We were sitting in the sandbox. Digging for treasure. She was so pretty. She had the green and blue shovel in her hand. She dug up the sand and was forming a nice hole. We have been searching for this treasure for days. Everyday we would spend digging in our free time. I would say “Bobby, it’s time to go home.” But she would ask to stay, just for a little bit longer. Then the sun would go down and we would keep digging. Her parents came by after a bit . Then my parents. Took me home, and told me not to do it again. Next day we would keep digging.

She’s been dead for sometime but not a day goes by that I don’t keep thinking of her. The river is still waiting for me, but I know there is no treasure. I’ll search anyway.

The hair in the back of my neck stood up. There was the sound of wood snapping, being broken. Not by an animal. It should just be me out here, I guess that’s not the case. I pull out my gun and aim it in the direction of the sound. A white shirt is thrown at my feet from the darkness. I almost shoot at it. A voice calls out.
“I mean no harm. I’m just passing by and was wondering if I could share your campfire.”
Didn’t expect to see anyone out this far in coyote country. I say that he could stay with me. I un-cock my pistol. A man walks out of the darkness. And that was it.

The young boy had just finished milking the goat. Even he knew the animal was on its way out. His father tells him to go collect some fire wood. He also tells him to take the rifle with him, he heard some strange noises last year.
The boy walks into his father’s woods. About a half-mile in the boy sees the dead man. Shot in the jaw and the chest. There is a white shirt in front of him. The boy doesn’t scream. He picks up the firewood. He brings it back from the father.
“Why do you got that look on your face?”
“There’s a dead man in the forest.”

Nobody knew who the man was. No papers. He was just an outlaw. A Colt was found on his body. The family kept it in their kitchen, in a high up shelf, behind a stack of plates that were rarely used.

The young boy would sneak out of bed at night and climb up and look at the gun. He would hold it in his hands. He would take out the bullets and put them up to his face, smelling the unique sound of the gunpowder.

They buried the man where they found him, the shirt with him. They put up a cross with nothing written on it as his tombstone. Winter came along soon enough. They had to use the cross for fire wood.

Spring came and the boy would look for where the body was buried. His memory of the geography of where the body was buried was foggy and distorted.

At night he heard a howl. He crept outside, into the forest. A coyote was digging a hole. The boy froze at the sight. The coyote looked up to the boy. It walked up to the boy and licked his palms then it walked on past. The boy saw that the coyote had been digging up the body. The boy carried the body out of the grave and drug him back to his house. He tried dragging it up the stairs. Made a lot of noise. His father came down and saw the body. He beat the boy. And made him bury the body again.

The boy dragged the body back into it’s final resting place. He was crying. The coyote came back and licked the boys face. The boy pushed all the dirt back into the hole.

The boy walked back into the house, the coyote was waiting outside. The boy grabbed the gun from his behind the plates. He walked up the stairs.

The graves were finished being dug. Just his sisters had to be filled. He drug her body into the grave, between his father and mothers. Then he pushed the dirt on their bodies. The coyote silently watched.

The boy heard a snap in the darkness. Not an animal noise. Then a white shirt was thrown in front of the boy.

And the rest must be told in a few hours.

That was the story I made up to scare her. We would sit in our tent, hitched up in my backyard, and curl up close inside our sleeping bags. We fell asleep before I could finish the story. She said I was a good story teller but she said that she could be better. She told her stories to me. They were not as scary as mine, but they were just as good. Maybe even better. But no one can really judge that.

One day she came out to our sandbox. She said that she was running away. I asked why. She said that her family is moving away. She didn’t want to leave.

We snuck out during recess and walked out of town. I kept looking back. Wondering what my parents were going to think. How mad they would be. We hopped over fences to stay away from the roads. We found a little river. Night time came and we sat underneath one of the trees. We heard a snap come from the darkness. She started to cry. Asked for me to protect. She made me promise to not let her die. I promised. She thought that they were going to see a ghost. I though we were going to see a white shirt. We fell asleep, crying, looking out into the darkness.

