Humbug Mountain (6 page)

“Be quiet.”

For a long while none of us said another word. I was certain a good five minutes had passed. Maybe more. We just watched the trees, getting more and more fidgety.

I turned to Ma. “I could gallop in with the pepperbox pistol.”

“Don't talk rubbish.”

“That fool killer man is gone-minded. He might be trying to bash Pa over the head. He's infernally blood-thirsty.”

Ma was getting edgy. “Pa told us to stay put!”

We waited some more. I never knew time to run so perishing slow. At least there was no crack of gunfire. Pa must have reckoned right that their ammunition was used up. Suddenly I remembered that they had tried to rid themselves of the crows by chunking rocks at them. If Shagnasty John had bullets for his gun, wouldn't he have shot them?

And then we saw Pa.

He came out of the trees on horseback. He was riding as straight-backed as a general of the army. And stepping along behind him came the terrors of the plains like prisoners of war. They were balancing lumber and boat poles on their shoulders.

Pa reined up beside us. He turned to the outlaws. “I want you to meet my family. My
wife
Jenny, our daughter Glorietta— and you've already met Wiley.”

Shagnasty John tipped his ragged old hat. “Howdy, m'am. Pleased to meet you, Miss Glorietta. How-do, Wiley.”

I was struck wordless. Pa had tamed them gentle as sheep. It was an eyebrow-lifter.

“Jenny,” Pa said, “you three make yourselves at home on the boat. These two neighborly squatters have kindly agreed to move our belongings aboard.”

“Anything you say, Colonel,” remarked Shagnasty John.

“Glad to oblige. Yes indeed, sir, the sooner you get the law off our trail the better.” Then he turned to Ma. “The Colonel says you brought along chickens on the hoof. I declare if they don't make the mouth water. Me and Mr. Fool Killer here, we ain't had lead to shoot any wild game in weeks.”

The Fool Killer caught hold of the spotted mare. Glorietta was owl-eyed behind her glasses. She stared at him as if he were the devil with his clothes still smoldering from down below.

“Come along,” Pa said, and the three men headed toward the river. We stood where we were like fence posts. How Pa had got the best of those outlaws was a wonder. It fogged the brain.

Then Ma gave her head a toss. “I don't know what your Pa is up to, but I do hope he keeps those two men downwind of us. They smell stronger than skunk cabbage. Now then, what's Grandpa's boat doing over in those trees?”

Ma's green eyes wandered sadly from one end of the boat to the other. “The poor old
Phoenix.
She was pretty as a duck on the water. But look at her now. Dirty as a pigsty. Grandpa wouldn't allow it. Something dreadful must have happened. He'd never abandon the
Phoenix.”

He might be dead, I thought. Maybe we all thought it, but no one ventured to say it.

We trooped across the gangplank to the cabin deck. “Pa said the logbook might tell us a thing or two,” I muttered.

Ma nodded. “In Grandpa's stateroom. Or up in the pilothouse.”

We opened the cabin doors, one after another, and looked in. It felt as if we were opening tombs. Each stateroom sat in heavy silence, with a red plush chair pulled up to a marble-topped table and rosy light pressing through stained glass at the top of the windows.

Grandpa's cabin was far forward and easy to spot. There was a speaking tube hung on the wall, a brass bed, Grandpa's pilot's license framed near the door, and baby pictures of Glorietta and me. There was also one of Ma as a young girl and another of Ma and Pa together.

Still, the room looked ransacked and the bed looked freshly slept in. We didn't find the
logbook,
but Glorietta discovered a club under the bed. A bur-oak club.

She gave me an anxious glance. No doubt about it, the Fool Killer had been sleeping in Grandpa's brass bed.

Ma opened the window to air out the cabin.

We climbed the stairs to the top deck. The pilothouse sat like a box of windows to the rear of the black smokestacks. But there wasn't a scrap of paper to be found inside. Not even Grandpa's river charts.

Ma shook her head. “What
had
he been doing, steaming off out of the main river!”

“Fool Killer!”

“Hang'm! Bash'm!”

Both Ma and Glorietta looked up in surprise. I'd forgot to tell them about those spooky ol' crows. They'd flocked onto the crown of the smokestack again.

“Ravens!” Glorietta exclaimed.

