Peck's Bad Boy in an airship

by George W. Peck

Pa and the cowboy have been training the male members of the tribe in the military drill, and we have got eight Companies that can march by fours and in platoons, and come into line just like soldiers, and they are proud of what they can do, but they only use clubs for guns, though Pa has promised them that when he gets money enough he will buy Winchesters for the whole army, and we will go and wipe out a tribe about twenty miles away, and take all their gold and diamonds, and they are going to dig up their gold and diamonds and give them to Pa to buy guns. That is about when we will skip out for the coast and sail for Paris and New York.

I suppose I ought to be killed, but I couldn’t help having some fun with Pa’s colored troops. One night Pa had brought them into line, after drilling them, and had made them break ranks and sit down around the big camp fire while the women served a barbecue banquet.

All day the women had been cooking an ox and some pigs over a big fire, under Pa’s supervision, cause Pa used to be a soldier and a politician and had superintended political barbecues lots of times, and he had the meat cooked so nice that wild animals had come near camp to smell of the barbecue, and Pa’s soldiers sat there watering at the mouth, and thinking how much better oxen and pigs were for food than human beings, and Pa felt that he had made a big triumph for civilization, and that his name would be handed down to future generations with the names of Stanley, Livingston and Roosevelt.

The negroes were resting around the fire, talking over the day’s drilling, and how, when they got the guns Pa was going to buy for them, they would go on the war path, when the women began to bring the food, the meat cut up in chunks, and sweet potatoes on big leaves and straw mats, and all began to eat like wild animals. It was too peaceful a scene for me to enjoy, so I went to a knapsack that I brought along from Paris, and got out my fireworks, which I always carry along for emergencies.

I got about a dozen nigger chasers and some Roman candles, and told the cowboy I was going to have some fun scaring Pa’s troops, to see if they were brave enough to fight an enemy.

Told the Cowboy I Was Going to Have Some Fun Scarring Pa’s Troops.

The cowboy had been drinking some berry juice and he said he would assist at the Fourth of July celebration by taking his Winchester and firing at some of the jackals and hyenas that had been attracted by the barbecue smell, just as I touched off my fireworks.

Well, it was a crime to do it, but what is a boy going to do when he is away off in a strange country and he has to create his own fun.

Well, just as the troops had got filled up with the meal, and the women who had served the banquet had sat down with the colored soldiers to eat what was left, and everybody was laughing, and Pa stood up by a tree in the light of the fire, like a fat statue, patting himself on the back and thinking he was the greatest man since Julius Caeser, I got a coal of fire and touched off my nigger chasers and pointed them towards the crowd sitting around the fire, and touched off a pinwheel I had fastened to a tree by a thorn, and opened up my battery of Roman candles, pointing them at Pa and the ex-king, who were the only ones standing up, and the cowboy cut loose with the Winchester at the wild animals, with a cowboy yell such as they give when they are shooting up a town out west.