parked the van in front of a short, broad staircase that led to an imposing wooden door
incised with images of soaring eagles.

  “Welcome to the Aerie,” he said. “I’ll get the luggage while you and Annelise bring the boys in. We can take them straight to bed, if you like.”

  I turned to look at the twins, who were still fast asleep. “Bed is where they need to be, but I can’t lift either one of them. I hurt my shoulder a few weeks ago and it’s still a little weak, so would you mind…?”

  “No problem,” Toby said and stepped out into the crisp night air.

  An hour later, the boys were in bed, Annelise was enjoying a well-earned bubble bath in a bathroom fit for a queen, and Toby and I were sitting on a huge, soft leather sofa in the great room, sipping hot chocolate in front of a roaring fire.

  “Are you sure we’re supposed to use the family’s bedrooms?” I asked for the third or fourth time.

  Toby nodded. “James left a note instructing me to put you in the family rooms. He thought you’d like being on the same corridor, but if you want to move—”

  “No, no,” I said hastily. “I don’t want to change a thing.”

  Will and Rob would have disowned me if I’d moved them from the room James Blackwell had assigned to them. The boys’ bedroom was a boy’s bedroom. The furniture was child-sized and made from rough-hewn logs. The chest of drawers had horseshoe handles, the twin beds had cartwheel headboards, and the metal bases of the bedside lamps were shaped like bucking broncos. The wide-planked floor was covered with Navajo-style rugs, the beds with Navajo-style blankets, and colorful paintings of hardworking cowboys hung on the walls.