Humbug Mountain

by Sid Fleischman

  “I was the first to find it, Grandpa!” Glorietta said. “If you don’t count Mr. Johnson. He’s only Ma’s goose. And I wasn’t even wearing my glasses. I’ve outgrown them.”

  “I declare. And what’s this about a gold strike in Sunrise?”

  I had to clear my throat. “That was my doing,” I confessed. “I didn’t know it was going to cause such a fuss to leave out a word. All Ma found in the chicken craw was the gold locket you gave Glorietta.”

  Grandpa laughed, and tipped back his captain’s cap. “Not the first time men have run gold fever on a wisp of bobtailed nothing! And they’ll stampeded after the next rumor that comes along. Shoveled up a storm, did they?”

  “Yes, sir,” I said.

  “Healthful exercise. I’m obliged to them. It appears to me the word you left out refloated the Phoenix.” And then he narrowed one eye. “Was that you standing on a bone pile waving your shirt?”

  I told him about the goings-on aboard the Prairie Buzzard.

  “A chain across the river! Well, well. That took cast-iron grit to stand up there. I’m proud of you, Wiley.”

  I glowed up inside, but tried not to let it show. I certainly didn’t feel that we were strangers anymore.

  He turned and gave a shout to the tin-clad. “Quickshot! Come out here and meet a fellow lawman!”

  “Quickshot?” I said. “Not Quickshot Billy Bodeen? Scourge of the Western Badmen?”

  “The same. Hired him on to protect our cargo. Outlaws have been banging away at us like a tin can all the way down the river. See all the bullet holes? The boat owner couldn’t find any fool but me to make the run. And Marshal Bodeen. But he’s so gun-shy he’s afraid to poke his head out. Lost his nerve.”

  Quickshot Billy afraid? That was impossible! Quickshot Billy had nerves of steel.

  “Marshal! Stop hiding and come here, confound you!”

  A tin-clad door opened and my breath about choked with awe. There he stood. Quickshot Billy Bodeen in person.

  He wore a big white Stetson hat, just like he wore in the book pictures, but his legs were so bowed you could run a hog through them. And you could hardly see his gunbelt for his stomach hanging out over it. He looked as blown up as a colicky horse. I wondered how he located his guns for his famous quick draw.

  His eyes shifted from side to side, taking us all in, and then he straightened back his shoulders and pulled the Stetson sharply over his eyes.

  “I’m ready for trouble, Captain,” he declared.

  “No trouble. I’ve got a grandson here and he’s the duly appointed sheriff of Sunrise. According to the papers, he captured Shagnasty John and the Fool Killer single-handed.”

  I felt my face heat up, red with embarrassment.

  “Kind of pint-sized for a lawman, ain’t he?”

  “Full of cast-iron grit, though,” Grandpa answered.

  “I’ve read your books of true adventures,” I managed to say. “I’ve even got a mirror ring just like yours.”

  “A mirror ring? What the deuce is that?”

  Didn’t he know? I guessed those nickel novels stretched the truth here and there, but I tried hard to fight off the crush of disappointment. Maybe Quickshot Billy was running slightly to tallow, but he must have once been tall and lean and scared of no man.

  As I gazed at him he was doing his best to hold back his stomach and look cool-eyed and fearless behind the badge on his shirt. I filled with a kind of sadness. I felt sorry for him.

  Suddenly his eyes lit up as if he’d spied an old friend. “I’ll be hanged! If it ain’t Colonel Flint!”

  My eyes flashed up at Pa. His face went kind of white under his knife-brim hat. I’d never seen him look so flustered. “Hello, Quickshot,” he muttered.

  I could hardly believe my hearing. Pa had never let on that he knew Quickshot Billy Bodeen.

  “Colonel, those are bully fine stories you wrote about me,” the marshal said. “Reckon there must be some ain’t come my way. Durned if I recall wearing a mirror on my finger ring.”

  I gazed at Pa, thunderstruck. Had he written those nickel novels I toted around? Why had he kept it such a dark, tight-fisted secret? Pa’s eyes looked everywhere but at me. He was fidgety with embarrassment.

  The marshal tried to hitch up his gunbelt. “I’m powerfully disappointed that Shagnasty John and the Fool Killer’s been caught and buried,” he was saying. “Wanted the pleasure of capturing them myself.”

  “You may have the chance,” Grandpa said. “Those two have popped up out of their graves.”

  “And here we are!”

  The voice came bellowing out through the crowd. Crows in the treetops began squawking.

  “Shagnasty John!”

  “The Fool Killer!”

  In the lead came Shagnasty John with a gun in each hand. The Fool Killer followed, toting his bur-oak club and rifle, his head wrapped in a dirty rag. There was a look in his eyes as if he still couldn’t see straight.

  “Reach up your hands! Every man jack!” Shagnasty John snarled.

  Arms went into the air, stiff as fence pickets.

  “That includes you, Colonel! Don’t go for your pepperbox!”

