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Book #2 of the Mogi Franklin Series
At a picnic in the mountains in 1891, three children run into the forest to play and are never seen again. More than a hundred years later, Mogi Franklin and his sister, Jennifer, discover a series of clues that bring them to the brink of solving the mystery, only to be thwarted by a resort-building billionaire eager to sacrifice an entire town to build a playground for the rich.
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Library of Congress Control Number 2016959827 Distributed by SCB Distributors, (800) 729-642
Chapter 1
Ouray, Colorado, August 19, 1891
It is my secret. It has been my secret from the beginning.
My secret and not hers. I wish I had never told her!
Jessie Jacobson raised up on her knees against the side of the wagon as it bumped and jarred its way over the rutted dirt road, then sat with her back against the boards, then switched to hanging her arm over the side. She looked forward, straining to see ahead, wanting to be there. Is Maggie already there? Will she go to the cabin without me?
Will she . . . ?
Jessie couldn’t sit still, both anxious to be done with it and terrified to see it through.
Has she already blabbed it to everyone? What will she do when she sees that I left the key at home? Will she be angry?
She’s ruining everything!
Jessie’s father used a flick of the reins to make the mules pull harder, the wagon jerking as the team heaved it over the last rise. The road flattened, and Jessie reminded herself that it was only minutes to the picnic area. It would soon be over.
Jessie’s dad guided the wagon to the hitching fence that had been built the previous year. Several dust-covered wagons and carriages had already pulled up and tied, depositing a crowd of townspeople—families, the town council, visiting dignitaries, miners, and railroad men. Bales of hay had been spread among the animals, both as feed and to keep them from snipping at each other.
Among the trees, bright red and white tablecloths were spread over boards set on more than two dozen sawhorses. A parade of food baskets was emptying onto the tables, which were soon crowded with homemade pies, fried chicken, hams and turkeys, deer and elk stews, beans, breads, mashed potatoes, and huge crocks of brown gravy.
“You get your fingers out of the chicken, young man,” Sally Jacobson scolded her son as their baskets were lifted from the wagon bed.
“Can I go now, Momma?” Jessie asked.
“No, you may not. There is work to be done getting all the food laid out and then I expect we will hear a few speeches from the mayor and others. You’re old enough to hear what they have to say. You and your brother grab those pies and be careful with them— they’re still juicy.”
“Ugh!” little Matthew wailed. “We don’t have to wait for everybody else to eat, do we? I’m hungry now!”
“I’ll have no more of that,” his mother warned. “Speeches first, then we eat. You can go play if you want, but you watch for when we start eating or there won’t be any food left when you get back.”
Maggie Thayer trotted over to Jessie. Jessie stiffened and held her head a little higher than normal.
“Come on! You know you want to,” she said, and then turned toward Jessie’s mother. “Can Jessie go now, Mrs. Jacobson? Can she?”
“Jessica has to be patient and so do you, Margaret. We’ve got to get this food to the table.”
Maggie didn’t like it when people used her full name, Margaret. It sounded formal and proper, and that was definitely what she did not want to be. She wanted to be like her father.
Maggie Thayer was Jessie Jacobson’s best friend, or had been until recently. The girls’ mothers often wondered why the friendship always seemed hot or cold, but decided it was just the nature of the girls themselves: Jessica was responsible like her mother, with more than her measure of discipline for her twelve years. On the other hand, Maggie, a year younger, was red-haired and boisterous, loud, sometimes careless, and constantly full of energy.
“Like trying to hitch a wild mustang to a carriage,” her mother had said on more than one occasion.
“You children come here before you set off,” Jessie’s father said. “You be careful if you go into the forest, you hear? Jessie, you take care of Matthew and don’t go off leaving him.”
“Yes, Poppa,” Jessie replied. She knew she had to take care of Matthew—he knew where they were going and she had already bribed him not to tell. Part of that bribe was that he got to go along.
“I was expecting Jessie to listen to the speakers,” Sally said to her husband. “She’s old enough that she ought to be paying attention to the workings of the town.”
“Listen to the speakers? We don’t even want to listen to the speakers; they’ll talk for hours and never say anything. Besides, Jessie does more chores than the rest of the girls her age. She ought to go off and play. She’s earned it.”
Her mother was not convinced but gave her permission just the same.
“And don’t you children go stirrin’ up any ghosts,” a voice said over Mr. Jacobson’s shoulder. “You don’t want ol’ Crazy Bill to rise up and start ticklin’ your toes!”
“Brewster Thayer, don’t you go scaring these children, you hear me?” Sally said as she gave him a stern look with raised eyebrows.
“Cross my heart, Sally. I’m just lookin’ out for the safety of these here children,” Brewster replied, smiling until she walked back toward the wagons. He turned back to the young ones gathering around him. “You kids know about ol’ Crazy Bill, don’t you?”
