Nick and Monty "The Danger Boys" in "The Dead Man's Hand"

By Frank Jackson

Two ordinary boys from an ordinary town try to solve a mystery that has kept a town gripped in gold fever for a hundred years! Could the key to solving the riddle be a mummified hand of a man dead for over a century? Nick and Monty, "The Danger Boys" use their cunning and wits to figure out the secret of the Gold of Sirus Grandview!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Frank Jackson
• Release date: Jan 1, 2020
• ISBN: 9781449049737

Book preview

Chapter 1: A Beautiful Place to Live

Nicholas Michael Barrington was born in Grandview, California, the town he always thought of as The Center of the Boring Universe. As far as he was concerned, Grandview was the dullest town in America. Grandview was a sleepy little town but full of friendly people, pleasant palm-lined streets and beautiful mountain views.

Everyone in the little desert town called him Nick. Even his father did, except when he was really angry with him. Then he became Nicholas again.

Nick’s best friend Julius Robert Montgomery who was born in the same room at Grandview General Hospital that Nick was, except 4 months later. He was known by everyone in town as Monty because he hated the name Julius. It’s a family name, his father told him and since he was an only child like Nick, he was stuck with it whether he liked it or not.

Nick and Monty had been best friends as long as they could remember. Their mothers had both died early in their lives so they had no one but their fathers to raise them. They each thought of the other as the brother they never had. Monty’s parents were originally from South Africa but that made no difference to Nick. Monty had his father’s rich, dark skin but not his accent. Sometimes, on days when Nick was feeling sad, he’d think of his best friend and feel better again. Even after a fight or an argument it didn’t take more than ten minutes and they’d have forgotten what it was they were fighting about.

The two were together constantly. Nick’s father, Professor Erik Barrington, was a research scientist at Grandview University. Monty’s father, Paul Montgomery was the founder and owner of his own computer software company. Mr. Montgomery and his wife were passing through Grandview looking for a place to establish his business when Monty was born. They loved the town so much the decided to raise their family there.

When Professor Barrington was working late at the university, Nick would spend the night at Monty’s house. When Mr. Montgomery was out of town managing one of his computer companies, Monty would stay at Nick’s house. There certainly was plenty of room for the four of them: Mick, Monty, Professor Barrington and their housekeeper, Mrs. Dearborn. Their house was one of the few survivors of the Great Fire of 1938.

It was a very ornate, gingerbread style of house popular at the time. Mrs. Dearborn had her own suite on the fourth floor, and a long driveway led up to the grand entrance. On the front lawn was a huge ornamental rock with a flower garden planted around it. Nick’s mother had planted it when Nick was just a baby. Professor Barring maintained it faithfully with his own hands.

Settlers on their way to Alaska originally founded the town of Grandview in 1849 during the famous Gold Rush. Hundreds of people passed through the speck of a town on their way to the Yukon in hopes of finding gold. In those days, Grandview was known as Silver Hills because a huge vein of silver was found there. To this day, the town was still honeycombed underneath with abandoned tunnels left by the silver miners. When the silver ran out, the town nearly became a ghost town. In 1872, a man moved to Silver Hills that would change the history of the town and change the path of the lives of Monty and Nick. That man was Sirus Grandview.

Sirus Grandview was the leading clock manufacturer in America at the time. He had made his fortune in Boston, Massachusetts making some of the best and most famous timepieces in the world. There wasn’t a city hall or capital building on the east coast that didn’t have a clock tower made by Sirus Grandview. By the end of the Civil War, he was famous for his complex timepieces and they made him very rich. But clockworks and timepieces were not Mr. Grandview’s first love, no, not at all! He had fallen in love with the legends of the Old West. The stories of Jesse James, Billy the Kid and the Gunfight at the OK Corral had become his passion. He read every tale of gunfights, train-robberies and cattle rustlers and soon grew tired of the cobble-stoned streets of Boston. With his fortune secured, he moved to Silver Hills and built the largest factory for the manufacturing of clocks and clockworks in the United States. He employed nearly everyone in town at his factory. In gratitude the mayor renamed the town Grandview in honor of its savior. The town never knew a more prosperous time.

But toward the end of his life, Sirus Grandview became a recluse, leaving the beautiful Grandview Mansion he built only to visit his factory. He had given up wearing the standard high-buttoned cellanoid-collard suits of the day for traditional cowboy garb. His ten-gallon cowboy hat and long duster were legendary around town, and he never left the mansion without his silver six-shooter. He didn’t trust banks and rumor had it his fortune was hidden somewhere in the huge expanse of Grandview Mansion. By the time he died in 1902, the era of the old west died with him. He built himself an enormous mausoleum in Grandview Cemetery complete with a marble bust of himself, clutching his famous six-shooter. He overlooked the vault where his coffin was placed. It was if he were standing guard over his own grave! But between the vault and his stone likeness stood a curious object known around