Humbug Mountain

by Sid Fleischman

  Mr. Slathers had been standing as still and silent as the Petrified Man. But he’d been building a head of steam, and the blast of his voice about blew Mr. Jim Chitwood’s ears flat back.

  “Clear out! And take that dratted contraption with you! Get! And be hasty about it! If you’re still in sight ten minutes from now I’m going to fold you up so that you fit in that bitty house and dump the tarnacious thing in the river.”

  Pa shook his head. “The man has the letter of the law on his side, Mr. Slathers, if not the intention. And he doesn’t have title to this land yet. If I know my law it takes thirty days to prove up a claim. We don’t have to pay a cent of rent. By that time the miners will give up trying to dig out gold that isn’t there. Mr. Chitwood will discover he’s filed on a ghost town.”

  Pa strode away. We all followed. I glanced back at Mr. Chitwood. There was a smile spread all over his shifty-eyed face. He’d got the best of us, and I hated him.

  Glorietta climbed to the pilothouse. I was standing at the window, not far from the Great and Only Genuine Petrified Man, and watching over the treetops for black smoke. That would be Grandpa’s tin-clad riverboat.

  “We could hang a door and a window in the hotel,” Glorietta said. “We could pay the filing fee with our buffalo-bone money. Soon as we get it.”

  “Where’s your head, Glorietta?” I answered. “That would be jumping Mr. Chitwood’s claim.”

  “He jumped Grandpa’s!”

  “But he did it legal.”

  “Humbug legal.”

  I nodded dismally. “Maybe Pa will take out after him and the land office and all in our newspaper. But you heard what he said. Thirty days and we’ll have to pull foot for somewhere else.”

  “I don’t want to go somewhere else. Neither does Ma.” I looked down at the new owner of Sunrise. He had unrolled a canvas sign and was hanging it on the two-wheeled shed.

  I read it off and simmered all over again. He’d brought along a small table and a bentwood chair and sat himself down to wait for the land rush to start.

  “Wiley!”

  I turned back to Glorietta. She was staring out the window.

  “I see it!” she declared in a sudden fuss of excitement.

  “See what, Glorietta? You’re not even wearing your specs.”

  “Smoke. Way upriver!”

  “Imagination,” I said. “Put on your specs and look again.”

  “I don’t need to. Puffs of black smoke out there. See for yourself.”

  I flashed a look over the treetops. A thunderbolt couldn’t have surprised me more. Maybe Glorietta was outgrowing her specs. There was smoke way off. Clear as you please!

  “Grandpa’s tin-clad boat,” she exclaimed.

  “Must be. Come on!”

  We flew down the stairway and yelled for Ma and Pa. But not even Mr. Slathers was around. Maybe they were off somewhere stomping off their anger.

  Glorietta and I ran like quarter horses until we reached the Missouri. We watched the black smoke unraveling in the wind and coming closer all the time. Finally we saw the top of the smokestack gliding above the tops of the trees and then we could hear the clanking of machinery and the splash of the paddle wheel.

  “There it is!” I shouted.

  The boat came steaming around a bend. It wasn’t tinclad. It was a trampish-looking boat, and Glorietta and I recognized it at first sight.

  It was the Prairie Buzzard returning. Captain Cully’s scruffy fertilizer boat.

  Two men were standing at the jack staff waiting with ropes to jump ashore and tie up.

  Suddenly we recognized them too.

  Shagnasty John and the Fool Killer.

  20

  THE CHAIN

  The Prairie Buzzard steamed right past our hill of buffalo bones and tied up in the shade of the stout old mulberry tree.

  Shagnasty John saw us, tipped his hat, and gave us a broad wink. The Fool Killer hardly gave us a shrug. They wore a change of clothes, both of them—black frock coats down to their knees, stiff soiled collars, and black string ties. The Humbug Mountain Hoorah had hung and buried them, and now they were trying to appear respectable. But there was no changing the shifty meanness of their faces.

  Captain Cully stuck his head out of the pilothouse window. “Howdy, you two,” he called out, tossing us a pale-eyed smile to go with it. “How’s everything in Sunrise?”

  “We’ve got a heap of bones to sell you,” I answered.

  “Must be two tons,” Glorietta announced. “Maybe more.”

