Chapter 20
Trail of the James Boys, or
Just Following Odors

. . . . Are they gone?

"Yeah, it's just you, now," said Fred.

Good. All right, you're going to hate me for this, but I have to do another recap. This time of chapter ten. I know, we did recaps of nine, then eleven. Sorry about skipping you, ten, but now we're going to make up for lost time -

"Will you hurry up and recap before this bunch of angry diamond rustlers beats us to bloody pulps!?"

. . . You asked for it:

FredandBarneywerevisitingaduderanchinTexaswhentheowner'sprizediamondwasstolensotheyrodeouttofindtherustlersbutnowthey'vebeenspottedandareabouttobeattacked.

Fast enough for you?

"Perfect, thanks," answered Fred, who turned back toward their approaching malefactors and tried to appear friendly. "Howdy pardners! How're the rattlesnakes treatin' ya?"

The rustlers gave no signs that they even wanted to answer as they closed in on the intruders and raised their makeshift weapons to strike -

"STOP!" someone cried.

Everyone immediately did and turned toward the source of the command, a male head poking out of one of the two tents. The head's body and another man emerged from the tent and walked toward the crowd, which quickly parted to let them through. They stopped directly in front of the two trespassers sitting on the ground near their camp, and it didn't take 20/20 vision to see how filthy and disgusting they were. Their clothes were hopelessly caked with mud, dirt, and food stains. Their faces and hair looked like they were washed with tomato juice and axle grease, plus other substances too gross to even think about. Their body odor, resulting from the probable fact that they hadn't washed themselves since John F. Kennedy was alive, would have made garbage collectors sick to their stomachs.

Joe would've loved it.

The two dirty desperadoes surveyed their catches very closely, so closely in fact that Fred and Barney could barely stand the stench. Their horses had already taken one whiff each and run for the hills. Finally, Fred couldn't take it any longer and begged, "Will you guys mind standing downwind from us!?"

"You hombres ain't in no position to tell us to do anythin'," the first one answered in a casual cowboy drawl.

"Ve're hardly een a position to smell anytheeng," replied Barney in a voice slightly altered by the fact that he was tightly pinching his nostrils shut.

"Who in the name of nasal decongestants are you!?" asked Fred.

The second leader looked slightly surprised. "You never heard of us? We're known throughout the territory as the meanest, lowest, dirtiest, filthiest, smelliest desperadoes west 'a the Pecos: Rank an' Messy James."

Fred had to think several seconds, and when he was done he did an amazed double-take. "You're new! The writer actually came up with his own characters for villains!? I don't believe it!"

"Hey, I can be original!" shouted Rupert. "When I want to be!"

"You call them original!?" retorted Ima. "Those names are just puns of historical figures!"

"Pick, pick, pick! I gave them an original gimmick, didn't I!?"

"Oh, big deal, super body odor! Anybody in a gym could've come up with that idea!"

"You would know!"

"WHADDAYA MEAN BY THAT!?"

"I mean you, my treadmill, and two family-size deodorant tubes per week!"

"That's not for my stench! That's to shield me from Joe's stench after he uses it!"

"I don't exercise on Rupert's treadmill!" retorted Joe.

"Then how does your stink get all over it!?"

"What stink? I clean it every morning, and I even use my own special blend of disinfectant, with my own secret ingredients guaranteed to eliminate all harmful germs!"

"Is this the same special blend of disinfectant you used in my microwave last week?" demanded Rupert. "I opened it up, and it smelled like a family of rats ate a three-year-old hunk of Limburger cheese spiked with cat vomit, and they all died inside!"

"... How d you know what my secret ingredients are!?"

"Hey!" shouted Fred. "Who's this chapter supposed to be about, anyway!?"

"Fred?" whispered Barney.

"Ten chapters, we've been waiting to show up again, and you guys are stealing our spotlight!"

"Fred?"

"What's a go-fer and his best long-distance pal gotta do to get some rackin'-frackin' respect in this damn novel!?"

"FRED!"

Fred's head whipped around. "WHAT!?"

"Look on thee table ofer there!"

Fred's eyes followed Barney's to the crude wooden folding table behind all the rustlers, and saw a huge diamond at least the size of a golf ball resting prominently on it.