Several more children ran up and joined the group, knowing that Mr. Thayer, Maggie’s father, was about to tell one of his stories, something he was famous about town for doing. It wasn’t unusual to find him at the Ouray Mining and Mercantile Bank, feet propped up on his desk, leaning back in his big chair, wistfully recalling a story about someone or other having some kind of ad- venture while they were out on the wild plains, or up in the mysterious mountains, or maybe it was out on the great oceans of the world. He wasn’t a man to be bothered with the facts. He believed no story was worth telling if you didn’t help it along.
“It was ten or fifteen years ago, I disremember exactly, that they found his body in the cabin, the very cabin that’s right up in those trees. Well, yes, I do remember that it was about this time of year, when the moon—well, gracious me—was almost full, just like it will be tonight!”
A little girl squealed.
“Ol’ Crazy Bill lived up there all alone, hardly ever coming to town except every month or so to buy food and tobacco. Well, it hadn’t been any more time than that, so nobody would have known anything was wrong if it hadn’t been for his mule. That mule showed up one day, trotted right through town, and went directly to the feed trough over at the livery. The blacksmith knew the mule belonged to Bill, so he walked over and told the sheriff about it.
“Ol’ Bill had been a prospector ’round these parts for a number of years and the rumor was that he had struck a gold pocket somewheres in these mountains. But he kept the location secret.
“Well, the sheriff didn’t mind riding up and checking on ol’ Bill, thinking that maybe he’d come across him while he was working his claim. But instead of finding the man working, he found him inside his cabin, sitting at the table, dead as a door nail, and under some mighty peculiar circumstances. Must have been dead for a week or more, but that ain’t what was peculiar.
“Ol’ Bill’s body was like he had froze to death, but it weren’t cold at all. His body was hard as a stone statue, and it was all crooked and twisted so bad they had trouble getting him out the cabin door. His arms and legs were bent in every direction, so much so that the undertaker had to cut them off to get the body inside the casket!”
“Brewster, I declare!” Sally called with a warning look.
Brewster continued in a lower voice, “I knew some of those who helped carry him back down the mountain. They was saying that the body was bad, all right, but it was his face that gave them a fright. His eyes were bulgin’ out of their sockets, his ears and nose bloody, his lips pulled back so all his teeth was grinnin’ a smile from the devil himself! And it was the devil who killed him, too. The doctor said as much.
“Scared to death! That was the doc’s judgment. It wasn’t written down as the official cause of death, you understand, but that’s what the doc said all the same—I heard him myself. It took courage for the man to admit it. It must have been ghosts or demons or the dogs of hell. He had been scared to death, like Ol’ Crazy Bill had seen the very face of Beelzebub!
“But that wasn’t the end of it, no sirree. I’ve heard stories that his soul was left behind in the cabin, a ghost now, just waitin’ for some little child to wander by!”
A little boy began to cry and ran for his mother. Some of the children squealed in glee at Brewster’s story while others weren’t sure whether he was telling the truth or making it all up.
Jessie’s face had turned pale while Maggie tried to stifle her laughter with her hand.
“Thank you very much, Mr. Thayer,” Sally Jacobson said sternly, shaking a wooden spoon in Brewster’s direction. “You children go play, but you stay away from that cabin, you hear me? And stay away from cliff edges, and the bottom of the falls, and any other place you can think of that I would tell you to stay away from, you understand?”
There was a furious nodding of heads as the children scattered in a half-dozen directions toward the various places to play in the deep canyon of Thunder Falls.
High above the picnic area, a mountain stream poured over a cliff, cascading sheets of water several hundred feet to the canyon floor, the noise of the water hitting the bottom and echoing off the steep canyon walls with a roar like continuous claps of thunder. Outside the town limits a couple of miles, up a steep road that took the town folk above the narrow confines of their houses and streets, the waterfall—so big and so close—was the pride of the town, a place to relax and enjoy the beauty of the mountainous backcountry of Colorado.
Thunder Falls and its canyon provided a place for the community to gather and socialize and the children to play. The children’s favorites included the swings that had been built near the tables, the pile of big rocks at the base of the falls where they dared each other to run through the spray from the splashing water, and the dense forest that naturally led to games of hide and seek.
The men played horseshoes, held knife-throwing contests, hosted shooting matches and, on special occasions, set up ropes for a boxing ring and had a few local toughs go at it. Ladies preferred to sit around the tables chatting. For the hardy and adventurous, several trails led in and around the canyon. One trail led up the side of the mountain into the peaks above.
Once the tables were set, Sally Jacobson became more sympathetic toward her husband’s opinion about speeches. After the dignitaries had gathered at the front of the crowd, it was almost an hour before the exhausted audience finally fell upon the feast laid before them.
Afterward there were games, battles at the horseshoe pits, sack races, and an instance or two of settling the horses after a few of the boys were careless with firecrackers.
Only when the cleanup had begun and baskets were being carried back to the wagons did Sally worry about her children. She couldn’t remember seeing them during the meal, nor at the games. The sun had crossed over at mid-afternoon and the shadow of the mountain now covered the canyon floor, giving the air a late-summer chill. Jessie and Matthew’s jackets were still bunched on the wagon seat.
