Text Leveling System

The Good, The Bad, and the Goofy

RDQ:	1512	Max Word/Sent	43	Total Words	3435		Diff Words	990
Lex	830	Ave Word/.Sent	7	Hi Freq occurs	2410	70.2%	Hi freq	404	40.8%
AR	4.3	Long Sentences	4	Low Freq occurs	173	5%	Low freq	129	13%

0NE
High noon.
A hot, dry wind blows across the prairie. "Where the heck are we?" asks Cooky. "Cheyenne country," says Cowboy Bob.
An arrow whizzes out of nowhere and sticks in the side of the chuck wagon. Cowboy Bob calmly pulls it out and looks at it.
"Yep. Cheyenne. I'll bet Sitting Bull and his braves are looking to rustle our cattle off the old Chillum Trail."
Cowboy Bob squints up at the ridge. Two hundred Indians on horseback stand ready to attack.
A flash of. lightning. A clap of thunder.
Two thousand longhorn cattle start to moo and mill around behind Cowboy Bob.
Cooky blinks nervously. "What are we going to do, Bob?"]]
Cowboy Bob tugs on his white ten-gallon hat. "Circle up the wagons and get lunch started, Cooky." He eases his two six-shooters out of his holster. "I'll stop these Indians. Then I'll hold off the stampede. By the time the cavalry comes to save the day, I'll be ready for grub."
Will the cavalry make it in time, Bob?" Cooky freezes. The background' music swells. The scene fades to black.
AND WE'LL BE RIGHT BACK WITH OUR "SATURDAY NIGHT AT THE MOVIES" FEATURE, COWBOY BOB TO THE RESCUE,
AFTER THESE IMPORTANT MESSAGES.
Fed grabbed the remote and turned the sound down. "Yes! Cowboy Bob is going to stop Sitting Bull and his Cheyennes from stampeding his cattle off the old Chillum Trail. Can you believe it?"
"No," said Sam, eating the last of the potato chips. "Because they've got it all wrong. Number one, Sitting Bull was not a Cheyenne. He was the leader of a Sioux tribe. Number two, the trail from San Antonio to Abilene was called the]]
Chisholm Trail. And number three, Cowboy Bob is just a bad character actor reinforcing mindless stereotypes."
Fred shook two cans of soda, looking for a full one. "Well, excuse me, Mr. Information. Thanks for spoiling the movie." Fred found a' half-full can and emptied it. "I .wonder what it was really like  back then instead of boring old now."
"Thanks so much for inviting yourself over far the night and then calling my house boring," I said.]]
Fred gobbled a handful of popcorn.
"I didn't mean your house is boring, Joe. It's great. But summer vacation is getting boring. Wouldn't it be great to be real cowboys for just a little' while?"
I thought about galloping across the prairie, firing off six-shooters, roping cattle, and sleeping under the stars. I pulled out a small blue book with stars and moons and twisting silver designs.
"Well, I have been reading a little more of The Book. And I think I found a spell we could use to get us out of any trouble. It's called the Industrial Strength Time Freezer Spell and-"
Sam jumped to his feet. "Oh, no you don't. If you two guys are going to go get stuck full of arrows and stampeded by cattle,  you can leave me out of it."
Fred grabbed another handful of popcorn. "Oh, come on, you chicken. We've handled giants, dragons, wizards, and pirates. What could be so bad about being cowboys?"
I held The Book in my lap.
Sam adjusted his glasses ;like he always does when he gets excited. "Don't touch that book, Joe. Every time you do we get in trouble. Just]]
because your uncle is a magician doesn't mean we have to be."
"You think I don't know magic?"- I said. "Let me show you the Power Broomstick Trick. I'll hold this broomstick and bet that both you and Joe together can't push me from this spot."
"No way. I'm not trying any tricks or saying , anything until you put that book away."
"But what if we could wish for something safe like being cowboys for just twenty-four hours," said Fred.
"No. That wouldn't work," I said, leaning on the broomstick. "What you have to do is-" "Wait! Stop! Shut up!" said Sam. "Don't say another word. I know exactly what's going to happen. One of you two wizards is going to say something stupid like
Yippee Ki-Yi Yippee, Yippee Ki Yi Yo. Take us back to cowboys long, long ago.
"Then that stupid green time-traveling mist will start to swirl around and we'll be in big trouble again."
"That would probably work," I said.
Sam adjusted his glasses and stared at me.]]
"What did you say?"
A faint wisp of green mist began to curl out of The Book.
"I think that rhymed spell would probably work."
"Oh, no," said Sam.
The green mist swirled thicker and deeper. "Oh, yes," I said.
The mist rose over our shoes, the couch, the TV. "Yeee haw!" said Fred.]]
TWO
High noon.
A hot, dry wind blew across the prairie. "Where the heck are we?" asked Fred. "Nowhere," I said.
