"I know green is a Christmas color and all, Mr. Gordon, but do we-"
"Stand still, if you please," Artemus commanded, wielding the paintbrush to get the last bit of Deputy Wilson covered before stepping back to admire his handiwork. "There! Perfect!"
The young deputy looked down at his clothing, then at his reflection in the mirror.
"Awww, Mr. Gordon, you got me all covered! What if my Ma and Pa see me looking like this? Is this stuff going to come out of my clothing?"
"Eventually," Arte grinned. "Mr. Wilson, I do believe you are looking like a ghost of yourself! Or you will, in just a little while."
The junior deputy, Jim and Artemus would in fact all be looking like ghosts of themselves when the time came that it was needed. It was fortunate that one of the recent cases the Secret Service had sent them on (around Halloween of all times) had called for Artemus and Jim to put in as spooky and unearthly an appearance as possible to apprehend a superstitious suspect. Fortunate as well that Arte still had a king-size batch of the phosphorescent body paint left after that mission was over. It would come in handy now at a time of year he'd never expected to use it.
"Now let's go outside and soak up some of that beautiful afternoon sunlight!"
Artemus looked up at the sky as he and Deputy Wilson exited a small outbuilding near the Gordon house. Hard to believe that with everything that had happened to them today, it was still only two o'clock in the afternoon of this December 24th. Perhaps two hours of daylight remained, and the glowing green paint needed to absorb as much of that daylight as possible – an hour at least if they could get it. Their uncanny luck was continuing in that the weather remained sunny and clear. Artemus' scheme for them wouldn't have worked without sunlight. But while the task that lay ahead of them was dangerous for all involved, Arte intended to make sure as little blood as possible got spilled – especially theirs. With that in mind, Arte used a bit of cloth to grab the lengthy sheet of unframed mirror as he and the deputy carried it out to a waiting horse cart.
"Is this what they mean by smoke and mirrors?" Wilson grunted, lifting his end to tilt it into the cart atop two other mirrors. Special and specially green Secret Service agent James West was already outside loading other equipment into the horse cart. None of them were wasting time – there was so little of it left to the afternoon. Mr. Nusker had his own cart, and his own stable of three horses, and he'd used two of those horses and the cart with a drop cloth cover to smuggle his three 'deceased' allies back into the center of Millwood Grove just long enough for them to find Sheriff Kurtz and Tom Shepherd first – not at the prearranged meeting spot where Anders might show up - and to warn them of what had happened. The sheriff had been almost beside himself to learn that his other deputy was part of the criminal conspiracy, and possibly the most dangerous part of it at that. But he wasn't going to doubt the word of all four of the men recounting this tale – especially when they all still reeked of smoke and the whiff of kerosene and three of them still had the reddened rope marks on their wrists to prove it too.
Kurtz hadn't been wasting his time either, and he'd been able to round up a small posse of men to aid in the task of catching the thieves. To Arte's relief, the volunteers looked not only competent and trustworthy, but well rested. The one advantage they had for sure in going into this fight is that the robber gang had spent the entire previous night assaulting the auctioneers and moving a veritable warehouse's worth of goods and livestock via the mine tunnels, which should have left them exhausted. Now that Timson, Anders and the rest thought that their most dangerous pursuers were not merely thrown off the trail but dead, there might be a chance to catch them napping – literally. If, that is, they could still be found.
Mr. Nusker and Gideon had what could be the most dangerous task of all, tracking the larcenous and lethal lions to their den and reporting back. He'd have more help in this than Arte and Jim had counted on. It seemed that there were two other relics of the region's past who he'd worked with during the dangerous '50s, conducting slaves to freedom Northward via the forests and tunnels – men who still considered Artemus a young puppy! But Nusker and his dog would be the ones tracking in the lead, picking up the trail of the Auction Barn's stolen livestock, while his elderly friends stuck to relay duty.
"It's something like smoke and mirrors," Jim told Wilson. "The mirrors may bring seven years bad luck – for them." He gave the young deputy a brief account of how a mirror had once saved his life – by causing hypnotized Secret Service agent Frank Harper to shoot his own reflection rather than Jim or himself. "We want them to be shooting at reflections of us rather than at us ourselves or anyone else."
