02 - Merciless Apaches!
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By Traverse
Monday, June 12th 2006 - 08:47:19 PM
Merciless Apaches!
This story happened many centuries ago, when Boy Scouts still wore knee socks with red garters, had to be eleven to join a troop, and when they turned fourteen got to wear the blue-green uniform of the Explorers.
Our troop met in an old quonset hut at the municipal maintenance area at the edge of town. Behind the building stretched miles of woods and streams and we often played nighttime games like Capture the Flag in those woods after the meeting was over.
Attendance was down on this particular night. There were only about eight or nine younger boys, four of the olders, and two adult leaders. After the meeting we decided to stay and play a game for a while. The adults left and we divided up. It was decided that it would be youngers against olders. The youngers,, in which group I fell, were all eleven and twelve. The olders were thirteen and fourteen. Jack was the Senior Patrol Leader and had just turned fourteen and had the brand new Explorer uniform to prove it!
We drew our boundaries, making the little creek that ran through the woods about three hundred yards behind the meeting building the boundary between our sides. The rules were simple: You could hide your flag anywhere you wanted; if you were caught in enemy territory you could be captured; if you were captured you had to stay at their base until you were tagged by one of your teammates; first team to capture the other team's flag won the game.
"We'll beat you squirts easy!" taunted one of the olders as we withdrew to our battle lines. They jeered at us as they moved off into the woods to cross the little creek and take over their territory.
We hid our flag in a really nice brushy section and posted a guard nearby. Then we had to come up with a strategy. We knew that some of the rules were regularly broken in our troop's version of C-the-F lately. For example, if you were captured you would probably be tied up. Nobody objected too much because this was fun. Boys will be boys, you know!
Also, lately the older boys had started teasing us that they weren't even going to bother looking for the flag anymore. They were just going to capture one of us and use what they called "Chinese tortures" to make him tell where the flag was. We pretended macho bravado but the threat somewhat daunted us. When you are twelve a fourteen year old seems a lot older and more menacing than he really is. The danger of being captured and subjected to mysterious torment was both strangely exciting and scary and so we decided that we would post guards all along our border area and try to win without exposing ourselves to capture.
I was with a group of three other boys and pretty soon we heard yelling and running off to our right in the dark where another small group of our guys were lying in wait for Olders to try to sneak into our territory.
"Gotcha! Gotcha!"
"Did not! You never even touched me! Ya! Ya! Ya!
And a lot more such yelling and commotion. But then we saw a shadowy figure figure crossing the creek below us. We crouched down among some bushes and waited. When the figure was within range we leapt out and grabbed him, using the weight of our bodies to throw him to the ground.
"Caught! Caught! Caught!" we yelled. We had ourselves a prisoner! We were elated. We let him sit up and saw that it was Jack. What a catch!
"Let's take him back to headquarters!" said Bill, another twelve-year-old who was also in my patrol, the Elks.
"Let's tie him up!" suggested Peter, eleven, who then proceeded to produce a length of knot-practice rope from his pocket. Jack was a good sport and put his hands behind him for the rope and Peter quickly tied them.
We marched Jack back to our headquarters, which was only a dozen or so yards from our hidden flag. We knew that we had to be careful about the border and sent Bill back to reinforce the others. That left three of us with Jack and five or six out in the dark watching for enemies. Since they only had three guys left we thought we had a good chance of winning. IF we could find their flag.
We made Jack sit down against a tree. The moon was up as so it was easy to see in the little clearing. Peter squatted down in front of Jack.
"Tell us where your flag is!" he said.
"No way!" laughed Jack. "You'll have to find it yourself!"
"Oh, no we won't!" said Peter, "If you don't tell us where it is, we'll MAKE you tell!"
"Oh, yeah!" said Jack. "How you gonna do that, squirt?" he laughed. Peter got very close to Jack and almost whispered.
"We'll torture you until you talk! That's how!"
"Yeah, right!" said Jack, clearly not worried.
"Don't laugh!" said Peter. "I have a book about Apache tortures! I know lots of ways to make you talk!"
Peter was a big reader. A very bright and imaginative boy. I had no doubt he had such a book. But this seemed pretty daring to me, and to the other boy, Dale, as well. After all, we had captured the Senior Patrol Leader and tied him up, and now Peter was threatening him with Indian torture. But I also thought it was pretty neat: they had been teasing us about what they would do to us if they captured us and now we had one of THEM! Great. I decided right then to let Peter take this wherever he wanted to, and worry about the consequences later. Off in the distance we could hear an occasional shout, but the night was mostly quiet. I could hear cicadas making their whirring, wind-up-toy noises all around us.
"You gonna talk?" asked Peter.
"Never!" said Jack.