“Oh, don’t worry,” Mr. Jacobson said. “Matthew wasn’t about to miss his helping of chicken, so I’m sure he and Jessie made it to one of the tables, ate their fill at someone else’s expense, and went back to play. They don’t get much chance to go their own way with their chores and all, so let them have their freedom for a while.” His wife reluctantly agreed, but didn’t like it.
A half hour later, after some of the wagons had pulled out for town, Sally decided that enough was enough. Her husband and Brewster Thayer began casually walking around the falls looking for the kids, up some of the trails, and along the road back to town.
An hour after that, the search became more serious, with all the remaining men fanning into the forest and up the sides of the canyon, looking along the streams, checking the boulders at the base of Thunder Falls, checking the bottoms of the cliffs. Some of those already in town returned to help.
Families were interviewed and the rest of the children counted. There were three children not spoken for.
Three children had gone out to play and hadn’t come back.
A rain that night kept the hounds from being used until morning. But the handlers told the families it was no use, that the rain would have washed away any scent. They were right. The dogs only roamed in circles as they bayed.
Some of the men climbed the trail out of the canyon and into the basins below the peaks, checking old mine shafts and abandoned buildings. Others went through the forest along the road to town while others explored every gully for a mile around, peering over cliffs and into crevices for any signs.
People searched for days. Nothing was found.
In the end, there was only heartbreak and sorrow and rivers of tears.
Three precious children. Lost.
Chapter 2
The Present
"Quit daydreaming and hold it tighter.”
Mogi Franklin turned his attention back to the butcher paper he was casually holding with his fingertips. Jennifer was smoothing out the rest of it, adjusting the edges, folding it carefully around the curved top of the gravestone, and occasionally stepping back to make sure it looked straight.
He lifted the paper slightly and pulled, smoothed it across the upper edge, then returned to looking at the distant town nestled between the still-snow-topped mountains. Huge thunderheads were building around the peaks, billowing and white on top, dark and threatening on the bottom. Like clockwork during the summer, Ouray, Colorado, would soon have its daily shower. The rain would stay in the area around the peaks and would not come into the valley north of town, which Mogi thought was good since he and Jennifer hadn’t brought umbrellas.
He and his sister had taken a local’s advice and were visiting the town’s cemetery, some five or six miles down the highway from their cousin’s apartment. When their cousin Jimmy had invited them to visit, and offered a free place to stay, they couldn’t turn it down.
Jennifer was delighted to come to the cemetery, while Mogi thought it would be boring. It was proving, however, to be the highlight of the day. The cemetery was quiet and peaceful, the trees and grasses were rich with full-bodied smells, and the hundred or so ancient head- stones were fascinating and sobering, making him wonder what life had been like so long ago.
“I bet it’s already a hundred and ten at home,” he said, giving a slight smile as a cool breeze made him shiver. The people in his hometown of Bluff, Utah, would already be heading indoors for the day so they could plop down in any spot that would shade them from the sun’s intense noon heat. The barren, parched, slickrock country in the summer was like the inside of a furnace.
Situated above the banks of the San Juan River, less than an hour from the Four Corners Monument, the country around Bluff included hundreds of square miles of bare sandstone, with solitary mesas rising for a thousand feet out of the desert floor and an uncountable number of craggy, twisting canyons. It was stark, beautiful country, but living there was sometimes brutal.
Thinking about the heat at home and how he would usually be either firmly planted in front of his computer and Xbox or working at some part-time job that always seemed to involve being out in the hottest part of the day, he stared down the cool, green valley and found himself completely satisfied with taking Jimmy up on his offer, even though his cousin was a lot older than he was.
Mogi was fourteen and tall for his age, but his muscles had not yet caught up with his bones, so he was gangly and spindly and a little awkward, which is to say, normal for his age. He took after his mom’s side of the family in his looks and his shyness, but seemed to be a sum of both families on the brain side: He was typically way smarter than the people around him, quick-minded, mentally disciplined and orderly, and had a natural talent for handling information.
Jennifer was seventeen and definitely took after their father. Shorter than her brother by a half-foot, with thick, brown hair cut short, she was strong, athletic, and physically graceful. She had unusual emotional stability for her age, and loved being around others. Whereas Mogi was the obsessive, analytical, adventurous problem-solver, Jennifer was the cautious people person. He pushed her to do more than she thought she ought to; she pulled him back into what seemed more reasonable.
Both of them had great Franklin smiles.
Satisfied that the paper was finally as close and secure as it could get to the gravestone’s surface, Jennifer took a stick of charcoal from a box and made circular motions across the paper. Then she repeated the process, moving the charcoal up, down, and sideways.
Gradually, along with cracks, marks, and chips, the letters and carvings of the headstone came through on the paper:
Harriet Johanssen
b. 1856 d. 1894
Beloved Mother, Honored Wife
The Angels Took Her Too Soon
After moving about the gravestone, leaning over to rub for more detail and stepping back to see her work, Jennifer finally removed the paper, laid it on the grass, and lightly sprayed it with hair spray to keep the charcoal from smearing. Then she wet her hands with glass cleaner and wiped them on a paper towel.
