John Fitzgerald GB 06 Return of (14 page)

“Some of the fellows are sure going to complain to their parents that they were swindled,” I said.

“Not one kid will dare to tell his parents,” Tom said confidently.

“And why not?” I asked.

“Because they would have to admit they were gambling,” Tom said. “And they all know their parents would give them a whipping for gambling.”

Then I got a brilliant idea of how to get even with Tom for all the times he had blackmailed me.

“I know one kid who isn’t afraid to tell his parents,” I said. “You are looking at him. So maybe you’d better make me a partner and give me ten per cent of the profits.”

“I see,” Tom said. “Trying a little blackmail, eh, J.D.?”

“It takes one to know one,” I said. “You never really reformed. You’ll go on being a crook all of your life. And I can’t see any harm in blackmailing a crook. Besides, it would make up for some of the times you blackmailed me.”

Tom thought about it for a moment. “Now let me get this straight,” he said. “You are going to tell Papa that I paid out cash instead of prizes if I don’t make you a ten per cent partner. Right?”

“Right,” 1 said.

“And I’m going to show Papa the prizes,” Tom said, “and tell him my wheel of fortune was better than the one at the carnival because somebody won a prize every time. Papa would understand I couldn’t have a dozen of each of the prizes on hand. Right?”

“I guess so,” I had to admit.

“And because none of the fellows will dare tell their parents they were gambling,” Tom said, “that means no

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parents are going to complain to Papa that I swindled their sons. Right?”

“Right,” I was forced to admit,

“Therefore,” Tom said, “when we tell Papa about the wheel of fortune, he is going to assume all the kids were satisfied and the winners went down to the Z.C.M.I, store and bought the prizes they had won. So you see, J.D., Papa isn’t going to pay much attention to your story, but he will pay a lot of attention to mine.”

I didn’t like the sound of that. “What do you mean by that?” I asked.

Tom shrugged. “I will naturally have to tell Papa that you tried to blackmail me out of ten per cent of the profits,” he said. “My guess is that you will lose your allowance for a month, maybe longer, and receive at least a month of the silent treatment.”

Talk about being a step ahead of somebody. The Great Brain was a mile ahead of me. And I couldn’t help wondering when I looked in a mirror why I didn’t see the head of a donkey on my shoulders.

“Forget about making me a partner,” I said. “I’m sorry I tried to blackmail you,”

“I accept your apology,” Tom said. “Face it, J.D., you haven’t got the brains to blackmail anybody. That is why I

forgive you.”

I watched Tom take down the wheel of fortune.

“What are you going to do with it?” I asked.

“I’ve taken the fellows for all the spending money they

have,” Tom said, “except for Parley and Pete. I’ll put the

wheel of fortune up in my loft until the rest of the fellows

have saved up some money.”

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I waited until Tom came down from the loft and helped him put the prizes in a cardboard box. Then Tom put his arm around my shoulders.

“How much did you lose, J.D,?” he asked sympathetically.

“Twenty-five cents this morning,” I said, “and fifteen cents this afternoon.”

“I would gladly give you back your forty cents,” Tom said, “except for one thing.”

I couldn’t think of any possible reason why he would gladly give me my money back.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“I want this experience to teach you never to gamble again,” Tom said. “I’m doing it for your own good.”

Maybe it was for my own good. But for my money it would have done me a lot more good to get back my forty cents, although I must admit it taught me never to gamble again.

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^ tep

^ <„*,

The Game of Outlaw and Posse

ALTHOUGH I’D BEEN FOOL enough to play it, for my money the wheel of fortune was an out and out swindle. Only two fellows had won money and about twenty-five kids had lost money, including me. I guess the fellows who lost were too ashamed to admit they had been swindled or too dumb to know it. They continued to talk to Tom and play with him. But I did notice they all stopped making fun of his great brain. And the fortune Tom made must have satisfied his money-loving heart at least for a little while. He didn’t even make a bet until a couple of weeks later.

The bet was made on a Friday afternoon. We had been playing scrub football on Smith’s vacant lot after school let

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out. We stopped when it was time to go home and do the evening chores, but as usual on Fridays, we talked about what we were going to do the next day before going home. Seth Smith was the first one to make a suggestion.