"What's so interestin' on our table?" asked the first leader, Rank.

Fred thought fast. "Oh, Barney was just wondering where you bought that table. One of those would be great the next time we go camping."

"Or maybe it's the big diamond on the table," replied Messy.

"Da, dat's vhat I meant!" Barney agreed.

Fred gave blabbermouth Barney a dirty look. "No kidding," he grumbled.

"So thee stampede vas a deeversion," Barney added, oblivious to his gaff. "How much ees dat diamond vorth?"

"We'll find out, when we get it to our buyer."

"Vhen do you plan to do that?" asked Barney.

"Actually," he answered with a sly grin, "when I said 'we,' I meant myself, brother Rank, and you two. I mean, we can hardly let you go an' tell the authorities about what we did."

"Why not? It's really easy," said Fred as he and his companion rose to a standing position. "You just tell your goons -" He interrupted himself as he noted that two of the James Brothers' goons were female. "- and goonettes to move aside so that we can walk to the nearest town and call the state police."

Now perturbed, Rank moved toward Fred until his face was only a few inches from Fred's, and the close proximity to Rank quickly made him nauseous. "Get this through your spotless skull, cowboy," he snarled, holding Fred's chin. "We don't want you and your two-man posse squealin' on us to the sheriff. And you're gonna come with us to make sure ya don't." He turned to his seven thugs. "Tie up the low-down varmints!"

The seven accomplices looked at each other as if it was the last thing they expected their leaders to request, but finally they shrugged, knowing theirs was not to reason why. They grabbed several lengths of rope, seized Rank and his brother, and started wrapping the ropes around them.

Rank and Messy struggled, furious that their accomplices could make such a lame-brained mistake before finally realizing the most likely reason for the mistake. "Not us low-down varmints!" shouted Rank, pointing at Fred and Barney. "The varmints who were spyin' on us low-down varmints!"

Realizing their error, they quickly released their leaders with hasty apologies and began tying up the boys to a tree stump. Rank supervised while Messy returned to his tent. He returned a few minutes later. "I jus' radioed our buyers. They'll be sendin' a plane to pick us up in a few hours.

"Then let's pack up the camp and be ready to leave the minute they get here," replied Rank, then he said to the others. "You heard Messy, start takin' down the tents and packin' your stuff. I'll put the diamond in the strong box."

"A few hours," whispered Fred as soon as everyone else was out of earshot. "That doesn't give us much time to come up with a plan. We gotta put our heads together and think - think real hard. Barney, if you got any ideas, any questions, you just bring em out. At times like this, any thoughts are useful!"

"Vhy do you think dey are called 'spaghetti vesterns?'" asked Barney.

. . . Okay, not every thought is useful, thought Fred. "What's that got to do with anything!?"

"You said any thought is useful, and dis one's been nagging at me ever since ve arrived!"

Fred impatiently replied, "I don't know, maybe they're made in Italy."

"Den vhy vouldn't dey be called 'Italian vesterns?' Say, I've heard you Americans have dese things called TV dinners' because you can eat them in front of the TV. Vell, maybe dey call them spaghetti vesterns because dey serve spaghetti in the movie theaters vhile they are playing?"

"Spaghetti in movie theaters?" The idea was so far out there, Fred actually forgot about escape plans to briefly ponder the idea. "H'oh boy, imagine that. Instead of candy and popcorn, concession stands would sell spaghetti marinara and linguini with clam sauce. And instead of soda machines, there'd be wine racks; I mean, whoever heard of drinking cherry cola with fettucini al fredo?"

"Vith food like that, de theater seats vould need trays to hold the customers' plates. Oh, and maybe a violin player vould vander up and down de aisles vhile the latest Roy Rogers movie played!"

"Or better yet, while The Godfather' played. . . . . What the hell are we talking about!? Never mind spaghetti westerns', we gotta think of a way outta this mess and get Weird Bill's diamond back!"

A few seconds later, Fred hissed, "I have an idea."

"Is it a good idea?" "I don't know, you tell me."

"I vill. It stinks!"

"You didn't even hear it!"

"I didn't haf to, I can smell it stinks plain as day!"

"That was just a breeze blowing one of the James boys' stench our way!"

