A Bad Run of Fate

By Bret Burquest

A dark psychological mystery examines the essence of the tortured soul of a serial killer.

Eight men learn of a fabulous cache of gold hidden in the hills near Congress, Arizona. But a mysterious serial killer, the Lord of the Wings, stands in their way.

The actual cache of gold, revealed within the narrative, remains undiscovered to this day. The story within the story details how the real treasure was hidden over a century ago and reveals its likely location. The author is offering a 90% finders fee for anyone who discovers the riches through the use of facts in this book.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jan 18, 2001
• ISBN: 9781462814107

Bret Burquest

Bret Burquest is the author of The Dogman of Topanga, Goomba in Montana, A Bad Run of Fate, The Eleventh Sage. He lives in rural Arkansas where he writes novels and keeps a single-minded lid on the Lord of the Wings.

Book preview

A BAD RUN

OF FATE

Bret Burquest

Copyright © 2000 by Bret Burquest.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

This book was printed in the United States of America.

To order additional copies of this book, contact:

Xlibris Corporation

1-888-7-XLIBRIS

www.Xlibris.com

[e-mail]

Contents

1 THE ELK EPIPHANY

2 TWO GREENHORNS FROM MINNESOTA

3 THE LORD OF THE WINGS

4 INDIAN MARY

5 THE KING OF CONGRESS

6 THE LONE RIDER

7 THE TOWN BULLY

8 THE NUMBER OF A MAN

9 A GREASE SPOT

10 THE DIAMONDBACK

11 THE FIRST THIRD CHINAMAN

12 THE THREE CHINAMEN

13 THE FLYSWATTER THIEF

14 GOLD RUSH DAYS

15 THE MAIN SHAFT

16 HALF BROTHERS

17 THE HEADLESS HORSEMAN

18 THE DOPE NEXT DOOR

19 DOPE EDITION

20 THE INDIAN MARY EXPEDITION

21 THE DESERT SAGE

22 THE PEDRO GRUJALVA THING

23 THE SECOND THIRD CHINAMAN

24 OUT WICKENBURG WAY

25 HERE IS WISDOM

26 FIVE ZONES

27 MINE MATTERS

28 CAMP CHAT

29 THE END OF THE RAINBOW

30 NECK HAMMER

31 DUST TO DUST

32 THE VERTICAL SHAFT

33 TWO SAD SACKS OF DUST

34 AMERICAN HERO

35 THE TIEBREAKER

36 PLENTY OF NOTHING

37 THE THIRD CHINAMAN DEPOSITORY

38 BEN DOVER

39 CAUSE AND EFFECT

40 THE FATE OF A FOOL

41 THE NEW CLIENT

42 ALWAYS A LAWMAN

43 LAW DOGS

44 THREE STRIKES

45 DATE CREEK DATE

46 A TEN-FOOT FINGER

47 FIVE DIRECTIONS

48 TWO LITTLE INDIANS

49 THE JUDAS AMONG THE SHRINKS

50 BROKEN ARROW

51 ONE MIGHTY JERK

52 WRIST ITCH

53 MEETING OF THE MINDS

54 THE BLONDE BOMBSHELL

55 PEPPER AND GRINDER

56 A HATE TRIANGLE

57 THE LAST EDITION

58 TWIN GHOST

59 THE THREE CONTRIBUTORS

60 THE BAD AXE

TO

LIFE, LIBERTY AND THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS

1

THE ELK EPIPHANY

A magnificent beast wandered into range, a lone buck with a gigantic rack. It let out an elk call and waited for an answer. The 30.06 fired first. The .50 caliber Sharps quickly followed. Both hit the target.

The elk froze in its tracks, stunned for a second or two. Then it spotted the two hunters hiding in the tree line and mounted a charge. Both hunters fired again.

The elk kept coming. The rack in attack position. Nostrils pumping. Eyes of anger and determination and impending mayhem. Two more shots rang out. Then two more.

The proud beast finally dropped ten feet before reaching the tree line.

