The Brilliantly Rainbowed Adventure

        It was high noon. The air was still crisp and cool, the sky almost painfully blue. It contrasted vividly with the rich green landscape, giving us a beautiful picture that we could have enjoyed if we weren't sweating rubber bullets smack-dab in the middle of it all. We were getting a little nervous; beginning to feel the onset of sharp nervous twinges caused by the presence of a nameless, unreasonable dread.
        The sun warmed us as we walked on our way, drawing nearer to the fringes of the Grizzly Dismal Rotting Swamp. We could see the infamous swamp looming portentously in the distance. Its dreary border of giant cypress trees formed a somber smudge across the span of the horizon like a ghoulish Van Gogh that had been smeared by a vindictive squirrel.
        After a while, we climbed up onto the gradient to the old Nowhere County Railroad Line to make our hiking easier. Up ahead we could see where the rail line made a sharp turn to the right, skirting the drizzly, steaming fens and peat bogs that surrounded the Grizzly Dismal. The bogs had been entombed in local legend as the deadly dwelling-places of various strange and supposedly extinct lizards, snakes, scorpions, and boogers. It was said by some that even the vorpal Boggy Marsh-Monster lived in that horrible swamp.
        Fell creatures, freed from their fens by the fall of night, were said to crawl into the tents of those weary campers who carelessly pitched their camps too close to the swamp. The critters were said to slither into the very sleeping bags in which the campers slept, scaring the poor souls silly. These mutant vermin were characterized by fetid breath, bad manners, and an unwillingness to share the covers. They were feared and dreaded by all people of good sense everywhere. Of course, we were not the least bit afraid!
        As we approached the right turn in the rail line, the low-lying marshes came into sharper focus. A few tall, skinny pond birds waded here and there in the dark water, and to our left we could see a shallow lake. Our view around the bend was obscured by a compact bay head. As we stood and stared at this sorry spectacle a loud train-whistle sounded in the distance.
        "Well, knock me over with a feather!" I exclamulated. Billy looked at me quizzically, and then made some words with his mouth.
        "That must be the first train in these here parts in over thirty years," he glorped.
        "Thirty some-odd years, you mean," I palavered, "and that will make a great line for my book."
        "The pens of fools are pregnant with a universe of books," quoth Billy, "their unfledged foundlings bury the earth beneath tons of ill-used pulp. Away, I cannot bear it! Come, let us think of happier things."
        Suddenly the train whistle blew again. It was much louder.
        "That baby's running wide open," said Egghead.
        We rounded the bend and there, to our unadulterated astonishment, we saw Slug sleeping up ahead. He was out like a light, smack-dab in the center of a comfortable bed of clover that had grown incongruously between the rails of the unkempt track.
        The whistle blew. Our wandering eyes moved up to a black locomotive, coming straight at us with a full head of steam and bearing down on old Slug like a falcon diving for a pigeon.
        In a flash we ran, effortlessly sailing over the crossties, our bodies awash in a surge of powerful adrenalin. Our legs pumped; we sailed; our breath was a roar in our ears, drowning out the sound of the train. Billy and I outstripped the rest, widening the gap between us and them with every stride.
        Slug lay sprawled ahead of us with his arms and legs splayed casually across the iron rails. The train rushed nearer. I could see the steam boiling up from the whistle as it blew, but I couldn't hear it at all.
        Behind me I heard a crash as Billy tripped and fell hard, slamming his head against a railroad tie and tumbling across the granite gravel. I looked back over my shoulder.
        Billy was out like a light with his torso sprawled over a rail. Like lightning I looked at Slug, with his limbs on the rail, and then back at Billy, with his whole body across a rail.
        I tried to stop, skidding and floundering as I skated on the small granite stones in the rail bed. I fell and, thrusting myself to my feet, I hurtled back down the track toward Billy. He was beginning to rouse when I reached him.
        I looked back to Slug; the train was fifty feet from him and coming on strong. He yawned in his sleep and rolled onto his side, pulling his arms and legs off the rail. He was now in the depression in the middle of the track, and he was still sound asleep. The train roared over Slug's head, safely clearing his slumbering form as it relentlessly bore down upon us.
        "Uhh...ahhh...," Billy cried. His eyes rolled; he had been knocked senseless. I tried to drag him off the rail, but he fought me tooth and nail.
        "Billy!" I hollered. I wept and prayed. Sweat stung my eyes. He fought; I struggled. I felt the train behind us. With a gut-wrenching effort I flung him down in a another low spot between the rails and covered him with my body.
        Suddenly the train blasted by overhead, shaking the earth and the air around us. Billy fought me like a maniac as I jammed my hands and feet against the crossties and hung on for dear life.
        The train passed over us for an eternity, rattling our teeth with its thunderous might. And then, like bad dream caused by too much pizza, it was gone. The engineer blew the horn as it rounded the bend and then proceeded to rumble on off into the distance. I shakily rolled over as Egghead came running up.
        "What happened?" he asked frantically. Billy shook his head.
        "What happened?" Billy asked.
        "I saved your life, O Native Beard," I gasped. My body was suddenly drenched with cold, clammy sweat and I shook like a leaf in a hurricane. He gazed at me wonderingly.
        "What happened?" called a familiar lowing bleat. It was Slug, who was now sitting up on his downy clover mattress.
        "Go back to sleep," I told him, "I'll wake you up if anything important happens."
        "OK," he said, and he laid back down. In seconds he was asleep again. Grabbing a large and rather convenient stick, I started after him, but Billy stopped me.
        "Why ruin a good stick?" he asked. Seeing his point, I decided to merely give our unwittingly unwitted companion a tremendous hotfoot. He still brags about that hotfoot to this day. Later on, as he soaked his scorched pontoon in a nearby pond, we told him about his narrow escape.
        "I had a dream that I had fallen into my bass speaker," he told us, "I didn't want to wake up." When my ears heard this statement I was suddenly ashamed of what I had done. I realized at that moment that Slug would be forced to live with himself for an entire lifetime. In his case, I had only been adding insult to entropy. "By the way," Slug asked us, "have you guys seen Stink?"
        "Oh, no!" we shouted.
        "Stink's stuck in the quicksand," cried Egghead, "you don't smoke, do you?"
        "Egghead, you know I don't," Slug replied. Egghead's shoulders slumped.
        "Let's split," I said, "time's a-wastin'." We left the railroad tracks and began to descend towards the Grizzly Dismal, picking our way through the grim, stinking marshes, following Billy as he carefully found safe passage between the bubbling sinks and treacherous traps of deadly quicksand. As we walked we called for Stink.
        "Stink!" I yelled.
        "Stink!" Billy yelped.
        "Stink!" Egghead yodeled.
        "Steak!" Sluggy yapped.
        "Not steak, you pinheaded poltroon!" moaned Billy, "STINK!"
        "Oh......," Sluggish blobbered. "Oh, Stink!" he called, "Stink!"
        Far away, barely within earshot (if, indeed, he had been able to hear us), Stink lay mired in the muck. His ordeal had been long and arduous, and it wasn't over yet. Stink was completely buried in quicksand.
        Stink's corncob pipe, which he usually carried around to chew on, was serving as a life-support system. Its bowl quivered and twitched above the foul waters of the fetid, reeking fen that held him fast in its deadly grip.
        His every breath was drawn through the stem of that pipe. He needed major assistance in a hurry, and we were the only Hicks who were close enough to help.
        That boy was in a heap of trouble.