This town,” says Squint, quiet, but determined, “has got to be made an example of. It has got to learn that it can't laugh at the Dalton Gang and go unscathed. Freckled Watson of Dead Man's Gulch,” says he to me, “speak up! What form shall the punishment take?”

“Blood,” says I.

“Two-Gun Tom of Texas,” says he to Tom Mulligan, “speak!”

“Death!” says Tom.

“Arizona Pete, speak!”

“Blood and Death,” says Pete Wilson, making his voice deep.

“Broncho Bob?”

“Blood, death, and fire!” says Bob Jones.

There was a solemn pause for a minute, and then I says, according to rule and regulation:

“And what says Dead-Shot Squint, the Terror of the Plains?”

He was very serious while one might have counted ten breaths, and then he pulled his jack-knife from his pocket and whet it on the palm of his hand, and tried its point on his thumb, and replied:

“He says death, and seals it with a vow!”

That vow was a mighty solemn thing, and we always felt it so. It wasn't the kind of a thing you would ever let small kids or girls know about. First you all sat down in a circle, with your feet together, and rolled up the sleeve of your left arm. Then the knife was passed around, and each drew blood out of his left arm. Then each one got as much blood out of the next fellow's arm as he could, in his mouth, and all swallowed simultaneous, to show you were going into the thing to the death and no turning back. Next we signed our names in a ring, using blood mixed with gunpowder. But not on paper, mind you. We signed 'em on parchment. First and last, that parchment was a good deal of trouble. If you think skinning a squirrel or a rat to get his hide for parchment is an easy trick, just try it. Let alone catching them being no snap. But Squint, he was Captain, and he was stern on parchment, for it makes an oath more legal, and all the old-time outlaws wouldn't look at anything else. But we got a pretty good supply ahead by saving all the dead cats and things like that we could find, and unless you know likely places to look it would surprise you how many dead cats there are in the world.

We were in the Horse Thieves' Cave, about a mile from town. It had really been used for that, way back before the war. There was a gang pretended to be honest settlers like everybody else. But they used to steal horses and hide them out in there. When they had a dozen or so of them they'd take 'em over to the Mississippi River, which was about thirty miles west, some night, and raft 'em down stream and sell 'em at Cairo or St. Louis. That went on for years, but along in the fifties, my grandfather said, when he was a kid, a couple was hung, and the remainder got across the river and went west. The cave was up on the side of a hill in the woods, and forgotten about except by a few old-timers. The door-beams had rotted and fallen down, and the sand and dirt had slid down over the mouth of it, and vines and bushes grown up. No one would have guessed there was any cave there at all. But the dogs got to digging around there one afternoon when the Dalton Gang was meeting in the woods, and uncovered part of those door beams. We dug some more and opened her up. It took a lot of work to clean her out, but she was as good as new when we got done with her. We never told any one, and the vines and bushes were so thick you could hunt a year and never find the opening. It isn't every bunch of kids get a real Horse Thieves' Cave ready-made like that, right from the hands of Providence, as you might say. Pete Wilson used to brag and say his grand-dad was one of those horse-thieves. It made the rest of us feel kind of meek for a time, because none of us could claim any honour or grandeur like that in our families. But my grand-dad, who has a terrible long memory about the early days, said it wasn't so; so far as he could recollect Pete's grand-dad never had any ambition above shoats and chickens.

Well, I was telling you about that oath. We were taking it because Squint's father, who was mayor, had run on to one of those parchments (which Squint ought never to have taken away from the cave), and had asked a lot of fool questions about it. Then he threw back his head and laughed at the Dalton Gang. It made our blood boil. Hence, our plans for revenge.

“The time has come,” said Squint, “for a bold stroke. Yonder proud city laughs. But he laughs best who laughs last. And ere another sun has set——”

“The last time we took the blood oath,” interrupts Bob Jones, “we didn't do anything more important than steal the ice cream from the Methodist lawn sociable.”