Both hunters had an epiphany. The magnificent beast had died the way they wanted to die, with courage and dignity.

They gutted the beast and headed home. A cloud of shame went with them. It would be their last hunt. Both knew it without saying a word.

They had been transformed. The elk epiphany had sealed their fate.

The hunter with the 30.06 climbed to the top of a mountain and howled in rage.

The hunter with the .50 caliber Sharps found a human maggot and became the Lord of the Wings.

2

TWO GREENHORNS FROM MINNESOTA

Four years later. Congress, Arizona. Veterans Day, November eleventh.

A dozen American flags flapped in the stiff breeze, paying tribute to those who had died fighting for freedom, liberty and the gross national product. In our little corner of the world, warfare was considered a human endeavor worthy of glorification, especially in a conservative enclave like Congress where lynching cattle rustlers was nostalgically regarded as both a sport and a civic duty.

At sundown, I began removing the flags from the business area, a simple task for a one-man flag committee in a one-block town.

I worked the south side of the street first, from east to west, starting with the Rusty Rock Cafe. Next, a long structure called the Martinez Building that consisted of four storefronts: the Glory Hole, the Desert Sage Gift Shop, a vacant shop and Congress Grocery. Then came the Post Office and the Sweet Dreams Motel. Eight flags: four on the Martinez Building, two at the cafe and two at the motel. The Post Office had its own flag.

Only three flags on the north side. I walked across the deserted street to the Laundromat, grabbed its flag and headed back east. I removed the flag at the Quik Stop, a gas station and convenience store, and finally the flag on the small office building, affectionately known as the Grist Mill, that housed the town lawyer’s office and the town newspaper.

I flopped down on the bench in front of the Grist Mill and listened to the sweet sound of a meadowlark off in the distance.

Suddenly, the breeze abruptly stopped and the meadowlark became silent.

I had an eerie feeling something awesome was about to happen, like some ancient prophet was about to appear out of nowhere, clutching a couple of stone tablets and pronouncing the world unfit for human habitation.

Directly out of the golden sunset a black vehicle appeared.

It was a black four-wheel drive, 3/4 ton Chevy pickup truck with a large black cab-over camper mounted on the bed. It was a formidable vehicle containing two formidable men, the two greenhorns from Minnesota.

They had been prospecting in the hills around Congress for almost two years and had become regular customers of the local stores. Every couple of weeks, they came into town to pick up supplies. They seemed friendly enough but mostly kept to themselves.

They stopped in front of the Quik Stop.

After arguing a bit, Lee, the driver, hopped out and began pumping gas.

Mickey Dean got out and headed toward the store.

It wouldn’t hurt you to pump gas once in a while, Lee complained.

I ain’t your servant, Captain, Mickey Dean shot back, then disappeared into the store.

The ancient gold fields in the hills and desert surrounding Congress attracted adventurers and vagabonds from across the country. Most who ventured into town went unnoticed but there was something unique about these two men yet I could never quite put my finger on it. They appeared to be genuine prospectors but I sensed they were greenhorns, like they were really rocket scientists or rodeo clowns who had an easier way of making a living than groveling in dirt looking for precious metals.

Old photographs of gold mines that once thrived in the region lined the walls of the Rusty Rock Cafe. Many of the photos exhibited hard rock miners, hardened men in disheveled overalls with stern expressions on their soiled faces.

Invariably, one man in the photo would stick out from the rest. He wore dapper office clothing rather than overalls and had a confident expression on his clean face, undoubtedly the foreman or geologist or both. An educated man who preferred to live a life of adventure among a gang of cutthroats in the middle of nowhere rather than rot behind a desk back east.

Lee reminded me of one of those men.

He was six feet tall, athletic-looking, quiet yet confident, intelligent and had an air of authority about him. He had short prematurely gray hair and a closely trimmed beard. He always wore a long-sleeve shirt, even in the intense summer desert heat, always neatly tucked into his blue jeans, and his boots always had a shine. Like the foremen in the photos, Lee was the sort of man who appeared capable of accomplishing any task without ever breaking a sweat.

