Free Scumble by Ingrid Law Page B

stuffed and mounted trophies: antelope, elk, deer—even a jackalope or two. Opposite me, a one-eyed buffalo jutted into the room like it had been stopped dead in its tracks while breaking through the wall. Stepping into the dimly lit study, I knew I never wanted to be part of Noble Cabot’s collection. Not if I wanted to keep my head.
    But Cabot had other things in his trove: a coin shot through the middle by Annie Oakley and a set of dried gourds that resembled the founding fathers all sat together on one shelf, and a clock made out of the jaw-bone of a crocodile hung on the wall, tick-tick-ticking .
    The housekeeper pushed past me to open a curtain, allowing a rectangle of sunshine to light the wings of Cabot’s assortment of butterflies. There were dozens of them. I even thought I saw a Montezuma’s Cattleheart—black with red, upside-down heart-shaped spots. But instead of flying around the place the way the butterflies did at my uncle’s ranch, here every one was pinned down dead, stuck in place between thin layers of glass and mounted on the wall with the rest of Cabot’s treasures.
    If I wasn’t careful, I knew I could end up under glass myself. I was certain Mr. Cabot would consider an unusual kid like me a unique addition to his collection . . . a real conversation piece . . . or maybe just a brand-new tool over at the CAD Co. acquisitions and demolitions place. With a good Ledger Kale around, who needed a backhoe or a wrecker?
    No wonder Sarah Jane had wanted Grandma Dollop’s jar! She’d probably swiped it for her dad. I looked around Cabot’s study for the peanut butter jar, but found no sign of it. I tapped my finger against the pocket that held Sarah Jane’s notebook. With her passion for peculiar stories, Sarah Jane was clearly following in her father’s footsteps. It made me wonder what her mom was like. Mrs. Cabot looked normal enough in the portrait hanging behind Cabot’s desk. Tall, thin, and graceful, Mrs. Cabot reminded me of the one tree that still stood outside the house.
    A fly buzzed in the window, breaking the stillness that choked the room. The housekeeper dispatched the bug with three swift smacks of her alien-invasion tabloid— Ka-thwap! Ka-thwap! Ka-thwap! —busting the silence into smaller and smaller fragments. Then she pointed the tabloid my way, making it clear that I would share the fly’s fate if I stepped out of line.
    As soon as the woman left to call up the stairs to Sarah Jane, I moved to check out the rest of the room. Backing into a rack of rusted barbed-wire snippets, I let out a yelp and leaped forward, colliding with a display of rocks and minerals, and knocking over a trash can filled with wadded-up paper. Righting the trash can, I grabbed the scattered scraps. It was only when I was stuffing them all back into the trash that I realized they had been copies of The Sundance Scuttlebutt .
    Sarah Jane’s father must not have been a fan.
    Trash picked up, I did my best to straighten Cabot’s rock collection, admiring a cluster of pyrite—fool’s gold—as heavy as a can of baked beans. I remembered seeing a ton of the stuff at Willie’s Five & Dime, so I knew it couldn’t be worth too much, even if it did look a lot like gold.
    I carried the rock with me as I continued to poke around, trying to ignore the image of my own head, and the heads of everyone in my family, mounted on the walls with all the wildlife. Disregarding the housekeeper’s orders, I touched everything. The frizzy-haired woman was not my mother. Just because she said something, that didn’t mean I had to do it. Here, I had a choice.
    Juggling the pyrite from hand to hand, I stopped to investigate a pair of antique wrist shackles hanging from a hook near the one-eyed buffalo, trying not to think about the sheriff who’d come asking questions at the ranch.
    â€œHands in the air!” I jumped as I felt something