The Brilliantly Rainbowed Adventure

        We trailed Frogstick into a large, fertile plain that was spotted with scattered clumps of palmettos and occasional clusters of grazing cattle. The sun was rising above the trees that bordered the huge prairie when we finally struck onto an unusual set of tracks. Two thin tire ruts converged with the massive podprints of Frogstick, and at this point the footprints of the Human Drum Machine vanished altogether. The skinny tire ruts ran eastward into a dense hardwood forest that stood ominously looming around upon the face of the earth in the distance. We all gazed towards the east and contemplated the possible meanings of this new developement.
        "Well, I reckon he hitched a ride," said Stink.
        "That's obvious," said Billy, "but with whom?"
        "With whom?" blabbed Slug, "What's a whom?"
        "It was aliens. They've taken Frogstick," whispered Stink. "Hooter saw them playing chess and made fun of them, and now they're getting revenge because he talked about them in his sleep last night." This was a surprise to me. I didn't know that I talked in my sleep.
        "It's not aliens," said Egghead, "give me a break."
        "Uh huh, it is too," cried Stinky, "ask Hooter." They all looked at me, I smiled cheesily, embarassed as all get-out.
        "Shucks, fellows," I erupted, "it was just a wierd dream that I had a couple of nights ago when that grappling hook knocked me out on the lake." I grinned like a gopher turtle reaching for a leaf. "Besides," I squirted, "my head is spinning like a top, and I have an unexplained thirst for a Fizzies with a dash of mango."
        They all looked at me as if they questioned my insanity, which I had thought was already beyond reproach. It sure was easy to pull their legs off!
        "Hoot is in his creative mode," observed Billy, "don't expect to get an straight answer from him now." Taking his cue, Egghead began to deliver his own succinct analysis of the situation.
        "Please allow me to interject my observations. Billy would like to know who has taken away our chum. The answer would seem to be indiscernible at the present time. I have developed a theory, however," he added, "that might shed some light upon this complex and rather thorny subject." As quick as a wet pig, old Egghead whipped out a notebook in which he had written a whole bunch of strange-looking ciphers.
        "Oh, no," moaned Billy, and he sat right down there on the grass.
        "A careful reconstruction and logical analysis of our prior adventures runs as follows," Egghead declared, whipping out a chart that he hung on a scraggly palmetto.
        The chart swayed in the breeze as he pointed to different formulas upon it while he spoke, expressing the entirety of the last few days in a self-contained, mind-bendingly complex mathematical equation. Somewhere around the instantiation of variable ratios comparing tomfoolery to sincerity I dozed off; I'm not proud of it, but I did anyway; I never could abide old Egg-Noggin's lectures, especially when he gets technical, and this here lecture was about as technical as they get.
        Old Egg-Phooey Youngman must have come nigh unto bursting his brain at the seams as he extrapolated all kinds of conclusions and such. But to be honest, I can't quite remember what they were, seeing as how I sort of drifted off there for a spell. When I awoke he was summing it all up. I gazed around and noticed that all of the boys were sprawled out on the green grass. Every single one of those unrefined rapscallions had been soundly bored to sleep.
        "So, you see," continued Egghead, "if my Fantastic Fiction Theory is correct, we can expect the author of our work to throw another curveball at us soon." He looked at his watch and raised his hand. "In fact, I would say that it will commence right...," he gazed at me, then looked back at his watch, "...NOW!" He dropped his hand dramatically.
        "Hello there!" Someone in the distance uttered a cry that echoed across the grassy plain. We looked in the direction of the sound. Far away, to the north, a miniature figure on horseback waved at us, and then began to gallop our way. As the boys began to stir and rub their eyes, Egghead tossed me one of those basic 'I told you so' looks, which I nonchalantly fielded without a glove.
        I may have acted mighty casual, but inside my innards were churning like the lye in Granny's washtub. That Egghead had pegged this new developement right down to the very second! Maybe there was something to his scatter-brained theory, after all.
        The boys commenced to rousting themselves from their hard-earned slumber, standing up and stretching their ungainly frames as they yawned and rubbed their eyes and did such-like things.
        "Lookee there," blated the old Stink-pot, pointing at the far-away figure of the approaching horseman. All the boys focused in on this eyefull of info.
        "Well, flip my flapjacks," bleated Slug.
        "A most scintillating confirmation of my theory," opined Egghead.
        "O, bittersweet deliverance from such a dull and hoary hornful of predictably quantified relationships!" quoth Billy.
        "That horse looks like the old Duke hisself, come to our rescue," blopped Stinker.
        "No fair, you had your turn," cried Slug. "It was my turn to say something stupid."
        "Hip hoofling comes riding into the chaparral-filled arroyos of my desert mind, bearing news or words signifying some thing or multiple things; a heavy, rambling groove cut into the waxing record of this spinning adventure, needling no one needlessly in the groves of this country happening, blowing out the speakers of my brain," rapped Zeb.
        "Well, I'll be hornswoggled," I stated. I was running out of good lines, and it was the best I could muster.
        "That's not even original," said Slug, "and so provincial."