Mickey Dean emerged from the store with a bag of supplies just as Lee finished pumping gas. He barked at Lee some more.

Lee tried to ignore him but Mickey Dean seemed to be in a rage.

When Lee entered the store, Mickey Dean hopped into the truck and slammed the door.

I had never seen them act this way before. They reminded me of a couple of characters in an old western movie. Lee, the immaculate hero. Mickey Dean, the grumpy sidekick.

Mickey Dean looked like one of the hardened miners in the photos on the wall of the Rusty Rock Cafe, only worse. He looked like the troublemaker, the one about to be fired for gross insubordination. Six inches shorter than Lee, Mickey Dean may have been the missing link archaeologists were always searching for. He slouched at the shoulders and was flat-footed. His arms were too long for his body, his hands were huge and obviously immensely strong, and his extended chin and chiseled cheekbones gave him a distinct Cro-Magnon look. He wore shirts with no sleeves, always unbuttoned, proudly revealing a strong upper torso covered with nasty tattoos of panthers and snakes and gargoyles and demons.

He wasn’t about to hide such beauty from the world. He had long flaming-red hair and a full beard. And he had this sort of devilish demeanor about him, like he was about to pull the wings off a fly or devour the next person he met.

I stored the eleven flags inside the Grist Mill, grabbed a copy of the latest Congress Capsule and sat back down on the bench in front of the building to rest my weary feet.

The Congress Capsule, our local newspaper, was my pride and joy. This particular issue had been one of the most popular in months. Jake Cope and Al Leius, mortal enemies in life and in print, confronted each other once again in editorials. The two of them filled the entire front page.

As usual, Jake’s tirade was lengthy, rambling and full of venom. He vehemently condemned Al Leius, Al Leius’ followers, faggots, dykes, mud people, white trash, tree huggers, draft dodgers, atheists, Catholics, Jews, non-Baptist scum, rich profiteers, welfare deadbeats, lawyers, accountants, politicians and various other forms of human filth for causing economic and moral decay in the world. He bragged about his World War Two military service, as usual, and blamed nearly every living human being, especially the Jews, for recent cutbacks in the Veteran’s Administration budget thereby somehow adding considerable misery to his already considerably miserable life.

In the previous issue, Jake had advocated vigilantism as a solution to the growing national crime problem. He suggested that every right-thinking Baptist-minded man should take the law into his own hands and start stringing up those who did not conform to the ideals of the late John Wayne and other splendid examples of proper human behavior.

Al Leius’ brief retort was in response to Jake’s diatribe. It read:

Jake Cope and other small minds never seem to learn the lessons of history. Like the Nazis and other vigilante groups of the past, they assume they are the sole paragons of virtue. They delude themselves with self-righteousness and justify their contemptible actions by demonizing others.

Jake Cope and his fellow Neanderthals are consumed with anger and guilt and feelings of inadequacy. They lash out at the innocent to suppress their own lack of self-worth. They see wickedness in everyone but themselves and they provoke conflict to mask their shame.

In the course of human events, every man must decide whether to accept the world as it is and suffer the consequences or do something about it and suffer a whole new set of consequences.

The horror of injustice overcome by the horror of revenge becomes an injustice once again. Evil becomes a force. The downfall of mankind feeds off itself and every mortal soul pays the price.

Sue Denim’s Top Ten List, normally a popular front page item, had been relegated to the back page. At least she stuck to the Veteran’s Day theme.

TOP TEN SIGNS AMERICA IS ABOUT TO GO TO WAR

1) The First Lady starts shopping for helmets

2) We find another country the size of Panama and Grenada that ticks us off

3) The Secretary of Defense issues a decree requiring all inner city youth to limit drive-by shootings to one day per week to help conserve on ammunition

4) The Pentagon places Bob Hope on full alert

5) Francis Ford Coppola begins shooting another war movie, tentatively titled Apocalypse Any Day Now

6) The President’s bunions are acting up The Seventh Fleet is secretly renamed the Eight Fleet to

confuse the enemy

7) Jane Fonda updates her passport

8) France begins manufacturing surrender flags

9) The Marine Band is wearing camouflage

A local grudge and topical humor. It wasn’t exactly the New York Times but in a world where no news was good news, it would do. As editor and publisher, I was proud of the Capsule once again.