“How about playing outlaw and posse tomorrow?” he asked.

Pete Kyle shook his head. “It is my turn to be the out-law,” he said, “but I can’t play. Got to help Pa fix the roof on our barn.”

Parley pushed his coonskin cap to the back of his head. “How about letting me be the outlaw in your place?” he asked.

“Sure,” Pete said.

“The posse will never catch me,” Parley said, as confident as a rabbit being chased by a snail.

Tom looked at him. “I’ll bet we would if I was the sheriff,” he said. “But it is Danny’s turn to be the sheriff.”

“Not me,” Danny said. “I don’t want to be the sheriff if Parley is going to be the outlaw. You can be the sheriff, Tom.”

I didn’t blame Danny for not wanting to be sheriff. The last time he’d been sheriff Parley had been the outlaw, and the posse hadn’t captured him.

Parley tapped Tom on the chest with his finger. “Bet two-bits the posse doesn’t capture me,” he said.

“You seem mighty sure of yourself,” Tom said.

“I’m as sure as sure can be,” Parley said.

“Then why just a quarter?” Tom asked. “Why not bet a dollar?”

We all stared bug-eyed at Tom. A dollar was a fortune to every kid there except The Great Brain.

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“You figured I’d back down if you made the bet a dollar,” Parley said. “But you are forgetting I won more than a dollar on the wheel of fortune. I’m going to call your bluff. A dollar says the posse doesn’t capture me,”

“It’s a bet,” Tom said. “All of you fellows with horses who want to play the game meet in the alley in back of my place tomorrow morning after chores. And this time bring food an outlaw and posse would have. Just beef jerky and hardtack. I don’t want anybody showing up with sandwiches and cookies like you did last time, Seth.”

For my money Tom would have a better chance of winning a bet that our milk cow could jump over our barn. Parley had learned everything there was to know about tracking from his father. Trying to track him down would be like tracking a rabbit over a lava bed. Parley had outwitted the posse every time he’d been the outlaw. Of course Tom hadn’t been the sheriff any of those times. And the sheriff was in complete charge and the deputies had to follow his orders-1 was thinking about this as Tom and I walked toward home.

“I’ll bet you were surprised when Parley called your bluff,” I said. “You can kiss that dollar good-bye.”

“I wasn’t trying to bluff him out of betting,” Tom said. “I just wanted to make him bet more than a quarter. I knew he could afford to bet a dollar because of the money he won on the wheel of fortune.”

“I still say you can kiss that dollar good-bye,” I said.

“If that is the way you feel, J.D.,” Tom said. “Why don’t you get down a bet of your own?”

All of my life I’d been waiting to win a bet from The Great Brain. Papa had often said if you just had the patience to wait long enough for something to happen that someday

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it would happen. This was my golden opportunity.

“Bet a quarter the posse doesn’t catch the outlaw,” I said.

“You’ve got yourself a bet,” Tom said.

The next morning Tom, Frankie, and I finished the chores. Eddie Huddle came over to play with Frankie. Tom and I saddled up Dusty. Parley was the first to arrive, riding his pony, Blaze. Then Seth Smith, Danny Forester, Hal Evans, Frank Jensen, and Howard Kay arrived on their horses. The rest of the fellows who owned horses had to work.

Tom and I rode double on Dusty as the outlaw and posse started for Three Falls Canyon where we played the game. The canyon was located about seven miles from town. It was named for the three waterfalls in it-The Paiute Indians believed the canyon was haunted and wouldn’t enter it, and I sure as heck didn’t blame them. The Paiute name for the canyon meant, place where screaming bad spirits dwell. The walls of the canyon were all limestone and in some places almost perpendicular. Millions of years of frost, rain, and wind had carved holes in the limestone cliffs-Some of them looked like giant honeycombs, they had so many holes in them. When the wind blew. in these holes it made an eerie whistling sound like the screaming of hundreds of demons. Another eerie thing was the way the coloring in the limestone cliffs changed with the light. Cliffs that looked pink, cream, and purple in the sunlight changed to ver-milion, yellow, and orange when the sun went behind a cloud.