“There must be no failure,” says Squint, not heeding him, and he jabbed the knife into the ground and gritted his teeth. You could see how the memory of being laughed at was rankling through his veins.

“But, Squint,” says Tom Mulligan, looking quite a bit worried, “you don't really mean to kill any one, do you?”

Squint only says, very haughty: “The blood oath has been sworn. Is there a traitor here?” He was always a great one for holding us to it, Squint was, unless what he called an Honourable Compromise came into sight. And we all got mighty uncomfortable and gloomy trying to think of some Honourable Compromise. It was to me that the great idea came, all of a sudden.

“Squint,” I says, “the thing to do is to kidnap some prominent citizen and hold him for ransom.”

Squint brightened up and said to wring gold from the coffers of yonder proud city would be even more satisfaction than blood. The next question was: Who will we kidnap?

“I suggest the mayor of yonder town!” says Squint.

“Gee—your dad, Squint?” says Tom Mulligan.

“I offer him as a sacrifice,” says Squint, very majestically. No one could do any more, and we all felt Squint's dad had deserved it. But the idea was so big it kind of scared us, too. But while the rest of us were admiring Squint, Bob Jones got jealous and offered his father. Then we all offered our fathers, except Tom Mulligan, who didn't have anything better to offer than a pair of spinster aunts. There was a general row over whose father was the most prominent citizen. But finally we decided to bar all relatives and kinsfolk, in order to prevent jealousy, even to the distant cousins. But it isn't a very big town, and it would surprise you how many people are related to each other there. Finally Bill Patterson was voted to be the Honourable Compromise, being known as the town drunkard, and not related to anybody who would own up to it.

It figured out easy enough. All we had to do was to wait until Sunday night, and take Bill out of the lockup. Every Saturday afternoon regular Si Emery, who was the city marshal, arrested Bill for being drunk on Main Street, and Bill was kept in jail until Monday morning. Si was getting pretty old and feeble and shaky, and of late years the town council never let him have the lock-up key until just an hour or so before it was time to arrest Bill on Saturdays. Because one time Si had forgot to feed and water a tramp in there for about a week, and the tramp took sick after a while, and he was dead when Si remembered about him, and had to be buried at the town's expense. And several times some tough customers had taken the keys away from Si and broken into the place and played cards and cut up in there scandalous for half the night. So it was thought best Si shouldn't carry the keys, nor the handcuffs which belonged to the town. After he had locked Bill up on Saturday evenings Si would take the keys to the mayor's house, and get them again on Monday morning to let Bill out.

So the next Sunday night when the hired girl wasn't looking, Squint sneaked the keys and the town handcuffs out of the drawer in the kitchen table where the knives and forks were kept. He slipped upstairs to bed, and no one noticed. About ten o'clock he dressed again, and got out the back window, and down the lightning rod; and at the same hour us other Daltons were doing much the same.

We met behind the lockup, and put on the masks we had made. They had hair on the bottoms of them to look like beards sticking out.

“Who's got the dark-lantern?” Squint asks, in a whisper.

“M-m-me,” answered Pete Wilson, stuttering. I was so excited myself I was biting my coat-sleeve so my teeth wouldn't chatter. And Bob Jones was clicking the trigger of the cavalry pistol his uncle carried in the war, and couldn't stop, like a girl can't stop laughing when she gets hysterics. The cylinder was gone and it couldn't be loaded or he would have killed himself, for he turned it up and looked right into the muzzle and kept clicking when Squint asked him what the matter was. Pete shook so he couldn't light the lantern; but Squint, he was that calm and cool he lit her with the third match. He unlocked the door and in we went.