Fred, Sam, and I' looked at each other. We looked around as the last of the green mist dissolved at our feet. No cowboys. No horses. No six-shooters. No cavalry. Nothing but scrubby cactus, bits of grass, and dirt -as far - as we could see.
"What happened? What did I say?" asked Sam. "Your Yippee Ki Yi Yo' spell worked perfectly," I said.
"But that's crazy. I just made it up," said Sam. "How are we supposed to know how The Book works if it keeps changing how it works?"]]
Fred kicked at a cactus and sent up a cloud of dust.
"That's how it works," I said. "It always changes how it works."
"Oh, great," said Sam. "So how do we get home again?"
"That always stays the same. The only way to get back to our time is to find The Book in this time."
Sam looked around at the grass, the dirt, the]]
sun. "Oh, thank goodness. What a relief. I mean, it should be a snap to find The Book out here. You look under that cactus. I'll look under this one. And in about a hundred years we should be done!"
"Shhh," said Fred, holding up his hand. "Do you hear that?"
Sam and I listened.
"Yeah, I hear the vultures circling. They're fighting over who gets to be first to pick our bones," said Sam.
"Give me a break," said Fred. "You're the one who wished us here. There must be cowboys around here somewhere."
"Yeah, The Book has never been wrong before," I added.
"This is true," said Sam. "The Book has almost -gotten us killed with King' Arthur. The Book has almost gotten us buried with Blackbeard's treasure. But The Book has never been wrong." Sam looked up at the hot sun beating down on us again. "Remind me to thank your uncle Joe for giving you such a great birthday present ... if we ever crawl out of this desert alive."]]
"Shhhh. There it is again," said Fred. "Do you hear that rumbling?"
"Yeah, that was your stomach," said Sam. "You know, we could also die of starvation, or' exposure,' or sunburn, or hypothermia, or-" "I hear it," I said.
"Coming from over there.'" Fred pointed to a reddish brown cloud of dust on the other side of a small rise.
"Cowboys!" shouted Sam. "We're saved! Come on!"
We ran up the rise and looked over the top. A swarming sea of brown was kicking up the cloud of dust we had seen.
"That's a lot of cowboys," said Fred. "Those are cows," I said.
"Cattle," corrected Sam.
The sound of hooves and mooing grew louder. We could just see a few cowboys riding around the edges of the herd.
Fred waved his hat and yelled, "Over here YOU guys!" The noise grew louder. The running sea of horns and legs grew larger.]]
"I don't think you have to call them over," said Sam. "They seem to be headed right ... uh ... right toward us."
I felt the earth beginning to shake beneath us. "Maybe we should move a little over this way, guys." We started walking sideways. It didn't seem to make much difference. The herd kept stretching out in front of us. We walked the other way. Now we could see the cowboys on their horses trying to turn the herd.
"It's a whatchamacallit," said Fred.
I looked for someplace to hide. There was still nothing but cactus, grass, and dirt.
"It's a thingamabob," said Fred. "It's a ... a. . ."]]
"Stampede!" yelled Sam.]]
The wave of cattle thundered toward us. We could see their long sharp horns, hear their wild mooing.
"Run," yelled Fred.
"We'll never be able to outrun them," said Sam. "The herd's too big. Joe, what about that Frozen Time Spell?"
"The Industrial Strength Time Freezer?"
The cowboys whistled and yelled. The cattle mooed. The ground shook.
"Now or never," said Sam. I tried to concentrate.
"Hickory dickory dock. The mouse ran up the clock. Cattle stampede. Here's what we need. . ."
I stopped. The herd was only a hundred yards away, heading' straight for us.
"What?" yelled Fred. "What do we need?" "Something to rhyme with clock." "Block, rock, sock!" screamed Sam.
The thundering herd was fifty yards away. "Cattle stampede. Here's what we need. Time freeze when Sam waves his sock." Twenty-five yards and still running.]]
"Wave your sock," I yelled.
Sam 'threw off his shoe, whipped off his red sock, and started waving it as hard as he could. The cattle charged closer.
Sam waved his sock.
The cattle kept charging.
Sam waved. The cattle charged.
We closed our eyes and prepared to be run over by a real Texas longhorn stampede.]]
THREE
The ground shook. We froze.
A cloud of heat and noise and dust covered us. It roared past us like a runaway train. And then. . nothing. The rumbling stopped. I opened one eye, then the other. There was nothing to see but reddish brown dust swirling everywhere. I could hear a few cows mooing softly, and what sounded like water splashing.
"Are we in heaven?" asked Fred