  “I noticed,” Captain Cully replied. “But can’t use ’em.”

  “What?” I said.

  “See for yourself. There’s not so much as a chicken bone aboard. I’ve retired from the fertilizer trade.”

  Glorietta and I exchanged quick looks. We’d about broken our backs toting gunnysack loads. But it was true—the decks of the Prairie Buzzard were bare. All I saw was a huge iron anchor chain piled near the bow. Each link looked big as a wagon hub.

  “But you promised!” Glorietta said, coming to a quick boil.

  “My dear friends,” Captain Cully replied in a prayermeeting tone of voice. “Me and my new partners have gone into the trade of saving souls. Say hello to the Reverend Mr. Chubb and the Reverend Mr. Shoeless Harry Dunster.”

  “Bless you, young’uns,” said Shagnasty John, who had refitted himself with the name of Chubb. The Fool Killer stared at us with his deep, hellfire eyes as if warning us to keep our mouths shut.

  That tarnacious pair had pulled the wool over Captain Cully’s eyes. It surprised me that he’d got religion so quick and sudden.

  Glorietta lifted her chin. “You said you’d buy all the buffalo bones we could collect. Four dollars a ton. You promised!”

  “Bless my sinner’s hide, I do hate to go back on my word, little children. But the Lord’s work comes first.”

  “We’re not little children,” Glorietta snapped back.

  “Trust in Providence, my lambs. Another scow is bound to turn up for your cargo of bones. Now you two run along. I’ve got to clean the Lord’s mud out of my boiler, and then we’ll be moving on, doing our good works. Amen.”

  “Come on, Glorietta,” I sputtered angrily. No doubt about it—we were stuck with a useless pile of bones. But at least we’d soon be rid of Shagnasty John and the Fool Killer.

  Then I turned my head. “Maybe you’ve seen a tin-clad steamboat upriver,” I called back. “Know if it’s close behind?”

  “A tin-clad!” Captain Cully bellowed out a laugh. “Why I never heard of such a thing on the Missouri. Tin-clad, do you say? Well, that beats all.”

  “Just like in the Civil War,” I answered, feeling challenged on the matter.

  “No such boat coming. Just river gossip. Say howdy to your folks.”

  “The Reverend Mr. Chubb and the Reverend Mr. Shoeless Harry Dunster!” Pa roared out laughing. “Aren’t those two cutthroats taking on airs? And you say Captain Cully has thrown in with them?”

  “Yes, sir,” I answered.

  “I don’t believe he’s fooled at all. Saving souls! What rubbish. If they’re not gone by morning they’ll bear watching.”

  “And he won’t buy our heap of bones.”

  It was the vision of that heap of bones that awoke me out of a sound sleep. I sat straight up. By morning Captain Cully might be gone, and our bones with him. They were there for the taking. And I didn’t trust Captain Cully any farther than I could throw a barn.

  I slipped out of the pilothouse and down the stairway and across the gangplank. I could see the faint glow of coals not yet died out in the campsites along the old riverbank. I cut through the cottonwoods and made a beeline for the Missouri.

  Our mountain of bones was still there, white as chalk in the starlight.

  I paused to catch my breath. And then voices drifted toward me from the mulberry tree. I edged closer along the bank and dropped to my stomach.

  Captain Cully and his partners were wrestling an
end of the heavy iron chain ashore. I watched as they secured the end around the mulberry tree.

  “That ought to hold,” I heard Captain Cully say.

  I spent hours watching. Captain Cully started up the engine of the Prairie Buzzard and carefully worked the boat to the other side of the river. Shagnasty John and the Fool Killer stood at the bow feeding out the monstrous chain, link by link.

  When they reached the far bank they hauled out sharpened wood stakes as big around as railroad ties. They spent an eternity swinging mauls to pound the cluster of stakes into the bank.

  Shagnasty John was huffing hard, and I heard Captain Cully say, “Keep at it, Shagnasty. We’ve got to get it done before daylight.”

  Well, he knew who Shagnasty John was all along.

  It was near daylight when they finished. I knew I ought to slip away. I reckoned they’d kill me if they knew I was watching. But I couldn’t tear myself away until I figured out what they were up to.