“Why didn’t you just take a picture of it?” Mogi asked, clearly not appreciating the effort she had put into the rubbing.
“For your information, dork-boy, I did take a picture of it, but you’re missing the point. It’s not about recording information. It’s the shape of the stone, the carving of the letters, and the cracks, as well as the saying; it’s how it feels touching the stuff growing in and around the letters. A gravestone has more than just words.
“The last action on earth that honored Harriet Johanssen was this gravestone being set. It was a statement that she lived, a symbol that she existed and somebody knew it, and that she was loved. I’m going to frame this and put it on my wall at home. When I see it, I’ll think of this place and remember that she was somebody’s wife, and somebody’s mother, and that she mattered to them. That lets her memory live a little bit more.”
Mogi wasn’t sure he wanted to wake up each day and be reminded that Mrs. Johanssen had died. He wandered away as Jennifer cleaned up, happy to browse through the meandering rows of graves. Several had variously decorated iron fences, long since bent and warped and aged like the stones they guarded. Most of the gravestones still had dates that were readable: 1893, 1912, 1897.
Who were these people? What was it like to live back then? The cemetery wasn’t big, but it had character, a solid feeling that its inhabitants were resting in peace. Gravestones, railings, iron gates, and some larger pads of speck- led granite ran in irregular rows through the shade of tall cottonwoods. Gnarled roots rose and fell from the deep green grass, lightly worn footpaths circled in and around the stones, and there were splotches of yellows, blues, and reds from flowers—some real, some plastic—and a scattering of small American flags.
“Hey, Jen, look at this one.”
It was a much larger plot than the others, flat, with no signs of a grave or gravestone, surrounded by an intricate, once-black, wrought iron fence. It had not one marker but three—three small granite statues evenly spaced across the grass.
The statues were angels, kneeling with hands clasped in prayer, peering downward with wings spread.
As Jennifer approached him, Mogi knelt to read a faded metal plaque fastened to the iron uprights. The engraved letters were hard to make out through layers of lichen and rust.
“Let me have a sheet of paper and your charcoal,” he said. He creased the paper’s edges around the plaque, and Jennifer helped to hold it in place. Mogi rubbed vigorously, learning quickly that making a good rubbing wasn’t as easy as it looked. He tore up his first attempt and started again with a lighter touch.
The letters formed words, and the words finally formed an unusual poem:
Our hearts are as empty graves,
Our minds are as lost footsteps,
Our souls are as wisps in the wind,
But our love is forever, forever.
We trust in God that you knew.
There was no date.
Mogi read the words again but couldn’t make sense of them. Who was the “you” in the last line? What were the angels for? Why three? Why would someone go to the trouble of making a grave space so long ago and then apparently never use it?
“How strange,” Jennifer said.
“Do you think Nancy would know anything about it? She grew up here, didn’t she?” Mogi asked.
“Maybe. We can ask her at lunch. I haven’t wandered as much as you, so I hate to go, but we’re supposed to meet her at 12:30.”
Mogi cleaned the charcoal dust from his hands and took a few pictures of the angels and the plaque as Jennifer sprayed the rubbing. Waving the rubbing through the air to dry, he folded the sides over to protect the lettering, undid one of his buttons, and slipped it inside his shirt.
* * *
Mogi watched the downpour through the window at the end of the table. Jimmy, a waiter during the summer, had shown him and Jennifer to a table in the back dining room of the Big Corral Steakhouse, a laid back, popular restaurant on the north side of town.
“Good thing we got here when we did,” Mogi said. “I believe the heavens openeth up and dumpeth upon the earth.”
Jennifer laughed as she ran her eyes over the menu.
“Hi, guys!” Nancy said cheerily as she approached the table and sat down.
Mogi smiled. Jimmy had good taste in girlfriends. Not only was she beautiful but she also had a real job working as the editor and writer for Ouray’s newspaper, the San Juan Mountains News-Herald. She’d made a success of her first job after college, Jimmy said, while he was still shuffling back and forth in the fall and spring finishing up at the college where they’d met.
“It is so beautiful here,” Jennifer began, leaning over the table to be heard over the noise of the lunch crowd. “We roamed around this morning and ended up at the cemetery where I got a rubbing from a gravestone. Nobody would mind that I did that, would they?”
“Oh, I wouldn’t think so,” Nancy said. “There’re a few people who are anxious to keep the tourists as confined as possible to the major attractions, but most of us are happy to share whatever you find. What we’ve got is pretty special and it’s only by freely wandering around that you get to experience it.”
Mogi noticed her face become clouded as she continued. “Of course, if you’re going to wander for free, you might want to do it pretty quick. Looks like there’ll be a whole new ballgame here pretty soon.”
Jimmy brought the drinks, took their orders, and rushed away to meet a wave of new customers coming through the door.
“What do you mean?” Jennifer asked.
“Does the name ‘Millennium Corporation’ ring a bell? Have you seen the posters around town?”
