Humbug Mountain (2 page)

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.

“I didn't say Pa
sold
them,” Glorietta said. “No one around here would buy them. Sunrise is too dreadfully far off.”

“Glorietta, you're just making things up to pass the time. Pa paid cash money for this wagon, didn't he? We're not busted.”

“I suppose I'm making up that he's not wearing his gold watch and chain this morning.”

I could hear a distant clap of thunder, but it was all inside my head.

“He sold them off for traveling money,” Glorietta said.

We stopped in one town after another. We'd let Mr. Johnson swim around in a horse trough while Pa scouted about, looking for Opportunity. He always pronounced the word with a capital
O.

He'd return with a larksome smile. “Another Mulesburg,” he'd say, and we'd move on. Some of those towns had newspapers, and we could all set type—especially Ma. She was wondrously quick at it. Glorietta and I had both learned to read by sorting spilled type. But Pa wouldn't hire us out. He didn't say anything, but I could tell there had been opportunities. But not Opportunity.

I always felt a mite uneasy whenever Pa was out of sight. It was something Glorietta and I hardly ever talked about. Pa had a way of disappearing. Sometimes for weeks at a time. We never knew when he walked out the door if we'd ever see him again. Even in these little towns I felt a huge relief when I caught sight of him returning to the wagon.

We camped out every night. Ma made a kind of merry time of it. She said it didn't bother her a bit when we heard strange noises in the dark. “Why, there's no better watchdog than a goose,” she smiled. “And Mr. Johnson's the best.”

Day after day we were getting dustier and dirtier. Finally, miles from anywhere and with night coming on, there rose up a narrow, slab-sided building with a tall false front at the edge of the road. It didn't seem to belong there. It looked like a building that had wandered away from town and got lost.

Pa pulled up and we all gazed at the sign. Glorietta peered through her glasses and said, “It's spelled wrong.”

Pa beat the dust out of his hat and Ma laughed. “It's spelled right enough for the occasion,” she said. “And ‘sure enuf,' that's where this family is going to stay the night.”

We took baths, and after dinner Pa unrolled the colored lithograph and stared at it. Then he cleared his throat.

“Wiley,” he said. “Glorietta. Your mother and I have hit upon a splendid notion. Opportunity? Why, Opportunity's been hiding right under our noses. Sunrise! At the foot of Humbug Mountain. That's where we'll head. To Sunrise—the Parnassus of the West!”

3

THE
PRAIRIE BUZZARD

Soon after daybust we left the Sure Enuf Hotel. We were in high good spirits. I don't think even Pa knew
exactly
where Sunrise was, but we were bound to find it once we reached the Missouri River. We'd board a steamboat in St. Louis and buy passage straight to the Parnassus of the West.

“Nausea,” Glorietta muttered. She had become uncommonly fond of that word. “What'll Grandpa think when he sees me in these ugly spectacles?”

“They're not ugly.”

“Infernally
ugly. He'll think I'm homelier'n a basket of knotholes.”

“Oh, nausea yourself,” I said. “That's the dumbest thing I ever heard.”

She spread her toes and stared at them. “I wrote him a letter last Christmas. He didn't answer.”

“Of course not. Town builders hardly have time to stop for air, let alone scratch out a lot of mail. But there could be a whole tote of letters floating around, trying to catch up with us.

She shrugged. “He'll be mad that I lost my locket he gave me.”

“Stop pining about it,” I said. “Won't he be surprised when we turn up! I'll bet he'll give us free rides on his steamboat. We'll go skimming up and down the river like high-lightning. Maybe he'll let me steer.”

She looked up from her toes. “What about me?”

“You too,” I said.

By the time we reached St. Louis I had charged through all four adventures of Quickshot Billy—again. I wished I had a finger ring with a mirror so I could see behind me. Outlaws were common as crows out west and a thing like that might come in handy. But Pa said he didn't think Captain Tuggle would allow outlaws inside the city limits. Grandpa was strong as a bull, and when he gave an order the blast of his voice set windmills spinning ten miles away.

And he might be right here in St. Louis to pick up a cargo of supplies or something. That would be a great stroke of happenstance! The first thing Pa did was buy a newspaper for
Ma.
She quickly turned to the shipping list. Glorietta and I hung over her shoulders as she ran her finger down the column of arrivals and departures. The
Phoenix
wasn't there.

“Oh drat,” Ma declared. She wasn't usually given to intemperate language of that nature.

Pa put us up in Planters Hotel and took me along the levee to choose a steamboat. We moved at a great clip—Pa was a high-headed sort of man with a brisk stride—and hauled up at a side-wheeler with most of the paint curling off. It looked like it was molting.

“Wiley, how does that vessel take your fancy?” he asked.

It was a pestiferous old boat that wouldn't hold a candle to Grandpa's
Phoenix.
But I said, “Fine, Pa,” and we walked aboard.

The captain was sitting in the shade of a tattered awning. He was of monstrous size and was trying to button a little wing collar and not choke himself in the bargain.