Humbug Mountain (8 page)

I looked up at Pa, all my muscles gone taut, and wished he'd held back on that volley of insults. They'd be fleahopping mad.

“We'll consider them your final and last words, Colonel,” said Shagnasty John, glowering. “Don't you know straight up when you see it? I'm holding the gun, sir! And we can't have the pack of you on the loose, knowing what you know. That's commonsensical.”

“Nonsensical,” Pa snapped.

“I told you to shut your jaws!” Shagnasty John turned to the Fool Killer. “You take 'em into the woods. One or two at a time.”

All the Fool Killer's yellow teeth were showing now. “With my gnarly club?”

“Of course, with your gnarly club! Can't waste ammunition, can we? We're going to need every drop of lead, ain't we? Start with the shirttail boy and the girl.”

The crows were squawking overhead, their black shadows flapping like bats along the deck. Pa's nostrils were all but giving out steam now, and I knew he was calculating the best moment to spring at Shagnasty John. The moment he had in mind must have been when the Fool Killer grabbed me and Glorietta.

But that was the moment a voice cut through the air, sharp as an ax. It came from the roof of the top deck.

“You! Drop the gun! I've got your overblown nose in my sights.”

Our heads jerked upward. A skinny man stood tall against the sky, a rifle aimed downward, one of his eyes snapped shut and the other peering along the sights. His face was white as a mushroom.

Shagnasty John stood awestruck. You'd think he was looking at a ghost, and maybe he thought he was.

“If I squeeze this trigger another hair, mister, you'll have an extra hole for breathing.” The man's voice was steady as his aim. “I recommended you drop that beanshooter, didn't I?”

Shagnasty John seemed to come unfroze. “Fixin' to, yes sir.” He squinted up at the man. “You the varmint that's been haunting this boat? Ain't sociable to do a thing like that! Why, Fool Killer's been gooseflesh from toe to head.”

“Drop it!”

“Yes indeedy, sir!” Shagnasty John let the pepperbox clatter to the deck.

“Pick it up, Colonel,” said the man.

Pa nodded grandly and gathered up his pistol. Ma gave a quick sigh of relief. “Get your hands off my children,” she snapped at the Fool Killer.

He dropped us like poison ivy, and we scrambled over to Pa and Ma.

The man on the roof kept his open blue eye to the sights. “Now then, you mildewed, lop-eared, flea-bitten buzzards—let's see if you can run for your horses quicker'n I can shoot. And don't stop running until you're out of the territory. Get gone!

The outlaws made a footrace along the deck and about tripped each other trying to be first onto the gangplank. They bounced across. I could hear Shagnasty John chuffing like a steam engine. The Fool Killer threw a glance back over his shoulder. He looked mad enough to bite nails.

Before long they whipped their horses out of the cottonwoods and headed for the setting sun.

Pa slipped the pepperbox pistol back into his pocket. “There's coffee on the stove,” he said, tossing a look up at the stranger. “We'd be highly honored if you'd join us—”

But the man was gone.

12

MR. SLATHERS

It didn't take Pa long to figure a way to smoke the man out of hiding. He kept a pot of coffee boiling on the stove while we busied ourselves in the printshop. We had to distribute the newspaper type back into drawers, letter by letter, being careful to toss each into its own small compartment. The powerful smell of coffee drifted to every quarter of the boat.

Ma set an extra place for supper, and Pa said, “Leave the door open.”

We sat at our places and waited a good ten minutes or more. The doorway remained dark and empty. The stranger was almighty strange, I thought.

“You
sure
it wasn't Grandpa?” Glorietta asked.

“I would certainly recognize my own father,” Ma said. “Well, there's no point in letting supper turn cold. It doesn't look like he's going to join us.”

Pa nodded and we began passing around platters. “Confound it! I'll be sorry to leave without thanking the man.”

Ma shot a startled look at Pa. “Leave? It's a roof over our heads, Rufus.”

“As Shagnasty put it, there's nothing out here worth ten cents of God-help-us. It appears he was right. And our food won't last another week, Jenny.”

“We can catch fish, Pa,” I said. “And maybe jackrabbits.”

“Can't we stay longer?” Glorietta exclaimed. “I've got a whole room to myself. And Grandpa—”

“He's gone,” Pa said. He avoided Ma's eyes. It was almost as if he was thinking that Grandpa might even be dead. But what he said was: “It's a wide country and we haven't a clue where to look for him. I'm truly sorry. There's nothing to hold us in Sunrise. We can't make a living out of weeds and jackrabbits.”