Jennifer thought for a moment. “I don’t think so.”
“Well,” Nancy continued, “the Millennium Corporation is an international syndicate of resort towns. They go around the world looking for small resort areas with big tourist potential—skiing, scuba diving, art centers, big music locations, or even historical places like around Washington, D.C.
“When they find them, they offer the existing communities a package deal—sell the town to them and they’ll put a billion dollars or so into transforming the area into an internationally recognized high-dollar resort. It can change a backwater town into an Aspen, a Vail, or a Lake Placid.
“This winter, the Millennium Corporation offered to buy Ouray.”
Jennifer’s head leaned forward as her eyes grew bigger. “Buy Ouray? What do you mean? Buy the buildings or something?”
“All the buildings, businesses, streets, sewer system, bridges, attractions, garbage trucks, hospital, county museum, even the shovels people use to shovel snow in the winter—everything. The people here now can remain if they choose, but they become ‘employees’ of the corporation. Even the individual houses are purchased and then leased back to the families living in them.
“In exchange, the corporation upgrades the utilities, rebuilds the roads, installs full-service communications capability, puts a new coat of paint on every house, rebuilds the historical structures, puts in a new water tower, you name it.
“And then, to make their money, the corporation builds a huge, brand-spanking-new ski resort in the mountains west of town, a monstrous network of ski lifts and runs that will cover several square miles of the high country. They’ll build a series of gondolas, too, that start from downtown and go up the canyon into Yankee Boy Basin, where one of the ski areas would be, go over Imogene Pass at a nifty thirteen thousand feet, and down into Telluride, connecting to its already big ski area. Very European.
“Looking at the plans, it might possibly become the largest ski area in the world.”
A different waiter appeared with plates of hamburgers and fries. He passed them around, refilled the drinks, and moved on. Ignoring the conversation for a few seconds, Mogi attacked his mound of french fries with a river of ketchup.
Jennifer was at a loss for words.
“Is this a good idea?” she finally asked. “Do people want this?”
“There’re a number of people who would be millionaires overnight, and the land values would skyrocket for a hundred miles in every direction. It would probably mean more gross income in a year than the total value of all of the gold and silver ever taken out of these mountains.
“Personally, I think it stinks,” Nancy said bluntly. “I’ve lived here all my life. Lots of people have. That graveyard you were in is full of people who shed blood, sweat, and tears making a life here. It’s not just a question of money, money, money. It’s supposed to be about hopes and dreams and people and love and family and ... .”
Finishing his hamburger and idly stealing fries from Jennifer’s plate, Mogi listened more closely.
“You sound pretty steamed,” Jennifer said.
“Well, yeah, I’d say I’m pretty steamed,” Nancy said. “This has been a land of opportunity for a hundred years, and I don’t deny that wealth has always been a motive for people to be here. But once people bury their families in a place, it becomes much more than just a place to collect a paycheck. This isn’t just a town—it’s my town. The idea that I have to become an ‘employee’ to live here makes me want to throw up.”
“Oh, I have a question,” Mogi suddenly remembered, unbuttoning his shirt and taking out the folded paper. “We found something strange at the cemetery. An iron fence was around a grave site, but there didn’t seem to be any grave in it, only three statues of angels. It had this funny poem on the fence.”
He shoved his empty plate to the side and carefully positioned the rubbing on the table. Nancy read through it.
She smiled. “I haven’t thought about them in years. That’s the grave—well, what was supposed to be the graves—of the lost children. It’s an old story from 1890- something where three children disappeared from a town picnic. Every third-grader in the Ouray public schools learned the story by heart as a lesson against wandering away from school functions.
“The kids were from prominent families—a girl and a boy who were the children of the general store owner, and a daughter of the town banker. They were about ten or twelve years old, old enough to take care of themselves in the woods.
“Ouray had thrown a big celebration when it officially became a city. One of the activities was a community picnic at the base of Thunder Falls, which is a big waterfall up a canyon east of here and a popular place for social gatherings. The picnic was sponsored by the town council and the railroad. A lot of families took their wagons and made an afternoon of eating and playing games.
“Of course, once everyone got to the waterfall, there was a horde of children that scattered in every direction. At the end of the day, when everyone was ready to go, all were accounted for except those three children. They were nowhere to be found.
“The townspeople spent days and nights looking for them. Every man in town helped, and the railroad even gave their workers a day off to help with the search. Nothing was ever discovered. Absolutely no clues, no clothing, no tracks, nothing. They had vanished into thin air.
“The town was pretty much devastated. Kidnapping wasn’t a big thing back then, and no ransom note ever showed up anyway. In place of any real information, people made up stories, especially those who blamed anything out of the ordinary on ghosts.
“After a while, the town went back to normal, but the families of the children were devastated. A year after it happened, they hired someone to create a statue of the three children. The sculptor created a clay model that was then bronzed in Denver. It’s a magnificent piece of work. It was erected at the bottom of the falls, but was moved later to be part of the county museum. I’m pretty sure it’s still there.
