Rather than taking the modern freeways, Penelope took the old highways up over the San Gabriel Mountains on a northern route, yet there was little to romanticize about the route as there was little more than sand and sagebrush in the hills overlooking north Los Angeles. Given the trip up to the old Bravo house barely a week ago, Shaggy was starting to get tired of the scenery.
Fortunately, Penelope's driving was as excellent as he remembered. Her hands at the wheel of the Compact Pussycat was as skilled as his own in the kitchen. Each turn was taken at speed, and every car on the road was passed with the skill of a professional racer - which of course, she was.
"Like, it's not that I don't appreciate the lift, but where are we heading again?" Asked Shaggy.
Eyes fixed to the road, Penelope gauged the gap ahead to pass a long semi before shifting into a higher gear as she sped up to cut around it just before an oncoming line of cars in the opposite lane crashed into them. In a panic, Scooby-Doo ducked his head down under the dash and hid by Shaggy's feet, the vibrations from his shaking barely registering those over those from the car's engine.
"You know that wasn't a double yellow right?" Asked Shaggy.
"When you live life at a certain speed, everything that doesn't match your pace is more of a suggestion than a rule." Said Penelope.
"What about those 'speed enforced by radar' signs?" Asked Shaggy.
Pointing up to the pink parasol sticking up from the center console, Penelope laughed. "It's not just for show, jams radar detection. Also scrambles radio frequencies so any pursuing police can't call in saying they're after a beautiful damsel in a pink hot rod. Now as to your previous question, I have a race upcoming and I'm going to talk to someone who raced over the same route and knows the dangers."
Coming down out of the mountains, Penelope followed the road signs leading onto Palmdale. Before long they pulled into the dusty driveway of a broken down ranch on the backside of the airport. Removing her white driving gloves, Penelope reached into her glovebox to swap them for a set of red gloves instead.
"I'll be heading in now. You coming?" Asked Penelope, not waiting for an answer as she exited her car and walked over to the old porch.
"Ree ropped?" Asked Scooby-Doo.
"Yeah bud, we're here." Said Shaggy, reaching down to give the dog a pat of assurance.
Weak-legged from fright, Scooby-Doo took one shaky step after another as the pair nervously wandered over towards where Penelope was standing against a rail under the shade of the porch, looking out onto the corral where a single white horse was trotting in circles alongside a smaller brown donkey.
Letting out a whistle, Penelope called out to the empty corral. "Quick-Draw, over here."
In a world with talking dogs and cats, a talking horse was not that much of an oddity, but the way Quick-Draw stepped over to the fencepost, picking up a hat hanging from a nail and placing it atop his head was still a sight that seemed more at place in a dream than reality.
"Glad to see you decided to come a-long little lady." Said Quick-Draw, whose eyes took a moment to adjust to the shade under the porch. "Ah, you twoo. I a-heard throough the grapevine that yoour gang was in the area as well."
The Donkey ran up alongside Quick-Draw as it likewise grabbed a sombrero before placing it on its head as well. And the memories of encountering Quick-Draw McGraw and Baby Looey returned to Shaggy of the encounter at Gopher Gulch with the 'Fastest Ghost in the West.'
"What are you doing out here Quick Draw? Weren't you, like, a sheriff or something?" Asked Shaggy.
"Just a-part-time work that were. Truth is I'mma retired, done put up my spurs and lookin' to enjoy mah twilight yeers." Said Quick-Draw.
"Queeksdraw been wanting to re-tired for the past hundred yeers now." Said Baba Looey.
"Rundred reers?" Asked Scooby-Doo.
"See, that's where yoo twoo come in. It a-turns out that you're both involved in the same mess as I got into a-long time ago."
Somehow the world seemed to get wavy, as Quick-Draw seemed to get drawn up into a flashback. But as the horse started speaking, the waviness stopped as quickly as it had set in as Baba Looey broke out of fan to blow away an onset of hot air.
"Eh-sorry 'bout that. Hot air from the airport sweeps this way and causes all sort of mirages." Said Baby Looey.
"It was 1890 and I was just a regular horse at the time, barely a thought in my head outside of long-distance running and wondering when the next time I'd get hay and water would be. My rider was a young buck named Bryce Bravo, not that I knew at the time. He was some slick, blonde from out of country who bought me from my home ranch out in Lakeside, California. I don't know what prompted him to enter the Steel Ball Run race, but sure enough we got involved in a wild adventure."
"So wait... you're like, 130 years old?" Asked Shaggy.
"Listen kid, I've got hooves, not fingers. Don't expect me to know the math." Said Quick-Draw. "Now where was I?"
"Steel Ball Run." Said Penelope.