Bill was snoring like all get out, and talking in his sleep. That made us feel braver again. Squint says to handcuff him easy and gentle before he wakes. Well, there wasn't any trouble in that; the trouble was to wake him up afterward. He was so interested in whatever he was dreaming about that the only way we could do it was to tickle his nose with a straw and wait until he sneezed himself awake. Squint clapped the muzzle of the pistol to his forehead, while I flashed the lantern in his eyes and the other three sat on his stomach and grabbed his legs. Squint says:

“William Patterson, one move and you are a dead man!”

But Bill didn't try to move any; he only said: “Can't an honest working-man take a little nap? You go 'way and leave me be!”

“William Patterson,” says Squint, “you are kidnapped!”

“Yer a liar,” says Bill. “I ain't. Ye can't prove it on to me. I'm just takin' a little nap.”

Then he rouses up a little more and looks at us puzzled, and begins to mumble and talk to himself:

“Here I be,” he says, “and here they be! I can see 'em, all right; but they can't fool me! They ain't really nothing here. I seen too many of them tremenses come and go to be fooled that easy.”

“Arise, William Patterson, and come with us,” says Squint.

“Now, you don't want to get too sassy,” says Bill, “or you'll turn into something else the first thing you know. You tremenses always does turn into something else.” We had to kick him on the shins to make him get up. When we did that he says to himself: “Shucks, now! A body'd think he was bein' kicked if he didn't know different, wouldn't he?”

He came along peaceable enough, but muttering to himself all the way: “Monkeys and crocodiles and these here striped jackasses with wings on to 'em I've saw many a time, and argified with 'em, too; and talked with elephants no bigger'n a man's fist; and oncet I chased a freight train round and round that calaboose and had it give me sass; but this is the first time a passel o' little old men ever come and trotted me down the pike.”

And he kept talking like that all the way to the cave. It was midnight before we took off his handcuffs and shoved him in. When we gave him that shove, he did get sort of spiteful and he says:

“You tremenses think you're mighty smart, but if I was to come out of this sudden, where would you be? Blowed up, that's where—like bubbles!”

We padlocked the door we had rigged up over the mouth of the cave, and by the time it was locked he was asleep; we could hear him snoring when we lit out for town again.

On the calaboose door, and in front of the post-office, and on the bank, we tacked big notices. They were printed rough on wrapping paper and spelled wrong so it would look like some tough customers had done it. They read as follows:

Bill Patterson has Bin stole 5 hundred $$ ransum must be left on baptis Cherch steps by Monday mid-night or his life pays us forfut like a Theef in the nite he was took from jale who Will Be next!

—the kidNappers.

Next morning we were all up at the cave as early as we could make it. I had a loaf of bread and a pie and part of a boiled ham, and Pete had some canned sardines and bacon he got out of his dad's store, and the others were loaded up with eggs and canned fruit and what they could get hold of easy. You may believe it or not, but when we opened that cave door Bill was still asleep. Squint woke him up and told him:

“Prisoner, it is the intention of the Dalton Gang to treat you with all the honours of war until such time as you are ransomed, or, if not ransomed, executed. So long as you make no effort to escape you need have no fear.”

“I ain't afeared,” says Bill, looking at that grub like he could hardly believe his eyes. We built a fire and cooked breakfast. There was a hollow stump on the side of the hill, and we had dug into the bottom of it through the top of the cave. It made a regular chimney for our fireplace. If any one saw the stump smoking outside they would only think some farmer was burning out stumps.

Bill always wore a piece of rope around his waist in place of a belt or suspenders. When he had eaten so much he had to untie the rope he sat back and lighted his pipe, and said to me, right cunning:

“I'll bet you ain't got any idea what state this here is.”

“It's Illinois,” says I. He looked like he was pleased to hear it.

“So it is,” says he. “So it is!” After he had smoked awhile longer he said: “What county in Illinois would you say it was, for choice?”

“Bureau county,” I told him. I saw then he hadn't known where he was.

“It ain't possible, is it,” he says, “that I ever seen any of you boys on the streets of a little city by the name of Hazelton?”

I told him yes.

