A Cowboy's Halloween
By Kayaklady
Authors Note:
I created this story for a classroom of 6 year olds who were curious about what I wrote. It was a picture book which I read to them. I am posting it here for those of you whom may have youngsters that you'd like to enjoy a Slim & Jess story with. For everyone else this is a warning. As this is an early reader children's story. It uses a tell style narrative rather than the illustrative style of my other works. Likewise, since this originally had pictures with it the narrative has some hard breaks in it so we could pause and enjoy the images. Since the site doesn't allow pictures I have inserted an image description in parentheses where these once existed.
The Story
Have you ever wondered about how people celebrated Halloween back in the days of the Wild West? They didn't dress up, or go Trick or Treating, but that doesn't mean they didn't have fun. Let me tell you a story about my favorite cowboys: Slim, his little brother Andy, and Slim's friend and business partner Jess. (Image of the 3 of them)
The fall of 1871 was a busy time on their ranch. Starting in September, Jess was away driving the cattle to market. This was before cars and trucks, so he spent two months walking the cattle 494 miles to the railhead where he would sell the herd for the ranch. All the other ranches in the area sent groups of men to the railhead as well. They were missed while they were gone, and everyone else got lonely. (Image of a cattle drive)
The last days of October were special, because Jess and everyone else came home. Everyone was happy to see them. To celebrate the town threw a big Halloween party. They used the biggest barn in the area. Lots of people came including Slim, Jess and Andy. (Image of a barn dance)
The party started late in the afternoon with lots of games for the children. Andy fell flat on his face during the sack race. Later, he and his friend Bobby took second place in the three-legged race. However, Andy's favorite activity was bobbing for apples. He would take a deep breath and trap the apple against the bottom of the tub that they were floating in. Once trapped, Andy could grab it with his teeth and bring it to the surface. This was how he won first place. (Image of a child bobbing for apples)
After the games, everyone sat down for a big dinner. After dinner Slim, Jess and the other adults had a dance. Jess and his partner got into a contest with the band to see if they could dance as fast as the musicians could play. (Image of a square dance.) While the adults danced, Andy and his friends played hide and go seek in the dark.
There was one problem with Halloween: the Trickster of Laramie. No one knew who the Trickster was, but he played jokes on everyone each Halloween night. Some people would have their windows covered in soap. Elsewhere a bucket of water was set to tip over on the first person through a barn door. One farmer came home to find a pig in his bed. However, the worst trick was having your outhouse pushed over. (Image of an outhouse)
What is an outhouse? In the days before indoor plumbing, people dug a hole away from the house to use when one had to go to the bathroom. A small building sat over the hole giving you privacy and protection from the wind and rain.
Sometimes the Trickster just pushed the building on its side. At Slim and Jess' it was worse. They found their outhouse upside down in the hole. Yuck!
The following year they were still mad and vowed to catch the Trickster. Slim and Jess figured the culprit was doing the mischief during the dance, so they laid their own traps before they left for the party. (Image of Slim & Jess)
The two men rigged a bucket of white wash to fall on anyone entering the barn without first disarming the trap. Then they used lariats to pull the outhouse away from the hole. They made sure that the moon light caused the shadow of the outhouse to hide the open pit. The two men figured that the trickster would sneak up in the shadow of the outhouse… and per-splash he would fall in.
When they got back home, it didn't look like the traps had caught anyone, or that the Trickster had even been there, so everyone went to bed. In the middle of the night, a splash and a scream woke them up. Slim and Jess raced outside and caught the Laramie Trickster or Tricksters as it were. They turned out to be two teenagers, Len and Pete Dixon. (Image from Two for the Gallows of Len & Pete)
Slim caught a smelly and unhappy Pete climbing out of the hole. Jess ran to the barn and discovered Len covered in white wash and looking like a wet ghost.
Slim and Jess were not at all sorry. They made Len and Pete clean up all the mess they caused. The next Halloween all was quiet. The year after that, the Dixon boys were working in Cheyenne so no one expected trouble.
That year after the dance, Slim went to put the horses in the barn and got a bucket of water dropped on him. The Cory's had all their windows soaped, and the Alan's had their outhouse pushed onto its side. It looked like the Trickster of Laramie was at it again. The only question was, "Who was the new Trickster?" The only clue was that the new trickster stayed away from Slim's outhouse.
Do you have an idea who the new trickster is? (Image of Jess, image of Andy, and of a question mark)
The End