Page 10 - The English Carnival 7

Bill and I had a joint capital of about six hundred dollars, and we needed just two
thousand dollars more to pull off a fraudulent town-lot scheme in Western Illinois

with. We talked it over on the front steps of the hotel. Philoprogenitiveness, says we,
is strong in semi-rural communities therefore, and for other reasons, a kidnapping
project ought to do better there than in the radius of newspapers that send reporters
out in plain clothes to stir up talk about such things. We knew that Summit couldn’t
get after us with anything stronger than constables and, maybe, some lackadaisical
bloodhounds and a diatribe or two in the Weekly Farmers’ Budget. So, it looked

good.

We selected for our victim, the only child of a prominent citizen named Ebenezer
Dorset. The father was respectable and tight, a mortgage fancier and a stern,
upright collection-plate passer and forecloser. The kid was a boy of ten, with
“bas-relief freckles”, and hair so brightly red, it looks like the “colour of the
cover of the magazine you buy at the news-
stand when you want to catch a train.” Bill
What you Think?ou Think?
and me figured that Ebenezer would What y
Who was chosen as
melt down for a ransom of the victim and why ?
two thousand dollars to
a cent. But wait

till I tell you.
About two miles from Summit was a

little mountain, covered with a dense
cedar brake. On the rear elevation of this
mountain was a cave. There we stored
provisions.

One evening after sundown, we drove in a
buggy past old Dorset’s house. The kid was
in the street, throwing rocks at a kitten on

the opposite fence.

“Hey, little boy!” says Bill, “would you like
to have a bag of candy and a nice ride?”

The boy catches Bill neatly in the eye with
a piece of brick.

“That will cost the old man an extra five hundred dollars,” says Bill, climbing over
the wheel.

That boy put up a fight like a welter-weight cinnamon bear; but, at last, we got him
down in the bottom of the buggy and drove away. We took him up to the cave, and I

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