Pepper laid her final tile, anO, beneath theYinstingy.
“Yo?” Lucille said disbelievingly.
“Challenge!” Doc fired a shot across the bow.
“I don’t think you want to be doing that,” the General said. “Yo is a word.”
“I said challenge, damn it,” Doc repeated.
“They’re right.” Lucille consulted her book. “Yo is listed right here.”
“Final five points to me.” Pepper rubbed her hands. “How about a score check?”
“Pepper is at six hundred and twenty-seven, Doc is five hundred and ninety, Lucille is five hundred and three, and I am bringing up the caboose with four hundred and sixteen.” The General pushed the wad of bills toward her. “To the winner, her spoils.” The gang looked on with begrudging admiration.
Pepper pocketed her reward—twenty bucks would fund a few indulgence pints of Häagen-Dazs—and checked on Wolfgang, snoozing beneath the shade of Davy Jones’s statue. “One more history question. What’s the deal with Davy Jones?” she asked.
Three pairs of eyes bored into her. “The deal?” they cried in shocked unison.
“Why, it’s a tale of heroics,” the General replied solemnly.
“Of loyalty,” Doc added, placing a hand on the General’s shoulder.
“A story of love.” Lucille dabbed at her eyes.
The General began: “A long while ago now, Hurricane Angelica struck the coastline. She was a mother of a storm. Cat four. The winds were so loud it sounded as if Everland was a train depot. All through the night the river rose. Davy was a mutt. No one knew where he came from, and no one ever owned him. I guess he was what you’d call a drifter. He’d show up sometimes downtown. Always friendly. He had a way about him, didn’t he?”
“Indeed he did,” Lucille said. “Except for the fire hydrant fascination.”
The General gave an indulgent chuckle, scratching his beard. “That dog couldn’t walk past a fire hydrant without taking a piss. Pardon my language.”
“None taken,” Pepper said.
“I’ll take her offense and lump it with mine. Kindly clean up your talk when regaling us with tales about such a noble beast,” Lucille said.
“My apologies.” The General wiped his grin away and reset his cap. “You’re right. Absolutely right. Now where was I?”
“No one in town had seen Davy Jones in some time,” Doc said. “Weeks.”
“And here was this storm on its way, and everyone was boarding up buildings, and gathering supplies,” the General jumped back in. “No one had a second to spare. The storm moved faster than the meteorological forecasts predicted.”
“And no one stopped to say so much as a hello to dear old Davy Jones,” Lucille said in a choked voice.
Doc cleared his throat twice with evident emotion. He was grumpy, but he seemed to have a soft, sensitive underbelly.
“The storm rocked and rolled. I’ve never seen nothing like it,” the General said. “Before or since.”
“Sometime around three in the morning, the howling started.” Lucille shivered. “I can hear it still.”
“A sound to wake the dead,” the General continued. A few folks finally banded together and went out. Couldn’t even stand upright because of the wind. There was Davy Jones, up on the river levee off Main Street, right near my store. The rain and storm surge meant that Everland River was about ready to overflow. Burst the banks and flood the town. Alarms were sounded and people braved the storm. Sandbagging until dawn. Anything they could do to keep the water out. It took all night but the town was saved. Thanks to Davy Jones.”
“What happened to him?” Pepper asked.
“No one knows. He wasn’t seen again.” The General consulted the great oak above them. “I like to think he was a manifestation of Everland’s community spirit, there to help in a moment of need.”
“More likely some Hogg Jaw no-account snapped him up to use as a hunting dog,” Doc grumbled.
“And that brings us to Hogg Jaw,” Pepper said curiously. “What’s the problem, besides the fact they claim to possess a likely fictional three-hundred-year-old pirate treasure?”