"This must be the Time Freezer Mist," I said. Sam coughed. "No, you dimwits. The only thing frozen is your brains. We're obviously in the middle of a cloud of dust kicked up by a herd of cattle that somehow just missed trampling us to death."]]
"Maybe it was supposed to go Hickory Dickory dare ....... I said. "Or maybe Mickey Mouse had a house. . .' "
"Shhhhh," said Fred. "Not again," said Sam.
We heard a squeaking, banging, and jangling noise.
"It's coming this way," said Fred.
We stared into the thick, swirling dust.
The squeaking,and jangling grew louder and louder. A big ugly thing with a bunch of legs and five heads suddenly appeared.
"Whoa, you idjits! Whoa!" growled the thing. The dust settled a bit and we saw a wagon pulled by four mules. A funny-looking guy with
a scruffy white beard was the driver
and' the owner of the voice.]]
"Shoot howdy. What the heck you boys doing out in the middle of this god forsaken nowhere?" "We're, uh .' . . we're. " I remembered our last two adventures and the trouble we got into as time travelers. "We're . . looking for cowboys," I said.
The wagon driver spit a disgusting brown stream of tobacco juice. "durn good place you picked to look, pardners--smack in the middle' - of the Chisholm Trail." He laughed again. "Though next' time, iffen I was you, I'd stand back a mite. Them doggies get running in a awful hurry when they smell water." He pointed and spit again.
The whole herd of cattle stood drinking their fill at a river behind us.
Sam absentmindedly cleaned his glasses with his sock. "You wouldn't happen to have a thin blue book decorated with stars, moons, and cryptic inscriptions on its cover, would you?"
"A book, you say?" The driver scratched his beard. "I seen a book once. Last year in San Antone, I think it was."
"I didn't think so," said Sam.]]
"Could you introduce us to the trail boss?" I asked. "Maybe he could help us."
"Naw, he ain't much on reading, neither." "We don't need help reading. We want to be cowboys," said Fred.
The driver looked us over from his seat on the wagon. "You boys aren't in any kind of trouble, are you?"
"The truth is,' we live in New York about a hundred and twenty-five years in the future," said Sam. "And we 'were just looking for something to do on a dull Saturday night,, so we used - a magic book to come back to this time. But we didn't tell you that because we didn't think you' would believe it."
The driver spit and then burst out laughing. "You are one funny little dude. I cain't make out half of what you're saying. But you are one funny little Yankee."
"Cooky! Hey, Cooky!" A big man in full cowboy gear-hat, bandanna, chaps,' boots, and spurs-rode up at a gallop. He reined his horse to a stop two feet in front of us. "What he his this? A church social? Stop the jabbering and]]
get your cussed butt and chow wagon up ahead and set up for the night."
"I'm on the way, Bob. Just stopped by to see if these boys needed a hand. They tell me they're from New York. They want to be real cowboys."
Trail Boss Bob looked down at us and then stepped his horse sideways. "I don't give a crusty cow patty if they're from the moon and want to be the King of England. I've got a thousand head of longhorn to drive up this trail. And I've got to get fifteen more miles through Cheyenne country before nightfall." The Boss gave us another look. "Let 'em ride drag with the Kid to work for their grub. I ain't paying no wages to train scrawny greenhorns. Real cowboys? Yahhh!"
Bob slapped his horse and galloped off, spraying sand and ;dust all over us.
Cooky leaned over and spit., "Now, isn't he a tenderhearted fella."
"I don't suppose he had a small blue book in that saddlebag," said Sam.,
"Real .cowboys," said Cooky. And then he laughed and laughed and laughed and spit.
"I didn't think so," said Sam.]]
FOUR
The next few hours lasted a lifetime. The Kid (who turned out to be just a year or two older than us) fixed us up with three scrawny ponies that looked like they escaped from the used horse lot.
Fred fell off once. I got thrown four times. And Sam quit counting how many times he got dumped by his cross-eyed nag.
Once we finally figured out how to steer our reject ponies, the Kid explained what "riding drag" meant. Our job was to follow the herd, round up strays, and keep the slow cattle moving. What we really did was choke on dust, run blind into cactus, and smell the nasty smell that follows two thousand cattle wherever they go
Trail Boss Bob came back every once in a while to try out new curse words on us.
"Keep 'em moving, you prairie-dog pellets.]]
You'll never be real cowboys that way." Bob smacked Sam's pony on the rump and sent him into another cactus patch.
When the sun finally sank, we staggered into camp.
"I'm starved," said Fred.
