The Daredevil Desperados of Destiny

by Charlie Small

  No, no, no! It’s just a load of gobbledegook! What am I going to do now? This could be the last entry I ever make in my journal.

  (If this is my last night, I’d just like to say goodbye to my mum and dad, and thank you to all the friends that have helped me on my travels; Jakeman; Grip and Grapple; the Puffer Fish Balloon; Jenny and her gran; the brave Desperados. I would also like to say a big good riddance to Thrak; the Perfumed Pirates; the Puppet Master, and most of all Craik.)

  Oops, sorry about that. Those two pages were stuck together with an ugly bug from Trouble County Jail. But I’m not out of trouble yet. Far from it: I’m in more trouble than ever!

  Whoa! Both the young Rapakwar brave and I are now suspended from the top of a high cliff in a rusty old cage, and we’re waiting for Ham’s surprise; and it’s much worse than I ever imagined. My stomach flips over every time I think about it. It seems we are going to be … No, sorry, I can’t bear to even think about it.

  There is nothing we can do but wait and hope that someone comes to rescue us. Though, if there is going to be any sort of rescue attempt, it had better be SOON!

  Meanwhile, although my life is in the greatest peril, all I can do is bring my journal up to date, and describe how we got here. It’s so annoying because less than an hour ago, we were so close to freedom …

  My heart had sunk when I read the note wrapped around the pebble that came whizzing into our cell. It was just a load of nonsense. But maybe the note wasn’t meant for me at all. I pushed it through the bars into the adjoining cell.

  ‘I think this might be for you,’ I said to the boy. He turned round and for the first time looked me in the eye. Then, without saying a word, he took the piece of paper and started to read. He remained silent for a very long time. Finally, he spoke.

  ‘You are one of Wild Bob’s Desperados? You are Lariat Kid?’

  ‘Yes,’ I replied.

  ‘Then I must apologize,’ said the boy. ‘My name is Nagachak, son of the mighty Rapakwar chief, Sitting Pretty. I thought you were a spy, put here to try and learn the secrets of the great Rapakwar nation.’

  ‘Not me,’ I said. ‘I’m in for bank robbery, and first thing tomorrow, Ham has promised me a big surprise. I don’t think it’s going to be a nice one!’

  ‘I have been promised this surprise also,’ said the boy, looking worried. ‘It is not good, I know.’

  ‘What do you know?’

  ‘We are …’ Nagachak hesitated. ‘Have you ever heard of Mapwai?’

  ‘Mapwai!’ I cried. There was that name again, the name that had scared Wild Bob so much. ‘What is Mapwai?’

  ‘Mapwai is a giant, bloodthirsty, gut-guzzling voracious vulture, also known as the Great Bird Of Death. To hear of her is scary enough. To see her, they say, is enough to drive strong men mad … and we are to be sacrificed to Mapwai, at dawn tomorrow.’

  ‘Sacrificed?’ I asked desperately. ‘What do you mean sacrificed?’

  ‘We are to be given to the giant bird for breakfast,’ said Nagachak mournfully. ‘Ham is full of superstitions, and believes that if he gives gifts to this disgusting bird, luck will always be on his side.’

  ‘What does the note say,’ I stammered, starting to panic. There is no way I wanted to end up as a huge bird of prey’s bowl of Cheerios! ‘Are they coming to rescue us?’

  ‘This note is from my father. He is a great friend of Wild Bob Ffrance. They have spoken, and they are coming to rescue us … some time tomorrow.’

  ‘What time tomorrow?’ I cried. ‘We’re being sacrificed at dawn!’

  ‘I’m afraid they don’t say,’ said Nagachak, screwing up the note and throwing it on the floor. ‘Kid, if we want to escape, we have to do it by ourselves.’

  I couldn’t believe it. Things were going from bad to worse.

  ‘I don’t know how we’re going to get out of here,’ I said. ‘The walls must be made of solid tree trunks.’

  ‘I know, but I have been studying this building,’ said Nagachak. ‘I think the weak point is the roof.’

  I looked up into the gloomy roof-space, and noticed that although the rest of the building was solid and strong, the roof itself was made of a thick thatch – dried reeds that were laid over bare rafters.