“I s'pose they got the same old city marshal there?” says he. I guess he thought maybe he'd been gone for years and years, like Rip Van Winkle. He was having a hard time to get things straightened out in his mind. He stared and stared into the bowl of his pipe, looking at me now and then out of the corners of his eyes as if he wondered whether he could trust me or not; finally he leaned over toward me and whispered into my ear, awfully anxious: “Who would you say I was, for choice, now?”

“Bill Patterson,” I told him, and he brightened up considerable and chuckled to himself; and then he said, feeling of himself all over and tying on his rope again:

“Bill Patterson is correct! Been wanderin' around through these here woods for weeks an' weeks, livin' on roots an' yarbs like a wild man of Borneo.” Then he asks me very confidential: “How long now, if you was to make a guess, would you judge Bill had been livin' in this here cave?”

But Squint cut in and told him point blank he was kidnapped. It took a long time to get that into Bill's head, but finally he asked: “What for?”

“For ransom,” says I.

“And revenge,” says Squint.

Bill looked dazed for a minute, and then said if it was all the same to us he'd like to have a talk with a lawyer. But Bob Jones broke in and told him “Unless five hundred dollars is paid over to the gang, you will never see Hazelton again.” He looked frightened at that and began to pick at his coat-sleeves, and said he guessed if we didn't mind he'd go and take a little nap now. You never saw such a captive for sleeping up his spare time; he was just naturally cut out to be a prisoner. But we felt kind of sorry and ashamed we had scared him; it was so easy to scare him, and we agreed we'd speak gentle and easy to him after that.

At dinner time we waked Bill up and gave him another meal. And he was ready for it; the sight of victuals seemed to take any fright he might have had out of his mind. You never saw such an appetite in all your born days; he ate like he had years of lost time to make up for; and maybe he had. He was having such a good time he began to have his doubts whether it would last, for he said, in a worried kind of way, after dinner: “This here thing of being kidnapped, now, ain't a thing you boys is going to try and charge for, is it? 'Cause if it is them there sharp tricks can't be worked on to me; and if you was to sue me for it you sue a pauper.”

After dinner Squint and I went to town on a scouting party. We hung around the streets and listened to the talk that was going on just like a couple of spies would that had entered the enemy's camp in war time. Everybody was wondering what had become of Bill, and gassing about the notices; and it made us feel mighty proud to think that fame had come to ones so young as us, even although it came in disguise so that no one but us knew it. But in the midst of that feeling we heard Hy Williams, the city drayman, saying to a crowd of fellows who were in front of the post office waiting for the mail to be distributed:

“The beatingest part of the whole thing is that any one would be fools enough to think that this town or any other town would pay ransom to get back a worthless cuss like Bill Patterson!”

It had never struck us like that before. Instead of being famous like we had thought, here we were actually being laughed at again! Squint, he gritted his teeth, and I knew all the rankling that he had done inside of him was as nothing to the rankling that he was doing now. So that night we put up some more notices around town, which read as follows:

n. B.—take notus! we didunt reely Expect money for Old Bill Patterson, we onely done that to show this town Is in Our Power. Take warning and pay Up the next will be a rich one or his child.

—kidnappers.

