THE RANSOM OF RED CHIEF[1]
I am going to tell you a story about how we tried to kidnap a child.
Bill and I were in a small town in the state of Alabama when the idea of kidnapping came to us. We needed money. Kidnapping seemed to us the best way to get a lot of money. It did not take us long to select a child for kidnapping. We selected the only child of a rich man named Ebenezer Dorset.
The kid was a boy of ten, with a face full of freckles. His hair was red, in fact it was bright red. We hoped that Ebenezer would be glad to give us a ransom of two thousand dollars for his son. But wait till I tell you the story.
About two miles from the town there was a little mountain covered with a thick wood. There was a cave in the mountain. We kept our food and things in the cave.
One evening we drove in a buggy past Ebenezer`s house. The kid was in the street. He was throwing stones at a cat.
