Sam and Bill, a couple of down-on-their-luck con men, decide to kidnap the young son of a prosperous banker, by the name of Ebenezer Dorset, in Summit, a small Alabama town, to finance one of their crooked land deals in Illinois. They kidnap the boy and hide him in a cave a few miles from Summit. At the cave they finalize their scheme to write a ransom letter to the boy's parent. The boy, an eight-year old freckle-faced red-headed hellion loves living in the cave. He treats the kidnaping as a wonderful adventure. Calling himself Red Chief, he makes believe his kidnappers are really his captives. He plans to burn Sam at the stake and scalp Bill at daybreak. Sure enough, at the rising of the sun and using Bill's sharp kitchen knife, Red Chief really attempts to scalp Bill.

When they write the ransom note, Bill convinces Sam that $2000 is too much for a kid like Red Chief, and they lower the ransom to $1500. The strain on Bill continues to worsen. Red Chief puts a hot baked potato down Bill's back and smashes it with his foot; then Bill is made to play the horse in Red Chief's Black Scout game and is ridden ninety miles to the stockade and forced to eat sand for oats. When the reply from the boy's father arrives, it is not what the kidnapers expect. Dorset answers the kidnappers' demands with a counter-proposal. He'll accept his son back only if they pay him. So when the kidnappers should have been collecting the ransom, they gladly hand over Red Chief and $250 to Dorset and flee town, two poorer but wiser men

READ-ALONG RADIO DRAMA KITS are literature units for the reading/ language arts classroom. The kit includes: A CD recording of the radio play with full cast and sound effects; A word-for-word read-along script; Duplication rights for word-for-word script and student activity sheets; Ready-to-use student activity sheets (Cloze Activity, Sequence Activity, Vocabulary Activities, Literal Comprehension Activity, Listening Skills Activity, Crossword Puzzles, A list of Writing/Discussion Questions); A literary terms study packet; Teaching suggestions w/answer keys; Strategies for teaching read-along in the secondary classroom; An annotated script of the original story; A sample lesson plan; Using Read-Along Radio Dramas. (Ransom of Red Chief Read-Along Radio Drama is recommended for grades 5 through adult. CD recording length 28 min.)