Humbug Mountain by Sid Fleischman Page A

it was all because I had left out the word locket. Just one dratted word. Well, I’d tried to tell them.
    I know that Ma was keeping an eye out for Grandpa with every new man who showed up. I imagined the way he’d probably lift his eyebrows and look at the dirt flying in the riverbed and say, “What in Sam Hill is going on here?”
    I can’t say that my first nights with the scruffy petrified man were exactly joyful. At least his back was turned, and after a while I got used to his dead-silent company. It beat listening to the crows.
    â€œSunrise, Home of the Great and Only Genuine Petrified Man,” Pa announced one evening. “That’s the way I’m printing it up. Bound to create a stir in the world. Why, so many folks will come for a sight of it we’ll need a hundred-room hotel—and then some.”
    Mr. Slathers cleared his throat faintly. It had taken him a while to shuck all his hermit shyness, but ever since Pa had stayed away he’d got used to looking out for us. He warmed right up to it. I got the feeling he was kind of borrowing us as his own kin. “That ancient gentleman must have got washed down in a roaring flood,” he said. “Looks to me like he must have been buried way back somewhere with limestone-water dripping down. All that sediment hardened him into solid limestone—that’s the way I figure it.” And then, almost without a pause, “I’ll be going back to Wolf Landing in a day or so.”
    I shot a glance at Pa. Mr. Slathers looked at Ma.
    â€œYou’ll need more than a backload of supplies if you’re going to feed all these miners aboard.”
    â€œYes,” Ma said in a flat voice. Her eyes avoided Pa. Then she seemed to perk up. “Yes, of course, Mr. Slathers. A wagonload of supplies. There’s money from the miners’ room and board.”
    â€œI’ll rent a wagon and fill it up.”
    I was still watching Pa and so was Glorietta. If he noticed us, he didn’t let on. “While you’re in Wolf Landing,” Pa said, “I’d be obliged if you’d drop off some copies of The Humbug Mountain Hoorah. It would be a fine start for the Petrified Man.”
    I could feel all my muscles let loose. Pa was staying with us.
    He added, “And would you see if the postmaster is holding a letter for me?”
    The Petrified Man wasn’t the only company I had in the pilothouse. There was the nickel novel Pa had brought back from Wolf Landing, and I had tried to ignore it. But now I read it.
    It was called Quickshot Billy on the Warpath, and was all about the time he had tracked a desperate outlaw two thousand miles to the Mexican border. The badman got the drop on him while Quickshot was having a breakfast of hot chili peppers and took his guns. But that ruffian hadn’t counted on Quickshot Billy’s resourcefulness. With a chili pepper between his fingers like a slippery watermelon seed he’d squirted the fiery juice into the outlaw’s eyes. “First time I ever enlisted the aid of a vegetable in capturing an outlaw,” Billy remarked.
    â€œI don’t believe a word of it,” Glorietta said when I told her the story.
    â€œYou don’t know Quickshot Billy’s quick and agile mind,” I said. “Nor his steel-clad courage.”
    â€œA chili pepper!” She groaned and rolled her eyes.
    There was no talking sense to Glorietta at times. I read the book all over again, and it was even better.
    When Pa got the second issue of The Humbug Mountain Hoorah printed, Mr. Slathers left with twenty copies on the long walk to Wolf Landing. Glorietta and I wandered among the gold diggers and sold a quantity of newspapers. Pa had mentioned a lot of their names in a column of mining news, not bothering to mention that no one had found a flake of gold. But that didn’t seem to discourage them. As far as I knew the only one who had given up was Mr. Jim