“I suggest the mayor of yonder town!” says Squint.
“Gee—your dad, Squint?” says Tom Mulligan.
“I offer him as a sacrifice,” says Squint, very majestically. No one could do any more, and we all felt Squint's dad had deserved it. But the idea was so big it kind of scared us, too. But while the rest of us were admiring Squint, Bob Jones got jealous and offered his father. Then we all offered our fathers, except Tom Mulligan, who didn't have anything better to offer than a pair of spinster aunts. There was a general row over whose father was the most prominent citizen. But finally we decided to bar all relatives and kinsfolk, in order to prevent jealousy, even to the distant cousins. But it isn't a very big town, and it would surprise you how many people are related to each other there. Finally Bill Patterson was voted to be the Honourable Compromise, being known as the town drunkard, and not related to anybody who would own up to it.
It figured out easy enough. All we had to do was to wait until Sunday night, and take Bill out of the lockup. Every Saturday afternoon regular Si Emery, who was the city marshal, arrested Bill for being drunk on Main Street, and Bill was kept in jail until Monday morning. Si was getting pretty old and feeble and shaky, and of late years the town council never let him have the lock-up key until just an hour or so before it was time to arrest Bill on Saturdays. Because one time Si had forgot to feed and water a tramp in there for about a week, and the tramp took sick after a while, and he was dead when Si remembered about him, and had to be buried at the town's expense. And several times some tough customers had taken the keys away from Si and broken into the place and played cards and cut up in there scandalous for half the night. So it was thought best Si shouldn't carry the keys, nor the handcuffs which belonged to the town. After he had locked Bill up on Saturday evenings Si would take the keys to the mayor's house, and get them again on Monday morning to let Bill out.
So the next Sunday night when the hired girl wasn't looking, Squint sneaked the keys and the town handcuffs out of the drawer in the kitchen table where the knives and forks were kept. He slipped upstairs to bed, and no one noticed. About ten o'clock he dressed again, and got out the back window, and down the lightning rod; and at the same hour us other Daltons were doing much the same.
We met behind the lockup, and put on the masks we had made. They had hair on the bottoms of them to look like beards sticking out.
“Who's got the dark-lantern?” Squint asks, in a whisper.
“M-m-me,” answered Pete Wilson, stuttering. I was so excited myself I was biting my coat-sleeve so my teeth wouldn't chatter. And Bob Jones was clicking the trigger of the cavalry pistol his uncle carried in the war, and couldn't stop, like a girl can't stop laughing when she gets hysterics. The cylinder was gone and it couldn't be loaded or he would have killed himself, for he turned it up and looked right into the muzzle and kept clicking when Squint asked him what the matter was. Pete shook so he couldn't light the lantern; but Squint, he was that calm and cool he lit her with the third match. He unlocked the door and in we went.
Bill was snoring like all get out, and talking in his sleep. That made us feel braver again. Squint says to handcuff him easy and gentle before he wakes. Well, there wasn't any trouble in that; the trouble was to wake him up afterward. He was so interested in whatever he was dreaming about that the only way we could do it was to tickle his nose with a straw and wait until he sneezed himself awake. Squint clapped the muzzle of the pistol to his forehead, while I flashed the lantern in his eyes and the other three sat on his stomach and grabbed his legs. Squint says:
“William Patterson, one move and you are a dead man!”