Every time I entered the canyon I wondered if some ancestor of mine could have been a Paiute Indian because I

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felt the same way they did about the canyon. I wouldn’t have gone there alone for all the candy in the Z.C.M.I, store. In addition, bobcats, mountain lions, wolves, and even bears had been killed in the canyon by hunters and trappers. For my money it was a good place for a fellow to have a lot of company.

We arrived at the mouth of the canyon before noon. We all ate some beef jerky and hardtack and drank water from the stream that ran down the canyon. Then Tom took out the watch he had received for Christinas.

“You all know the rules,” he said. “The posse gives the outlaw a fifteen minute head start. Then the posse has two hours to track down the outlaw and get close enough to touch him to arrest him, or the outlaw wins. It is now a quarter past twelve. That means the outlaw must be caught by two thirty. All right, outlaw, get going.”

Parley jumped on Blaze and rode up the canyon on the trail used by hunters and trappers. Tom sat on a log holding the watch in his hand until the fifteen minutes were up. Then he put the watch in his pocket and stood up.

“Mount up, men,” he ordered. “We’ve got an outlaw to capture.”

We rode up the canyon following the trail. The hoofprints of the outlaw’s horse were easy to follow because there had been a light rain the night before. Birds began making noises in the trees. I saw crossbills, Clark’s nut-crackers, and a lot of gray jays. The jays were better known as camp robbers. They were the most daring thieves of all birds. They would steal a piece of bread right out of your hand. One time on our annual fishing trip Papa had just put bacon and eggs on our tin plates when some camp robbers swooped down and stole the bacon right off our plates.

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The canyon was too narrow for farming or grazing livestock. It was more of a gorge than a canyon, less than a hundred feet wide in most places, and in some places only about twenty-five feet wide. We had traveled for about fifteen minutes when Tom called a halt. ~

“The outlaw rode his horse at a gallop or trot this far,” he said. “But now the hoofprints show he slowed his horse down to a walk. So keep a sharp eye for signs where he might have left his horse and tried to escape on foot.”

We followed the trail around a bend in the canyon. Parley’s pony, Blaze, was standing by himself eating some grass by the trail. Tom dismounted. He walked all round the pony looking for footprints or bent grass caused by footsteps but couldn’t find any. He led BIa/e over to me and handed me the reins.

“You ride the outlaw’s horse,” he said. Then he went over and sat down on a log. He sat there so long Danny finally rode over beside him.

“Are yon giving up already, Sheriff?” he asked.

“No,” Tom said as he stood up. “We know the outlaw left his horse hut he didn’t get off on the ground or we would have seen signs of footprints along the trail.”

“Maybe he erased his footprints with a bush,” Danny said.

“The ground is too wet for that,” Tom said.

“But there is no other way to get off a horse,” Danny protested.

“Yes, there is,” Tom said. “We will have to backtrack.”

Tom mounted Dusty and we started back the way we had come. But this time Tom wasn’t looking at the trail. He was looking up at trees. When we reached the place where the outlaw had walked his horse Tom called a halt. He

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pointed at a big limb of an aspen tree that hung about twelve feet above the trail.

“See how the small branches on that big limb are broken,” he said. “That is how the outlaw left his horse.”

We all stared at the limb. Danny put into words what we were all thinking.

“Impossible,” he said. “The outlaw couldn’t reach it from his saddle.”

“You are forgetting,” Tom said, “that we are dealing with an outlaw who won prizes for trick riding at county fairs before he became an outlaw. This is where he walked his horse. He stood up on the rump of the horse and grabbed the limb as they got under it. Then he hoisted himself up on the limb after giving his horse a command to keep going. See how the small branches are broken all the way to the trunk of the tree. Dismount, men.”

We got oft our horses and walked to the trunk of the big tree. Tom pointed at another big limb going in the opposite direction.

“See the small broken branches on that one,” he said. “The outlaw used it so he could drop more than twenty feet away from the trail.”

Sure enough we found footprints where the outlaw had dropped to the ground from the limb.

“We will have to track him on foot,” Tom said. “Deputies Evans, Jensen, and Kay take the horses along the trail and meet us at the first waterfall. The rest of you men come with me.”