“A couple years after that, both families decided to leave and that’s when they created the burial plot with the three angels. I suppose they wanted to make sure that if the children were ever found, there’d be a place for their bodies. That’s also, by the way, why there’s no date.”
“That’s awful!” Jennifer said. “How sad.”
“I can tell you, as a tale to make a third-grader think twice about wandering off, it had a great effect. I had nightmares for a week,” Nancy continued. “And I never, ever wandered off from any picnics.”
“Do you remember the names of the children?” Mogi asked.
“I don’t think so,” she said. “I’d have to think about it.”
He looked again at the words from the plaque: “Our hearts are as empty graves.”
He folded the rubbing, put it inside his shirt, and then sat back, wondering. How could three children just up and disappear?
"Quit daydreaming and hold it tighter.”
Mogi Franklin turned his attention back to the butcher paper he was casually holding with his fingertips. Jennifer was smoothing out the rest of it, adjusting the edges, folding it carefully around the curved top of the gravestone, and occasionally stepping back to make sure it looked straight.
He lifted the paper slightly and pulled, smoothed it across the upper edge, then returned to looking at the distant town nestled between the still-snow-topped mountains. Huge thunderheads were building around the peaks, billowing and white on top, dark and threatening on the bottom. Like clockwork during the summer, Ouray, Colorado, would soon have its daily shower. The rain would stay in the area around the peaks and would not come into the valley north of town, which Mogi thought was good since he and Jennifer hadn’t brought umbrellas.
He and his sister had taken a local’s advice and were visiting the town’s cemetery, some five or six miles down the highway from their cousin’s apartment. When their cousin Jimmy had invited them to visit, and offered a free place to stay, they couldn’t turn it down.
Jennifer was delighted to come to the cemetery, while Mogi thought it would be boring. It was proving, however, to be the highlight of the day. The cemetery was quiet and peaceful, the trees and grasses were rich with full-bodied smells, and the hundred or so ancient head- stones were fascinating and sobering, making him wonder what life had been like so long ago.
“I bet it’s already a hundred and ten at home,” he said, giving a slight smile as a cool breeze made him shiver. The people in his hometown of Bluff, Utah, would already be heading indoors for the day so they could plop down in any spot that would shade them from the sun’s intense noon heat. The barren, parched, slickrock country in the summer was like the inside of a furnace.
Situated above the banks of the San Juan River, less than an hour from the Four Corners Monument, the country around Bluff included hundreds of square miles of bare sandstone, with solitary mesas rising for a thousand feet out of the desert floor and an uncountable number of craggy, twisting canyons. It was stark, beautiful country, but living there was sometimes brutal.
Thinking about the heat at home and how he would usually be either firmly planted in front of his computer and Xbox or working at some part-time job that always seemed to involve being out in the hottest part of the day, he stared down the cool, green valley and found himself completely satisfied with taking Jimmy up on his offer, even though his cousin was a lot older than he was.
Mogi was fourteen and tall for his age, but his muscles had not yet caught up with his bones, so he was gangly and spindly and a little awkward, which is to say, normal for his age. He took after his mom’s side of the family in his looks and his shyness, but seemed to be a sum of both families on the brain side: He was typically way smarter than the people around him, quick-minded, mentally disciplined and orderly, and had a natural talent for handling information.
Jennifer was seventeen and definitely took after their father. Shorter than her brother by a half-foot, with thick, brown hair cut short, she was strong, athletic, and physically graceful. She had unusual emotional stability for her age, and loved being around others. Whereas Mogi was the obsessive, analytical, adventurous problem-solver, Jennifer was the cautious people person. He pushed her to do more than she thought she ought to; she pulled him back into what seemed more reasonable.
Both of them had great Franklin smiles.
Satisfied that the paper was finally as close and secure as it could get to the gravestone’s surface, Jennifer took a stick of charcoal from a box and made circular motions across the paper. Then she repeated the process, moving the charcoal up, down, and sideways.
Gradually, along with cracks, marks, and chips, the letters and carvings of the headstone came through on the paper:
Harriet Johanssen
b. 1856 d. 1894
Beloved Mother, Honored Wife
The Angels Took Her Too Soon
After moving about the gravestone, leaning over to rub for more detail and stepping back to see her work, Jennifer finally removed the paper, laid it on the grass, and lightly sprayed it with hair spray to keep the charcoal from smearing. Then she wet her hands with glass cleaner and wiped them on a paper towel.
“Why didn’t you just take a picture of it?” Mogi asked, clearly not appreciating the effort she had put into the rubbing.
“For your information, dork-boy, I did take a picture of it, but you’re missing the point. It’s not about recording information. It’s the shape of the stone, the carving of the letters, and the cracks, as well as the saying; it’s how it feels touching the stuff growing in and around the letters. A gravestone has more than just words.
“The last action on earth that honored Harriet Johanssen was this gravestone being set. It was a statement that she lived, a symbol that she existed and somebody knew it, and that she was loved. I’m going to frame this and put it on my wall at home. When I see it, I’ll think of this place and remember that she was somebody’s wife, and somebody’s mother, and that she mattered to them. That lets her memory live a little bit more.”
