THE TIME WARP TRIO
The Good,
the Bad,
and the Goofy
by Jon Scieszka
PUFFIN BOOKS
ONE
High noon.
A hot, dry wind blows across the prairie. “Where the heck are we?” asks Cooky. “Cheyenne country,” says Cowboy Bob. An arrow whizzes out of nowhere and sticks in the side of the chuck wagon. Cowboy Bob calmly pulls it out and looks at it.
“Yep. Cheyenne. I’ll bet Sitting Bull and his braves are looking to rustle our cattle off the old Chillum Trail.”
Cowboy Bob squints up at the ridge. Two hundred Indians on horseback stand ready to attack.
A flash of lightning. A clap of thunder.
Two thousand longhorn cattle start to moo and mill around behind Cowboy Bob.
Cooky blinks nervously. “What are we going to do, Bob?”
Cowboy Bob tugs on his white ten-gallon hat. “Circle up the wagons and get lunch started, Cooky.” He eases his two six-shooters out of his holster. “I’ll stop these Indians. Then I’ll hold off the stampede. By the time the cavalry comes to save the day, I’ll be ready for grub.”
“Will the cavalry make it in time, Bob?” Cooky freezes. The background music swells. The scene fades to black.
AND WE’LL BE RIGHT BACK WITH OUR “SATURDAY NIGHT AT THE MOVIES” FEATURE, COWBOY BOB TO THE RESCUE, AFTER THESE IMPORTANT MESSAGES.
F red grabbed the remote and turned the sound down. “Yes! Cowboy Bob is going to stop Sitting Bull and his Cheyennes from stampeding his cattle off the old Chillum Trail. Can you believe it?”
“No,” said Sam, eating the last of the potato chips. “Because they’ve got it all wrong. Number one, Sitting Bull was not a Cheyenne. He was the leader of a Sioux tribe. Number two, the trail from San Antonio to Abilene was called the Chisholm Trail. And number three, Cowboy Bob is just a bad character actor reinforcing mindless stereotypes.”
Fred shook two cans of soda, looking for a full one. “Well, excuse me, Mr. Information. Thanks for spoiling the movie.” Fred found a half-full can and emptied it. “I wonder what it was really like back then instead of boring old now.”
“Thanks so much for inviting yourself over for the night and then calling my house boring,” I said.
Fred gobbled a handful of popcorn.
“I didn’t mean your house is boring, Joe. It’s great. But summer vacation is getting boring. Wouldn’t it be great to be real cowboys for just a little while?”
I thought about galloping across the prairie, firing off six-shooters, roping cattle, and sleeping under the stars. I pulled out a small blue book with stars and moons and twisting silver designs.
“Well, I have been reading a little more of The Book, And I think I found a spell we could use to get us out of any trouble. It’s called the Industrial Strength Time Freezer Spell and—”
Sam jumped to his feet. “Oh, no you don’t. If you two guys are going to go get stuck full of arrows and stampeded by cattle, you can leave me out of it.”
Fred grabbed another handful of popcorn. “Oh, come on, you chicken. We’ve handled giants, dragons, wizards, and pirates. What could be so bad about being cowboys?”
I held The Book in my lap.
Sam adjusted his glasses like he always does when he gets excited. “Don’t touch that book, Joe. Every time you do we get in trouble. Just because your uncle is a magician doesn’t mean we have to be.”
“You think I don’t know magic?” I said. “Let me show you the Power Broomstick Trick. I’ll hold this broomstick and bet that both you and Joe together can’t push me from this spot.”
“No way. I’m not trying any tricks or saying anything until you put that book away.’’
“But what if we could wish for something safe like being cowboys for just twenty-four hours,” said Fred.
“No. That wouldn’t work,” I said, leaning on the broomstick. “‘What you have to do is—”
“Wait! Stop! Shut up!” said Sam. “Don’t say another word, I know exactly what’s going to happen. One of you two wizards is going to say something stupid like:
Yip pee Ki Yi Yip pee, Yip pee Ki Yi Yo.
Take us back to cowboys long, long ago.
“Then that stupid green time-traveling mist will start to swirl around and we’ll be in big trouble again. “
“That would probably work,” I said.
Sam adjusted his glasses and stared at me.
“What did you say?”
A faint wisp of green mist began to curl out of The Book.
“I think that rhymed spell would probably work.”
