This town,” says Squint, quiet, but determined, “has got to be made an
example of. It has got to learn that it can't laugh at the Dalton Gang
and go unscathed. Freckled Watson of Dead Man's Gulch,” says he to me,
“speak up! What form shall the punishment take?”
“Blood,” says I.
“Two-Gun Tom of Texas,” says he to Tom Mulligan, “speak!”
“Death!” says Tom.
“Arizona Pete, speak!”
“Blood and Death,” says Pete Wilson, making his voice deep.
“Broncho Bob?”
“Blood, death, and fire!” says Bob Jones.
There was a solemn pause for a minute, and then I says, according to
rule and regulation:
“And what says Dead-Shot Squint, the Terror of the Plains?”
He was very serious while one might have counted ten breaths, and then
he pulled his jack-knife from his pocket and whet it on the palm of his
hand, and tried its point on his thumb, and replied:
“He says death, and seals it with a vow!”
That vow was a mighty solemn thing, and we always felt it so. It wasn't
the kind of a thing you would ever let small kids or girls know about.
First you all sat down in a circle, with your feet together, and rolled
up the sleeve of your left arm. Then the knife was passed around, and
each drew blood out of his left arm. Then each one got as much blood out
of the next fellow's arm as he could, in his mouth, and all swallowed
simultaneous, to show you were going into the thing to the death and no
turning back. Next we signed our names in a ring, using blood mixed with
gunpowder. But not on paper, mind you. We signed 'em on parchment.
First and last, that parchment was a good deal of trouble. If you think
skinning a squirrel or a rat to get his hide for parchment is an easy
trick, just try it. Let alone catching them being no snap. But Squint,
he was Captain, and he was stern on parchment, for it makes an oath more
legal, and all the old-time outlaws wouldn't look at anything else. But
we got a pretty good supply ahead by saving all the dead cats and things
like that we could find, and unless you know likely places to look it
would surprise you how many dead cats there are in the world.
We were in the Horse Thieves' Cave, about a mile from town. It had
really been used for that, way back before the war. There was a gang
pretended to be honest settlers like everybody else. But they used to
steal horses and hide them out in there. When they had a dozen or so
of them they'd take 'em over to the Mississippi River, which was about
thirty miles west, some night, and raft 'em down stream and sell 'em at
Cairo or St. Louis. That went on for years, but along in the fifties,
my grandfather said, when _he_ was a kid, a couple was hung, and the
remainder got across the river and went west. The cave was up on
the side of a hill in the woods, and forgotten about except by a few
old-timers. The door-beams had rotted and fallen down, and the sand and
dirt had slid down over the mouth of it, and vines and bushes grown up.
No one would have guessed there was any cave there at all. But the
dogs got to digging around there one afternoon when the Dalton Gang was
meeting in the woods, and uncovered part of those door beams. We dug
some more and opened her up. It took a lot of work to clean her out, but
she was as good as new when we got done with her. We never told any one,
and the vines and bushes were so thick you could hunt a year and never
find the opening. It isn't every bunch of kids get a real Horse Thieves'
Cave ready-made like that, right from the hands of Providence, as you
might say. Pete Wilson used to brag and say his grand-dad was one of
those horse-thieves. It made the rest of us feel kind of meek for a
time, because none of us could claim any honour or grandeur like that in
our families. But my grand-dad, who has a terrible long memory about
the early days, said it wasn't so; so far as he could recollect Pete's
grand-dad never had any ambition above shoats and chickens.
Well, I was telling you about that oath. We were taking it because
Squint's father, who was mayor, had run on to one of those parchments
(which Squint ought never to have taken away from the cave), and had
asked a lot of fool questions about it. Then he threw back his head and
laughed at the Dalton Gang. It made our blood boil. Hence, our plans for
revenge.
“The time has come,” said Squint, “for a bold stroke. Yonder proud city
laughs. But he laughs best who laughs last. And ere another sun has
set----”
“The last time we took the blood oath,” interrupts Bob Jones, “we didn't
do anything more important than steal the ice cream from the Methodist
lawn sociable.”