"Just think of it as ghosts and mirrors," Arte chuckled. "And we're going to be the ghosts of Christmas present." Or Christmas presents, he added silently. Neither Secret Service Agent intended to go blundering into another one of Timson's underground booby traps again, or let anyone else do it either. But they intended to set up one of their own, closer to a tunnel outlet where Kurtz's posse could be waiting and ready for them. Those of the thieves who weren't caught napping (and kept napping with the help of some of Arte's more special chemical concoctions) needed to be lured into fish-in-barrel position, far enough from where livestock was being held and wouldn't be put in danger by the fight. That was Nusker's requirement, and Arte and Jim's as well. It wouldn't be easy, but with more luck they'd manage to pull it off, round up the outlaws and recover the stolen articles and animals this afternoon without a casualty.
The Secret Service agents' preparations and equipping had taken them no more than an hour, and the cart was on its way toward a prearranged meeting spot when the 'ghosts' heard a signal whistle. Artemus halted long enough for an elderly town librarian, one of Nusker's friends, to hop on board and give them the latest update.
"Anders met the sheriff and that boy Tom right on schedule," Mr. Walters the librarian and former Conductor told them. "Gave out a story as to how Deputy Wilson here gave him some guff and went off with you two, and he doesn't know where you all got to. Sheriff started swearing just like you told him to, and he and Tom went off saying they were going to look for you three instead of the bandits and told Anders he better go off and do the same."
Frank Wilson gasped and did some swearing of his own at the senior deputy's lie to their boss about him, but from Arte's perspective this was all going according to plan.
"You think he fell for it?" Jim asked.
"Anders?" Mr. Walters grinned. "Sure looked like it!"
"Excellent," Arte murmured. With any luck, Anders would head straight back to his criminal colleagues to inform Timson and the rest that they were as good as in the clear and that the sheriff had bought every word of Anders' phony story. Sheriff Kurtz was no professional actor, and that was something both Secret Service agents had worried about. If Kurtz had sounded too nervous or insincere and been forced to arrest his own deputy on the spot, Anders' failure to return to the hideout would have alerted the rest of the Timson gang and the lawmen would have a much worse fight on their hands. Instead, the senior deputy would be giving Kurtz' hidden posse one more trail they could follow to the gang's hideout. Artemus and Jim had one more advantage besides: the librarian had found a map of the old Timson coal mines in the town's archives, and it had allowed them to narrow the search considerably. The outlaws and the livestock had to be holed up in either a large above-ground hideout with sufficient barn or building space near one of the several exit shafts of the original system, or if still underground, near a section of mine that was not only large enough to hold them all but which had plenty of ventilation. Those criteria pointed to only three significant possibilities. Anders would hopefully point the posse to the correct location without even realizing it. And the sooner they knew that location, the sooner these 'ghosts' could set up for their haunting.
Mr. Walters didn't linger, but dashed back into the woods to resume his relay position, while the cart with its interesting occupants and cargo continued onward toward their own rendez-vous.
Sheriff Kurtz was an interesting mix of flustered and relieved when Jim, Arte and Deputy Wilson showed up, and not a little slack-jawed to see them transformed and green with something other than envy. Kurtz gave them his own description of the encounter with Deputy Anders, which Tom Shepherd backed up.
"I've done just like you said," Kurtz muttered. "Can't say as I've ever gone in much for this subtle-fuge stuff myself. You really think this plan of yours will work?"
"Have you thought of a better one?" Artemus queried, already knowing what the answer would be.
Sheriff Kurtz shook his head.
"W-we'll get them good . . . like . . . you've said." Tom Shepherd had a grim determination in his voice. It must have been as hard or harder for him to reign in his temper and appear to fall for Deputy Anders' fish tale as it had been for the sheriff, given the way Anders had treated him.
"Okay, but no bloodshed unless it's absolutely necessary," Jim responded.
Before anyone could add anything else, a whistle from the woods got their attention again, and the second of Mr. Nusker's elderly Conductor acquaintances put in an appearance. He made a quick hand gesture to them – the signal they'd all been waiting for. Nusker and Gideon had evidently figured out which of the three possible locations on the mine map the bandits and their hoard were holed up in.
"That's our cue," Arte said to Wilson. "Showtime."