  ‘You’re right. That’s a bit of an oversight!’ I said. ‘So that’s what you’ve been gazing at; I thought you were just staring into space.’

  ‘If there is nothing other than the thatch, we might be able to squeeze through onto the roof,’ said Nagachak.

  ‘Brilliant,’ I replied. ‘But how do we get up there? It’s mighty high.’

  We tried running and jumping, but we were nowhere near reaching the roof. I put my hands through the bars and gave Nagachak a leg up, but he was still someway short of the beams. The bars themselves, although they went all the way up to the roof, were just too slippery to shin up. Then, looking through my rucksack once more, I thought I might have the answer.

  I took out the ball of string and the glue pen. Turning the glue pen over, I read the blurb.

  Right, I thought. Let’s see if you’re as good as you say! Starting about half a metre from the floor, I tied the loose end of the string to one of the bars with a special pirate knot, having first squirted the spot with a generous dab of glue. Then, unravelling the string, I knotted it tightly around the adjacent bar, which again I dabbed with the glue pen. Taking the string diagonally back to the first bar, I repeated the process, and continued zigzagging from one bar to the other as high up as I could reach. Like this:

  Standing back, I looked at my handiwork. Excellent! I had made a rope ladder, and if the glue would hold, we should be able to climb up high enough to grab one of the rafters and squeeze through the thatch!

  ‘Ready to give it a try?’ I asked Nagachak.

  ‘After you,’ he said with a grin.

  I put my foot on the lowest rung and gently applied my weight. The string was thin but strong, and although the knot slipped a bit, it soon gripped tight and I lifted myself off the floor. Carefully I placed my other foot on the next bit of string. Again it held. It was going to work! Soon I had reached the top rung, my hands gripping the two bars in front of me.

  Then, stretching up, I grabbed hold of one of the beams. I swung my feet back and then up, my legs bursting through the thatch of reeds. Letting go of the beam with one hand, I forced through the reeds and dragged the rest of me up and out onto the rooftop. I immediately spread my weight over the thatch to stop falling back into the cell below, and parting some of the reeds, I looked down at Nagachak.

  ‘It’s easy,’ I whispered. ‘Come on!’

  A few minutes later, Nagachak was beside me on the roof, and we were looking down onto a courtyard bathed in moonlight. In the courtyard were two guards, both with rifles. I put my finger to my lips and we set off silently along the roof towards freedom.

  As quietly as mice, we crawled along the rooftop and onto the next roof. The courtyard was on one side of us, where the two guards were talking in low voices; smoke drifted up from their disgusting cheroots. On the other side of the roof was a dark narrow alley, which we dropped down into as silently as shadows.

  We ran to the end of the alley and looked out onto Main Street. The town was asleep, but outside the front of the jail stood a gang of guards. Nagachak and I looked at each other, shook our heads and scuttled back along the alley to the other end. This led onto a piece of wasteland on which stood a couple of rundown huts; beyond these was open country.

  ‘Let’s go,’ said Nagachak, and darted out into the moonlight and across the wasteland. His feet didn’t make a sound in the dusty earth, and soon he was standing in the shadow of one of the huts. He gave a thin whistle for me to follow and I scurried out myself, feeling very exposed in the bright light of the moon. But nobody called; nobody challenged me, and I dived into the shadows alongside Nagachak, my nervous breath sounding loud in the still night air. We smiled at each other; we were going to do it! Carefully we crept along t
he side of the hut, invisible in the deep black shadow.

  I still think it was a stupid place to leave a tin bucket! Right there, in the middle of the porch that ran down the side of the house. Anybody could trip over it in the dark, and somebody did. Me!

  The bucket clattered and rang as it rolled across the wooden boards of the porch and immediately set the town dogs barking and howling. Nagachak and I were rooted to the spot, holding our breath and praying that no one would bother to investigate the noise. It was a forlorn hope, because a light came on in the hut straight away and we heard a voice call out.

  ‘Who the dang-devil is out there, disturbin’ of the peace? Where’s my blunderbuss? You better watch out, you pesky prowlers. I’ll blow you to kingdom come!’ And the wall next to us was peppered with tiny holes as a mighty bang shook the hut.

  ‘Run for your life!’ yelled Nagachak as the door opened and a shaft of light fell across the porch steps. We ran.