“There must be no failure,” says Squint, not heeding him, and he jabbed
the knife into the ground and gritted his teeth. You could see how the
memory of being laughed at was rankling through his veins.
“But, Squint,” says Tom Mulligan, looking quite a bit worried, “you
don't _really_ mean to kill any one, do you?”
Squint only says, very haughty: “The blood oath has been sworn. Is there
a traitor here?” He was always a great one for holding us to it, Squint
was, unless what he called an Honourable Compromise came into sight.
And we all got mighty uncomfortable and gloomy trying to think of some
Honourable Compromise. It was to me that the great idea came, all of a
sudden.
“Squint,” I says, “the thing to do is to kidnap some prominent citizen
and hold him for ransom.”
Squint brightened up and said to wring gold from the coffers of yonder
proud city would be even more satisfaction than blood. The next question
was: Who will we kidnap?
“I suggest the mayor of yonder town!” says Squint.
“Gee--your dad, Squint?” says Tom Mulligan.
“I offer him as a sacrifice,” says Squint, very majestically. No one
could do any more, and we all felt Squint's dad had deserved it. But the
idea was so big it kind of scared us, too. But while the rest of us were
admiring Squint, Bob Jones got jealous and offered _his_ father. Then we
all offered our fathers, except Tom Mulligan, who didn't have anything
better to offer than a pair of spinster aunts. There was a general row
over whose father was the most prominent citizen. But finally we decided
to bar all relatives and kinsfolk, in order to prevent jealousy, even to
the distant cousins. But it isn't a very big town, and it would surprise
you how many people are related to each other there. Finally Bill
Patterson was voted to be the Honourable Compromise, being known as the
town drunkard, and not related to anybody who would own up to it.
It figured out easy enough. All we had to do was to wait until Sunday
night, and take Bill out of the lockup. Every Saturday afternoon regular
Si Emery, who was the city marshal, arrested Bill for being drunk on
Main Street, and Bill was kept in jail until Monday morning. Si was
getting pretty old and feeble and shaky, and of late years the town
council never let him have the lock-up key until just an hour or so
before it was time to arrest Bill on Saturdays. Because one time Si
had forgot to feed and water a tramp in there for about a week, and the
tramp took sick after a while, and he was dead when Si remembered about
him, and had to be buried at the town's expense. And several times some
tough customers had taken the keys away from Si and broken into the
place and played cards and cut up in there scandalous for half the
night. So it was thought best Si shouldn't carry the keys, nor the
handcuffs which belonged to the town. After he had locked Bill up on
Saturday evenings Si would take the keys to the mayor's house, and get
them again on Monday morning to let Bill out.
So the next Sunday night when the hired girl wasn't looking, Squint
sneaked the keys and the town handcuffs out of the drawer in the kitchen
table where the knives and forks were kept. He slipped upstairs to bed,
and no one noticed. About ten o'clock he dressed again, and got out the
back window, and down the lightning rod; and at the same hour us other
Daltons were doing much the same.
We met behind the lockup, and put on the masks we had made. They had
hair on the bottoms of them to look like beards sticking out.
“Who's got the dark-lantern?” Squint asks, in a whisper.
“M-m-me,” answered Pete Wilson, stuttering. I was so excited myself I
was biting my coat-sleeve so my teeth wouldn't chatter. And Bob Jones
was clicking the trigger of the cavalry pistol his uncle carried in the
war, and couldn't stop, like a girl can't stop laughing when she gets
hysterics. The cylinder was gone and it couldn't be loaded or he would
have killed himself, for he turned it up and looked right into the
muzzle and kept clicking when Squint asked him what the matter was. Pete
shook so he couldn't light the lantern; but Squint, he was that calm
and cool he lit her with the third match. He unlocked the door and in we
went.