“We could collect buffalo bones!” Glorietta cried out. “Captain Cully said he'd pay good money for 'em.”

I perked up at the idea. But I couldn't help saying, “Glorietta, you said you'd rather
perish
than collect buffalo bones.” I turned to Pa. “Could we?”

But Pa was no longer listening. He was gazing at the doorway. We stopped talking.

The stranger had appeared.

His hair was watered down and parted in the center, and he wore an old dark blue coat
with
brass buttons. I stared at him. We all stared at him. He was barefoot and seemed to have the dry wilts like the Fool Killer and almost everything else around Sunrise.

“Slathers's my name,” he muttered. “I brought my own tin mug. If I could have the borrow of a cup of coffee I'd be downright obliged.”

“Certainly not,” Ma said, quickly gathering her wits. “Not unless you join us for supper. A place has been set, Mr. Slathers.

He held back. I'd never seen a grown man so overcome by the bashfuls. He looked like he didn't know where to get. Finally he said, “I'm mostly used to eating alone, m'am. I probably forgot my table manners. I never was one for the fuss and feathers of company.”

“Mr. Slathers, do come in,” Ma declared, smiling. “We're plumb out of fuss and feathers. Just corn fritters and common doings.”

Like a puff of wind he was gone.

Pa gazed at the empty doorway and shook his head. “He appears to be a cast-iron hermit. I wonder if that brassbutton ship's coat is really his own.”

The room fell silent. I reckon each of us was thinking the same thing. If Mr. Slathers belonged to the
Phoenix,
he'd know a thing or two about Grandpa.

“His hair was slicked down and all,” Ma said. “He wanted to be sociable.”

“He's hungry,” Pa said. “That's certain.”

Ma rose from her chair. “I'll find him. I've
got
to talk to him, Rufus.”

As suddenly as he had vanished Mr. Slathers reappeared in the doorway. He cleared his throat softly, two or three times. And I noticed he'd pulled on shoes. “I don't suppose you'd have any use for this sorry old can of peaches,” he stammered.

“I love peaches!” Glorietta blurted out.

“Bring them right in, Mr. Slathers,” Ma said. “How thoughtful of you! Peaches for dessert—I declare!” She accepted the can from his hands. “Sit right there between Glorietta and Wiley.”

He slipped into his chair.

“Howdy,” I said.

“Hello,” Glorietta said.

“Hello,” he said.

“Howdy,” he said.

Pa introduced Ma and himself, but he already seemed to know who we were. I reckoned he'd overheard a lot of talk with the outlaws. We got busy passing him the supper platters.

“You saved our lives and we're eternally in your debt, Mr. Slathers,” Pa said.

Now
that he was seated among us he seemed to thaw out, little by little. After a long moment he said, “It was neighborly of you to leave me that grub last night.”

“That was Wiley's doing,” Pa said.

“I been hiding inside the ship's furnace,” Mr. Slathers remarked. “Those two cutthroats never thought to look there.”

“Neither did we!” I exclaimed.

He smiled. “Thanks for the feed, Wiley. And m'am, these fritters are first-rate.”

Mr. Slathers was turning friendly as a lamb. And talkative too, as if he'd stored up enough words to bust. He said he'd bunked down in the furnace months ago, when Shagnasty John and the Fool Killer first turned up. “They came aboard while I was over to Wolf Landing for supplies.”

“Wolf Landing?” Pa asked, his interest aroused.

“Thirty miles upriver. The nearest town.”

“Does it have a post office?”

Mr. Slathers nodded. I wished Pa wouldn't interrupt him that way. What difference did it make if there was a post office or not? “I got back here at night and those fools began shooting at me,” he went on. “They didn't see me. They were just shooting at noises. Mighty jumpy, those squatters. That's what gave me the idea.”

“What idea?” Ma asked.

“I figured I'd just scare them off. I dislike having to drop an ounce of lead into a man.” A smile flashed up into his eyes. “I'd mouse out of hiding when they were snoring, and mislay their boots and make off with their chewing tobacco. Anything else they didn't have bolted down. Even lifted their cartridges a few at a time until they were down to empty gunbelts. At first they thought one was stealing from the other. But it wasn't long before I heard the howling fools talking about ghosts. And the crows didn't ease their minds any.”