Lee came out of the Quik Stop. He grabbed a free copy of the Capsule from the rack by the ice cooler and stuffed it into the bag of supplies he was toting.

Then he got behind the wheel, pulled the truck across the street and parked in front of the Glory Hole.

It looked like they had resumed their argument.

Mickey Dean got out of the truck in a huff and slammed the door behind him.

He stomped into the Glory Hole, a store that specialized in prospecting equipment and related items, with a small bag in his hand.

Lee hopped out of the truck with his Border collie, Pepper, and led the dog over to the bushes between the Glory Hole and the Rusty Rock Cafe.

Soon Mickey Dean emerged from the store with his face as red as his hair. He began grumbling at Lee but I was too far away to make out the words.

A rare moment of excitement in small town America.

My curiosity got the better of me. I started walking across the street to hear what the fuss was all about.

Mickey Dean wouldn’t let up. He gave Lee a shove and growled even louder.

Lee calmly led Pepper back to the truck and opened the passenger door.

Pepper jumped up onto the front seat and stood with her front paws on the dashboard so she could keep an eye on the outside world.

I made it across the deserted street, wandered over to the bench in front of the Glory Hole and sat down.

Lee closed the passenger door, without slamming it, and headed back toward Mickey Dean.

Howdy, Lee said when he finally noticed me.

Fine day, I told him.

It’s about to get better, Lee said with a rare smile on his face.

In a burst of supreme energy, Lee grabbed Mickey Dean by the neck with one hand and by the crotch with the other and abruptly tossed him into a nearby Dumpster. It happened so unexpectedly, Mickey Dean had no time to react.

Lee slammed the lid about a half a dozen times, then loudly demanded, I don’t want to hear it anymore!

Then Lee stood back a few paces and calmly waited for a reaction.

No response from the Dumpster.

I noticed Sweetwater Bob staring out the window of the Glory Hole, wondering about the commotion.

Still no response from the Dumpster.

Lee ambled back to the truck. Not one drop of sweat on his brow, his shirt still neatly tucked into his pants. Definitely foreman material.

You two guys do this often? I asked.

Not often enough, Lee responded.

With surprising humility, Mickey Dean crawled out of the Dumpster and walked over to the truck.

Lee handed him a beer and cracked one open for himself.

Didn’t think you had it in you, Captain, Mickey Dean said with a grin on his face. He seemed proud of his longtime buddy for having enough moxie to stand up to him.

Just trying to keep America beautiful, Lee quipped.

They offered me a beer, but I wasn’t in the mood.

Soon, they drove off back into the hills.

Sweetwater Bob came out of the store and joined me on the bench.

What do you suppose that was all about? I asked.

That redheaded moron brung me a bag of pyrite, Sweetwater Bob said.

Fool’s gold?

When I told him what it was I thought he was gonna bust a gut.

I wonder if that was what the argument was all about. Ya shoulda seen his eyes when I told him the bag was worth more than the crap inside. Greenhorns, I uttered.

Ya pegged ‘em right, King. Them two is green as grass. I wandered back across the deserted street and walked home.

3

THE LORD OF THE WINGS

The Lord of the Wings found the Congress Capsule indispensable in his work. Three days after the Veteran’s Day issue came out he made some inquiries with the VA hospital in Prescott to learn Jake’s full name. Jake James Cope. Then he calculated Jake’s number. 6:5. Evil with a desire for turmoil. That confirmed it. Another human maggot had been unearthed.

On Sunday afternoon Jake Cope, retired Army Master Sergeant, and his wife, Edith, returned home from another weekly Baptist cleansing.