Mogi wasn’t sure he wanted to wake up each day and be reminded that Mrs. Johanssen had died. He wandered away as Jennifer cleaned up, happy to browse through the meandering rows of graves. Several had variously decorated iron fences, long since bent and warped and aged like the stones they guarded. Most of the gravestones still had dates that were readable: 1893, 1912, 1897.
Who were these people? What was it like to live back then? The cemetery wasn’t big, but it had character, a solid feeling that its inhabitants were resting in peace. Gravestones, railings, iron gates, and some larger pads of speck- led granite ran in irregular rows through the shade of tall cottonwoods. Gnarled roots rose and fell from the deep green grass, lightly worn footpaths circled in and around the stones, and there were splotches of yellows, blues, and reds from flowers—some real, some plastic—and a scattering of small American flags.
“Hey, Jen, look at this one.”
It was a much larger plot than the others, flat, with no signs of a grave or gravestone, surrounded by an intricate, once-black, wrought iron fence. It had not one marker but three—three small granite statues evenly spaced across the grass.
The statues were angels, kneeling with hands clasped in prayer, peering downward with wings spread.
As Jennifer approached him, Mogi knelt to read a faded metal plaque fastened to the iron uprights. The engraved letters were hard to make out through layers of lichen and rust.
“Let me have a sheet of paper and your charcoal,” he said. He creased the paper’s edges around the plaque, and Jennifer helped to hold it in place. Mogi rubbed vigorously, learning quickly that making a good rubbing wasn’t as easy as it looked. He tore up his first attempt and started again with a lighter touch.
The letters formed words, and the words finally formed an unusual poem:
Our hearts are as empty graves,
Our minds are as lost footsteps,
Our souls are as wisps in the wind,
But our love is forever, forever.
We trust in God that you knew.
There was no date.
Mogi read the words again but couldn’t make sense of them. Who was the “you” in the last line? What were the angels for? Why three? Why would someone go to the trouble of making a grave space so long ago and then apparently never use it?
“How strange,” Jennifer said.
“Do you think Nancy would know anything about it? She grew up here, didn’t she?” Mogi asked.
“Maybe. We can ask her at lunch. I haven’t wandered as much as you, so I hate to go, but we’re supposed to meet her at 12:30.”
Mogi cleaned the charcoal dust from his hands and took a few pictures of the angels and the plaque as Jennifer sprayed the rubbing. Waving the rubbing through the air to dry, he folded the sides over to protect the lettering, undid one of his buttons, and slipped it inside his shirt.
* * *
Mogi watched the downpour through the window at the end of the table. Jimmy, a waiter during the summer, had shown him and Jennifer to a table in the back dining room of the Big Corral Steakhouse, a laid back, popular restaurant on the north side of town.
“Good thing we got here when we did,” Mogi said. “I believe the heavens openeth up and dumpeth upon the earth.”
Jennifer laughed as she ran her eyes over the menu.
“Hi, guys!” Nancy said cheerily as she approached the table and sat down.
Mogi smiled. Jimmy had good taste in girlfriends. Not only was she beautiful but she also had a real job working as the editor and writer for Ouray’s newspaper, the San Juan Mountains News-Herald. She’d made a success of her first job after college, Jimmy said, while he was still shuffling back and forth in the fall and spring finishing up at the college where they’d met.
“It is so beautiful here,” Jennifer began, leaning over the table to be heard over the noise of the lunch crowd. “We roamed around this morning and ended up at the cemetery where I got a rubbing from a gravestone. Nobody would mind that I did that, would they?”
“Oh, I wouldn’t think so,” Nancy said. “There’re a few people who are anxious to keep the tourists as confined as possible to the major attractions, but most of us are happy to share whatever you find. What we’ve got is pretty special and it’s only by freely wandering around that you get to experience it.”
Mogi noticed her face become clouded as she continued. “Of course, if you’re going to wander for free, you might want to do it pretty quick. Looks like there’ll be a whole new ballgame here pretty soon.”
Jimmy brought the drinks, took their orders, and rushed away to meet a wave of new customers coming through the door.
“What do you mean?” Jennifer asked.
“Does the name ‘Millennium Corporation’ ring a bell? Have you seen the posters around town?”
Jennifer thought for a moment. “I don’t think so.”
“Well,” Nancy continued, “the Millennium Corporation is an international syndicate of resort towns. They go around the world looking for small resort areas with big tourist potential—skiing, scuba diving, art centers, big music locations, or even historical places like around Washington, D.C.
“When they find them, they offer the existing communities a package deal—sell the town to them and they’ll put a billion dollars or so into transforming the area into an internationally recognized high-dollar resort. It can change a backwater town into an Aspen, a Vail, or a Lake Placid.
“This winter, the Millennium Corporation offered to buy Ouray.”
Jennifer’s head leaned forward as her eyes grew bigger. “Buy Ouray? What do you mean? Buy the buildings or something?”