"OK, then!" Peter got up and stood with his hands on his hips in front of the seated Jack. "C'mon you guys, help me get his uniform off!"
Huh? Get his uniform off? Whoa.
"What for?" asked Dale.
"Because that's how you do it!" explained Peter, as if talking to a three-year-old. "The Indians always stripped their captives when they were gonna torture 'em," he added. It sounded reasonable.
We started with his shirt.
"C'mon, you guys! Be careful! This is my new uniform!" Jack complained as we worked away at the stiff buttons.
"Wait!" said Peter. He turned to Jack. "Your uniform won't get ripped if you take it off yourself! We'll untie you and you can take it off and then you have to promise that you will let us tie you up again. Will you promise? Scout's honor?"
"And what if I don't?" Jack sneered.
Peter produced his scout knife and held it up. "Then we will do it the Indian way and cut your clothes off!" he announced. Baloney, I thought. But it sounded good. I'm sure Jack thought it was bull, too, but he agreed, and did the Scout's honor sign. We untied him and let him up. He slipped off his shirt, his tee shirt, his shoes and socks, and then dropped his slightly smudged dark blue-green shorts. He stood there in the clearing in his white jockey shorts. This was daring stuff!
Jack could have ran away at that point, but he didn't. Scout's honor meant something in those days. Maybe it still does, I don't know.
Now we had to decide how we were going to tie him up, for the second time. Dale suggested that we stake him out on the ground on an anthill, but we didn't have an anthill handy, so we settled for Peter's idea of making him kneel down with his back against a small tree. We made him move until his knees were next to the tree and then tied his ankles fairly close together behind the tree. Next we had him raise his arms over his head and then bent them back so that we could tie his hands together behind the tree trunk. Peter also ran some rope around his hips so he was held tightly to the little tree.
I have often thought about this night and about how at the time I wondered why Jack had allowed us to do this to him. Scout's honor notwithstanding, he could have easily escaped. Instead, he allowed us to tie him to the tree, in nothing but his briefs. I would learn more about this later, but at the moment it seemed a thrilling mystery.
Peter took over.
"Tell us where the flag is!" he demanded.
"No," said Jack. "You twirps are outta luck!"
"You are the one out of luck, prisoner!" crowed Peter. "Our tortures are hideous and you will beg for death before this night is over! Unless you talk." Peter was always pretty good with words and I thought he was doing a great job. Just like the Bad Guy in the movies.
"Ha!" Jack responded.
And then Peter dropped to his knees next to Jack. "Let the tortures begin!" he announced. And so they did.
I was keen to learn all about Apache torture. From what Peter did to Jack it seemed the Apaches used to torture their prisoners by tickling them. Peter dug his fingers into Jack's armpits.
"No! Don't! Eyow! Not fair! Please! Not THAT! HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!"
Jack was almost gyrating he was trying so desperately to escape Peter's tormenting fingers. After a bit Peter stopped.
"Are you ready to talk now, white man?" he asked.
"N-n-n-no!" said Jack, wheezing and breathless. "But just please don't tick..."
Peter started again. Ribs this time, as well as the armpits. Jack was seriously ticklish.
"AAAAAHHHHHHHHGGGGGGG!!!! No! P-p-please! Nnnnnnnnngggg! HAHAHAHA! P-p-please STOPPPPPPPPP!" Jack was going crazy. It was an awesome sight, I can tell you.
"C'mon, guys, work on his feet! Help me out here!" said Peter.
I could go on with a lot of HAHAHAHAHA's and Please, no's, but you probably get the idea. Ribs, feet, belly - the works. Poor Jack. Peter was ruthless and we followed his lead. Every few seconds Peter would ask him if he was ready to talk and Jack would shake his head. For a while, anyway. Finally the moment came.
"Are you gonna talk?"
"Yes! Yes! I'll talk! I'll tell you! Just, please, no more tickling!"
"It's not tickling, white man!" said Peter. "It's torture!"
"OK, OK - torture! Just please no more torture! I'll tell!"
And he did. We untied him and made him promise to stay at headquarters until one of his team tagged him - the "old rules"! In return we agreed not to tell anyone else what had happened to him.
The three of us worked our way down to the creek and found our bunch spread out along it. The other side was deathly quiet. We decided that the best way was for all of us to charge across the creek at the same time. There were only three of them, after all. They couldn't stop us all. We knew where the flag was now. It was an easy win. We were very proud.
The Olders were not happy to be beaten by squirts, but they were pretty good sports about it. They asked how we knew exactly where their well-hidden flag was, but we didn't tell them.
Those were good times.
Traverse
traverse67@hotmail.com
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Traverse's stories
- 01 - Scouting Tales (m+/m)
- 02 - Merciless Apaches! (mmm/m)
Index of all stories in the "Archive for Everyone" section