Jack: Book One in the Trilogy, the Battle Begins

Victory Celebration Part 22

Later that day, we all got together in Jack's barn just as planned.

"Did you tell him anythin'?" Jack said nervously as soon as we met. Brooksy was already there and so it was clear to me before I even talked to Brooksy that master didn't get what he wanted from him even if he did get some.

"No," I said. "I just denied everythin' that crafty old badger was tryin' to make me admit. I didn't think I could endure it much longer, my mouth was so dry from lyin' I felt there was sand in it and it's a good thing that I told master I was sick as a dog. But he has strong suspicions that we're all lyin' and said the constable was goin' to get the truth out of us."

"Huh!" said Jack victoriously. "We beat him and beat him good and he knows it."

Jack had given Brooksy a tongue-lashing for saying more than he was supposed to say and Jack had told him that he was just not smart enough to try to color the story anything beyond what he was ordered to say. Still our position was pretty solid.

"We held the high ground in the battle," said Jack, who added, "Whittemore was lyin' at the bottom of the hill so to speak, bruised and a'bleedin' with his face in the mud."

That's how Jack saw the so-called "victory".

"We've got to celebrate this one," said Jack. "I've got an idea, you're goin' to just love this one."

"Jack forget it. Leave it for a while," I said.

"No way! This is the last part of the plan and we have to follow it all the way through so that we can say we stuck through it, through thick and thin. Besides, a victory over an enemy isn't really a victory unless he knows he's been beat and we want that snivelin' old fool to know it. Tonight after we're done celebratin' on our own, we go by master's house underneath his bedroom window in the woods which are right there beneath his window. We light off three big bangin' cherry bombs and then right away Jeremy you start a'blowin' your trumpet and I'll play my harmonica to a high pitch and you, Brooksy, will bang a drum as loud as you can - you can use a pale and a big ole iron soup spoon that's in my mom's soup pot. Sound like fun kiddies?"

"I've already had too much fun today Jack at master's expense, can't we just..."

"No we can't! We've got to put on the finishin' touch! So he'll never forget it! When he's old and crotchety and a'smokin' his pipe and a'sittin' in his rockin' chair and a'spittin' in his filthy spitoon', he'll remember with a glint in his eye, I think, the day he tried to get the goods on Jack Stone and his band of Midnight Raiders. And he'll have one more note to add to his collection. It'll say:

Don't try to play with the big boys son - stick to the little kiddies!

The Midnight Raiders."