![]() ![]() Sam leaves the cave to get a view of the countryside. Bill is terrorized by the boy's sadistic commitment to make-believe, and worries that no one would pay two thousand dollars to have a child like him returned. ![]() Sam intervenes, and can't go back to sleep because he worries Johnny will try to burn him at the stake, as he has threatened to do while in character as Red Chief. ![]() Johnny wakes the men up at dawn by trying to remove Bill's scalp with a knife. ![]() The boy's hyperactive behavior and incessant questions keep the men awake most of the night, but they do not worry that Johnny will escape because Johnny says he hates being home and going to school. Instead, he plays make-believe with them, pretending to be a Native American warrior named Red Chief who has taken Bill and Sam captive. In a rented horse and buggy, the men abduct Johnny from his front yard and take him to their cave hideout on a nearby mountain. In a town called Summit, the men target a mortgage lender named Ebenezer Dorset, kidnapping his ten-year-old son Johnny. The men have six hundred dollars and need two thousand more to pull off another scheme in Illinois. " The Ransom of Red Chief" begins with Sam, the story's first-person narrator, recounting how he and his partner in crime, Bill, were in Alabama when they had the idea to kidnap a wealthy man's son and hold him for ransom. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |