Humbug Mountain

by Sid Fleischman

  HUMBUG MOUNTAIN

  BY

  SID FLEISCHMAN

  Copyright © 1978 by Sid Fleischman, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the Publisher, except where permitted by law.

  First ebook edition copyright 2012 by AudioGO. All Rights Reserved.

  Trade ISBN 978-1-62064-3884

  Library ISBN 978-0-7927-9442-4

  Cover photo © Shaun Lowe/iStock.com

  Once again for Anne, Paul, and Jane

  CONTENTS

  1. THE GOOSE PULL

  2. ON THE ROAD

  3. THE PRAIRIE BUZZARD

  4. THE SHINER

  5. SMILE, YOU’RE IN SUNRISE

  6. FATE OF THE PHOENIX

  7. THE FOOL KILLER

  8. THE GHOST

  9. THE SHERIFF OF SUNRISE

  10. THE FACE IN THE MIRROR

  11. THE HUMBUG MOUNTAIN HOORAH

  12. MR. SLATHERS

  13. THE DEAD MAN’S HAND

  14. JIM CHITWOOD

  15. THE DIGGINGS

  16. THE PETRIFIED MAN

  17. “SINNERS ONLY”

  18. MR. SLATHERS’S SURPRISE

  19. THE RETURN

  20. THE CHAIN

  21. THE TIN-CLAD

  22. QUICKSHOT BILLY

  23. THE SECRET

  HUMBUG MOUNTAIN

  1

  THE GOOSE PULL

  My sister, Glorietta, came bursting through the front door of Pa’s newspaper office. “Wiley!” she cried out. “They’ve got Mr. Johnson by the neck!”

  I was leaning back in Pa’s swivel chair with my legs propped up on the southeast corner of Pa’s rolltop desk. He’d left me in charge of business affairs and Ma had left me in charge of Glorietta.

  I studied her through my bare feet. “Glorietta,” I said calmly, and spit in Pa’s cuspidor. “Stop your howling. Mr. Johnson’s penned up in the backyard with the chickens.”

  “No, he ain’t!” Tears began gully-washing down her cheeks. “He must have got loose! They’re fixing to have a goose pull!”

  “You know that’s not so,” I said patiently. Even though I was considerably older than Glorietta—three years and two months—she stood a mite taller than I. It wasn’t fair. She was only ten, but skinny-legged and nearsighted. Ma could hardly get her to wear her brass-rimmed spectacles in public; folks called her window-eyes and dumb things like that. The doctor said she’d outgrow the specs, and Pa said I’d shoot up before long. We were both of us infernally impatient.

  “A goose pull?” I said. “Glorietta, you know it’s not the Fourth of July or anything like that. Mr. Johnson’s out back. I watered his tub not an hour ago.”

  “Maybe you left the gate open!”

  I straightened up in the chair. Mr. Johnson was Ma’s pet goose. She’d have my hide if anything happened to Mr. Johnson.

  “I always latch the gate,” I said. “That bull goose is exactly where he ought to be. Come on, I’ll show you.”

  We went out back and the first thing I saw was chickens running loose. The gate had swung open. Mr. Johnson was gone.

  This town we lived in, Mulesburg, was an uncommonly backward sort of place. Folks around and about raised mules and turnips and clod-headed mischief. There was hardly a dog that hadn’t had a string of tin cans tied to its tail, or a cat either. In Mulesburg a dogfight in the street was considered refined entertainment and drew hat-slapping crowds.

  I don’t mean to say that Mulesburg was our home. Ma could never get Pa to stay in one place long enough to call it home. Newspapermen are born with the yonders. Pa was that way—itchy-footed, long-strided, and with his dark eyes always drawn to the horizon.

  And I’ll have to confess that more than once we were run out of town. Newspapering was a risky profession, and Pa carried a short pepperbox pistol handy in his brown corduroy coat. I’ve seen men come looking for him with a horsewhip or worse just because Pa had said in print they were lop-eared donkeys or corn-cribbing crooks. Newspapermen are given to strong language like that.

  “Fellow’s got no sense of humor,” Pa would say, after he’d scared them off with his six-barreled pepperbox. The little thing shot every which way, which made it almighty hair-raising. “But wasn’t he sizzling mad! Hotter’n the devil in long woolen underwear. No point in waiting around for the tar and feathers.”

  And we’d pack. We had an ol’ Washington hand press and three cases of lead type, and Pa could start up another newspaper quicker’n a hen lays an egg.

  We got stuck in Mulesburg because Glorietta broke out with the measles. We were only just passing through, heading west, and Pa discovered the town didn’t have a newspaper.

  Ma put Glorietta to bed and Pa started up the Mulesburg Squibob. He fancied names like that.

  It didn’t take long to discover why the place had no reading matter of its own. The first issue of the Squibob was as easy to hand out as a hot horseshoe.

  Hardly anyone in Mulesburg could read.

  Pa never laughed so hard as when the laugh was on him. “Why, folks in this cussed town consider anyone fully educated who can count to twenty without taking off his shoes!” he had said.

  The local people resented the Squibob right off. We were outsiders, to begin with, but what put an arch in their backs was that a newspaper in town made them aware of their own howling ignorance. It’s true, a few folks took a different view and began sending their children to school more than one day a month. “We’ve performed a public service,” Pa declared airily. “A noble profession, newspapering.”

  But on the whole we were as popular as a skunk at a lawn party. We’d have been up and gone by now except that someone had burned our wagon to the ground. It didn’t surprise me now that someone had made off with Mr. Johnson.

  “Hurry!” Glorietta said.

  A goose pull. The only thing I could think of to do was fetch my hickory slingshot and fill my back pocket with broken lead type. Then we lit out. It surprised me to see that Glorietta had put on her brass specs without being told.

  “They went this way, Wiley!”

  There were mud puddles here and there, but on the whole the roads were drying out. It didn’t take us long to find Mr. Johnson.

  We could hear him honking away something fierce even before we saw him. We hauled up about a quarter of a mile west of town and kept to the trees and bushes. About six men were sitting their fastest mules, waiting for the goose pull to start.

  All we could see of Mr. Johnson was his long neck rising out of the center of the road. They had smeared his neck with black grease and had buried the rest of him. The idea was to whip their mules, race for the goose, lean way down, and try to catch that weaving, slippery neck. I’m not saying it was easy to do. The first one to snatch the goose out of the ground won the contest. Almost always it broke the goose’s neck.

  “One at a time, gents, one at a time,” Earl-Bob Pickett called out. He appeared to be in charge. “I’ll go first.”

  It was all I could do to keep Glorietta from rushing out there. Earl-Bob Pickett was already whipping his mule and she’d get run down. He was a round, fat-backed little man and came thundering down the road like the devil beating tanbark.

  I was already loading my slingshot with broken lead. From the cover of the bushes I drew back. As he leaned over for Mr. Johnson’s greased neck I let fly a broadside.

  I missed. But he missed too. The other men raised a laugh and a hoot, and another mule came fast-trotting down the road.

  “I’d best get closer,” I told Glorietta, and we both dodged behind an
other bush. Mr. Johnson was honking and weaving his neck about like a teased snake.

  It was Earl-Bob’s younger brother Froy riding that second mule. He came toward us, whooping and hollering, and I followed him with my slingshot. The moment I had a clear target of his back I let go.

  He missed Mr. Johnson by a mile. I didn’t miss Froy Pickett. He kept up the whooping and hollering, only his voice had risen to a pig squeal, and he slapped at his back. “I’m beestung!” he cried out.

  The goose-pullers kept coming, one after the other, and by the time Earl-Bob’s turn came round again I was down to the last bits of broken type in my pocket. Mr. Johnson still hadn’t been snatched up, though I’d missed as often as not.

  Then I noticed that Earl-Bob began to slow his mule as he approached Mr. Johnson. He meant to have that goose. I disliked to do it, but I aimed at the rump of his mule.

  That mule took off as if he were shot from a stovepipe. It caught Earl-Bob by enormous surprise. I don’t know how long he hung on, for that runaway mule disappeared around a bend in the road.

  And around the bend up loomed Pa and Ma in an old freight wagon they’d gone to buy.