"I'm hungry, thirsty, dirty, sore, and too tired to list everything else I am," said Sam.
We walked up to the campfire and joined about ten other cowboys around; the chuck wagon. Cooky stood in the middle, dishing dinner out of a big iron pot over the fire.
"Hey, lookee here-it's our New York cowboys." Cooky spit a stream of tobacco juice, then plopped a spoonful of something on a plate.
The crew turned to check us out. They didn't - look anything like Cowboy Bob' on TV. Four of the guys were black, three were Mexican, and they were all even dirtier than we were. Most had scraggly beards and beat-up brown hats. They all had boots with spurs, bandannas around their necks, and jeans. Most had a single six-shooter in a holster. Nobody said a word. The sun slipped below the horizon and lit the clouds red and purple.]]
"Sit down and eat up," said Cooky, spooning up three plates.
"I think I'll just stand," said Sam.
Fred pushed the stuff around on his plate and smelled a forkful. "What is it?"
"Cooky only knows two meals," said a cowboy missing a few teeth. "So it's either bacon, beans, and biscuits or biscuits, beans, and bacon."
The rest of the cowboys. laughed and hooted. I tasted a little bite. It reminded me of some of our science experiments-like the one where we grew mold on bread and forgot about it for three weeks.
"I'll never complain about cafeteria food again," said Fred.
But we were all so hungry we ate the mess. We even sopped our plates clean with biscuits like everybody else. The last of the sunlight disappeared and a cool breeze picked. up. We moved closer to the fire.
Fred took off his Tigers hat and tried to slap the dust off it. "What a life. What do you guys do for fun?"
None of the cowboys said anything. I didn't]]
want this time trip to be a repeat of our last two near-disaster adventures, so I spoke up, . trying to sound as' friendly as I could, in a cowboy sort of way.
"Howdy. My name is Jumping Joe This here is Wild Fred. And that there is Yosemite Sam." A few guys looked at us. Somebody burped I figured I'd better keep talking before the beans took effect.
"We just want' to say thanks for letting us join up with you. We'll only be sticking around a few days until we get to town and-
"Two -months, more like it," said Cooky, spitting into the fire.
"Two months?" said Sam.
"Yep. Take us at least that long to get to Abilene." -
"Two months?" said Sam. "I can't take- two months of dust and beans and bacon. We've got to get out of here." Sam jumped to his feet and chanted a spell.
"We are rubber. Cowboys are glue. Send us back home. Whoop whoop-ee-do."]]
I sat Sam down and whispered, "Knock it off. They'll think we're crazy. Besides, the only way we can get back is to find The Book."
I had just managed to calm Sam down when Fred spoke up.
"And where are all those famous cowboys like Buffalo Bill and Wild Bill Hickok and General Custer?"
The biggest, meanest-looking black cowboy suddenly looked up. "Did you say Custer?"]]
"Uh . . . yeah," said Fred.
"There's a Lieutenant Custer at Fort Dodge leading the Seventh Cavalry. I just got out of the Tenth."
Then it suddenly dawned on me just where and when we were. "You mean Custer's still alive?"
"Last I heard." "What year is this?"
The cowboys around the campfire looked at me like I was crazy. "Sixty-eight."
"Custer's Last Stand isn't until 1876," I said. "He attacks a huge camp of Sioux and Cheyenne. He and the whole Seventh Cavalry get wiped out."
Now the cowboys looked at me like they knew I was crazy.
"We've got to warn him," said Fred. "Where are they?"
"They're around here somewheres," said the cowboy from the Tenth. '"They're looking for Black Kettle and his Cheyenne braves after what they done to them boys driving the King Ranch herd through here last week."
A coyote howled in the dark.]]
Sam's eyes almost bugged out of his head. "Wha  . . wha . . what did they do to them boys driving the King Ranch herd through here last week?"
"First they tied 'em up. Then they scalped 'em," said Cooky. "Then they cut 'em open. Then they took their guts and-"
'Cooky!'
Sam. and I jumped into each other's arms. Trail Boss Bob appeared out of the darkness. "Stop flapping your gums, you sorry sacks of sod. We've got trouble."
"Indians?" I asked.
"Worse," said Bob. "Thunderstorm. One crack of thunder and this Lazy J herd; is gone just like this afternoon. Once a herd spooks, they'll spook again." Bob looked at Fred, Sam, and me like we were something he stepped in. "And when two thousand head of cattle run over a- man, they don't leave much to bury."
"Thanks for sharing that with us," said Fred. "Jake, you and Cody go on first watch. ;Try to calm them doggies down," growled Bob. "The rest of you be ready to ride."

