The Daredevil Desperados of Destiny

by Charlie Small

‘Wake up, Kid. It’s time to go.’ It was Wild Bob Ffrance.

  ‘Time to go where? I’ve only just this minute dropped off to sleep,’ I complained.

  ‘You’ve been asleep for two days, Kid,’ chuckled Bob. ‘Now get up. We’ve got an appointment to keep.’

  ‘What appointment?’ I asked, still very fuzzy in the head. I hadn’t made any appointments.

  ‘Shake a leg and I’ll tell you all about it while you’re getting dressed,’ said Wild Bob.

  I stumbled out of my bunk and pulled on my jeans. The hut was deserted and I could see through the windows that the sun was already high in the sky. ‘What’s going on?’ I asked.

  ‘When we got back from Death Valley, I held a meeting with the rest of the Desperados,’ said Wild Bob. ‘They were horrified when they learned what Ham had tried to do to you and Nagachak and we decided that enough is enough! Our little raids have had no effect whatsoever. We must try and destroy Ham’s power base once and for all. To that end, I sent Ham an invitation, an invitation I’m glad to say he has accepted.’ With these words, Wild Bob handed me this scrap of paper:

  ‘Wow!’ I cried. ‘A final showdown. That’s a bit drastic. What happens if you lose?’

  ‘Losing is not an option,’ said Wild Bob, somewhat grim-faced. ‘But we’ve got to face the fact that we might well lose. Sneaky Pete has been out sneakin’ around, and has just reported back that Ham has a gang of hired gunslingers over five hundred strong.’

  I whistled. ‘That’s one heck of a lot of men. How many do you have on your side?’

  ‘Well, all in all, counting you, about twenty,’ said Bob.

  ‘Twenty!’ I cried. ‘We’ll be driven out of this state and into the middle of next week!’

  ‘We might be driven out of this life altogether,’ said Bob. ‘So I just want to say, you’ve been a real pal and I’ve no right to ask you to fight my battles for me. If you want to get going on your journey, no one will hold it against you.’

  But I didn’t even need to think about it. ‘You saved my life, and there’s no way I’m going to let you and the rest of my pals face Horatio Ham without me,’ I said, and immediately thought, whoops, that was a bit hasty!

  ‘Good lad, I knew we could count on you,’ said Wild Bob, smiling broadly. ‘Now, you’d better get ready.’

  ‘How many days until the seventeenth?’ I asked, wondering how long I had got to hone my lariat skills.

  ‘Erm,’ said Bob. ‘Today is the seventeenth!’

  ‘Today!’ I cried. Hot-diggity-dog! ‘And what’s the time now?’

  ‘It’s eleven o’clock,’ said Bob, standing up to leave. ‘We’ve got one hour until showtime! I’ll let you finish getting ready. I’ve got some last-minute things to deal with.’

  One hour? ONE HOUR! What on earth was I going to do? I hadn’t come all this way to be blasted into eternity by a power-crazed son of a snake-oil merchant; but I had also given Wild Bob my word that I would stay and fight. We needed help. We needed reinforcements, but how on earth was I going to get any? Then I remembered Chief Sitting Pretty’s promise. He would help; he said he would. All I had to do was send him a message …

  I staggered bleary-eyed into the sunshine, and the first thing I saw was the campfire in the middle of the compound sending a plume of smoke into the sky. That’s it, I thought. A smoke signal – I’ll send a smoke signal. Hold on, though. I don’t know how to do it! Never mind, I thought, I’ll have to use Morse code instead and just hope the Rapakwar warriors understand and come running! I ran back into the bunkhouse for my blanket and dampened it under the camp pump. Now, I thought, let’s see if this works.

  ‘Could you give me a hand, Mr Duff?’ I asked.

  ‘Of course, my dear,’ said the kindly corpulent cook, putting down his tea-towel and waddling over.

  ‘If you just stand on one side of the fire and hold the corners of this blanket, I’ll do the rest,’ I said. Holding the blanket low over the smouldering cinders, we lifted it once, twice, three times. Each time, a separate puff of smoke drifted up into the air, higher and higher until it passed through the mouth of the volcano. We did three small puffs, three large puffs and then another three small ones.

  My smoke Signal,

  Dot-dot-dot. Dash-dash-dash. Dot-dot-dot. SOS!

  Oh, I hope the Rapakwar receive the signal … and understand it!