  Glorietta didn’t lose a moment. She ran to Mr. Johnson and began digging him loose with her bare hands. And when Ma saw what had been happening she shot those goose-pullers a look hot enough to melt rocks. She was beside Glorietta in no time. “What a pack of howling jackasses!” Ma declared. “And I’m not referring to the mules!”

  Pa strode forward, his square-toed boots muddy, his corduroy coat unbuttoned and hanging loose, and the wide knife-blade brim of his hat pulled straight across his eyes. “Howdy, Froy,” he said, polite as you please. “Wasn’t that your brother Earl-Bob who just went by without tipping his hat?”

  “That goose of yours got loose,” Froy answered, still clawing at his back. “Nothing meaner than a bull goose. You ought to keep him penned up.”

  Pa nodded. “Let’s apply it all the way around. There’s no one meaner than your brother Earl-Bob. And he’s loose down the road. Pen him up, Froy, pen him up. For if I catch sight of him I intend to dig a hole and grease his neck. You’ll all be invited to the man pull. Good day, gentlemen.”

  When we got back to town and Ma discovered I’d been shooting lead type at grown men she wanted to take the slingshot away from me. But Pa said, “Wiley did those rascals a favor, Jenny. They’ll get their first reading lesson plucking type out of each other’s hide.”

  2

  ON THE ROAD

  There was a whistle of rain a couple of days later when we left Mulesburg—forever.

  The freight wagon Pa had bought was yellow where any paint was left sticking. He greased the hubs while the horses were getting shod. Ma had cleaned Mr. Johnson with homemade glycerine soap and warm water. Finally Glorietta and I rounded up the chickens.

  Glorietta’s fingers kind of froze at her neck and an awful sick look came over her face. “It’s gone, Wiley. I’ve lost my locket!”

  We searched all over for it. The locket was a little lump of gold, no bigger’n a watermelon seed, but almighty precious to her. Grandpa had sent it to her when she was five.

  We even went back to the trees and bushes we’d hidden in during the goose pull. But that locket was nowhere. Finally dark was coming on and even Glorietta gave up. I could tell she was trying hard not to flood up any tears. She was going to have to leave her gold locket behind in Mulesburg.

  We were up before first light loading the wagon with the printing press, type, a keg of powdered ink, newsprint, Pa’s spittoon, Pa’s books of Shakespeare and Homer, a stack of door signs, our few sticks of furniture, two crates of chickens, Mr. Johnson, Mr. Johnson’s oaken water tub, pots and pans, Ma’s piano music, a sack of flour, a sack of cornmeal, a sack of coffee beans, and two horsehair trunks. Ma also found room for her flowerpots.

  I helped Pa hitch up our two big iron-gray horses. Ma was wearing her dark traveling dress with what always looked to me like a spiderweb of white lace up around her neck. She pinned her hat through her reddish hair and touched up the dove feathers. Then she pulled down the green shades of the Mulesburg Squibob and we were ready to travel.

  But Pa didn’t consider it right and proper to depart without leaving a message. He thumbed through our own printed signs, chose one to his liking, and hung it on the doorknob.

  Ma opened her black umbrella against the first splatters of rain and Pa climbed up beside her on the spring seat. He shook the leather reins and we were off at last. Glorietta and I sat on the tailgate, with our legs dangling over and our heads snugged under the freight canvas. Ten minutes later Mulesburg disappeared from sight behind us.

  The first weeds of spring were up. Before long the rain squall whisked itself away and the sun broke out, warm and fresh. We were heading west again.

  I dug around under the canvas for my nickel novels. I was collecting the complete adventures of Quickshot Billy Bodeen. I had only four books. There were heaps more to find. Pa, with his poet’s eye, declared them mangy trash, but I read them anyway. I guess Pa was kind of famous, but I’d never met anyone who’d read his poems. When the mood seized him he’d scratch out page after page of his new poem. It was perishing long, and not even half finished.

  “Do you want to hear Quickshot Billy, King of the Tin Stars?” I asked Glorietta.

  She was still in the dismals about leaving her locket behind. “You’ve read that a dozen times,” she said.

  “How about Quickshot Billy and the Robbers of Outlaw Gulch?”

  “Oh, nausea,” she groaned.

