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“Sure. Yeah. Okay,” I answered, rubbing the faint bruise that shaded my chin like a smudge of newsprint, a souvenir from my last encounter with the intrepid Sarah Jane and her friendly, friendly fist. I held up Sarah Jane's notebook. “See? I've got her notebook right here. Trust me, SJ and I go way back.” All the way back to Saturday.

The housekeeper stepped back, nodding me into the house with the point of her chin. “I'm cleaning,” she said gruffly, rattling the carpet sweeper in my face. “You can wait in Mr. Cabot's study while I call Miss Cabot down. Mr. Cabot's not here and I always save his room for last.” She turned a sharp eye on me, rimpling her nose like she smelled something bad. Then added, “If you value your skin, don't touch anything. Or Mr. Cabot might make you part of his collection.”

“His collection?”

The woman didn't elaborate. She didn't have to. Cabot's study spoke volumes for itself—and I didn't think I liked what it had to say.

L
OOKING UP, I GAZED INTO THE glassy, staring eyes of a zoo's worth of 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.

“Hands in the air!” I jumped as I felt something jab me in the back. Sarah Jane's watermelon-scented lips were by my ear—so close, I could feel her warm breath on my cheek. The girl was as silent and sneaky as a bushwhacking, story-slinging ninja.

“Those cuffs once held the Sundance Kid, you know.” She giggled. “Maybe you're his reincarnation. That would make a really great headline!”

As soon as she dropped her finger from my back, I turned, whacking my head against the buffalo's shaggy chin. Two of the heavy-duty bolts that held the trophy to the wall came loose and the buffalo head lurched sideways as if cocking its head to get a better look at us. At the same time, the hands fell off the crocodile clock, even as it kept on ticking.

Sarah Jane shook her braids. “You are the King of Damage, you do know that, don't you? What are you doing here, Cowboy? Did you come for another right hook in the kisser?” She bent toward me again, cracking her knuckles with a teasing smile. Then she stopped and wrinkled her nose the same way the housekeeper had done when she'd let me in.

“Wow! You smell worse than that bison once did, Cowboy. What did you do,
run
here?”

“Um, yeah actually. I did,” I answered, trying not to flinch as the buffalo took another lurch down the wall. “And the name's Ledge, remember?”

“Yeah, yeah.
Ledge
—got it.” Sarah Jane eyed the buffalo, then looked back at me. “I see you're getting acquainted with all my father's favorites.”

“Favorites?”

Moving away from me, Sarah Jane idly brushed her fingers over other things in the room, stopping in front of a murky glass case next to her father's desk. She sighed as she stared through the glass.

Squinting, I moved closer.

“What's in there?” I asked.

“Look for yourself.”

“What the—whoa!” The sight of a two-headed rattle-snake caught me by surprise. I stepped back, dropping the heavy pyrite cluster on my toe, then hopped quickly to the other side of the room, trying not to react as a rocking chair in the corner fell off both its rockers. It had been stupid of me to come here. Stupid, stupid, stupid. I needed to get Grandma Dollop's jar and go before I revealed how completely I belonged in Cabot's exhibit.

Sarah Jane looked from me to the chair and rolled her eyes to heaven, repeating, “
King of Damage,
” under her breath.

“Relax, Ledge. It's not alive,” she explained, sounding like a bored tour guide as she dissed me, the clumsy tourist. “I don't think it's even real. Even so, it's my father's favoritest favorite.”

As I did what I could to right the rocker, Sarah Jane bent to retrieve the glinting chunk of pyrite.

“Maybe if I were this shiny, I could get some attention too,” she murmured. “I can't even get Daddy to read my newspapers—no matter how wild I make the stories.”

I looked away, unsure what to say. The soft tick of the crocodile jaw clock filled the room—the only sound until Sarah Jane sighed a second time and returned the fool's gold to its proper place.

“So, what's up, Ledge? Why are you here?” She turned back to me.

“I . . . er, have your notebook. I thought you might want to make a trade.”

“A trade?”

“You took something that doesn't belong to you on Saturday,” I answered. “I came to get it back.”

Sarah Jane pulled a face, but before she could reply, a man's voice made us both turn.

“What, precisely, did my daughter take, young man? And who in Sam Hill's kitchen are
you
?”

S
ARAH JANE'S FATHER STOOD IN THE doorway, a silver-tipped cane in one hand, a heavy red-and-white foreclosure sign gripped in the other. Mr. Cabot's yellow hard hat, with its CAD Co. logo, was paired with a dark western-cut suit. His scowl looked unbreakable as he blocked the only exit from the room.

