The night before his thirteenth birthday, Billy Christmas runs away from home in stodgy St. Louis and rides off to the Wild West, where he becomes Scrib, letter writer for lovelorn cowboys and wild-eyed outlaws.

Here is Scrib's own story, told in bubbling prose and babbling epistles, an ambling tale set in 1863, as Scrib travels his rounds on his horse Gabe, befriending all and running into deadly danger along the way.

This is probably the funniest, most outrageous cowboy story you will ever read. With the cleverness of Mark Twain at his best, the hilarity of a Mel Brooks movie, and the fast-moving speed of a train wreck, this is the Old West as it may not have been -- but should have!

Scrib

HarperCollins Publishers

Chapter One

Middle of a morning, I rode down out the pines and come into the scrub. At the place on the grade where the pines left off and the scrub took over, I stopped and loosed the reins so Gabe could get at some of the last sweet grass along the crick. Then I sat a while and looked over the country I was coming into and pondered it somewhat troubledly. It was the old scrub down there all right. I could see some fine country far beyond it, very small and green, and to the north I could feel the great Canyon even though I couldn't see it -- same way I always knew the War betwixt Unions and Confederates was going on somewhere though I had not been to it. Ever minute or two Gabe kept looking back up towards the ridge and stamping his left forehoof, and I would stroke his neck to try and calm him. Problem was, I didn't feel any too calm myself.

Somebody was following me. I knew so because I had read my pursuer's fearful message.

Afternoon before, I had found a fine camp up among the pinion pines and junipers just down from the ridge. I have always liked to be among pines, for the resiny smell and the soft gold blanket of needles they throw on the ground and for the homey feeling you get when the light shines through the spaces betwixt them. In the spot that I found, a spring bubbled up out of nowhere and run away down the hill in a crick. It was fringed by mallow and horsetail, and that crick had the sweetest water I ever tasted. After I had et, I scrubbed my tins clean with horsetail, which is a trick I learnt from my Paiute customer, Pierre.

So I was feeling pretty carefree reposing there, whistling and tossing bits of wood on the fire, counting the stars as they popped out like zeroes on the end of some long number. Then I heard Gabe snuffle amongst the trees where I had tied him and I stopped whistling, fast. When I saw Gabe dance around so he could look up into the dark of the ridge and he posed the tip of that left forehoof on the ground like a pointer dog, I slid up to my feet and eased my knife out of its sheath.

"What do you see up there, Gabe?" I whispered.

Gabe couldn't see any more than me in that darkness, but he could smell something, or sense it. That's why his ears was laid back and his nostrils was big and his hoof was posed. That left forehoof was always a telltale, and it didn't look like Gabe had smellt bear or bobcat. He had sensed something very bad up there, which could only mean Man.

My rifle was a long jump away, but a boy of sixteen with a rusty squirrel rifle wasn't going to be much good in a real fight -- specially if that rifle wasn't loaded and the boy had swore to his mother never to fire a weapon at another human being. I tossed a few more chunks on the fire and banged my tins to scat the thing away, but nothing scatted up there that I heard.

"Hello!" I called out, but my voice didn't come out too loud so I tried again. "Hello, there! If you're after food," I called, "I still got some salt pork, and you're welcome to it!"

All I heard was the tree toads and the fire crackle and the rustle of the stream. I had just convinced my self it was nothing but a ringtail cat when I heard the sound.

Tching. Like a boot spur ringing on a rock somewheres up there. And just a hair too quickly muted.

A breeze come up and fanned the flames, but the greater brightness around me only made the dark look darker. Anybody up there could have seen me edging towards that rifle, still keeping my knife at the ready. Not that I would have known what to do with the knife. I wasn't a rough-in-tumble kid, and I only weight a hunderd twenty with my hair unbarbered.

"If you want anything," I called, "I ain't got it! I ain't got nothin' a-tall! I'm just a poverished boy!"

A rancher had been robbed and brutely clubbed to death two weeks before, and Wanted posters was up all over the landscape with the face of Crazy James Kincaid offering $5000.00 reward. I hoped I wasn't about to find the Kincaid Gang without planning to. And the "Crazy" on "Crazy James Kincaid" had not been added for decoration. People said Kincaid had once shot a man for telling a joke he did not find funny ...

Excerpted from Scribby Ives, David Excerpted by permission.
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