  ‘Hee, hee,’ we heard the man cackle. ‘I’m a-comin’ to get ya! This is better than a raccoon hunt.’ The strange man wasn’t the only one to come after us. We heard a yell go up amongst the guards at the jail, and we knew that they would be on our trail immediately.

  Nagachak and I sprinted over the rock-strewn countryside. The moon had started to get low in the sky and soon it would begin to lighten with the dawn. ‘We need a place to hide,’ panted Nagachak. ‘We’ll be sitting ducks out here!’

  I looked around frantically, not seeing any possible hiding place in the featureless, flat landscape. The rocks were too small to hide behind and there were no trees to climb or caves to conceal us.

  ‘It’s no good,’ I said. ‘There’s nowhere to hide. Oh, wait a tick!’ I noticed a large, flat slab of rock sticking out where the ground rose in a deep step. Like this:

  There was just enough room to crawl underneath the rock and hide in the deep shadows. We only just made it; as we scrambled back to where the rock met the earth, we heard the sound of men approaching. We were completely out of breath, and it took all our concentration to calm down and try to breathe quietly.

  ‘They’ve got to be somewhere around here,’ said one voice. ‘Bring the light over.’ A man ran over with a flaming torch and they held it high and surveyed the landscape as they walked up and down. ‘Nothin’,’ said the voice, and then louder he called, ‘They’re nowhere to be seen.’

  ‘They can’t have disappeared into thin air,’ came a new voice, and I recognized it at once.

  ‘Horatio Ham,’ I whispered. ‘Now we’re in trouble.’

  ‘I want this whole area searched. We’ll smoke ’em out if we have to. It’ll soon be dawn and I need them for the great sacrifice.’

  We waited in silence, a nervous sweat dripping down our faces as we heard the men start to search the area, kicking over stones and pulling up thin scrubby bushes. Then, as the sky started to turn silver in the approaching dawn, we heard Ham say, ‘There, under that slab. Have you looked under there?’

  ‘No, boss. It’s too low for me to get under.’

  ‘Then have a good feel around. They’ve got to be here somewhere.’

  ‘But, boss, it’s just the sort of place a rattler might hang out.’

  ‘Do it!’ said Ham, and I heard the sound of him drawing back the hammer on his pistol.

  The next minute, a man’s arm was nervously feeling about under the rock, and Nagachak and I held our breath as he felt the stones and twigs all around us. Then he grabbed my knee!

  ‘I’ve got something, boss,’ he cried as I quickly opened my rucksack and pulled out the bag of marbles I had bought in Granny Green’s village.

  ‘What is it?’ demanded Ham.

  ‘Not sure yet, boss, but it ain’t no stone,’ he said, squeezing my knee so hard I nearly cried out. Instead I lifted the bag of marbles and shook them hard. They rattled loudly.

  ‘Oh no!’ cried the man. ‘It’s a …’ And at the same time Nagachak picked up a forked twig from the floor and jabbed it into the back of his hand. The hand was whipped away with a cry.

  ‘I’ve been bitten! A rattlesnake has bitten me! I’m done for, boss.’

  ‘Oh, stop your whingeing and get yourself back into town.’

  ‘I need to see the doc, boss. I need to see him quickly.’

  ‘Do you think I’m made of money? I haven’t got money to waste on doctors. What a lot of fuss over a little nip!’

  We heard the man wander off, whimpering softly to himself, and as Ham and his men wandered away to continue their search elsewhere, Nagachak and I congratulated ourselves on our quick thinking.

  A rattling noise sounded again.

  ‘It’s OK, they’ve gone,’ said Nagachak. ‘You can put your marbles away now.’

  ‘That wasn’t my marbles,’ I gasped, and we both looked around in fear. We had celebrated too soon, for sliding through a small crack at the back of our hidey-hole was a real rattlesnake! It was fat and angry, and it coiled up in front of us, its yellow eyes blazing and its tail rattling out an angry staccato.

  Nagachak and I started to crawl slowly backwards out from under the rock, but the snake slithered round to cut off our escape. What now?

  ‘How are we going to get out of this?’ whispered Nagachak.