  ‘Are you ready, Kid?’ shouted Wild Bob from over by the corral. ‘It’s time to go.’

  The Daredevil Desperados were all waiting for me, so I slung my rucksack on my back and mounted Freecloud, who had followed Wild Bob all the way home after dumping me in the Main Street of Trouble town.

  I grabbed one of the bacon sarnies that Cornelius Duff was handing out, and wolfed it down. I was starving, but either the bacon had gone off or I was getting really scared, because my tummy started to burble like a pan of his bubbling baked beans!

  Solemnly we rode two abreast up the steep path, through the tunnel and down the hidden track to the outside of Destiny volcano. The Desperados were armed to the teeth with rifles and pistols and slingshots and blunderbusses, but they knew it would never be enough against Ham’s hordes. The Daredevils were going to fight a losing battle, but they had a job to do and would do it to the best of their ability. My knees were knocking against Freecloud’s side as we kicked our horses into a gallop and rode off towards the wasteland.

  The blood froze in my veins when we arrived at the wasteland, a huge and rocky open area. Silhouetted against the skyline on the other side were Horatio Ham’s henchmen, all five hundred of them. Our little band of Desperados looked pathetic in comparison. How on earth were we going to escape from this deadly confrontation? Where were the Rapakwar Indians; had Chief Sitting Pretty understood my message?

  I looked at Wild Bob Ffrance. Had he any ideas? When I saw his face, I could see that he hadn’t. He caught my questioning look.

  ‘Don’t worry, Kid, something always turns up when you least expect it.’

  ‘Like the Rapakwar Indians?’ I asked.

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘I sent them a message, but they don’t seem to have received it.’

  ‘Never mind, I don’t think they would be the answer,’ Bob said, smiling.

  ‘Why, I thought a tribe of warrior braves would be just the thing!’ I said, feeling a bit put-out. Then, as a bloodthirsty call sounded from the low ridge to our left, I saw what Wild Bob meant. There, on the backs of their war-painted ponies, longbows over their shoulders and tomahawks in hand, were the Rapakwar braves. All twelve of them, and apart from Sitting Pretty and Nagachak, the rest were as skinny and stooped as their longbows and as toothless as toads. They were wrinkly old granddads!

  ‘Is that it; is that all they sent?’ I gasped.

  ‘That, I’m afraid, Kid, is the entire male population of the Rapakwar nation. And that’s why I didn’t bother asking for their help!’

  Brilliant, now we’re really done for!

  I thought to myself: I’ve got to try and stop this madness before the obnoxious Ham defeats the brave Daredevil Desperados. I would put a stop to it, right now: I would demand a pow-wow! Surely this situation could be resolved by talking it through? I quickly opened my rucksack and felt around inside until I found my white scarf (well, white and blue, really). Then carefully and quietly, I leaned over and withdrew the rifle from the holster on Gentleman Jim’s saddle. I tied the scarf of truce to the end, and holding it high in the air, I gave Freecloud a kick and sent her galloping into the middle of the wasteland.

  ‘Come back, Kid,’ yelled Wild Bob. ‘It’s no good, they won’t listen.’

  ‘I’ve got to try,’ I shouted over my shoulder as I brought Freecloud to a halt in the middle of the arena, facing Ham’s army of thugs. My heart was pounding against my ribcage, and my hands were clammy with fear. Now it was up to Ham to send a negotiator out to talk to me. Already, I could see Ham talking to a group of his men. Perhaps this was going to work. Then, quite
unexpectedly, I heard a low rumble of thunder. That’s strange, I thought, looking at the sky, there isn’t a cloud to be seen.

  The rumble grew louder and louder as one of Ham’s men galloped out to meet me. This is more like it, I thought. Now we’re getting somewhere. Imagine my surprise then as the rider swung his rifle out of its holster and, at full gallop, aimed and fired, blasting a huge hole in my scarf of truce! Yikes, Bob was right. These men weren’t prepared to talk. It’s time to get out of here. Now!

  I turned Freecloud around, ready to scarper, but as I did so, the rumble of thunder became deafening and the ground beneath our feet started to shake violently. Over to my right, a huge dust cloud hung in the air. What was it: an earthquake; a vast army of tanks? I started to shake as violently as the ground – this was terrifying!