  They lugged the chain around and around the tight cluster of stakes and locked the end in place with a couple of crowbars. Then they shoveled dirt to cover the chain.

  In the pale dawn light I saw they had drawn the chain like an iron fence from bank to bank across the river. They’d set it so that not a link showed above the surface of the muddy water.

  I scuttled backward and out of their sight. Grandpa’s tin-clad must be close behind after all, I thought. A cold sweat shot out over me. He wouldn’t see the chain, and he’d go crashing into it. Shagnasty John and the Fool Killer meant to board the boat like pirates and the Prairie Buzzard would make off with that two tons of gold dust!

  I didn’t dare get to my feet and run. They’d see me. I crawled away through the dirt and weeds. Pa and Mr. Slathers would know what to do!

  I never remembered the sun to rise so fast. I kept rushing along, pausing once for a quick glance over my shoulder. I could still see the Prairie Buzzard bigger’n life.

  And then I heard it. The blast of a steamboat whistle. Upriver.

  The hair on my neck stiffened. I got to my knees, but there wasn’t going to be time enough to run for Pa.

  I could already see puffs of smoke and sparks in the sky. And then a silver boat flashed through the upriver cottonwoods. It gave off sunlight like a distant mirror.

  Grandpa’s tin-clad, for sure.

  21

  THE TIN-CLAD

  Crows were perched on the hill of buffalo bones. They went squawking into the air as I climbed to the top. I had to keep Grandpa from charging into the mighty iron chain stretched from bank to bank.

  “Wiley! Fool Killer!”

  I pulled off my shirt. The tin-clad steamed around bends and oxbows, flashing and drawing nearer and closer. Shagnasty John and the Fool Killer could use me for a shooting target, for all I cared.

  I got ready to wave my shirt. I wished it were red. That would warn Grandpa of trouble ahead. But it was only the color of oatmeal mush. It would have to do, and I’d yell myself hoarse.

  I caught sight of the miners fleeing out of the old riverbed as if they’d dug up the devil red-hot from home. Gold pans, picks, shovels, and bedrolls flew over the bank. I had no idea what was wrong and no time to wonder about it. The blast of the tin-clad’s whistle sounded through the trees.

  Grandpa wasn’t likely to hear me yell over the whistling and the chugging of the engine. And with two tons of gold dust aboard he might not even slow down for a shirttail boy waving a mush-colored shirt.

  Off to my left, the miners’ voices were rising in shouts.

  “Run for your lives!”

  “Get to high ground!”

  “Dad-bob fools! They burrowed in smack through to the Missouri. And here it comes!”

  I couldn’t help looking. I saw a muddy gush of water breaking away from the channel. The miners were climbing the river bluff like ants. And then the earth itself seemed to bust apart. Great sections of the bank collapsed with a tumbling roar. A sheet of water went rushing along the dry diggings. Tree stumps and logs leaped into the air and raced away a mile a minute.

  My eyes almost stood out of my head. The Missouri was jumping its banks again.

  And jumping right back into its old riverbed!

  A long blast of the steamboat whistle brought me around. The tall smokestack above the treetops didn’t appear more than a half mile off.

  My heart was thumping like a donkey engine. I began waving my shirt. The heap of buffalo bones was sure to catch Grandpa’s eye, I told myself. And it wasn’t every day you saw a boy waving a shirt on a heap of buffalo bones. Maybe it was enough to make him pause and wonder. Slow down, at least!

  The shirt was snatched out of my hands so quick it appeared to vanish in midair. I spun around and there stood the Fool Killer, taller’n a tree, and with his bur-oak club resting on a shoulder. He tossed my shirt aside.

  “I catched me a fool,” he said, and his eyes burned madly in their hollows. “I smite fools with my club. That’s my trade.”

  “You’re gone-minded,” I declared. “There’s no such real thing as the Fool Killer!”

  He raised the club in both hands to bring it thundering down on my skull. He swung and I dodged clear. He swung again and I scuttled to the other side. Neither of us could get a good foothold on all those buffalo ribs and skulls.

  I could hear the thump and splash of Grandpa’s boat behind me, but I didn’t dare look. The Fool Killer tracked me around the top of the bone heap and swung again. I got my hands on a buffalo rib and flung it at him.