That really made folks pretty serious, that notice. There was a piece in a Chicago paper about the things that had happened in our town. The piece told a lot of things that never had happened, but when the papers came down from Chicago and they all read it the whole town began to get worse and worse excited. And about that time we began to get scared ourselves. For there was talk of sending off to Chicago and getting a detective. People were frightened about their kids, too. It kept getting harder and harder for us to get out to the cave to guard Bill. Not that he needed much guarding, either; for he was having the time of his life out there, eating and sleeping and not working at anything else. It had been years since he had struck any kind of work that suited him as well as being kidnapped did; if we hadn't been so worried it would have been a pleasure to us to see how happy and contented we were making him; he acted like he had found the real job in life that he had always been looking for, and the only thing that bothered him at all was when he recollected about that ransom and got afraid the town would pay it and end his snap. But mostly he didn't bother about anything; for his recollection was only by fits and starts; yesterday was just as far off to him as a year ago. The second day he was there he did get a little grouchy because he had been without anything to drink for so long. But that night someone broke into the saloon and stole a lot of quart bottles of whiskey; about a bushel of them, it was said. We didn't suspect it was Bill, right at first, for he was foxy enough to keep it hid from us; and when we did know we didn't dare say anything! That whiskey was the one thing Bill had lacked to make him completely happy. But the theft worked in a way that increased our troubles. For it showed people that the mysterious gang was still hanging around waiting to strike a desperate stroke. And the very next night a store was broken into and some stuff stolen. It wasn't Bill, but I suppose some tramp that was hanging around; but it helped to stir things up worse and worse. So we decided that we had better turn Bill loose. We held a meeting out by the cave, and then Squint told him:

“Prisoner, you are at liberty!”

“What d'ye mean by that?” says Bill. “You ain't goin' back on me, are ye?”

“Yonder town has been punished enough,” says Squint. “Go free—we strike your shackles off!”

“But see here,” says Bill, “wasn't I kidnapped reg'lar? Ain't I been a model prisoner?”

“But we're through with you, Bill,” we told him. “Don't you understand?”

Bill allowed it was a mean trick we were playing on him; he said he had thought we were his friends, and that he'd done his best to give satisfaction in the place, and here we were, firing him, as you might say, without any warning, or giving him any chance to get another job like it, or even telling him where he had failed to make good, and then he snuffled like he was going to cry, and said: “That's a great way to treat an honest workin'-man, that is! An' they call this a free country, too!”

But Squint, while expressing sorrow that we should have raised any false hopes, was firm with him, too. “You take the rest of that whiskey and chase along, now, Bill,” he said, “you aren't kidnapped any more.”

But Bill flared up at that. “I ain't, ain't I?” he said. “Yer a liar! I was kidnapped fair and square; kidnapped I be, and kidnapped I stay! I'll show you blamed little cheats whether I'm kidnapped or not, I will!”

He took a chew of tobacco and sat down on a log, and studied us, looking us over real sullen and spiteful. “Now, then,” he says, finally, “if you young smart alecs think you can treat a free man that-a-way yer dern fools. I got the law on to my side, I have. Do you think I don't know that? Mebby you boys don't know ye could go to jail for kidnappin' an honest work-in'-man? Well, ye could, if it was found out on ye. It's a crime, that's what it is, and ye could go to jail for it. You treat Old Bill fair and square and keep friends with him, and he won't tell on you; but the minute I hear any more talk about bein' set at liberty I'll tell on ye, and to jail you goes. I'm mighty comfortable where I be, and I ain't goin' to be turned out.”

We all looked at each other, and then we looked away again, and our hearts sank. For each one read in his neighbour's eyes (as Squint said later) what his doom might well be.

“Kidnapped I be,” says Bill again, very rough and decided, “and kidnapped I stay. And what's more, I want chicken for supper to-night. I ain't had no chicken for quite a spell. You can wake me up when supper's ready.” And he went into the cave and lay down for a nap.

We were in his power, and he knew it!

We had to steal that chicken, and it went against the grain to do it. It was the first time in its career of crime the Dalton Gang had ever actually stolen anything. Except, of course, watermelons and such truck, which isn't really stealing. And except the ice cream from the Methodist lawn sociable, which was for revenge and as a punishment on the Sunday School, and so not really stealing, either.