Then the Cope Sunday ritual began. Edith went inside to make lunch while Jake stayed in the garage to sneak some Jack Daniels into his system. If he was in a good mood and lunch was satisfactory, he would refrain from beating her. These days, Jake was rarely in a good mood.

Jake retrieved a fifth of Jack Daniels from his workbench drawer and took a slug right from the bottle.

Suddenly, an arm wrapped around his neck from behind.

If you think you have the solution, you’re part of the problem, right-wing trash, whispered the Lord of the Wings into Jake’s ear.

Then the Lord of the Wings grabbed the Jack Daniels with his free hand and held it firmly in Jake’s mouth, forcing Jake to swallow.

Jake, old and feeble, was no match for the younger vigilante.

And as angry as Jake had been when he wrote the editorial, it was minuscule compared to the utter fury of the Lord of the Wings.

After nearly drowning Jake with Tennessee sour mash, the bottle of Jack Daniels fell to the floor and shattered.

The Lord of the Wings put his right hand over Jake’s face and pushed Jake hard while simultaneously whipping his left leg across the back of Jake’s ankles.

Jake toppled to the concrete floor. The back of his head hit first, opening like a ripe melon. Out spilled all those wretched thoughts of hate into an expanding pool of dark blood. Another human maggot had expired.

The Lord of the Wings took pride in his calling. As always, it would look like an accident. He removed his gloves, pulled his hat down hiding most of his face and made a quick exit, careful not to leave any footprints.

The world was momentarily a better place.

4

INDIAN MARY

Indian Mary was born the same day as Hitler. But Indian Mary was alive and well and living a life of solitude in the Bradshaws while Hitler was in another dimension doing a lot of explaining.

Many years ago, Indian Mary’s granddaughter, Arristia, a full-blooded Yavapai Apache maiden, married a man named Colin Campbell, a full-blooded Scotsman. A match made in heaven. On Earth, the Yavapai Apache considered it a disgrace and the Scots called it blasphemy. But Indian Mary saw it as a bridge between the two races. Colin and Arristia had one son, Camacho, named after one of the great Yavapai Chiefs of the past. To placate the other side of the family they gave Camacho two middle names, Baxter and Brutus, after Colin’s two grandfathers. To the world, Camacho was a half-breed. To Indian Mary, he was a tall, noble peacemaker who out-shined both races.

Every year, Camacho Campbell would haul Indian Mary down from the high country during Old Congress Days. This year was no exception. Indian Mary preferred to stay in the mountains but she was so proud of her great-grandson being a college-educated county sheriff she just had to mingle with white people and show off.

Old Congress Days was an annual celebration designed by the local business interests to fill local business pockets. For most of us, it was a three-day weekend to try to sell all the junk around the house in a flea market to city slickers from Wickenburg, Phoenix and beyond.

Every year, Indian Mary always stopped by Wandering Daniel’s booth to pick up some magic. There were always three rows of booths and Wandering Daniel was always assigned the last booth in the last row, the farthest from the parking area and refreshment stands.

Wandering Daniel felt a great sense of honor to be assigned the same booth year after year. The booth committee wanted the town lunatic as far from the main crowd as possible. It worked out well for both parties.

This year, Wandering Daniel had his usual assortment of unusual items. Mostly small gems and oddly shaped or colored rocks he had found in the surrounding desert and mountains.

Indian Mary immediately spotted a fluorite crystal. It was as black as obsidian and perfectly shaped, like two four-sided pyramids meeting at the base. She knew such a gem contained the wisdom of the ages. Much better than magic, there would be no haggling over something so precious. Campbell laid out twenty bucks, which just about covered Wandering Daniel’s monthly living expenses.

Congress was one of the old Arizona mining towns that refused to die. It just withered a lot.

Gold was first discovered in the area in the late 1860s. Beginning in 1894, Congress was Arizona’s premier gold camp for the next decade and a half. President William McKinley paid a visit on May 7, 1901. Two thousand citizens showed up to witness the mayor present the first lady with a small gold