“Oh, no,” said Sam.
The green mist swirled thicker and deeper.
“Oh, yes,” I said.
The mist rose over our shoes, the couch, the TV.
“Yeee haw!” said Fred.
TWO
A hot, dry wind blew across the prairie.
“Where the heck are we?” asked Fred.
“Nowhere,” I said.
Fred, Sam, and I looked at each other. We looked around as the last of the green mist dissolved at our feet. No cowboys. No horses. No six-shooters. No cavalry. Nothing but scrubby cactus, bits of grass, and dirt as far as we could see.
“What happened? What did I say?” asked Sam. “Your ‘Yippee Ki Yi Yo’ spell worked perfectly,” I said.
“But that’s crazy. I just made it up,” said Sam. “How are we supposed to know how The Book works if it keeps changing how it works?”
Fred kicked at a cactus and sent up a cloud of dust.
“That’s how it works,” I said. “It always changes how it works.”
“Oh, great,” said Sam. “So how do we get home again?”
“That always stays the same. The only way to get back to our time is to find The Book in this time.”
Sam looked around at the grass, the dirt, the sun. “Oh, thank goodness. What a relief. I mean, it should be a snap to find The Book out here. You look under that cactus. I’ll look under this one, And in about a hundred years we should be done!”
“Shhh,” said Fred, holding up his hand. “Do you hear that?”
Sam and I listened.
“Yeah, I hear the vultures circling. They’re fighting over who gets to be first to pick our bones,” said Sam.
“Give me a break,” said Fred. “You’re the one who wished us here. There must be cowboys around here somewhere.”
“Yeah, The Book has never been wrong before,” I added.
“This is true,” said Sam. “The Book has almost gotten us killed with King Arthur. The Book has almost gotten us buried with Black-beard’s treasure, But The Book has never been wrong.” Sam looked up at the hot sun beating down on us again. “Remind me to thank your uncle Joe for giving you such a great birthday present... if we ever crawl out of this desert alive. “
“Shhh, There it is again,” said Fred. “Do you hear that rumbling?”
“Yeah, that was your stomach,” said Sam. “You know, we could also die of starvation, or exposure, or sunburn, or hypothermia, or—”
“I hear it,” I said.
“Coming from over there.” Fred pointed to a reddish brown cloud of dust on the other side of a small rise.
“Cowboys!” shouted Sam. “We’re saved! Come on!”
We ran up the rise and looked over the top. A swarming sea of brown was kicking up the cloud of dust we had seen.
“That’s a lot of cowboys,” said Fred.
“Those are cows,” I said.
“Cattle,” corrected Sam.
The sound of hooves and mooing grew louder. We could just see a few cowboys riding around the edges of the herd.
Fred waved his hat and yelled, “Over here, you guys!”
The noise grew louder. The running sea of horns and legs grew larger.
“I don’t think you have to call them over,” said Sam. “They seem to be headed right... uh. . . right toward us.”
I felt the earth beginning to shake beneath us. “Maybe we should move a little over this way, guys.” We started walking sideways. It didn’t seem to make much difference. The herd kept stretching out in front of us. We walked the other way. Now we could see the cowboys on their horses trying to turn the herd.
“It’s a whatchamacallit,” said Fred.
I looked for someplace to hide, There was still nothing but cactus, grass, and dirt.
“It’s a thingamabob,” said Fred. “It’s a. . . a. . .
“Stampede!” yelled Sam.
The wave of cattle thundered toward us. We could see their long sharp horns, hear their wild mooing.
“Run,” yelled Fred.
“We’ll never be able to outrun them,” said Sam. “The herd’s too big. Joe, what about that Frozen Time Spell?”
“The Industrial Strength Time Freezer?” The cowboys whistled and yelled. The cattle mooed. The ground shook.
“Now or never,” said Sam.
I tried to concentrate.
“Hickory dickory dock.
The mouse ran up the clock.
Cattle stampede.
Here’s what we need . . .“
I stopped. The herd was only a hundred yards away, heading straight for us.
“What?” yelled Fred. “What do we need?” “Something to rhyme with clock.” “Block, rock, sock!” screamed Sam. The thundering herd was fifty yards away.
“Wave your sock,” I yelled.
Sam threw off his shoe, whipped off his red sock, and started waving it as hard as he could.
The cattle charged closer.
Sam waved his sock.
...
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