Bill looked dazed for a minute, and then said if it was all the same to us he'd like to have a talk with a lawyer. But Bob Jones broke in and told him “Unless five hundred dollars is paid over to the gang, you will never see Hazelton again.” He looked frightened at that and began to pick at his coat-sleeves, and said he guessed if we didn't mind he'd go and take a little nap now. You never saw such a captive for sleeping up his spare time; he was just naturally cut out to be a prisoner. But we felt kind of sorry and ashamed we had scared him; it was so easy to scare him, and we agreed we'd speak gentle and easy to him after that.
At dinner time we waked Bill up and gave him another meal. And he was ready for it; the sight of victuals seemed to take any fright he might have had out of his mind. You never saw such an appetite in all your born days; he ate like he had years of lost time to make up for; and maybe he had. He was having such a good time he began to have his doubts whether it would last, for he said, in a worried kind of way, after dinner: “This here thing of being kidnapped, now, ain't a thing you boys is going to try and charge for, is it? 'Cause if it is them there sharp tricks can't be worked on to me; and if you was to sue me for it you sue a pauper.”
After dinner Squint and I went to town on a scouting party. We hung around the streets and listened to the talk that was going on just like a couple of spies would that had entered the enemy's camp in war time. Everybody was wondering what had become of Bill, and gassing about the notices; and it made us feel mighty proud to think that fame had come to ones so young as us, even although it came in disguise so that no one but us knew it. But in the midst of that feeling we heard Hy Williams, the city drayman, saying to a crowd of fellows who were in front of the post office waiting for the mail to be distributed:
“The beatingest part of the whole thing is that any one would be fools enough to think that this town or any other town would pay ransom to get back a worthless cuss like Bill Patterson!”
It had never struck us like that before. Instead of being famous like we had thought, here we were actually being laughed at again! Squint, he gritted his teeth, and I knew all the rankling that he had done inside of him was as nothing to the rankling that he was doing now. So that night we put up some more notices around town, which read as follows:
n. B.—take notus! we didunt reely Expect money for Old Bill Patterson, we onely done that to show this town Is in Our Power. Take warning and pay Up the next will be a rich one or his child.
—kidnappers.
That really made folks pretty serious, that notice. There was a piece in a Chicago paper about the things that had happened in our town. The piece told a lot of things that never had happened, but when the papers came down from Chicago and they all read it the whole town began to get worse and worse excited. And about that time we began to get scared ourselves. For there was talk of sending off to Chicago and getting a detective. People were frightened about their kids, too. It kept getting harder and harder for us to get out to the cave to guard Bill. Not that he needed much guarding, either; for he was having the time of his life out there, eating and sleeping and not working at anything else. It had been years since he had struck any kind of work that suited him as well as being kidnapped did; if we hadn't been so worried it would have been a pleasure to us to see how happy and contented we were making him; he acted like he had found the real job in life that he had always been looking for, and the only thing that bothered him at all was when he recollected about that ransom and got afraid the town would pay it and end his snap. But mostly he didn't bother about anything; for his recollection was only by fits and starts; yesterday was just as far off to him as a year ago. The second day he was there he did get a little grouchy because he had been without anything to drink for so long. But that night someone broke into the saloon and stole a lot of quart bottles of whiskey; about a bushel of them, it was said. We didn't suspect it was Bill, right at first, for he was foxy enough to keep it hid from us; and when we did know we didn't dare say anything! That whiskey was the one thing Bill had lacked to make him completely happy. But the theft worked in a way that increased our troubles. For it showed people that the mysterious gang was still hanging around waiting to strike a desperate stroke. And the very next night a store was broken into and some stuff stolen. It wasn't Bill, but I suppose some tramp that was hanging around; but it helped to stir things up worse and worse. So we decided that we had better turn Bill loose. We held a meeting out by the cave, and then Squint told him:
“Prisoner, you are at liberty!”
“What d'ye mean by that?” says Bill. “You ain't goin' back on me, are ye?”