  I looked at Quickshot Billy. He was reaching for the sky like everybody else!

  “No one’ll get hurt,” said Shagnasty John, offering up a grin through his dirt-brown beard. “We just mean to change the ownership of that tin-clad boat. A simple business transaction. Our pilot’ll be along soon as we finish negotiatin’.” And then he noticed the marshal’s badge on Quickshot Billy’s shirt.

  He snorted out a laugh. “Fool Killer, see what we got here!”

  “What?”

  “The genuine law. Marshal, lower your cussed arms and draw. We don’t want a tin-star on our tracks again.”

  Quickshot Billy kept his hands in the air.

  “I said draw! That’s your job, ain’t it?”

  I saw all the color fade out of Quickshot Billy’s face.

  “You deaf, Marshal? Drop your arms and go for your guns!”

  Quickshot Billy looked stunned. He only gazed at them.

  “Cuss it all, Marshal. I got just so much patience. I’ll have to shoot you as you stand.”

  Shagnasty raised both guns and took aim with the pair of them.

  The breath was caught in my throat. Quickshot Billy stood frozen. I recollected his adventures with the chili peppers. I twisted my mirror ring. I caught the sun in it and squirted the reflection smack into Shagnasty John’s eyes. He fired.

  The shots went so wild they shattered a window in the pilothouse of the Phoenix. The Fool Killer commenced blasting away too, but he was so perishing gone-minded now he seemed overjoyed just to raise a clanging from the tin-clad. Mr. Johnson started honking and flapping his wings and running about in a fright. The Fool Killer’s attention strayed. He dropped the rifle and took off after the goose, flailing away with his club.

  I kept the sunlight dancing in Shagnasty John’s eyes. He tried to brush it away like a pesky fly. All the ruckus seemed to scare some of the fear out of Quickshot Billy. I saw him fumbling around for his guns. His draw wasn’t exactly quicker’n the eye, but he did take careful aim.

  A puff of smoke shot out of the barrel. Shagnasty John’s hat flew off his head. “Fool Killer! I’ve gone sun blind! Finish him off!”

  “Drop your irons!” Quickshot Billy roared. “You’re under arrest.”

  “Fool Killer!”

  “Raise your hands!”

  “Fool Killer!”

  “He’s off chasing a goose,” said the marshal. He paused, arms akimbo. “No, by gum, now the goose is chasing him.”

  Shagnasty John gave out a great, bellowing groan and dropped his guns.

  Quickshot Billy must have been carrying a ton of manacles aboard the tin-clad, and before long Shagnasty John and the Fool Killer seemed to be wearing them all. The marshal said he’d turn the men and hardware over to the law in St. Louis.

  He sauntered about with a str
ong, silent look on his face. But I knew he’d never be the Quickshot Billy I’d imagined, and I reckoned he never was. I guessed he’d never squirted a chili pepper at real outlaws. Pa must have whipped up those adventures out of his own head. But that was all right. Glorietta had outgrown her specs and I figured I’d outgrown pretending I had a close friend in those dog-eared nickel novels.

  I found myself standing in Quickshot Billy’s monstrous shadow. He gave me a wink. “Let me see that looking-glass ring, Wiley,” he said. “Wish I had me one of those confounded things.”

  23

  THE SECRET

  “It’s a dad-blasted fake,” Grandpa laughed. “It’s a humbug!” We had all followed along as he inspected the Phoenix and pronounced it mostly fit. When we reached the pilothouse, we saw that Shagnasty John’s wild shots through the window had knocked off the whole left thumb of the Great and Only Genuine Petrified Man.

  “No bone in the hand,” said Grandpa. “Not a splinter. The petrified gent was hand-chiseled out of solid limestone.”

  “Well, the laugh is certainly on us,” Ma said.

  Pa was awfully quiet. His eyes avoided Glorietta and me. Ever since Quickshot Billy had exposed him as the writer of his daring exploits and adventures, Pa looked as if he wanted to climb under a flat rock and hide. I didn’t understand why he was so dang sheepish about it.

  “Someone must have planned on digging up the confounded statue after properly aging it,” Grandpa said. “Might have been able to swindle a circus or museum out of a princely sum of money for it.”

  Ma turned to Pa. “Rufus, we’ll be obliged to put out another edition of the paper exposing the hoax.”

  “Of course,” Pa answered, but he hardly seemed to be listening.

  “Why, Colonel, just move it to the opera house and charge ten cents admission,” Grandpa said. “There’s so little to see out here folks will come a long way to look at a genuine hoax!” He was gazing at the empty lots of Sunrise. “We’ll put a general store down there. Schoolhouse up there. With the river jumped back, saloons will spring up like weeds. I’d better bring back lumber for a church.” He cocked his head. “But that pile of buffalo bones is an eyesore.”

  “Dreadful eyesore,” Glorietta agreed.

  “I’ll haul ’em off to the factory soon as I’m back at the wheel of the Phoenix. What’ll you take for ’em?”