Fred leaned closer to Barney to make doubly sure they wouldn't be overheard. "Okay, here's my idea. First, we lure one of those guys over here by calling him over and asking for two tall cactus juices. Once he's here, I tell him his shoelace is untied, and while he's looking at his feet, you grab a club and knock him out. Then we cut ourselves loose with his Bowie knife, then you disguise yourself as the bum and infiltrate the mob and find out who's buying the diamond. I'll sneak up and bust the diamond out of the strong box, let them see me escaping, and you come after pretending to chase me and we both escape with the diamond."

Barney thought for a few moments, then said, "It stinks."

Forgetting not to risk being overheard, Fred snapped, "Whaddaya mean it stinks!?"

"First, I do not haf a club. Second, I could not use a club if I had vone because my hands are tied up. Third, how could I knock vone of dem out and disguise myself out here vhere efery-vone can see us?"

Fred started to snap back but stopped. He hadn't really thought out those little wrinkles.

"Den you should be more careful vhen you iron your clothes," said Barney.

Fred gave him a strange look, then said, "Okay, forget the club, but I can still make my idea work. We still gotta lure one of those guys over here, but this time we'll get loose first."

"How, vithout a Bowie knife?"

"This stump's bark is rough. We oughta be able to fray the ropes on it." Fred and Barney started rubbing the ropes binding their wrists up and down on the tree stump. Their progress was agonizingly slow as the rope fibers were not as easy to wear through as Fred hoped. They also had to stop several times whenever one or more of the cowboy gang turned to look at them, and they had to pretend to be doing nothing but sitting still. Some of the gang members began to wonder if the boys' stupid, guilty-looking grins, which they put on every time the bad guys looked at them, meant something.

Finally, they felt their ropes give way. Careful to conceal their accomplishment, they leaned closer together so Fred could outline the next step in his escape plan. "Now, to lure one of them over here." He then raised his voice toward one of the rustlers who didn't appear too tough. "Hey, Silly the Kid! We're getting thirsty over here!"

The man he called turned toward him with a look of surprise and confusion. "How'd you know my name?" he asked.

Fred was surprised and confused for a second but recovered quickly. "I know everything... except where the water bucket's been for the last two hours!"

"All right, all right, keep your shirt on," he grumbled as he fetched the water bucket and brought it toward the captives.

"How can I take it off when my hands are tied up?" was Fred's sarcastic retort.

Now Barney was confused. "Tied up? I thought ve - AAK!" Fortunately, his revelation of Fred's deception was narrowly averted when Fred somehow managed to swing his foot around and shove it into the gap between Barney's legs . . . all the way in. Seeing Silly's puzzled look, Fred said, "Those darn mosquitoes, always buzzing in the worst places."

"Dat vas a pretty bad place, da," agreed Barney, in a voice much higher than normal.

Silly shrugged and bent down to serve water to Fred from the bucket with a ladle, and Fred quickly grabbed the man's arm and shoved an Uzi into his neck. "Reach for the sky, pilgrim, and no sudden moves," he muttered with conviction.

Barney was genuinely aghast. His grandparents had filled him with stories about Americans being imperialistic economic oppressors bent on world domination, and he was well aware of Americans' current tastes in entertainment, but through further research and his own video chats with Fred, he had decided that the majority of Americans weren't really the war-mongering, battle-crazed maniacs the rest of the world thought they were. Seeing Fred, however, made him wonder either if he should've listened to Grandma and Grandpa and the internet after all.

As for Silly, his casual cowboy attitude simply evaporated, replaced by jaw-shaking panic. "W-where did you g-get that g-gun!?" he stammered.

"It's what the modern stone-age men are using these days."

Still aghast, Barney exclaimed, "I thought you vanted to use a club!"

"I did, but the background checks for clubs take forever."

Rank turned away from his quick supper of baked beans, a chili dog with garlic and sauerkraut, and homemade whiskey that smelled like toilet bowl cleaner, when he noticed what was happening with his prisoners. "What's goin' on over there?"

Fred stood up, still jabbing Silly's neck with his Uzi. "What's goin' on is we're takin' over 'round here, see?" he replied in an accent more appropriate for a gangster movie before realizing his mistake. "I mean, you hombres re through pushin' us around. Give us th' diamond and let us go, or yer friend's gonna have an extra mouth."