  The rifleman seemed just as frightened, made a U-turn and retreated into the distance. The dust cloud grew closer and closer and the ground started to shake even more. It was getting hard to stay on Freecloud. What the heck was going on – had Destiny erupted?

  Ham’s man had had the right idea; it was time to go. I gave Freecloud a kick, but now the ground was shaking so much I couldn’t hold on, and as Freecloud galloped off towards the Desperados, I was shaken out of the saddle and landed with a thump on the ground. Again!

  I got to my feet quickly. The cloud of dust was now only a couple of hundred metres away and closing fast. Then, as a breeze parted the billowing clouds for a second, I could see what was hurtling towards me. Bison, a hundred thousand strong! I was rooted to the spot in the path of a gigantic bison stampede. HELP!

  There was nothing I could do. Even if I ran, I couldn’t reach the end of the humungous herd before it was upon me. I was going to be trampled as flat as a piece of paper.

  ‘Kid!’ I heard Wild Bob cry above the cacophony of half a million thumping hooves, but then I was swallowed up in the great, swirling fog. The dust filled my nose, the noise filled my ears and the last thing I saw before I closed my eyes was the massive leader of the herd dip its head, ready to strike. His woolly head was as broad as an armchair, his horns as thick as Thrak’s mighty arms. I squeezed my eyes shut and braced myself for the collision. Aaargh, here goes!

  But the strangest thing happened. I felt the lightest of bumps from the great bull’s head as it gently scooped me from the floor with its horns. With a toss of its head I was sent spinning through the air. I braced myself for the crushing thump as I bounced off the bison’s back and fell under the herd’s pounding hooves … but the next minute I found myself sitting on a stool next to a very strange little man indeed!

  What on earth was going on?

  I looked round in disbelief. The man next to me was very short, hardly any taller than me, and had an enormous peppery brown moustache sprouting from under his bulbous nose. On his head he sported an old flying cap and a pair of oily goggles.

  This was totally bizarre: who was he, and how did I get here? One minute I had been stuck in the path of a bison stampede in the middle of the dusty wasteland, and the next it was as if I had been suddenly plucked from the earth by a passing spaceship. Maybe I had! I started to panic.

  ‘What’s going on?’ I cried above the noise of thumping pistons and hissing airbrakes. ‘Where am I?’

  ‘Just a minute, Charlie!’ said the strange man, frantically pressing buttons and pulling levers.

  Hold on! How did he know my name? This was getting weirder by the minute!

  ‘Ah, that’s better. So glad you could drop in, Charlie! I’ve been looking all over the place for you.’

  ‘You have?’ I asked in amazement. ‘But who are you and how do you know my name; are you some sort of alien who’s beamed me up into their flying saucer?’

  ‘No, I’m not an alien and you’re not in a spaceship,’ chuckled the little man, adjusting his goggles. ‘You’re … yikes! That was a close one.’ He twisted the throttle grip on a pair of cow-horn handlebars, and with a smart double-declutch, he changed gear and our mysterious craft accelerated away to the sound of screaming machinery.

  The man reached under his seat and pulled out a sheet of paper. ‘This might explain where you are,’ he said.

  ‘It’s another one of Jakeman’s mechanical animals,’ I gasped. ‘Oh! Do you mean I’m inside this bison?’

  ‘Correct,’ smiled the man. ‘I flipped you over the bison’s head, you landed on the spring-loaded hatchway in its back and dropped down into the seat next to me. Pretty nifty bit of driving, don’t you think; you do know who I am now, don’t you?’

  ‘No,’ I said, looking at him carefully. ‘Have we met before?’ I’m sure I would have remembered a strange little man like this.

  ‘Oh, come on, Charlie. You’re not usually so slow!’ said the man, pointing at the diagram of the hydraulic bison again. ‘Have a guess.’ And then I had it. Of course, it was obvious!

  ‘You’re Jakeman!’ I cried.

  ‘Correct,’ chuckled the man. ‘And it’s so nice to meet you at last, Charlie Small.’

  Yippee! I couldn’t believe it. I was finally face-to-face with the man who had been helping me since the very start of my adventures. I had ridden his steam-powered rhinoceros across the endless plains towards the gorillas’ jungle; driven his jet-propelled swordfish through stormy seas; sunk an enemy ship with his clockwork limpets and been saved from certain death by the monstrous hydro-electric submawhale. And here was the man who had invented all those wonderful machines.