Things got worse and worse. For Bill, he kept us on the jump. He got to wanting more and more different things to eat, and was more and more particular about the cooking. He wouldn't lift a hand for himself, not even to fill and light his own pipe. We waited on him hand and foot, all day long. And first he would take a fancy for a mess of squirrels, and then he would want pigeons; and we had to take turns fanning the flies off of him when he wanted to take a nap. Once he told a story, and we all laughed at it; and that gave him the idea he was a great story teller; and he would tell foolish yarns by the hour and get sulky if we didn't laugh. We got so we would do anything to keep him in a good humour. We had a lot of Indian stories and Old Sleuths out to the cave, and he made us take turns reading to him. That good-for-nothing loafer turned into a regular king, and we were his slaves.

Between sneaking out there to keep him happy and contented and rustling up grub for him, and thinking all the time we would be arrested the next minute, and wanting to confess and not daring to, we all got right nervous. Then there was a man came to town who didn't tell what his business was the first day he was there, and we were right sure he was a detective. He passed right by the cave one day, and we hugged the ground behind the bushes and didn't dare breathe. It turned out afterward he was only looking at some land he was figuring on buying. But that night I dreamed that that man arrested me; and I was being sent to jail when I waked up screaming out something about kidnapping. I heard my Pa say to my Ma, after they had got me quieted down:

“Poor little fellow! He thought he was kidnapped! No wonder he is afraid, the state this whole town is in. If those desperadoes are caught, they'll go to the pen for a good long term: nothing on earth can save 'em from a Bureau county jury.”

Then he went back into his room and went to sleep; but I didn't go to sleep. What he had said didn't make me feel sleepy. I slipped out of bed and prayed enough that night to make up for the times I had forgot it lately; and the next day the rest of the Dalton Gang admitted they had prayed some, too.

But the worst of all was when Bill made friends with the tramp. Squint and I went out to the cave one morning to get Bill's breakfast for him, and as we got near we heard two sets of snores. Bill's snore you could tell a long way off, he sort of gargled his snores and they ended up with kind of a choke and an explosion. But the other snore was more of a steady whistling sound. We ran across the fellow sudden, and it like to have frightened us out of a year's growth. He was lying just inside the cave with his hat pulled over his face, but he was snoring with one eye open. It peered out from under the brim of his hat; it was half-hidden, but it was open all right, and it was staring straight at us. It wasn't human; no one with good intentions would lie there like that and snore like he was asleep and watch folks at the same time on the sly. We couldn't even run; we stood there with that regular see-saw snore coming and going, and that awful eye burning into the centres of our souls, as Squint says later, and thought our end had come. But he waked up and opened the other eye, and then we saw the first one was glass and he hadn't meant any harm by it. He was right sorry he'd scared us, he said; but we'd have to get used to that eye, for he allowed he was kidnapped, too. It was two days before he quit being our captive and left, and they are among the saddest days I ever spent.

He left because Bill's whiskey was gone; and the afternoon he left, Bill was helpless. When we saw Bill in that fix it gave us an idea how to get rid of him. That night he was still weak and easy to handle. So we slipped the handcuffs on him and took him back and locked him into the calaboose again. Then we put signs and notices around town that read this way:

Ha Ha Ha

Did you ever get left! this town joshed me for years but I have got even—the joke is on to you—I wasn't kidnapped a tall—who is the suckers now?

Bill Patterson.

And that town was so mad that when they found Bill in the jail again there was talk of handling him pretty rough. But it all turned into josh. Bill, when he woke up in the calaboose, thought he had just had a dream at first, and denied he had ever been absent. Then when he saw they all took him for a deep joker he began to act like he was a joker. And before long he got to thinking he really had played that trick on the town. When they used to ask him how on earth he got into and out of the calaboose without the keys, he would wink very mysterious, and look important, and nod and chuckle to himself and say that was the best part of the joke and he intended to keep it to himself.

But one day when he was almost sober he saw Squint and me on the street and stared at us long and hard like he was trying to recollect something, and scratched his head and said: “You boys didn't always used to live in this town, did you?”

“Uh-huh,” says I.

“That's funny,” says Bill, “I could have swore you was boys I once knowed a long ways off from here that time I was on my travels.”