A cranky Cabot is bad for Sundance,
the sheriff had said to Uncle Autry.
A cranky Cabot is bad for us all.
A creep of crimson, as red as the foreclosure sign, colored Mr. Cabot's face as his stare drilled through me. He didn't look once at Sarah Jane. I guessed finding a strange boy talking to his daughter in the middle of his private room didn't make the man too happy. In fact, judging by the way the red in his cheeks was morphing into a deep and dangerous-looking purple, I guessed that I had, in one fell swoop, just made Noble Cabot cranky.

He dropped the sign with a heavy thud, letting it lean against the doorjamb.

“Sarah Jane, go to your room,” he ordered. “I've told you before that you don't belong in here.” Mr. Cabot's words were aimed at his daughter, but his eyes never left me once. Sarah Jane flushed.

“But, Daddy—!”

“Sarah Jane, do as I say!” Even without a remarkable talent backing him up, Mr. Cabot's voice had the same kind of power over Sarah Jane as Mom's had over me. Before her father could tell her again, Sarah Jane fled past him in a blur, knocking over the sign and stomping up the stairs. She slammed a door above us, rattling the entire house as powerfully as my savvy might've done. Mr. Cabot didn't even blink. He continued to stare at me.

“Er . . . I was just leaving.” Jar or no jar, it was time for me to go. Tripping over the foreclosure sign, I tried to slip past Mr. Cabot. But he raised his cane—
swish
—to stop me.

“Not so fast, young man.”

A telltale tingling itch crawled into my palms. I had to get out soon. Supersonic soon. I clenched my fists and focused on a spot on the floor between me and Mr. Cabot.

Above us, Sarah Jane opened and closed her bedroom door again—
SLAM!
—and again—
SLAM! SLAM! SLAM!
Reminding everyone that, just because she was upstairs in her room, she hadn't disappeared.

“You! What is your name?” Mr. Cabot demanded. “Who do you belong to?”

I bit my tongue. Filled with freaked-out savvy fuel, my hands began to shake and my skull buzzed like a big, round beehive on my shoulders. After what happened to my uncle's barn, I knew I could huff and puff and blow the Cabots' house down at any second. I knew it with terrible, horrible, nauseating certainty.

I was three crocodile clock ticks away from breaking family rules, ready to spill my guts and yell,
“If I don't leave now, I'm going to destroy your house!
” when the doorbell rang and saved me from Mr. Cabot—saving Mr. Cabot's house from me at the same time.

I drew a deep breath and listened as the housekeeper opened the front door. A moment later, she was standing behind Sarah Jane's dad, her brow creased at the sight of the buffalo head tilting precariously from the opposite wall.

“What is it, Hedda?” Mr. Cabot demanded without turning.

“Mr. O'Connell's at the door, sir,” Hedda said, eyeing me with distaste. “He says he's looking for his nephew.”

The dragonflies
, I thought. Autry's squadron of insects had taken off as soon as I'd reached the Cabot house. While the bugs had seemed like a nuisance before, now I was grateful to them for getting my uncle here so fast.

“O'Connell?” Mr. Cabot spat, turning on the housekeeper as if she'd picked up a dirty word off the floor and jammed it in his ear. “
O'Connell?
” Mr. Cabot left the room without another glance my way, smacking his cane against the fancy molding of the door frame with a
CRACK!
as he headed for the front door like a bolt of lightning with a hitch in its jag. I followed quickly, ignoring the way every spindle in the stair rail jogged up and down in its setting, making the sound of a giant millipede running a marathon in wooden shoes as I passed by.

Uncle Autry stood on the other side of the screen door. Beyond him, half a dozen gumball-sized spiders worked busily between the porch's ornate columns. The presence of the spiders was the only sign that my uncle wasn't as relaxed as he appeared. Autry's features were calm and composed. His posture easy. Yet all six spiders looked like they'd sucked down seven pots of super-sweetened coffee. Beneath the eaves, chaotic, disorderly webs were going up faster than shake-and-bake subdivisions, each one big enough to nab an entire thirteen-year-old boy.

I shot past Cabot as he reached the entryway. Flying out the screen door, I pushed past Autry too, not even daring to pause. I felt just like I had at school when I'd had to rush out of art class after looking too long at a weird painting of melting clocks. Only, on that day—a month before my birthday—Josh and Ryan had been there to drag me to the nurse's office, even while Big Mouth Brody announced to everyone that I'd barfed after getting freaked out by a painting. Though, now I wondered if it hadn't been some sort of savvy premonition.

Ducking under the drooping webs draping Cabot's porch, I leaped the stairs and cleared the perimeter of the pointed iron fence, hustling past my uncle's white pickup. All without wrecking a single thing more.