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obituaries!”
    I don’t know how Shagnasty John had fished the pepperbox pistol out of Pa’s coat pocket.
    He came aboard, all smiles and friendliness, with the Fool Killer ambling along behind. They tracked muddy footprints on deck.
    Pa handed over the stack of newspapers. “The ink’s still wet,” he said. “But you’ll see that I kept my word. Good day, gentlemen.”
    â€œWell, not quite so fast,” Shagnasty John grinned. “Me and Fool Killer wouldn’t want to be taken advantage of, Colonel. We’ll just study it a bit and make sure you got it right.”
    He licked his thumb, dealt off a single copy of The Humbug Mountain Hoorah, and shifted it back and forth in front of his nose until his eyes got the focus. Squinting hard, he commenced to read about the capture in a mumbling voice. He stumbled considerably and leaped over some words entirely. “Colonel,” he said, interrupting himself, “some of them paragraphs are thorny as a cactus patch. What is that pesky long word that keeps cropping up— S-h-a-g-n-a-s-t-y ?”
    â€œThat’s your name,” Pa said impatiently.
    â€œI declare! I never saw it wrote out before.”
    It took him so long I must have grown an inch before he got to the end. “Fool Killer,” he roared. “It says in white and black you and me are guaranteed dead—had our necks stretched at the end of a rope. Now, don’t that cheer you up? Ain’t nothing going to follow us now but our own shadows.”
    The Fool Killer barely shrugged. His deep eyes fixed us with double-barreled shots of darkness.
    â€œWe’re much obliged, Colonel,” Shagnasty John exclaimed. He rolled up the stack of newspapers and stuck them into a deep pocket of his bearskin coat. When his hand came out—there was the pepperbox pistol.
    He spread his legs firmly, pointed the gun at us, and he wasn’t smiling anymore. “Colonel, we weren’t born in the woods to be bit by a fox. Directly we’re gone you’ll flap your coattails and inform the law that this here story is a bamboozle. Ain’t that so, Fool Killer?”
    The Fool Killer began to grin. Wider and wider. I remembered now the secret look the outlaws had traded at supper the night before. They’d had this in mind all along!
    Pa straightened to his full height and viewed the men with such a wintery blast they ought to have suffered frostbite. “I had no such intention,” Pa said. “I see now that I misjudged you. I credited you with common intelligence. Smart enough to take full advantage of a man’s word and handshake. It’s clear now that one of you doesn’t have the brains God gave geese, and the other is wearing a seven-dollar hat on a five-cent head.”
    I looked up at Pa, all my muscles gone taut, and wished he’d held back on that volley of insults. They’d be fleahopping mad.
    â€œWe’ll consider them your final and last words, Colonel,” said Shagnasty John, glowering. “Don’t you know straight up when you see it? I’m holding the gun, sir! And we can’t have the pack of you on the loose, knowing what you know. That’s commonsensical.”
    â€œNonsensical,” Pa snapped.
    â€œI told you to shut your jaws!” Shagnasty John turned to the Fool Killer. “You take ’em into the woods. One or two at a time.”
    All the Fool Killer’s yellow teeth were showing now. “With my gnarly club?”
    â€œOf course, with your gnarly club! Can’t waste ammunition, can we? We’re going to need every drop of lead, ain’t we? Start with the shirttail boy and the girl.”
    The crows were squawking overhead, their black shadows flapping like bats along the deck. Pa’s nostrils were all but giving out steam now, and I knew he was calculating the best moment to spring at Shagnasty John. The moment he had in mind must have been when