Summary
Back at the cave, Sam finds Bill pushed to the side of the wall, breathing hard, and the boy threatening to smash Bill with a coconut-sized rock. Bill tells Sam that the boy put a red-hot potato down the back of his shirt and mashed it with his foot so the potato opened on Bill’s skin. Bill says he boxed the boy’s ears in retaliation. Bill then asks Sam if he has a gun on him.
Sam takes the rock from the boy and tries to intervene in the argument. The boy, speaking as Red Chief, warns Bill that no man has ever struck Red Chief without being struck back, so Bill better beware. After breakfast, the boy takes a piece of leather with strings wrapped around it out of his pocket. He leaves the cave. Bill worries he’ll run away, but Sam isn’t afraid. He says there isn’t much excitement in town over his disappearance, so they will have to get a ransom message to the boy’s father.
As they are speaking, the boy lets out a warwhoop and whirls around his head the sling he had in his pocket. Sam dodges an egg-sized rock that hits Bill in the head with a heavy thud. Bill’s body goes loose and he falls in the fire across a frying pan of hot water that was to be used for washing dishes. Sam drags Bill out and pours cold water on his head for half an hour. Eventually Bill sits up and feels behind his ear. He tells Sam his favorite Biblical character is King Herod. He then implores Sam to not leave him alone with the boy.
Sam goes and catches the boy, shaking him “until his freckles rattled.” Sam threatens to take the boy home right away if he doesn’t behave. Sullenly, the boy says he was only playing and didn’t mean to hurt Old Hank. He says he’ll behave if he doesn’t send him home and if he lets him play the Black Scout.
Sam says that he doesn’t know the game and it is for Bill to decide. Sam says he is going away on business for the day. He then makes the boy shake hands with Bill. Sam takes Bill aside and tells him he is going to Poplar Cove, a village three miles from the cave, to find out what people are saying about the kidnapping in Summit. He says he will also send a ransom letter to Dorset that sets out their demands and how to pay.
Bill says he has stood by Sam through earthquakes, fires, poker games, police raids, train robberies, and cyclones. In that time, Bill never lost his nerve or batted an eyelash, but now the kid has rattle his nerves. He asks Sam to not leave him there long. Sam promises he will be back in the afternoon. Together they write the letter to Dorset while the boy struts back and forth in front of the cave, guarding it. Bill tearfully begs Sam to set the ransom at fifteen hundred instead of two thousand dollars, saying that no matter how pure parental affection may be, he doesn’t believe a rational human would pay two thousand to get a terror like the boy back. Bill offers to cover the difference himself.
Sam accepts Bill’s request. In the letter, Sam tells Dorset it is useless for him or the most skillful detectives to attempt to find the boy. They outline where to put the $1,500, demanding the money be left in a small box near some trees on the road to Poplar Cove. Sam warns that if Dorset fails to comply he will never see the boy again. He signs the letter “Two Desperate Men.”
As Sam is leaving, the boy pleads with Sam to let him play the Black Scout, saying he is tired of playing "Indian." The boy explains that the game involves riding to the stockade to warn the settlers that the Indians are coming. Sam says it sounds harmless and that he guesses Bill will help the boy “foil the pesky savages.”
Bill eyes the boy with suspicion and asks what he does in the game. In the role of the Black Scout, the boy imitates an African-American accent as he tells Bill to be the “hoss,” instructing Bill to get down on his hands and knees to become the horse the boy needs to ride to the stockade. Sam tells Bill to keep the boy interested until they get the scheme going, adding that Bill needs to loosen up. Bill gets down on all fours and has a look in his eye like the look a rabbit gets when caught in a trap. The boy says it is ninety miles to the stockade and jumps on Bill’s back, digging his heels into Bill’s sides. Bill implores Sam to hurry back as soon as he can. Bill says he wishes they hadn’t made the ransom more than a thousand. Bill warns the boy to stop kicking him.
Analysis
The motif of Johnny’s overly violent, trauma-inducing style of playing arises again when Sam returns to the cave to discover Bill and the boy in the midst of a tussle. In the tone of a child telling on a playmate to his parent, Bill defends his having boxed Johnny’s ears (i.e. hitting him on the side of the head) by explaining how Johnny put a hot potato down the back of his shirt and then kicked him, ensuring the steaming-hot insides of the potato would burn Bill’s skin.
The violence continues as Johnny retaliates against Bill by slinging a rock at Bill’s head. After Sam helps Bill recover, Bill makes an allusion to King Herod, saying Herod is his favorite Biblical character. In this allusion, King Herod symbolizes Bill’s anger toward Johnny, as Herod is infamous for the Massacre of the Innocents, which involved killing all males under two years old in Bethlehem.
Having been injured by Johnny multiple times, Bill pleads with Sam to not leave him alone with the boy. The ironic instance of a grown man complaining about being mistreated by a child he has abducted speaks to the story's comic sensibility while simultaneously building on the theme of poetic justice—a fitting retribution for one’s crime. Furthering the situational irony, it is the threat of being sent home that prompts Johnny to promise Sam that he will behave. Extending the comedy of the scene even further, Henry shows Sam having to assume an almost parental role as he intervenes in the disagreement and forces Bill and the boy to get over their differences by shaking hands and making up.
After establishing peace between Bill and Johnny, Sam proceeds with his ill-fated kidnapping plan, writing a ransom note to send to Ebenezer Dorset. While crafting the letter together, Bill convinces Sam to lower the ransom demand to $1,500, as he believes no one in their right mind would pay two thousand dollars to get back a boy like Johnny. The men identify themselves in the letter as “Two Desperate Men,” a sign-off that has an ironic double meaning. While the men intend to imply that they are desperate for money (and thus a credible threat), by the end of the story it will become clear that they are more desperate to get Johnny off their hands—something Dorset will not only understand but exploit.
Before Sam leaves to post the ransom letter, Johnny begins a new game of make-believe that appears as though it will lead to Bill being treated with less violence. In contrast to the antagonism inherent to Johnny’s first game, The Black Scout involves Johnny and Bill working together against an imagined Native American enemy. However, the game requires that Bill pretend to be Johnny’s horse, meaning Bill has to get on his hands and knees while Johnny sits on his back and kicks at his sides. With the return of the motif of Johnny playing too violently, Henry introduces yet another instance in which Bill is unwittingly punished by the child he abducted. One of the last things Sam hears before he leaves for Poplar Cove is Bill warning Johnny to stop kicking him—a line that foreshadows Bill losing patience with the boy.