“Just common crows,” I said.

“Same kin,” Ma remarked. “I wonder who taught them to speak.”

“Maybe it was Grandpa,” I said. “Those birds keep worryin' Shagnasty John. The Fool Killer, too. They keep chunking rocks at them.”

We kept searching for papers. The ship's log must be somewhere. And there might even be a letter or two Grandpa had meant to send off to us.

I ended up poking around on my own. The freight deck was piled to the guardrails with stacks and stacks of milled lumber and windows and barrels of nails. I explored around and ended up at the door of the engine room. I turned the brass knob and looked in. I could make out the huge furnace and the white-faced steam gauges and the brass tubing gleaming in the shadows. I edged inside and gazed all around. Almighty clean, the engine room, I thought. There wasn't even the feel of grit under my shoes.

I was starting back outside when I whirled about. A faint rustling sound had caught my ear.

“Who's there?” I said quickly.

I peered into the gloom and waited, but no one answered. Something had moved, but I couldn't make out a thing. Maybe a rat, I thought. Ma would have a perishing fit if she thought there were rats underfoot, and I didn't much like the idea myself. I scrambled out of there and shut the door.

Pa and the outlaws returned with our trunks and sacks of dry food and Mr. Johnson and the chickens and the heavy printing press and all the newspaper stuff. They had fixed boat poles to the sides of the horses like wagon shafts and had dragged everything through the weeds on rough platforms of lumber lashed together. In my Quickshot Billy stories I'd read about Indians toting their belongings that way.

“Colonel,” Shagnasty John said, wiping his face with his bandanna. “If I was you I'd camp right here in the cottonwoods.”

“Nonsense. There's good shelter aboard the boat.”

“I'm downright anxious to be up and gone. We made an agreement, didn't we? Shook on it, too. You don't want to pack all this plunder aboard.”

“Of course I do.”

Shagnasty John flashed the Fool Killer an uneasy look. Then he turned his eyes back to Pa, who was handing me a couple of Ma's flowerpots.

“I'm thinking of the women and children, Colonel,” said Shagnasty John. “They won't like sleeping even one night aboard that cussed riverboat. No sir.”

“What are you talking about?”

Shagnasty John's gaze seemed to float off somewhere. Almost under his breath, the Fool Killer said, “Can't nobody sleep much.”

Shagnasty John was clearly embarrassed to tell what was on his mind. Finally he spit to one side and said, “No one tougher'n me and the Fool Killer. Ain't scared of nothing. But you'll never print up that newspaper for us. Not on the boat.”

Pa said, “I gave you my word, sir.”

“It's the woman and children, Colonel. They'll be too scared. That's the truth.”

“Nonsense.”

“Wait'll you hear them peculiar sounds that come in the night,” Shagnasty John said. “And things'll disappear. And those blasted crows'll start calling out
your
name. I tell you, Colonel, it was all me and Fool Killer could do to stay hid out here. That boat has a ghost aboard. And that's a fact. It's haunted.”

9

THE SHERIFF OF SUNRISE

Pa set up his printshop in a rear cabin. The boat haunted?

“Flap-jawed foolishment,” he declared. And Ma said, “I'd sooner have a ghost aboard than those two high-smelling ruffians.”

She gave Mr. Johnson and the chickens the run of the freight deck. I thought about the sounds I had heard, in the engine room. Maybe it
wasn't
a rat. Glorietta gave my sleeve a tug. “Wiley, what if there is a ghost aboard?”

I tried to sound as certain as Pa. “Foolishment,” I said.

“But Shagnasty John and the Fool Killer—they heard him.”

“One see is worth twenty hears,” I answered.

The Fool Killer stood off by himself. He watched us with his deep-socketed eyes as if he had found a whole passel of fools.

Shagnasty John dusted off his hands after all the hauling about. “How long you figure to take printing us up that newspaper?”

“You'll have it tomorrow,” Pa answered.

Ma said, “Mr. Shagnasty—or whatever it is you call yourself—you or your friend must have seen the ship's logbook somewhere.”

“Reckon we did,” said Shagnasty John.

Ma's eyes lit right up. “That's splendid. Where is it?”

“I burnt it,” the Fool Killer answered in that quiet voice of his.