  That put him in such a hopping rage that he came at me circling the club with so much might it almost whistled. But he forgot his footing and the mess of bones tangled his left foot. I’d already picked up another rib, but I didn’t need to throw it. The bur-oak club had so much swing left in it that it caught the rear of his own skull. He went sprawling down. The Fool Killer had catched himself.

  I snatched up my shirt and turned as the silvery boat was clearing the nearest bend, dead ahead. It was so close I could see a man at the pilothouse wheel. He was peering through the open window. A long cigar between his teeth was clamped at a devil-may-care angle under the bill of his black cap.

  I waved the shirt and began yelling: “Grandpa! Captain! Grandpa!”

  Maybe he saw me. But something else caught his eye. Between us the Missouri River was roaring lickety-cut down its old bed, and draining the new.

  Grandpa cocked his head a moment and then spun the spokes of the big steering wheel into a blurr.

  The tin-clad was turning! The bobtailed paddle wheel swung into view. Grandpa was following the fresh flow of water. He was steering into the old riverbed!

  Wild relief almost lifted me off my feet. The Fool Killer turned himself over with a groan. He was going to have a headache fit for a mule. I glanced over at the Prairie Buzzard. The river had already dropped so low the chain had come into clear view. In no time at all Captain Cully’s boat would be sitting sunk and dry on the bottom!

  I scrambled down the bone heap and ran.

  22

  QUICKSHOT BILLY

  The Phoenix was afloat! She had been lifted from the river bottom as if from a dusty grave, and her old mooring lines had held. By the time I came charging along, Grandpa’s tinclad was giving off merry blasts of her whistle as her paddle wheel splashed in reverse. She was mooring along the bluff just behind the Phoenix.

  Ma was all smiles. Her eyes drifted back to the Phoenix. “Sits on the water pretty as a duck, doesn’t she?”

  Pa stood watching, and so did the bandy-legged, mouse-eared landowner of Sunrise. “Mr. Chitwood,” Pa said, without even favoring the man with a glance. “Roll up your sign, hitch up your pipsqueak house, and make tracks out of here. Your Nebraska title is not worth crow bait. The river has jumped your claim, sir. This is Dakota Territory again. You’re trespassing.” Mr. Jim Chitwood went slinking off like a rained-on dog.

  The tin-clad shut down its engine, and Grandpa stepped out of the pilothous
e.

  The sight of the Phoenix kindled a twinkle in his eyes. Then he took a jaunty look at the half-built hotel, the half-built opera house, Mr. Johnson running loose, and the entire population of Sunrise. He took the cigar out of his mouth and said, “What in Sam Hill’s going on here?”

  Miners were gathering around for a look at the tin-clad boat, and he didn’t see Ma at first. “Is that you, Mr. Slathers?”

  “It is, Captain.”

  “You still here!”

  “Ain’t left! And look at the Phoenix. Greased and oiled and even the doorknobs polished. Waiting for you, Captain.”

  “I declare!”

  The he spied Ma in the crowd. He lifted his cap, gave a wave, stepped lively down the ladder, and jumped ashore.

  “Jenny!”

  “Welcome to Sunrise, Father!” Ma exclaimed. “Welcome home!”

  He opened his arms and snugged her to him.

  Then he shook Pa’s hand. But he didn’t recognize Glorietta, and he didn’t recognize me. I suddenly realized we were strangers.

  “Father,” Ma said, and turned him to face us.

  “Glorietta?” he enquired, in a kind of awe. “Wiley!”

  We both stood there in a fit of shyness.

  He tossed away his cigar. The next thing Glorietta knew she was hoisted high in the air. He kissed her cheek and looked at me. He calculated I was too old for that kind of thing, and shot out his hand.

  I shook it. His hand was huge and rough, but friendly.

  “By ginger! Haven’t you both sprouted up!”

  I stood there wishing I were at least as sprouted up as Glorietta. I was older and it wasn’t fair. There was no rushing a matter like getting your full height, hang it all! I’d just have to wait. But he had shook my hand as if I were a grown-up.

  “So you’re the first lady pilot on the Missouri,” Grandpa said. “And Wiley, didn’t I read that you are sheriff around here?”

  “That was just make-believe, Grandpa.”

  “Well, what’s this I heard in Wolf Landing about a Petrified Man?”