        "Well, okay then," I stammered, refusing to admit that I had run out of clever repartee and was truly operating without a clue. "I'll be hornswoggled....IN A FOREIGN LANGUAGE!"
        Well sir, I must have said something funny there, because Egghead and Billy just about had a conniption fit laughing, slapping their and hee-hawing laughing like a couple of hyenas. The horseman was drawing closer to us, and we could now make him out. He was none other that old Sneb Snifton, a former schoolmate who was now a cowpuncher at the Whopping Big C, Florida's largest remaining cattle ranch. The Whopping Big C bordered the entire northeastern corner of the Nowhere County Wilderness Area, and was almost as big as the wilderness area itself.
        Old Sneb flopped and flounced in the slapping saddle as he galloped his horse on up to us. The horse snorted loudly as Sneb reined him to a halt in front of us.
        "Whoa," he called in a low voice, patting him on the neck.
        "Howdy, boys," he said, tipping his hat." Bosco told me that you might be a-headin' my way."
        "Good to see you, Sneb," I snorted, "how's Snelda and the little Sniftons?"
        "Oh, they're doin' jest fine," he said, "if I can keep 'em from a-doggin' that old potbellied shoat of ours. Snelda keeps a pig for a pet, and my boys have been a-givin' that old porker the dickens, that's fer sure," he told me. "My youngest, he rides him like a horse, and the rest of 'em jest join right in like a bunch of wild Injuns, that's all. No offense, Billy," he said to The Beard.
        "None acknowledged," replied Billy, "but I must add that you smell like a typical dirty pale-face, and that your horse is a an ill-bred, sway-backed jade." Sneb grinned.
        "Sure glad to see that there ain't no offense taken," he whined, and then he started to roll his eyes and hum, which he did for about thirty seconds. This was not exactly normal, but neither were we, so we couldn't say much about it.
        When he came to himself, Sneb fired away with a high-powered jet-stream of tobacco juice that barely even made an arc as it raced in a bee-line to its dead-log target and plastered it solid like a heat-seeking missile. I have to admit it, if anybody has ever elevated the spitting of tobacco juice to an art form, I reckon that that fellow is Mr. Sneb Snifton.
        "Sneb, you know Zeb Hendrix, don't you?" I asked him. Old Sneb's face rung up an expression of startled delight.
        "I do declare," he said, "Zeb Hendrix! I've got all of yer albums." He turned sideways and fired a long shot of tobacco juice to punctuate his remark, an impressive effort that beheaded a mushroom growing out of the green pastureland a good thirty feet to his left.
        "Zeb, Sneb," I says, "Sneb, Zeb." I know that my humor was low-brow, but I just couldn't resist. "You know Billy," I added, "seeing as how he almost married your sister." Billy had dodged a real bullet with that one.
        "Well, I'm honored again with a double scoop of real big honor," says Sneb, "as if I didn't know it!" Sneb dismounted now and shook hands all around with us world-famous Hootenannies as well as our talented and renowned companions.
        Sneb had known us Hootenannies and Billy ever since we had all attended the Greater Gutchinville Grammar School, which was in Snifton City next to the Dairy Queen on Main Street. Because we were old pals, us famous celebrities were allowed to act normal around Sneb. It was quite a chore, but we gave it a manly effort.
        "Well now," tooted Sneb, "since you boys have made it big, and have rubbed elbows and hobnobbed with your basic foreign Kings and Jacks and Coronets, and such like, you might turn up your lips at what piddlin' hospitality I can offer you, but us boys at the Whopping Big C would be plumb tickled if'n you'd join us for a bar-be-que.
        "Well, there's just one problem," I said, "we've been tracking Frogstick for a long time, and we're worried about the boy."
        "Oh, don't worry," said Sneb, "He's with the Old Coot." Me and the boys swapped eyeballs and looked around at our own selves, eyeing our various eyeballs as we eyed each other. "He's a strange old feller, but harmless," offered Sneb. I looked around at my little band of Gypsies.
        "How about it fellows," I asked, "do you want to go and eat succulent bar-be-que at the wildest and wooliest cattle ranch in the state of Florida, or do you want to track down the Froggy Stick-Swinger and the Old Coot?"
        "Bar-b-que!" rang out the reply; "bar-b-que, bar-b-que," they began to chant. Poor old Frogstick never had a chance. I kind of pitied the old boy at the time, but if I had known what kind of kingly existance he had temporarily fallen into, I would have known better than to throw my sympathy in his direction.
        For now I heeded my boon companions, and we all struck out for the sprawling, brawling, rollicking hillbilly heart of the Whopping Big C, the most fabled spread on this side of the Mississippi. A veritable Paleolithic feast awaited us to the due northeast, and our lanky guide led the way to the greener grazing-grounds of the chuck wagon at the end of the trail.
        Ahead we forged, braving the miasmatic plasma of the great unknown, unaware of the dangerous encounters that lurked in the bushes of the forest waiting to mug us. More importantly, we were unaware of one particular encounter that would shake us like no other.
        Soon we would meet the Wonder of the Wilderness, soon the Bachelor's Balrogs, the Wanderer's Wights. Soon we would meet...........The Furies.