“Was it you taught them to talk?” I asked.

Mr. Slathers nodded. “I did educate a couple of them. By gum, when the squatters heard their very own tarnacious names squawked in the air they were plumb mystified. Haunts and ghosts, haunts and ghosts—that was about all they talked about. But still they wouldn't clear out.”

Pa said, “They must have been more scared of getting fly-trapped by the law than of your ghost.”

“Likely,” remarked Mr. Slathers. “But their heads rattled with schemes and plans. There's something peculiar due to come down the river from way up in Montana and they were
trying
to figure some way to lay hands on it. ‘Two tons of dust!' Shagnasty would thunder out every so often. I don't know what's so tempting about two tons of dust.”

“Well, there's certainly no shortage of dirt around here,” Ma shrugged. “Heads as soft as goose grease, those two!”

I could tell from the pondering look in Pa's eyes that he didn't like this turn of events. “Did they say when they expected this odd cargo?”

“I don't think it much mattered. I overheard 'em once saying they'd need to be armed to the teeth. But they didn't even have a lump of lead to shoot the crows.”

Mr. Slathers had cleaned every morsel off his plate, but he wouldn't take second helpings. Maybe he thought it was bad manners. Ma urged him to help himself, but in the end it was Glorietta who heaped his plate all over again.

“Thank you, Miss Glorietta,” he said, kind of embarrassed. “I'm bound to confess I'm a mite hungrier than is polite.” And then, looking at us around the table, he added, “You folks lost?”

“Not if this is Sunrise, the Parnassus of the West,” Pa remarked. “Disappointed, yes. Confounded and perplexed—yes, again. But not lost, Mr. Slathers.”

And Ma said, “We expected to be met by my father, Captain Tuggle.” Hope flashed up in her eyes. “Do you know him, sir?”

Mr. Slathers's neck straightened like a maypole. “I declare—the captain's own kin! Why, m'am, I'm chief engineer of the
Phoenix.”

“Then you surely know what happened,” Ma exclaimed. “Where is he?”

Mr. Slathers's ghostly pale face slackened. “A first-rate gentleman, your father,” he said. “Poor old Captain Jack. The river keelhauled him.”

Ma's eyes froze. She held her breath. “He's not drowned, Mr. Slathers? He's not dead?”

“The captain? No, m'am! Tougher'n an old lanyard knot is Captain Jack Tuggle. Gone, though.”

“Gone where?”

Mr. Slathers avoided Ma's anxious eyes. “Wouldn't say. Headed up north, maybe. Or down south. Or east. Or west. He was so deep in the glooms, m'am, it didn't much matter.”

“In the glooms?” Pa said. “What happened?”

“The spavined, muddy, cantankerous, misbegotten Missouri flooded, that's what happened. When the water settled, the river stood a mile off. It had cut itself a new channel. Left the
Phoenix
high and dry. You can see that.”

“Yes,” Ma said.

“Wasted
a smart lot of dynamite trying to blast the river back where it belonged. But the Missouri's got a mind of its own. Sunrise went bust before it got fairly started. The captain's fine river lots are now too far from the Missouri to be worth a nickel.”

“But a mile,” Pa said, “hardly seems serious. A short walk.”

Mr. Slathers shook his head. “A short walk, maybe, but a man could drown going to the nearest saloon.”

“I certainly don't understand,” Ma remarked.

Mr. Slathers waved an arm as if to take in all of Sunrise. “This grit used to be Dakota Territory. It's now Nebraska. The river is the dividing line.”

“If I understand you,” Pa said, leaning forward, “a caprice of the river shifted Sunrise from Dakota Territory to Nebraska. What in Sam Hill have saloons got to do with it?”

“Heaps, Colonel. Knockemdead is legal in Dakota.”

“Knockemdead?” Ma asked.

“Whiskey, m'am. Illegal on this side of the river. Nebraska has voted itself dry.” Mr. Slathers swallowed a mouthful of food. “The first ventures of commerce in Sunrise were six tent saloons and more on the way. When the river jumped, those knockemdead fellows found themselves out of business. They packed their whiskey barrels and hauled anchor before the Nebraska law turned up. Before long there weren't enough men in town to build a horse trough. This far from civilization a man gets thirsty. The crew jumped ship with the rest.”