Bill was snoring like all get out, and talking in his sleep. That made
us feel braver again. Squint says to handcuff him easy and gentle before
he wakes. Well, there wasn't any trouble in that; the trouble was to
wake him up afterward. He was so interested in whatever he was dreaming
about that the only way we could do it was to tickle his nose with a
straw and wait until he sneezed himself awake. Squint clapped the muzzle
of the pistol to his forehead, while I flashed the lantern in his eyes
and the other three sat on his stomach and grabbed his legs. Squint
says:
“William Patterson, one move and you are a dead man!”
But Bill didn't try to move any; he only said: “Can't an honest
working-man take a little nap? You go 'way and leave me be!”
“William Patterson,” says Squint, “you are kidnapped!”
“Yer a liar,” says Bill. “I ain't. Ye can't prove it on to me. I'm just
takin' a little nap.”
Then he rouses up a little more and looks at us puzzled, and begins to
mumble and talk to himself:
“Here I be,” he says, “and here they be! I can see 'em, all right; but
they can't fool me! They ain't really nothing here. I seen too many of
them tremenses come and go to be fooled that easy.”
“Arise, William Patterson, and come with us,” says Squint.
“Now, you don't want to get too sassy,” says Bill, “or you'll turn into
something else the first thing _you_ know. You tremenses always does
turn into something else.” We had to kick him on the shins to make him
get up. When we did that he says to himself: “Shucks, now! A body'd
think he was bein' kicked if he didn't know different, wouldn't he?”
He came along peaceable enough, but muttering to himself all the way:
“Monkeys and crocodiles and these here striped jackasses with wings on
to 'em I've saw many a time, and argified with 'em, too; and talked with
elephants no bigger'n a man's fist; and oncet I chased a freight train
round and round that calaboose and had it give me sass; but this is the
first time a passel o' little old men ever come and trotted me down the
pike.”
And he kept talking like that all the way to the cave. It was midnight
before we took off his handcuffs and shoved him in. When we gave him
that shove, he did get sort of spiteful and he says:
“You tremenses think you're mighty smart, but if I was to come out
of this sudden, where would _you_ be? Blowed up, that's where--like
bubbles!”
We padlocked the door we had rigged up over the mouth of the cave, and
by the time it was locked he was asleep; we could hear him snoring when
we lit out for town again.
On the calaboose door, and in front of the post-office, and on the bank,
we tacked big notices. They were printed rough on wrapping paper and
spelled wrong so it would look like some tough customers had done it.
They read as follows:
_Bill Patterson has Bin stole 5 hundred $$ ransum must be left on baptis
Cherch steps by Monday mid-night or his life pays us forfut like a Theef
in the nite he was took from jale who Will Be next!_
--_the kidNappers._
Next morning we were all up at the cave as early as we could make it.
I had a loaf of bread and a pie and part of a boiled ham, and Pete had
some canned sardines and bacon he got out of his dad's store, and the
others were loaded up with eggs and canned fruit and what they could get
hold of easy. You may believe it or not, but when we opened that cave
door Bill was still asleep. Squint woke him up and told him:
“Prisoner, it is the intention of the Dalton Gang to treat you with
all the honours of war until such time as you are ransomed, or, if not
ransomed, executed. So long as you make no effort to escape you need
have no fear.”
“I ain't afeared,” says Bill, looking at that grub like he could hardly
believe his eyes. We built a fire and cooked breakfast. There was a
hollow stump on the side of the hill, and we had dug into the bottom
of it through the top of the cave. It made a regular chimney for our
fireplace. If any one saw the stump smoking outside they would only
think some farmer was burning out stumps.
Bill always wore a piece of rope around his waist in place of a belt or
suspenders. When he had eaten so much he had to untie the rope he sat
back and lighted his pipe, and said to me, right cunning:
“I'll bet you ain't got any idea what state this here is.”
“It's Illinois,” says I. He looked like he was pleased to hear it.
“So it is,” says he. “So it is!” After he had smoked awhile longer he
said: “What county in Illinois would you say it was, for choice?”
“Bureau county,” I told him. I saw then he hadn't known where he was.
“It ain't possible, is it,” he says, “that I ever seen any of you boys
on the streets of a little city by the name of Hazelton?”