That vow was a mighty solemn thing, and we always felt it so. It wasn't the kind of a thing you would ever let small kids or girls know about. First you all sat down in a circle, with your feet together, and rolled up the sleeve of your left arm. Then the knife was passed around, and each drew blood out of his left arm. Then each one got as much blood out of the next fellow's arm as he could, in his mouth, and all swallowed simultaneous, to show you were going into the thing to the death and no turning back. Next we signed our names in a ring, using blood mixed with gunpowder. But not on paper, mind you. We signed 'em on parchment. First and last, that parchment was a good deal of trouble. If you think skinning a squirrel or a rat to get his hide for parchment is an easy trick, just try it. Let alone catching them being no snap. But Squint, he was Captain, and he was stern on parchment, for it makes an oath more legal, and all the old-time outlaws wouldn't look at anything else. But we got a pretty good supply ahead by saving all the dead cats and things like that we could find, and unless you know likely places to look it would surprise you how many dead cats there are in the world.
We were in the Horse Thieves' Cave, about a mile from town. It had really been used for that, way back before the war. There was a gang pretended to be honest settlers like everybody else. But they used to steal horses and hide them out in there. When they had a dozen or so of them they'd take 'em over to the Mississippi River, which was about thirty miles west, some night, and raft 'em down stream and sell 'em at Cairo or St. Louis. That went on for years, but along in the fifties, my grandfather said, when he was a kid, a couple was hung, and the remainder got across the river and went west. The cave was up on the side of a hill in the woods, and forgotten about except by a few old-timers. The door-beams had rotted and fallen down, and the sand and dirt had slid down over the mouth of it, and vines and bushes grown up. No one would have guessed there was any cave there at all. But the dogs got to digging around there one afternoon when the Dalton Gang was meeting in the woods, and uncovered part of those door beams. We dug some more and opened her up. It took a lot of work to clean her out, but she was as good as new when we got done with her. We never told any one, and the vines and bushes were so thick you could hunt a year and never find the opening. It isn't every bunch of kids get a real Horse Thieves' Cave ready-made like that, right from the hands of Providence, as you might say. Pete Wilson used to brag and say his grand-dad was one of those horse-thieves. It made the rest of us feel kind of meek for a time, because none of us could claim any honour or grandeur like that in our families. But my grand-dad, who has a terrible long memory about the early days, said it wasn't so; so far as he could recollect Pete's grand-dad never had any ambition above shoats and chickens.
Well, I was telling you about that oath. We were taking it because Squint's father, who was mayor, had run on to one of those parchments (which Squint ought never to have taken away from the cave), and had asked a lot of fool questions about it. Then he threw back his head and laughed at the Dalton Gang. It made our blood boil. Hence, our plans for revenge.
“The time has come,” said Squint, “for a bold stroke. Yonder proud city laughs. But he laughs best who laughs last. And ere another sun has set——”
“The last time we took the blood oath,” interrupts Bob Jones, “we didn't do anything more important than steal the ice cream from the Methodist lawn sociable.”
“There must be no failure,” says Squint, not heeding him, and he jabbed the knife into the ground and gritted his teeth. You could see how the memory of being laughed at was rankling through his veins.
“But, Squint,” says Tom Mulligan, looking quite a bit worried, “you don't really mean to kill any one, do you?”
Squint only says, very haughty: “The blood oath has been sworn. Is there a traitor here?” He was always a great one for holding us to it, Squint was, unless what he called an Honourable Compromise came into sight. And we all got mighty uncomfortable and gloomy trying to think of some Honourable Compromise. It was to me that the great idea came, all of a sudden.
“Squint,” I says, “the thing to do is to kidnap some prominent citizen and hold him for ransom.”
Squint brightened up and said to wring gold from the coffers of yonder proud city would be even more satisfaction than blood. The next question was: Who will we kidnap?