Next day we ran back down the road to town, back to our parents. They were happy that they found us. I didn’t even get punished. But it didn’t solve any problems. A month later Bobby moved away. I missed her. I never saw her again.
A few years later my mom is waiting for me when I get home from school. She tells me what she saw in the paper. Bobby was killed in a car accident with her family. Apparently they were driving on the interstate and the car in front of them through out a white shirt which landed on Bobby’s windshield. They crashed. And that was it.

There was a young girl. She and her father enjoyed hunting together. This time her father took her duck hunting. They traveled up river. They came across a fisherman. He wore an eye patch. They asked if the fisherman had a camp set up nearby. The fisherman made a loud whistle.
Then suddenly a dozen men reveal themselves from behind trees, all wielding weapons. Her father lays down his weapon and tells her to do it also.
“Are these men outlaws, Pa?”
“Yes, they are, Bobby.”
Then the fisherman walks up to the father. Picks up the laid down weapons.
“You got any money?”
“Ain’t got no money. Nor anything valuable.”
“Do you know who I am?”
“Yeah, I reckon so.”
‘What do you reckon?
“I reckon that you are Jacky Harkem.”
The young girl lets out a gasp. It was the Jacky Harkem. The most famous outlaw ever, the most dangerous too.
“Give me the girl and I’ll let you go.”
“Over my dead body.”
“So be it.”
Then Jacky Harkem shot the father with his own weapon. The girl fell to her knees and started to cry over her father’s massacred body. Jacky Harkem gave her some space. When her tears ran out he knelt down beside her.
“What do you think of being an outlaw, little girl?”
“Over my dead body.” Then she spit into Jacky Harkem’s good eye and raked his face with her nails, taking off the eye patch. He screamed. She grabbed the gun from the ground and made a run for it, eye patch still in hand.
She could hear bullets zooming past her head and the sound of Jacky Harkem giving orders to kill her. She found a foxhole and hid in there. She saw the boots of outlaws walk past.
Nighttime came. She was afraid of foxes. She exited the foxhole and looked around. She saw a light in the distance. She crept up on the light. She could see that it was the outlaws and they were digging a hole. A very, very deep hole.
She could see Jacky Harkem sitting cross-legged by the fire. He had put on a new eye patch. He was playing the harmonica.
“Is the hole deep enough, Jacky?”
“I reckon so. Now put in the treasure.”
She watched them put a gigantic chest into the hole and then they began to bury it.
A young outlaw sat next to Jacky. He put down his harmonica and told the story to the young man of how he single handedly broke out of jail, robbed a bank and a train, killed a sheriff, all in one day with only butter knife. He told the youngster that he was the most dangerous man alive. Jacky Harkem stood up and saw that the outlaws had finished burying the treasure. Jacky told the young outlaw to go and grab some more fire wood. He left. The other’s asked Jacky:
“What now, boss?”
“’What now’ is right.”
Then Jacky Harkem withdrew his pistols and all twelve of the men were dead before they hit the ground. Jacky laughed.
“No one’s going to take my money.”
Then the girl shot Jacky Harkem in the back. He fell to the ground. The girl walked over to him, gun pointed.
“Please.”
“You killed my father.”
“Let me go. Please.”
“Over my dead body.”
The she picked up one of Jacky’s pistols and shot him in the heart. She dropped his previous eye patch that she had been carrying onto his body.
She looked up from his body and saw the young outlaw point a gun at her, a few yards away.
“You killed Jacky Harkem.”
“I reckon so.”
Then the youngster shot the girl through her eye and through her head, killing her.
And that was the tragedy of Bobby the Avenger and Jacky Harkem. They say that she haunts that place to this day. They say she haunted the youngster until he killed himself a few years later. They say that the treasure is still buried there, her watchful ghost always waiting.

I recently took a walk up a little creek a few miles from where my house is. I passed a fisherman. One of his eyes was clear colored. My time was approaching. I made myself a campfire that night, by the river. I waited for her to appear.