"Right. So, I'mma bit hazy about the early part of the race. All I know is that we weren't in the lead, not even in the top 20. Somewhere around half-way through the race, that's when everything changed. We weren't in Kansas anymore... no wait, we were in Kansas. I know we crossed the river before a-going off course from the other riders. I think we headed north, to find a faster route, but neither Bryce nor I knew the country so we got lost."
"They got lost after leaving Kansas City." Said Baba Looey.
"That's what the recoords say." Said Quick-Draw.
"So, somewhere in Northwest Missouri?" Asked Penelope.
"Bryce rode into the night following some light in the sky that lit up the trail. And despite it being night, we found ourselves in this wide-open plain that was as bright as day, with all sorts of buildin's and ruins. Now Bryce tied my leads to some post he found and went inside to take a look around. After some time passed I started to get thirsty and pulled on my leads, which came undone because Bryce couldn't tie a knot to save his life and I wandered inside to see what had happened. I found him inside this buildin' collapsed in a ball of sweat next to what looked like a couple of sticks. Upon closer examination, they weren't sticks, but bones. My curiosity got the better of me and I bent down for a sniff but they touched my snout and I fell down a-right next to my rider." Said Quick-Draw.
"Rib bones?" Asked Shaggy.
"That's the best guess I have, yep." Said Quick-Draw.
"What happened next? The papers say that Bryce turned up in Chicago a year later." Asked Penelope.
"Well, after waking up, I saw Bryce had run around collecting stuff from the city and was loading them up on this cart. For my part, I felt different upon wakin' up. My thoughts were starting to process things different. And words that Bryce was speaking aloud to himself started to make sense. I guess it was like how you humans reach an age where you move out of being a toddler and start makin' memories - or some such, I ain't no high-falutin' doctor." Said Quick-Draw.
"You said bones. Were there two of them?" Asked Shaggy.
"That's right. And that's where all this trouble started. See, we left that place with this cart full of stuff and stashed it in a property that Bryce had bought outside of Chicago. We then finished that confounded race where Bryce stored the last two items on him, those bones, in a safe in New York. After he did a press tour, we went back to Missouri and tried finding that place again, but nothin' doin' - we couldn't find our way back in. After that, Bryce abandoned me in Chicago and went about his business. By that point, I was about as smart as you humans, and went out on my own, back into the west." Said Quick-Draw.
"All this is to say, don't go off road in Missouri or you'll get caught in a time bubble that will waste a year of time?" Asked Penelope. "What a waste of time."
Going over to a bench to sit down in a huff, Penelope removed her helmet and checked her hair with a compact mirror.
"We've run across these bones. What do they do?" Asked Shaggy.
"Aye reckon' they each do something. The one gives some sort of power. It made me smarter than the average horse, let me talk like you humans, and seems to do the same for animals around me. It's not perfect, but it explains your friend there because I had and encounter with his great-great-great-grandpappy, Scofield-Doo, back in the day. As 'fer the other one, well..."
Reaching over to a saddle resting atop the corral fence, Quick-Draw opened a flap and pulled out a rib bone.
"This one seems to grant extended life to those who have it." Putting the bone back in his saddle bag, Quick-Draw looked Shaggy and Scooby-Doo up and down. "It took me no small amount of effort gettin' this one from Bryce's son Brinsley back in the day. The other one was safe with dear Jebedissa who kept it from her unscrupulous relatives, but with her passin' I'm afraid that things are about to be shaken up."
"Whose bones are these?" Asked Shaggy.
"That's not a rabbit hole I've ever wanted to go down kid. Truth be told every rabbit hole I've ever gone down has been a mess because of that darn Scooter Rabbit... but that's another story." Said Quick-Draw.
"What about those things you mentioned? The things Bryce took out of the hidden city?" Asked Shaggy.
"Some of them he sold off as curiosities, others he kept because they seemed useful to him. But I've heard tell that the Bravos have put in a lot of effort to find the pieces that had been sold off and recollect them. That might be worth lookin' into." Said Quick-Draw.
Looking over to the bench where Penelope was sitting, Shaggy collapsed from the information overload. This sort of stuff was more Velma's thing, though something told him that she and Johnny wouldn't have made it out of Brandon's house of horrors... well maybe Velma would have made it out, Johnny's short legs weren't made for running - he was a stand and fight sort of guy, something Shaggy didn't really relate to.
"Penelope. You mind giving me a ride to Aaron City? I gotta get back to the gang." Asked Shaggy.
"Better to be back on the road than waste my time listening to old horse stories." Said Penelope.
Getting in the car, Shaggy looked back to the horse and donkey, relics of a bygone age, sadly waving goodbye to a couple of kids. Their words of warning weren't much of a help; but when you live your life throwing caution into the wind, maybe, just maybe, you find that caution again flying about as the storms of life surround you.