“I s'pose they got the same old city marshal there?” says he. I guess he
thought maybe he'd been gone for years and years, like Rip Van Winkle.
He was having a hard time to get things straightened out in his mind. He
stared and stared into the bowl of his pipe, looking at me now and then
out of the corners of his eyes as if he wondered whether he could trust
me or not; finally he leaned over toward me and whispered into my ear,
awfully anxious: “Who would you say I was, for choice, now?”
“Bill Patterson,” I told him, and he brightened up considerable and
chuckled to himself; and then he said, feeling of himself all over and
tying on his rope again:
“Bill Patterson is correct! Been wanderin' around through these here
woods for weeks an' weeks, livin' on roots an' yarbs like a wild man of
Borneo.” Then he asks me very confidential: “How long now, if you was to
make a guess, would you judge Bill had been livin' in this here cave?”
But Squint cut in and told him point blank he was kidnapped. It took
a long time to get that into Bill's head, but finally he asked: “What
for?”
“For ransom,” says I.
“And revenge,” says Squint.
Bill looked dazed for a minute, and then said if it was all the same to
us he'd like to have a talk with a lawyer. But Bob Jones broke in and
told him “Unless five hundred dollars is paid over to the gang, you will
never see Hazelton again.” He looked frightened at that and began to
pick at his coat-sleeves, and said he guessed if we didn't mind he'd go
and take a little nap now. You never saw such a captive for sleeping up
his spare time; he was just naturally cut out to be a prisoner. But
we felt kind of sorry and ashamed we had scared him; it was so easy to
scare him, and we agreed we'd speak gentle and easy to him after that.
At dinner time we waked Bill up and gave him another meal. And he was
ready for it; the sight of victuals seemed to take any fright he might
have had out of his mind. You never saw such an appetite in all your
born days; he ate like he had years of lost time to make up for; and
maybe he had. He was having such a good time he began to have his doubts
whether it would last, for he said, in a worried kind of way, after
dinner: “This here thing of being kidnapped, now, ain't a thing you boys
is going to try and charge for, is it? 'Cause if it is them there sharp
tricks can't be worked on to me; and if you was to sue me for it you sue
a pauper.”
After dinner Squint and I went to town on a scouting party. We hung
around the streets and listened to the talk that was going on just like
a couple of spies would that had entered the enemy's camp in war time.
Everybody was wondering what had become of Bill, and gassing about the
notices; and it made us feel mighty proud to think that fame had come
to ones so young as us, even although it came in disguise so that no one
but us knew it. But in the midst of that feeling we heard Hy Williams,
the city drayman, saying to a crowd of fellows who were in front of the
post office waiting for the mail to be distributed:
“The beatingest part of the whole thing is that any one would be fools
enough to think that this town or any other town would pay ransom to get
back a worthless cuss like Bill Patterson!”
It had never struck us like that before. Instead of being famous like
we had thought, here we were actually being laughed at again! Squint, he
gritted his teeth, and I knew all the rankling that he had done inside
of him was as nothing to the rankling that he was doing now. So that
night we put up some more notices around town, which read as follows:
_n. B.--take notus! we didunt reely Expect money for Old Bill Patterson,
we onely done that to show this town Is in Our Power. Take warning and
pay Up the next will be a rich one or his child._
--_kidnappers._
That really made folks pretty serious, that notice. There was a piece
in a Chicago paper about the things that had happened in our town. The
piece told a lot of things that never had happened, but when the papers
came down from Chicago and they all read it the whole town began to
get worse and worse excited. And about that time we began to get scared
ourselves. For there was talk of sending off to Chicago and getting a
detective. People were frightened about their kids, too. It kept getting
harder and harder for us to get out to the cave to guard Bill. Not that
he needed much guarding, either; for he was having the time of his life
out there, eating and sleeping and not working at anything else. It had
been years since he had struck any kind of work that suited him as well
as being kidnapped did; if we hadn't been so worried it would have been
a pleasure to us to see how happy and contented we were making him; he
acted like he had found the real job in life that he had always been
looking for, and the only thing that bothered him at all was when he
recollected about that ransom and got afraid the town would pay it
and end his snap. But mostly he didn't bother about anything; for his
recollection was only by fits and starts; yesterday was just as far off
to him as a year ago. The second day he was there he did get a little
grouchy because he had been without anything to drink for so long.