Subjective Criteria

Illustrations: No support

Dialog: Multiple speakers

Dialog: Broken dialogue

Dialog: Unlabeled Speaker

Vocabulary: Some difficult words

Language: Many descriptive words

Sentences: Some Long/Complex

Text structure: Story/Poem

Inferences: Some implications

Complexity: Several ideas - closely related

Concept: Fanciful

Features

Simple Plot

Dialect/Accents

Topic

*History

Low Frequency Words

absentmindedly	adjusted	adventures	biscuits	burped
bury	cafeteria	cain't	calmly	cavalry
chaps	charged	charging	chillum	circling
concentrate	cryptic	curse	cussed	dickory
dimwits	dirtier	dishing	dissolved	doggies
dude	durn	eases	edges	effect
emptied	escaped	exposure	eyed	fella
forkful	forsaken	future	general	gobbled
greenhorns	handled	herd	herd's	hickok
hickory	holster	hooves	horizon	hypothermia
idjits	iffen	inscriptions	introduce	jabbering
jangling	jeans	lieutenant	longhorn	magician
messages	mexican	mindless	mite	mooed
mooing	nag	naw	ne	nervously
nightfall	nowhere	pardners	pellets	prairie
reddish	reined	reinforcing	reject	rhyme
rhymed	ridge	runaway	rustle	saddlebag
scalped	science	scraggly	scrawny	scrubby
scruffy	seventh	sideways	sioux	smacked
social	sopped	spoonful	spooning	spurs
staggered	stampede	stampeded	stampeding	starvation
stereotypes	sunburn	swirl	swirled	swirling
tenderhearted	thingamabob	thundered	thundering	thunderstorm
tobacco	trampling	vultures	warn	wha
whatchamacallit	whipped	whistled	whizzes	wisp
wizards	yankee	yosemite