  ‘This is brilliant! I’ve been desperate to meet you,’ I cried, and all the questions that I had been bottling up inside for so long came pouring out. ‘How come you keep helping me, Mr Jakeman; do you know how I ended up in this strange world; can you tell me how to get home?’

  ‘Slow down, slow down, Charlie my boy. Yes, I can answer all of your questions … but later. First we’ve got a job to finish.’

  ‘We have?’ I asked. In all the excitement of meeting Jakeman, my mind had become a jumble, and I had no idea what I was supposed to be doing.

  ‘Of course, you haven’t forgotten Horatio Ham, have you? Look!’ Jakeman pointed out of the small slit of a window in front of us and I could see we were charging straight towards Ham and his horde of hired guns. ‘I’m the lead bison in this stampede,’ he added. ‘And wherever I go, the herd will follow.’

  He throttled the bison up and we powered forward even faster, and from the noise coming from behind us, I knew that the rest of the huge herd was following.

  ‘Just a minute, the view’s a bit restricted in here,’ said Jakeman, and with a flick of a switch, the hatch doors swung open, our seat was raised, and we could peer out over the top of the hydraulic bison’s powerful shoulders. Brilliant!

  Ham’s men were panic-stricken. Some were mounting their horses to escape, some just running away on foot, and in the middle of them all, Horatio Ham stood stock-still with a look of complete disbelief on his face.

  ‘Run, Ham, run!’ I yelled, standing up so that the top half of my body was sticking out of the bison. Goodness knows what Ham was thinking. Perhaps his mind was a complete blank. I’m not exactly sure what happened next, but as we galloped straight at Ham, I heard a whoop and a yell from behind us. I turned to see Wild Bob Ffrance, the Daredevil Desperados and the Rapakwar warriors joining the back of our stampede.

  ‘Come on, Bob. They’re on the run!’ I yelled, but when I turned forward again, we had passed right over the spot where Ham had been standing and I could see neither hide nor hair of him. Whoops! Had we pummelled him as flat as a very flat pancake?

  I had no time to think, for Jakeman turned the bison stampede straight towards Ham’s ranch, Two-Eyes. It must have changed a great deal since Wild Bob’s parents had owned it, because now a huge and gaudy mansion stood on the land. But not for long!

  ‘Heads down, closing hatchway,’ called Jakeman and I sat back down as the seat lowered and the hatch closed. ‘Hold on tight, this is going to be a rocky ride,’ he chuckled.

&
nbsp; We hit the wooden homestead at full pelt, the rest of the bellowing buffaloes right on our heels. To the thunderous sound of splintering wood and crashing furniture, we ploughed right through the mansion. Ham’s headquarters were history.

  Mission accomplished!

  It takes a long time to stop a bison stampede, and when Jakeman finally brought the huge herd to a standstill, we were a good half kilometre beyond Two-Eyes. As the snorting, panting bison herd lowered their heads to feed on Ham’s lush pasture, Wild Bob and his men rode up.

  ‘Yippee! I’ve never seen anything like it!’ cried Wild Bob. ‘Who’s your pal, Charlie?’

  ‘This is Jakeman,’ I exclaimed. I was so thrilled at having met Jakeman, and by our battle with Horrible Ham, that my words came pouring out so fast they started tripping over one another in the rush. ‘He’s the man I told you about; theonewhobuiltallthosemarvellous mechanicalbeasts, he’s …’

  ‘Slow down, Kid,’ said Bob with a smile. ‘Where did you spring from, partner?’ he asked Jakeman.

  ‘Oh, a long way away,’ said Jakeman quietly. ‘Miles away; worlds away!’

  ‘Well, I’m mighty pleased to meet you, sir,’ said Bob. ‘You were brilliant, both of you,’ and as the Desperados cheered and threw their hats into the air in celebration, Chief Sitting Pretty, Nagachak and the small band of wrinkled warriors immediately went into their victory dance, whooping and chanting.

  ‘Have we done it, then?’ I asked Bob above the noise. ‘Has he gone?’

  ‘I should say so. I saw him run like a jackrabbit, just before you hit. He ran to the ridge and left in a wagon with his slimy son, Silas. Don’t worry; we won’t be seeing him again. He looked scared half to death! Yee-hah, we’ve won!’ crowed Wild Bob, and joined in the Rapakwar dance, stamping his feet and shouting at the sky.