The James brothers and all their other gang members replied by simultaneously drawing on Fred and Barney.

"Great, how am I goeeng to get all dese eenk spots off my clothes?" Barney griped.

. . . . I mean, drawing their guns on you . . . you twit!

Fred decided his plan was not going as smoothly as he hoped.

"Any more bright ideas, Kemosabe?" Barney muttered.

"Soon as I think of one, you'll be the first to know."

"I hope you get one soon!" The boys were rather surprised that the shaky encouragement came from Silly. "I won a lot of their money in a poker game last night, and I think they're still sore!"

Messy called to the three huddled, hapless guys. "'Pears we have a standoff here! You pull that trigger, we pull ours, making' three stiffs instead 'a one."

"Hey, c'mon Messy!" whined Silly. "You didn't lose any money! Whadda you got against me!?"

"You always use deodorant. Ah can't stand th' stuff."

One of the James' brothers female gang members spoke up. The boys noted she talked with a strong New Zealand accent. "Rank, Messy, th' plane's gonna be here soon. There's only one way we're gonna settle this bah then."

"How's that, Annie Auckland?" asked another gang member.

"Eithah Rank or Messy and one ah tha boys have a showdown."

Rank rolled the idea around in his head, and seemed to approve. "I always like doing things th' traditional way. 'Specially when it lets me fill someone full 'a lead."

Fred didn't approve as much, but he saw no other way out of their predicament. "I guess we don't have a choice," he said. "Good luck, Barn."

"Thanks, Fred." It was a full second before Barney realized what Fred meant. "Vait a minute! Vhy should I haf a showdown!?"

"You're the one who wanted to play cowboy!"

"But you haf the gun!"

"I'll let you borrow it!"

"I can't shoot a gun for crap!"

Messy grinned. "Just th' kind a opponent I like."

"Forget it, little brother," Rank said to Messy, "this fight's mine. And I'm doin' it with their leader."

Fred turned to Barney. "Well, Boss, good luck. Give im hell! "

Before Barney could sputter a reply, Rank cut in, pointing at Fred. "I meant you, Tenderfoot!"

Fred finally saw there was no way of deflecting his fate onto some other sucker. "Mind if I write my will first?"

Shortly after, Fred completed his hastily written will, in which he ultimately decided to take everything with him. Barney and Messy signed it as witnesses, the latter getting more ink on his own hands than on the document, and finally Fred and Rank took their positions, staring at each other from two hundred feet apart, each armed with one six-shooter. Both glared at each other with calm, contempt-filled gazes, although Fred's served only to mask a combined feeling of, "How the hell did I get myself into this mess?" and, "I want my mommy!"

Messy acted as referee to the showdown. "Okay, pardners, here's th' deal. Fred wins, he and his compadre take th' diamond and leave. Rank wins, Fred and his compadre don't." An evil grin accentuated the "don't." "Ready? Go for it!"

Go for it? Fred thought. At the moment I'd rather go for the next bus back to New Jersey than go through a shootout with the Fastest Gunk in the West! In a Wild West showdown, only one man could survive, and he calculated the odds of he being the survivor as comparable to the odds of him being elected president of Pluto.

If I did get elected, I wonder if they'd tell me if it's really a planet or not.

Suddenly, as Fred stared at his opponent and contemplated a highly improbable future as an interplanetary politician, he spotted something in the distance beyond. Somehow, he managed to keep his expression neutral as he realized that it appeared to be a group of vehicles, and that meant people driving the vehicles. He suddenly remembered that Weird Bill intended to call the sheriff, meaning there was a chance this was a search party sent out to look for them and the James gang. He also realized they were too far away to notice the rustlers' camp unless they came in their direction, and he couldn't be sure they'd do that on their own.

And he suddenly realized he had the perfect means to draw them in their direction: his revolver, and the propane tank on the camp's small gas grill, whose trajectory was not too far off from that toward Rank. If only he could pull it off without getting killed . . .

Steeling himself up, he began his slow advance toward Rank. Rank immediately followed suit. At one hundred feet, they stopped and stared hard at each other, their gazes full of contempt for each other. The sand shifted in the light breeze, and a small tumbleweed drifted through the camp. An eternity seemed to pass by in which no one moved or even breathed. The eyes of the two adversaries dared each other to make the first move.