“All the buildings, businesses, streets, sewer system, bridges, attractions, garbage trucks, hospital, county museum, even the shovels people use to shovel snow in the winter—everything. The people here now can remain if they choose, but they become ‘employees’ of the corporation. Even the individual houses are purchased and then leased back to the families living in them.
“In exchange, the corporation upgrades the utilities, rebuilds the roads, installs full-service communications capability, puts a new coat of paint on every house, rebuilds the historical structures, puts in a new water tower, you name it.
“And then, to make their money, the corporation builds a huge, brand-spanking-new ski resort in the mountains west of town, a monstrous network of ski lifts and runs that will cover several square miles of the high country. They’ll build a series of gondolas, too, that start from downtown and go up the canyon into Yankee Boy Basin, where one of the ski areas would be, go over Imogene Pass at a nifty thirteen thousand feet, and down into Telluride, connecting to its already big ski area. Very European.
“Looking at the plans, it might possibly become the largest ski area in the world.”
A different waiter appeared with plates of hamburgers and fries. He passed them around, refilled the drinks, and moved on. Ignoring the conversation for a few seconds, Mogi attacked his mound of french fries with a river of ketchup.
Jennifer was at a loss for words.
“Is this a good idea?” she finally asked. “Do people want this?”
“There’re a number of people who would be millionaires overnight, and the land values would skyrocket for a hundred miles in every direction. It would probably mean more gross income in a year than the total value of all of the gold and silver ever taken out of these mountains.
“Personally, I think it stinks,” Nancy said bluntly. “I’ve lived here all my life. Lots of people have. That graveyard you were in is full of people who shed blood, sweat, and tears making a life here. It’s not just a question of money, money, money. It’s supposed to be about hopes and dreams and people and love and family and ... .”
Finishing his hamburger and idly stealing fries from Jennifer’s plate, Mogi listened more closely.
“You sound pretty steamed,” Jennifer said.
“Well, yeah, I’d say I’m pretty steamed,” Nancy said. “This has been a land of opportunity for a hundred years, and I don’t deny that wealth has always been a motive for people to be here. But once people bury their families in a place, it becomes much more than just a place to collect a paycheck. This isn’t just a town—it’s my town. The idea that I have to become an ‘employee’ to live here makes me want to throw up.”
“Oh, I have a question,” Mogi suddenly remembered, unbuttoning his shirt and taking out the folded paper. “We found something strange at the cemetery. An iron fence was around a grave site, but there didn’t seem to be any grave in it, only three statues of angels. It had this funny poem on the fence.”
He shoved his empty plate to the side and carefully positioned the rubbing on the table. Nancy read through it.
She smiled. “I haven’t thought about them in years. That’s the grave—well, what was supposed to be the graves—of the lost children. It’s an old story from 1890- something where three children disappeared from a town picnic. Every third-grader in the Ouray public schools learned the story by heart as a lesson against wandering away from school functions.
“The kids were from prominent families—a girl and a boy who were the children of the general store owner, and a daughter of the town banker. They were about ten or twelve years old, old enough to take care of themselves in the woods.
“Ouray had thrown a big celebration when it officially became a city. One of the activities was a community picnic at the base of Thunder Falls, which is a big waterfall up a canyon east of here and a popular place for social gatherings. The picnic was sponsored by the town council and the railroad. A lot of families took their wagons and made an afternoon of eating and playing games.
“Of course, once everyone got to the waterfall, there was a horde of children that scattered in every direction. At the end of the day, when everyone was ready to go, all were accounted for except those three children. They were nowhere to be found.
“The townspeople spent days and nights looking for them. Every man in town helped, and the railroad even gave their workers a day off to help with the search. Nothing was ever discovered. Absolutely no clues, no clothing, no tracks, nothing. They had vanished into thin air.
“The town was pretty much devastated. Kidnapping wasn’t a big thing back then, and no ransom note ever showed up anyway. In place of any real information, people made up stories, especially those who blamed anything out of the ordinary on ghosts.
“After a while, the town went back to normal, but the families of the children were devastated. A year after it happened, they hired someone to create a statue of the three children. The sculptor created a clay model that was then bronzed in Denver. It’s a magnificent piece of work. It was erected at the bottom of the falls, but was moved later to be part of the county museum. I’m pretty sure it’s still there.
“A couple years after that, both families decided to leave and that’s when they created the burial plot with the three angels. I suppose they wanted to make sure that if the children were ever found, there’d be a place for their bodies. That’s also, by the way, why there’s no date.”
“That’s awful!” Jennifer said. “How sad.”
“I can tell you, as a tale to make a third-grader think twice about wandering off, it had a great effect. I had nightmares for a week,” Nancy continued. “And I never, ever wandered off from any picnics.”
“Do you remember the names of the children?” Mogi asked.
“I don’t think so,” she said. “I’d have to think about it.”
He looked again at the words from the plaque: “Our hearts are as empty graves.”
He folded the rubbing, put it inside his shirt, and then sat back, wondering. How could three children just up and disappear?