A Good Idea

It looked like a good idea. But wait until I tell you.

Bill Driscoll and I were in the South, in Alabama, when we had the idea of kidnapping someone. We had about six hundred dollars, and we needed two thousand dollars more for a dishonest business deal in Illinois.

There was a small town there called Summit. It was flat and quiet, and the people were simple farmers. “A town like this,” we said, “will not have strong police. A kidnapping will be easy here.”

We chose the only child of an important man named Ebenezer Dorset. He was rich and careful with his money. His son was a boy of ten, with lots of freckles and hair the color of a magazine cover you buy at the train station. Bill and I thought, “His father will pay a ransom of two thousand dollars, no problem.” A ransom is the money you ask for to give a kidnapped person back.

About two miles from Summit there was a little mountain covered with trees. On the back of the mountain there was a cave. We put food and supplies in it.

One evening after sunset, we drove a horse and buggy past Dorset's house. The boy was in the street, throwing rocks at a cat.

“Hey, little boy!” said Bill. “Would you like a bag of candy and a nice ride?”

The boy hit Bill right in the eye with a piece of brick.

“That will cost the old man five hundred dollars more,” said Bill, climbing down.

The boy fought like a wild bear, but at last we got him into the buggy and drove away to the cave.

After dark, I took the buggy back to a village three miles away and walked back to the cave. Bill was putting small bandages on the scratches and bruises on his face. There was a fire behind a big rock at the entrance of the cave. The boy was watching a pot of coffee. He had two big bird feathers in his red hair.

He pointed a stick at me and said, “Ha! Cursed paleface, do you dare to enter the camp of Red Chief, the terror of the plains?”

“He is all right now,” said Bill, rolling up his trousers to look at the bruises on his legs. “We are playing Indian. I am Old Hank, the Trapper, Red Chief's prisoner, and I am going to be scalped at daybreak. Wow! That kid can kick hard!”