“If it was your intention to arrange your own funeral, you might have had the decency to avoid arranging ours in the process.”
The man nodded solemnly and let his head sag. “That’s th’ truth. I do feel right terrible about that, an’ I aim to make it right or die tryin’.”
“Mr. Hudson,” I said. “You’re injured—what happened?”
“Oh, hey there, little lady.” He tilted his head toward me. “Yeah, he got me pretty good. I ain’t done yet, though, and he’ll have to come back around here soon enough.”
I looked across at the scattered bones. “Will one of you please explain to me why you’re so certain the dragon is going to come back for more bones? Isn’t it more likely to pick off cows and horses and things that have”—I swallowed—“meat?”
“Would you like to tell her, or shall I?” asked Jackaby.
The trapper grunted. “Shoulda guessed you’d figger it out. Go right ahead.”
Jackaby took a breath. “I told you I was not prepared to slay a dragon, Miss Rook, and I do not intend to. As I have insisted from the start, dragons have gone the way of the dodo.”
Jackaby paused, watching my expression and waiting for me to catch up.
“No,” I said as it sank in. “No, Mr. Hudson, you wouldn’t . . .”
The trapper nodded, sadly. “’Fraid so.”
“That beast is as much a dragon as the ‘loathsome birds’ in Darwin’s dossier,” Jackaby continued. “The creature is only a mimic realizing its full potential.”
“You stole one of the kittens!” I said.
Hudson shrugged guiltily. “Couldn’t let ’em all be skeeters.”
“So,” Jackaby went on, “after returning to the valley with his own chameleomorph—an orange tabby, judging by the molted fur in his cabin—Mr. Hudson couldn’t resist trying a little experiment.”
“In my defense,” the trapper said, “I thought it was gonna be a dinosaur when I started.”
“Wait,” I interrupted. “You stole the first tooth? But that’s impossible—you didn’t even arrive in the valley until after it was in the newspapers!”
“I didn’t steal it,” Hudson said. “I wasn’t in the valley when I . . . when I didn’t steal it.”
“Hudson . . . ,” Jackaby prompted sternly.
“I did kinda bump into a fella who might have,” he admitted. “I had just left your place up in New Fiddleham. I had the kitten with me and he saw it, only the guy seemed to know it wasn’t no ordinary kitten. He said it was just a shame it wasn’t bigger. He says it just like that, too, all meaningful like. ‘Bigger.’ And then he shows me the tooth.”
“Did you get a good look at him?” Jackaby asked. “Tell me, did he have a grim, mortiferous aura? Maybe accented by a faint lavender halo?”
“He was a funny-lookin’ short guy,” said Hudson. “Dark clothes. Real washed-out face. He gave me the creeps at first, but he said he was a friend of Coyote Bill’s, and he thought a guy like me might be able to make use of a real old bone. I figured I already knew why he wanted to get rid of it, now that it was in the papers as stolen. Bill got all nervous when I asked him about the fella later. Downright spooked. Shoulda told y’all then . . . Stupid of me. I just got the idea in my head, and I had to know if it would work . . .”
The pale man I had seen in New Fiddleham at the train station—he had taken the bone. Jackaby and I exchanged a glance. If he had seen fit to murder Madeleine Brisbee to get the fossil—then why give it to Hudson so easily? None of it made sense. Who was he? Why had he come? Why did those people have to die?
“You’ve had the fossil since then?” Jackaby said. “The whole time we were looking?”
The trapper nodded sheepishly.
“Okay. I take it you reduced it to shavings, then?” Jackaby continued. “You must have laced the creature’s food and kept the food sources varied to ensure only one single ingredient was consistent. Something like that?”
Hudson nodded again. “Ground it ta powder. He changed a lot quicker than I expected.”