But that night someone broke into the saloon and stole a lot of quart
bottles of whiskey; about a bushel of them, it was said. We didn't
suspect it was Bill, right at first, for he was foxy enough to keep
it hid from us; and when we did know we didn't dare say anything! That
whiskey was the one thing Bill had lacked to make him completely happy.
But the theft worked in a way that increased our troubles. For it showed
people that the mysterious gang was still hanging around waiting to
strike a desperate stroke. And the very next night a store was broken
into and some stuff stolen. It wasn't Bill, but I suppose some tramp
that was hanging around; but it helped to stir things up worse and
worse. So we decided that we had better turn Bill loose. We held a
meeting out by the cave, and then Squint told him:
“Prisoner, you are at liberty!”
“What d'ye mean by that?” says Bill. “You ain't goin' back on me, are
ye?”
“Yonder town has been punished enough,” says Squint. “Go free--we strike
your shackles off!”
“But see here,” says Bill, “wasn't I kidnapped reg'lar? Ain't I been a
model prisoner?”
“But we're through with you, Bill,” we told him. “Don't you understand?”
Bill allowed it was a mean trick we were playing on him; he said he
had thought we were his friends, and that he'd done his best to give
satisfaction in the place, and here we were, firing him, as you might
say, without any warning, or giving him any chance to get another job
like it, or even telling him where he had failed to make good, and then
he snuffled like he was going to cry, and said: “That's a great way to
treat an honest workin'-man, that is! An' they call this a free country,
too!”
But Squint, while expressing sorrow that we should have raised any false
hopes, was firm with him, too. “You take the rest of that whiskey and
chase along, now, Bill,” he said, “you aren't kidnapped any more.”
But Bill flared up at that. “I ain't, ain't I?” he said. “Yer a liar!
I was kidnapped fair and square; kidnapped I be, and kidnapped I stay!
I'll show you blamed little cheats whether I'm kidnapped or not, I
will!”
He took a chew of tobacco and sat down on a log, and studied us, looking
us over real sullen and spiteful. “Now, then,” he says, finally, “if
you young smart alecs think you can treat a free man that-a-way yer dern
fools. I got the law on to my side, I have. Do you think I don't know
that? Mebby you boys don't know ye could go to jail for kidnappin' an
honest work-in'-man? Well, ye could, if it was found out on ye. It's a
crime, that's what it is, and ye could go to jail for it. You treat Old
Bill fair and square and keep friends with him, and he won't tell on
you; but the minute I hear any more talk about bein' set at liberty I'll
tell on ye, and to jail you goes. I'm mighty comfortable where I be, and
I ain't goin' to be turned out.”
We all looked at each other, and then we looked away again, and our
hearts sank. For each one read in his neighbour's eyes (as Squint said
later) what his doom might well be.
“Kidnapped I be,” says Bill again, very rough and decided, “and
kidnapped I stay. And what's more, I want chicken for supper to-night. I
ain't had no chicken for quite a spell. You can wake me up when supper's
ready.” And he went into the cave and lay down for a nap.
We were in his power, and he knew it!
We had to steal that chicken, and it went against the grain to do it.
It was the first time in its career of crime the Dalton Gang had ever
actually stolen anything. Except, of course, watermelons and such truck,
which isn't really stealing. And except the ice cream from the Methodist
lawn sociable, which was for revenge and as a punishment on the Sunday
School, and so not really stealing, either.
