by Jon Scieszka
We turned in circles, studying the weird scene of frozen cowboys, Indians, and cavalry. Sam wiped his glasses on his completely dirty shirt and gave another look to make absolutely sure of what he was seeing. “So now what do we do? Go back home and leave everyone frozen here in 1868?”
“No, I think we have to unfreeze time or it will never make it to our time,” I said.
“Why don’t we move Black Kettle and his guys out of here,” said Fred. “Then we unfreeze time, hop in our green mist, and everybody gets saved.” He grabbed Black Kettle’s arm and lifted. It didn’t budge an inch.
I shook my head. “Frozen in time and space.”
“Let me get this straight,” said Sam. “We can’t unfreeze time because Black Kettle and his guys will get wiped out. But we can’t leave time frozen because we won’t have a time to go back to, right?”
“Right,” I said.
“That’s what I was afraid of.”
We sat back down on the hill. I tapped my forehead with The Book. “Think, you guys. Think.” And then I had it. “Of course,” I said. And I opened to the index again. “Time Bending ... Time Folding ... Time Freezing ... Time Sliding ... here it is—Time Unfreezing, page forty-five.”
I turned to page 45 and read aloud, “ ‘Because the Time Freezing Spell puts such a strain on the mechanism of the universe, it should be used only in cases of Extreme Emergency, and even then only once every millennium or so. To unfreeze Time, simply wait. Depending on conditions of the local Time/Space Continuum, Time will usually thaw in fifteen to twenty minutes.’ ”
“Fifteen to twenty minutes,” said Fred, jumping to his feet. “We’re almost out of time. Let’s get out of here before everybody comes back to life.”
“Wait. Here’s the part we need—‘For Selective Unfreezing, touch the individual person or object to be unfrozen and say Ezeens sgip, eseehc esuom.’ ”
I put my hand on Black Kettle’s shoulder and tried it. “Ezeens sgip, eseehc esuom.” He blinked, looked around at the frozen scene around us and nodded. “Strong medicine, Joe Magnificent.”
Sam and Fred unfroze the rest of the Cheyenne and their ponies while I tried to explain The Book, the Industrial Strength Time Freezer Spell, and the thawing of the local time/space continuum to Black Kettle. He didn’t seem at all surprised. As each brave came whooping, singing, or screaming to life he called them over.
“Joe Magnificent, Sam Who Tells the Stars, and Warrior Fred have come from time ahead to save us. There are many questions I would like to ask about all of these people.” Black Kettle swept his arm in a circle to include cowboys, soldiers, and braves. “But we must leave quickly.” Black Kettle jumped on his pony and raised his hand. “As long as the Great Bear walks in the sky we will not forget what you have done for the People.”
Fred, Sam, and I raised our hands.
The braves walked their ponies carefully past the frozen Seventh Cavalry, holding their bows, rifles, and tomahawks ready. They passed the last bluecoat statue and then took off in a whooping, yelling cloud of dust.
“Good work, Time Warp Medicine Chiefs. Now we just have to time this right to make sure we have a time to go home to,” I said.
We heard a great screeching and groaning sound like a giant fingernail dragging across a blackboard and a 70-millimeter Dolby movie soundtrack slowly starting up.
I opened The Book to a picture of three guys.
A green mist began to form around our dusty sneakers.
The Lazy J herd came mooing to life and the cavalry resumed its charge.
The mist rose.
Time thawed.
And we were gone.
ELEVEN
You did it,” says Cooky. “You stopped Sitting Bull and his Cheyenne. You stopped the stampede. And here comes the cavalry just like you said.”
Cowboy Bob pushes back his ten-gallon hat with one of his six-shooters. “I reckon I did, Cooky. Now, why don’t you rustle me up a second helping of that good grub. We still got a ways to go down that Old Chillum Trail.”
Cowboy Bob and Cooky grin at each other. The music swells. The credits roll up from the bottom of the screen.
AND THAT CONCLUDES TONIGHT’S
“SATURDAY NIGHT AT THE MOVIES” FEATURE,
COWBOY BOB TO THE RESCUE.
BE SURE TO TUNE IN NEXT WEEK FOR
COWBOY BOB WINS THE WEST.
Fred grabbed the remote and clicked off the TV. “Yeah, right.”
Fred, Sam, and I looked at each other, still a bit stunned from our trip to the wild West. Our T-shirts, jeans, and sneakers were thoroughly ripped, wrinkled, and covered with dust. Sam tried to straighten his glasses. Fred poked a finger through the hole in his Tigers cap. I tried to decide if my stomach felt the way it did because of beans, bacon, and biscuits or the green time-traveling mist.
“I wonder what happened when those guys got to the top of that hill,” said Sam.
I thought about the cavalry, the cowboys, Black Kettle, and his tribe.
“We know what happened to Custer. I wonder whatever happened to Black Kettle and his guys?”
Sam looked out the window and up at the stars. “Well, the Great Bear is still walking up there.”
“Shhhh,” said Fred. “What’s that noise?”
“Oh, no,” I said. “Not again.”
We froze and listened.
It wasn’t a stampede. It wasn’t a flash flood.
“Joseph Arthur?”
It was my mom.
Fred, Sam, and I looked at each other and then around the room. We looked and smelled as bad as the Lazy J herd. But the room looked even worse. It was a mother’s nightmare of popcorn, soda cans, and us.
The door began to swing slowly open. I imagined the look on my mom’s face. I imagined we might have a good case for just one more Extreme Emergency Industrial Strength Time Freezer Spell.