slim woke up. he had been dreaming, but he never remembered his dreams.
he turned on the little lamp beside the bed in the motel room and looked at his watch, which he had left beside the lamp.
it was only eleven thirty! he had hardly slept at all. he put the watch back down and reached for the lamp to turn it back off when there was a knock on the door.
slim thought it sounded like a woman’s knock. probably the not so young young wife of the desk clerk again. slim was tempted to turn the light off and ignore but he realized she had probably seen the light - weak as it was - under the door.
sure enough, there was the knock again, a little louder.
“all right, i am coming,” slim called. he had fallen asleep on top of the bed, fully clothed except for his shoes, as he usually did if there was any chance he would have to get up and move quickly,
he quickly slipped his shoes on and tied them and straightened and tightened his tie and got up and opened the door.
it was the desk clerk’s wife. she had a mean little smirk on her face and she was holding something by her side. slim quickly saw that it was not a gun or a knife.
it was a book. she offered it to slim. “the general wanted you to have this.”
it was a gideon bible. slim hesitated. he decided it was no use to keep pretending he did not know anything about the general. “is he here now? why doesn’t he give me this himself?”
“just take it, sweetheart. why does the general do anything?”
slim took the bible from her hand. “there is a note inside,” she told him. “read it.”
there was a small slip of paper inside the front cover. slim recognized the general’s enormous handwriting - or an imitation of it by someone who knew how he wrote.
“my dear legrand,” it read, “please bring the bearer to our meeting tomorrow. signed - “o”.
“you got that?” the wife asked.
“yeah, i got it,” slim answered. always so complicated, he thought, but i should be used to it by now.
“then i’ll see you in the morning. what time were you planning on leaving?”
“about eight o’clock. how dies that sound?
“eight o’clock it is, then. i will be out front. my name is thelma, by the way.” and she was gone, again.
slim went back to the bed. he put the bible down beside the lamp and turned the lamp off and tried to get back to sleep again.
then they came into the camp and lodged in the camp.
and joshua rose early in the morning…
jericho didn’t look like much, slim thought, as he rode up to it with joshua, jesse james, and stonewall jackson.
just a crumby looking brick wall. he could see the tops of some houses behind the wall, but they did not look like much.
the general was in his jeep behind them. goliath was driving it, and little david and the queen of sheba were in the back with a big picnic basket.
the basket was tied with a big green bow.
the sun came up over the walls of jericho.
“what do we do now?” slim asked. he didn’t like being on a horse. he had never liked horses, which was one reason he had run away from his old pappy’s farm and taken up a life of skullduggery in the city.
“just wait,” jesse james told him. “something will happen.”
“something always does, “ stonewall jackson added.
the sun kept climbing in the sky.
there was a door in the wall and it opened. thelma came out, and the countess sophie de fitzgriffin.
stonewall jackson tipped his big general’s hat to them. “morning, ladies.”
“good morning yourself,” the countess answered. “what all is going on here?”
“we would like to invite you on a picnic,” joshua told her.
“what if we don’t want to go on no stinking picnic? “ thelma asked.
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