  “They’re true stories,” I said. “He’s a real man.”

  “Ugh.”

  Sometimes there was no reasoning with Glorietta. But we had slathers of time to pass so I turned back the paper cover of Quickshot Billy, Marshal of the Wild Frontier, and cleared my throat. “Chapter One,” I said.

  “I’m going to put my fingers in my ears.”

  “Go ahead,” I said, and began to read aloud. “ ‘Quickshot Billy Bodeen stood straight as a pine, arms akimbo, his iron jaw set, waiting, waiting—’ ”

  “What does akimbo mean?”

  “How can you hear with fingers in your ears?”

  “No real person would ever stand with his arms akimbo,” she declared. “I’ll bet it’s a made-up word.”

  “It means elbows out.”

  “Hogwash.”

  “Ask Pa. Quickshot Billy is about to draw his guns, that’s why he’s standing arms akimbo.”

  “And no real person has an iron jaw. That’s enough to make a cat laugh. It would rust like an old hinge.”

  “His jaw is not made of iron,” I said. “It’s just set like iron. Hard. Determined. He wouldn’t be smiling at a time like that.”

  “That’s the trouble. Quickshot Billy never smiles. And there are never any girls in those stories.”

  “It’s the wild frontier. That’s no place for women.”

  “There must be at least one,” Glorietta insisted. “Maybe two. But they wouldn’t have anything to do with a cluck like Quickshot Billy, always standing with his arms akimbo. And he hasn’t once taken a bath in any of those fiddle-faddle books. I’ll bet he smells like skunk cabbage.”

  “Sure,” I said. “He stops right in the middle of a gunfight to take a bath. I’m going to read to myself.”

  “I’d be ever so much obliged, Wiley.”

  I clamped my jaws and went on with the story. The best thing to do was ignore her. At times like that I sorely missed not having someone my own age to talk to. We jumped around so much I was always an outsider. It didn’t matter that Quickshot Billy Bodeen was a grown man; I’d come to feel he was my closest friend. My only friend, I guess. I never had to leave him behind, either.

  After a while Glorietta got tired of watching our freshly cut wheel tracks in the road. “Wiley?” she muttered.

  That arch-villain of the border, Hognose Jack, had dodged into one of the dusty cross streets and planned to make a
target of Quickshot Billy’s back.

  “Wiley?” Glorietta said again. “What exactly does bankrupt mean?”

  I didn’t look up. Quickshot Billy wore a finger ring with a little mirror in it, and in a few seconds he’d catch the reflection of Hognose Jack lurking behind him. I turned the page and Quickshot Billy fired his pistol over his shoulder.

  “What does bankrupt mean, Wiley?”

  “Insolvent,” I answered. “Be quiet.”

  Of course, Quickshot Billy only grazed him, with just that ring mirror to aim by. But Hognose Jack lit out of there like a jackrabbit.

  “What in tarnation does insolvent mean?” Glorietta murmured.

  “Bankrupt,” I answered. “What are you whispering for?”

  “Pa’s bankrupt,” she said.

  I slid her a look. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. It means when you’re flat out of money. Not even enough to buy a stick of candy.”

  “I woke up in the night and heard them talking. That’s what Pa said. Bankrupt.”

  “You must have heard wrong,” I said. Pa always had a jingle of coins in his pocket.

  “Why do you suppose they went to the county seat yesterday?”

  “To buy this freight wagon.”

  She shook her head. “They tried to sell those six town lots we own in Sunrise.”

  “Glorietta, you dreamt it. Ma wouldn’t let Pa sell off those lots.”

  Ma always talked about Sunrise as if it were our own promised land. It was a brand-new city our grandfather, Captain Tuggle, had staked out somewhere along the Missouri River. That was three years ago. We had a big, rolled-up colored lithograph picture of the town showing Grandpa’s very own riverboat, the Phoenix, tied up at the landing. He’d given us six of the finest lots on a bluff overlooking the hotel and opera house. Someday we’d haul up there and build a great house and Ma could have a piano and plant flowers all over the place. She was always planting gardens, but we were generally up and gone before the flowers were ready to pick. No, Ma would never let loose of our Sunrise property. Those lots were uncommonly important to her.