  ‘I have no idea,’ I replied. But even as I spoke, I was gently searching through my rucksack again, trying not to make a sudden movement. My hand closed on the plastic lemon that I often used in my cooking, and just as I pulled it from the bag, the rattler coiled back, ready to strike. I only just managed to unscrew the top when it struck at Nagachak. I squirted a stream of lemon juice straight at the snake’s eyes and, boy, it must have stung, for the rattler coiled and writhed in pain. With an angry hiss, it quickly slithered away.

  ‘Yahoo!’ I cried.

  ‘Shhh!’ warned Nagachak, grasping my hand in thanks. ‘Ham might still be around.’

  ‘Sorry,’ I whispered. ‘Let’s get out of here before the snake decides to come back.’

  ‘Which one?’ sniggered Nagachak as we backed out from under the rock, our eyes peeled for any further sign of the rattler. We both gave a huge sigh of relief as we emerged into the silver light of a beautiful dawn, but it froze in our chests as we turned around to see Horatio Ham and a line of his men, all armed and waiting for us.

  ‘Well, look what just crawled out from under a rock,’ said Ham with a sneer. ‘And just in time for their special surprise. Grab ’em, men.’

  Within seconds our hands were cuffed behind our backs and we were marched over to a covered wagon and hoisted on board. Half a dozen of Ham’s men got into the back of the wagon to guard us, and the wagon started to move over the bumpy ground.

  Nagachak and I were driven fast across the countryside to the top of a high cliff looking out over a wide, sunken valley. Further along the cliff top we could just make out a tall rock, shaped like a crooked finger, pointing up into the sky.

  ‘That’s where Mapwai has his nest,’ whispered Nagachak nervously.

  Nearby, a big metal gantry hung out over the edge of the cliff and, from the end, a chain disappeared over the side. Mad McKay went over and started to turn a hand crank and, amidst much clanking and squealing of rusty wheels, a large and ornate metal cage rose into view.

  ‘What do you think of my beautiful birdcage, Kid?’ asked the unctuous Ham.

  ‘Well, it’s very rusty and there is no bird in it,’ I replied, ‘but apart from that, it’s very pretty.’

  ‘You go inside the birdcage, you dolt: you and this so-called son of a chief. Then the bird will come to you. And, for your information, that isn’t rust all over the cage; it’s dried blood. Ha ha ha ha!’ Mean, vicious and downright bad, Ham started to laugh uncontrollably. ‘Now get your sorry carcasses inside the cage,’ he yelled, his face flushing with anger.

  Mad McKay and another of Ham’s hired gunslingers uncuffed our hands and pushed us towards the cage at the edge of the cliff. Wow! My head started to spin when I saw how high we w
ere from the valley floor. What’s more, the valley appeared deserted; where were Wild Bob and the Desperados? Where was Sitting Pretty, Nagachak’s dad? Why weren’t they here to rescue us?

  We were forced into the cage through a narrow doorway, which was locked securely behind us. Then McKay kicked the cage away from the cliff edge and we swung out over the void below. Again, with much squealing, the cage was lowered below the cliff ledge for about twenty metres.

  The cage stopped and everything went silent. Nagachak and I sat on the barred floor of the cage, swaying high above the ground in the bright morning sunlight.

  ‘What now?’ I asked, but before Nagachak could answer, a cry came from the top of the cliff. It was Horatio Ham and he had started to chant:

  Oh, come great bird and accept this offering,

  Oh, come and feast on blood, guts and gore,

  Two tender morsels I am offering,

  With innards and entrails and claret galore.

  ‘What’s he doing?’ I asked.

  ‘It’s an old Rapakwar chant,’ said Nagachak. ‘In the old days my people thought the great bird represented both good luck and bad luck. I don’t know why; perhaps because it has two heads.’

  ‘Two heads!’ I cried as a shudder of nerves went through my body. ‘Nobody’s mentioned two heads before.’

  ‘Well, anyway,’ continued Nagachak. ‘They thought if they sacrificed a nice fat bison, Mapwai would bring them good luck instead of bad. It looks like Ham has gone one better and is offering human sacrifices.’

  ‘But why should Ham care about the bird? He’s not a Rapakwar.’

  But to my great surprise, Nagachak replied, ‘Well, actually, he is. Sort of. Horatio Ham is my uncle.’