  “Captain Cully said four dollars a ton,” I said.

  “Why, the dishonest, mildewed cheat! They’ll fetch twice that. Sold—for eight dollars a ton!”

  I remained behind in the pilothouse. With the boat lifted by the river, I could now see over the treetops. I tried to imagine Sunrise all built up, the way it appeared in our rolled-up color lithograph. Glorietta and I would have heaps of our own friends before long, I thought. Heaps. Unless Pa was coming down with the yonders again. I didn’t know what to think.

  The crows caught my eye. They were flocked in the distance like flecks of pepper over the stranded and done-for Prairie Buzzard. It seemed to me I could make out Captain Cully himself. He was digging a hole at a fierce rate. Shovel dirt was flying.

  I watched him a long time. It was Captain Cully who had buried the humbug Petrified Man! No doubt about it. He was digging in the very spot.

  Grandpa chuckled. “It was you, was it, Colonel, who wrote up those grandacious lies about Quickshot Billy! I don’t mind confessing he was hired on the strength of the bully reputation you gave him. Good reading, those yarns.”

  “Confounded trash,” Pa snapped. “I regard myself as both a newspaperman and a serious man of letters, Captain. A poet. Those nickel novels are an intense embarrassment. But from time to time we needed money.”

  “Rufus,” Ma sighed, and then gave her head a toss. “I don’t know how much longer I could have kept your secret. You’re a splendid poet and you must get on with your new book. But you’ve got more pride than a roomful of poets.”

  “Pa, I liked those stories,” I said. “Is that what you were doing over in Wolf Landing? When you locked yourself in the hotel room? Were you writing another story?”

  Pa hesitated. Then he gave a small shrug. “Quickshot Billy, Whirlwind of the West.”

  “Well, I hope you put some girls in it this time, Pa,” Glorietta said.

  Pa’s eyes settled on us for the first time. “It was hard on you the way I’d disappear. I know that.”

  Glorietta stood mum, staring at Pa. So did I, thinking back.

  Pa said softly, “I may have kept a secret, but I’ve never lied to you. When our money ran low I had no choice but to lock myself away in order to scribble out that nonsense. Around the clock, for days and sometimes weeks, in secret. I wrote under a dozen different names.” He took a long breath. “Hang it all, I not only made Quickshot Billy’s reputation, but one for myself—King of the Nickel Novels!”

  My eyebrows rose. “Honest?” I exclaimed. I thought it sounded glorious!

  Pa looked from one of us to the other. He appeared confounded that we weren’t embarrassed to have a father who was King of the Nickel Novels.

  “Then you won’t have to disappear again, will you, Pa?” Glorietta said.

  Pa’s eyes slid to Ma. “Jenny, do you have that catalog of Lyman Bridges Ready-Made Houses? Study it over and pick out a home to your liking.”

  “I already have. House Number 27. It has a lovely parlor with a bay window, and three bedrooms and the prettiest front porch.”

  Pa withdrew an envelope from his pocket. It was the letter Mr. Slathers had brought back from Wolf Landing. “Captain, this is a check from my publisher. When you return with the general store, the schoolhouse, and the church, will you kindly bring us House Number 27?”

  It was late morning when Grandpa boarded the tin-clad to leave. But then he turned to Pa. “I’m afraid those asbestos coffins you advertised will draw a rough brand of citizen, Colonel.”

  “It takes all kinds to make a town, Captain,” said Pa.

  “I think we’re going to need a sheriff to handle the sinners who show up.”

  “You’re not thinking of Quickshot Billy?” Glorietta said with a faint groan.

  I found myself standing up for him. “He did get back his nerve at the last minute, Glorietta.”

  “Appears to be an ounce or two of grit in him,” Grandpa said. “I’ll confess, it surprised me.”

  And Ma said, “We’ll get busy on the next issue of The Humbug Mountain Hoorah. Didn’t he save two tons of gold dust and capture two notorious outlaws?”

  Pa gave me a wink. “With Wiley’s help. Oh, Quickshot will walk the streets of Sunrise with such a strong reputation that ruffians will run like rabbits at the sight of him.”

  Grandpa gave us a wave, and before long the tin-clad was churning out of sight downriver.

  I looked at the mirror ring on my finger. I’d give it to Quickshot Billy Bodeen. He might need all the help he could get.

  THE END

  Sid Fleischman wrote more than sixty books for children and adults. He was awarded the 1987 Newbery Medal for The Whipping Boy and also received the California Young Readers Medal, the Boston Globe-Horn Book Award, The Mark Twain Award, was a finalist for the National Book Award, and was the U.S. nominee for the international Hans Christian Andersen Award. His lifelong fascination with history, magic, movies, and the American west filled both his fiction and the biographies he wrote of Harry Houdini, Mark Twain, and Charlie Chaplin. He told his own tale in The Abracadabra Kid: A Writer's Life.

  Also by Sid Fleischman, JINGO DJANGO – available as an ebook from AudioGO.

 

 

 
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