Things got worse and worse. For Bill, he kept us on the jump. He got
to wanting more and more different things to eat, and was more and more
particular about the cooking. He wouldn't lift a hand for himself, not
even to fill and light his own pipe. We waited on him hand and foot, all
day long. And first he would take a fancy for a mess of squirrels, and
then he would want pigeons; and we had to take turns fanning the flies
off of him when he wanted to take a nap. Once he told a story, and
we all laughed at it; and that gave him the idea he was a great story
teller; and he would tell foolish yarns by the hour and get sulky if
we didn't laugh. We got so we would do anything to keep him in a good
humour. We had a lot of Indian stories and Old Sleuths out to the cave,
and he made us take turns reading to him. That good-for-nothing loafer
turned into a regular king, and we were his slaves.
Between sneaking out there to keep him happy and contented and rustling
up grub for him, and thinking all the time we would be arrested the
next minute, and wanting to confess and not daring to, we all got right
nervous. Then there was a man came to town who didn't tell what his
business was the first day he was there, and we were right sure he was a
detective. He passed right by the cave one day, and we hugged the ground
behind the bushes and didn't dare breathe. It turned out afterward he
was only looking at some land he was figuring on buying. But that night
I dreamed that that man arrested me; and I was being sent to jail when I
waked up screaming out something about kidnapping. I heard my Pa say to
my Ma, after they had got me quieted down:
“Poor little fellow! He thought he was kidnapped! No wonder he is
afraid, the state this whole town is in. If those desperadoes are
caught, they'll go to the pen for a good long term: nothing on earth can
save 'em from a Bureau county jury.”
Then he went back into his room and went to sleep; but I didn't go to
sleep. What he had said didn't make me feel sleepy. I slipped out of bed
and prayed enough that night to make up for the times I had forgot it
lately; and the next day the rest of the Dalton Gang admitted they had
prayed some, too.
But the worst of all was when Bill made friends with the tramp. Squint
and I went out to the cave one morning to get Bill's breakfast for him,
and as we got near we heard two sets of snores. Bill's snore you could
tell a long way off, he sort of gargled his snores and they ended up
with kind of a choke and an explosion. But the other snore was more of a
steady whistling sound. We ran across the fellow sudden, and it like to
have frightened us out of a year's growth. He was lying just inside the
cave with his hat pulled over his face, but he was snoring with one eye
open. It peered out from under the brim of his hat; it was half-hidden,
but it was open all right, and it was staring straight at us. It wasn't
human; no one with good intentions would lie there like that and snore
like he was asleep and watch folks at the same time on the sly. We
couldn't even run; we stood there with that regular see-saw snore coming
and going, and that awful eye burning into the centres of our souls,
as Squint says later, and thought our end had come. But he waked up and
opened the other eye, and then we saw the first one was glass and he
hadn't meant any harm by it. He was right sorry he'd scared us, he
said; but we'd have to get used to that eye, for _he_ allowed he was
kidnapped, too. It was two days before he quit being our captive and
left, and they are among the saddest days I ever spent.
He left because Bill's whiskey was gone; and the afternoon he left, Bill
was helpless. When we saw Bill in that fix it gave us an idea how to
get rid of him. That night he was still weak and easy to handle. So we
slipped the handcuffs on him and took him back and locked him into the
calaboose again. Then we put signs and notices around town that read
this way:
_Ha Ha Ha_
_Did you ever get left! this town joshed me for years but I have got
even--the joke is on to you--I wasn't kidnapped a tall--who is the
suckers now?_
_Bill Patterson._
And that town was so mad that when they found Bill in the jail again
there was talk of handling him pretty rough. But it all turned into
josh. Bill, when he woke up in the calaboose, thought he had just had
a dream at first, and denied he had ever been absent. Then when he saw
they all took him for a deep joker he began to act like he was a joker.
And before long he got to thinking he really had played that trick on
the town. When they used to ask him how on earth he got into and out of
the calaboose without the keys, he would wink very mysterious, and look
important, and nod and chuckle to himself and say that was the best part
of the joke and he intended to keep it to himself.
But one day when he was almost sober he saw Squint and me on the
street and stared at us long and hard like he was trying to recollect
something, and scratched his head and said: “You boys didn't always used
to live in this town, did you?”
“Uh-huh,” says I.
“That's funny,” says Bill, “I could have swore you was boys I once
knowed a long ways off from here that time I was on my travels.”