“Burned it!”

“Yes, m'am,” Shagnasty John nodded. “Every scrap of paper we could lay hands on. To start up our cook fires—when we had grub to cook. I tell you that ghost is meaner' n galvanized sin—even stole the last of our coffee beans. If we didn't sleep with our hardtack the creature'd have stole that too. Me and Mr. Fool Killer ain't had a square meal in so long, m'am, it's a wonder we don't throw shadows with holes where our stomachs used to be. That goose looks mighty mouthwatering.”

“Don't you dare lay a hand on Mr. Johnson!” Ma snapped. “I'll pick out a couple of chickens.”

“And Fool Killer would consider it a pleasure to twist their necks for you.”

Ma
gave them a suffering look. “You're not going to sit down to supper with us without a clean bath. Both of you.”

Shagnasty John gave Ma a sulky squint. “M'am, you misjudge us. We bath regular. Every Fourth of July.”

“I'll cut you a piece of soap,” Ma said firmly.

“Ain't more'n a drop of water aboard.”

“There's plenty in the river. Wash your clothes while you're at it.” And then Ma added, “Take some water kegs with you. When you get back you can wash windows.”

Shagnasty John grumbled in his beard, but before long he and the Fool Killer rode off toward the river. They both looked as out-of-sorts and cantankerous as freshly sheared sheep.

“Rufus,” Ma said in the printshop. “What in merciful powers have you hatched up with those two?”

Pa had hung up his coat and was unbuttoning his vest. “I promised them one edition of a newspaper. Let's see—we'll need a name for the masthead. And we'll all have to get busy on it.”

“What on earth do they want with a newspaper?” Ma scoffed. “I'll bet it takes both of them to read one sentence.”

Pa gazed thoughtfully at a tray of large maplewood letters. “It's perfectly simple. We're going to print the news that Shagnasty John and the imposter who calls himself the Fool Killer were caught, tried, and hung right here in Sunrise. How about calling our newspaper
The Humbug Mountain Hoorah?
Yes,
humbug
strikes just the right note.”

“But
Hoorah
for what, Pa?” Glorietta asked.

“Once the ink is dry we'll be shed of the terrors of the plains.” Pa began plucking the blocks of wooden type. “I persuaded them to ride out and leave the papers in barbershops and aboard steamboats and around general stores. News that they've been hung is bound to make the telegraph wires. The law will stop looking for them. And they won't have to hide out
here
any longer.”

Ma gave a huge sigh of relief, and smiled. “Hoorah!”

“Of course, those two have got reserved seats in hell,” Pa added. “They're bound to be recognized by some sheriff or other when they try to hand out this humbug.”

Pa arranged the blocks of type on our marble composing stone, and we all looked at the masthead. The letters were stacked backward so that they'd print forward, but we all could read backward.

“Wiley,” Pa said. “We'll need a fearless lawman to arrest them. You've just been elected sheriff of Sunrise.”

“Me?” I answered, startled.

“Daring capture in broad daylight. I'll write the story myself.”

10

THE FACE IN THE MIRROR

Shagnasty John and the Fool Killer washed windows, and when they finished Ma put them to work cleaning up the cabin deck. They scowled and frowned and muttered between themselves. I do believe they were more anxious to be shed of Ma than we were of them.

Pa began clacking letters into his typestick, composing the capture news as he went along. Hardly without interrupting his train of thought he told us to think up stories to fill out the columns. After all,
The Humbug Mountain Hoorah
had to look enough like a real newspaper to fool Shagnasty John and the Fool Killer.

“If Wiley gets to be sheriff,” Glorietta protested, “what about me?”

“You can be premier singer at the Sunrise Opera House. Mademoiselle Glorietta, the internationally famous songbird of the prairies.”

Glorietta turned up her sharp, freckled nose. “I can't sing, Pa. I'd rather be dogcatcher.”

“There are no dogs in Sunrise.”

“There's no opera house, either.”

“All right, we'll make you the first lady pilot of the Missouri steamboat
Phoenix.
Yes, that'll make a splendid news item.”

Even though it was all make-believe, I must confess I felt inches taller to be sheriff. I supposed I ought to investigate the engine room again, but I knew Pa wouldn't let me carry his pepperbox pistol.