Lightning fast, Fred drew his gun. Rank, however, was even faster and fired straight at his chest. Fred however, at the same instant he started drawing, imitated a move he'd seen in a lot of action flicks, and dived hard to one side as he fired. Rank's bullet missed, while Fred's bullet deliberately missed Rank and, to his incredible surprise, hit the propane tank almost dead-center! -

- and ricocheted harmlessly off the metal casing and shot high into the air.

The word that popped into Fred's head was more than appropriate for the situation, but not for this novel's PG rating. And Rank, quickly adjusting his gun's aim back toward Fred, didn't give him time for a second try.

"You lose," Rank grinned. Everyone in the camp knew Fred was dead meat.

But just as Rank cocked his gun for the fatal shot, a distant explosion high in the air followed by an engine whine increasing in pitch and volume caught everyone's attention. They looked up and were surprised to see a police airplane trailing smoke as it nosedived out of the sky right toward their camp. It crashed frighteningly close by, instantly turning into a huge, smoldering pile of twisted, blackened metal. A few seconds later, two men in tattered, smoldering police uniforms staggered out of the plane in mutual dazes.

That's when Fred realized the plane fell out of the same part of the sky his bullet flew toward.

"Oops."

In all fairness, he wanted to attract the attention of the police. He certainly got the attention of these two.

The speechless shock of the other gang members suddenly turned into panic and they started running for cover and shooting at anything that moved. One of them suddenly noticed the group of vehicles approaching at high speed, attracted by the crash. Just a minute later they arrived, and their passengers, who indeed turned out to be a search party consisting of three police jeeps and four horsemen, stormed the camp.

Fred and Barney eluded their captors and rejoined. "Now's our chance to get the diamond," Barney shouted over the firefight, and they hurried to the table. Just then another plane landed nearby, but his one was obviously not connected with the police. The boys reached the table and grabbed the diamond, just as a lasso landed around their bodies and yanked them together, unable to move.

Messy appeared, holding the other end of the lasso, with his brother. "Not so fast, pardners," he said. "We all got an appointment with an important client, and we don't like to disappoint im." So saying, Rank and Messy hauled Fred and Barney and the diamond toward the plane, where two guards in foreign uniforms ushered them inside. Before the police forces could stop them, the plane taxied across the plain and took off toward the east.

The sheriff's anger was partially abated only by the fact that they managed to catch everyone else in the James brothers' gang. The rustlers were quickly taken away in all but one of the vehicles while the sheriff joined the horseman who was the oldest of the four. "Well, at any rate we just might get an idea where the ringleaders are going if these desperadoes decide to talk. Thanks for you and your sons' help, Mr. Cartwright."

"Pleasure to help, Sheriff," he answered. "I'm sorry we couldn't recover Bill's diamond. Or rescue those two boys."

His youngest son was equally concerned. "I've heard some of the things Rank and Messy James do to their captives. Those boys could be in big trouble."

"Not much we can do about it, Little Joe," said the eldest son. "All we can do is hope."

"C'mon, boys," said Mr. Cartwright, turning his mount, "we better get back to the ranch. Those cattle aren't gonna round up themselves."

His middle son, the largest and most brutish-looking of the quartet, winced in dismay. "I'm still saddle-sore from the last roundup, Pa! Why can't we use trucks and helicopters like everyone else nowadays?"

"Would you rather re-shoe a horse or flush out an oily crankcase?"

"Giddyup, girl!" Hoss quickly told his horse. "We got a long ride ahead!"

Rank and Messy James and their minions are copyright (more or less) to RC Gumby Productions. So is the sheriff. The names of Fred Flintstone and Barney Rubble/Ruble are copyright to Hanna-Barbera and Warner Brothers, with original thanks to the voices of Alan Reed and Mel Blanc. Ben, Adam, Little Joe, and Hoss Cartwright are presently copyright to CBS Television Distribution, with respective thanks to Lorne Greene, Pernell Roberts, Michael Landon, and Dan Blocker for bringing these pardners to life.

"Boy, theese novel ees churneeng out a bonanza of cameos," Barney quipped, followed by a hyena-like laugh.

"Ah, shaddap and pass me the in-flight magazine!"