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All the kids knew about the Haunted House. The way I knew about it was because we used to go out the Four Mile Road nutting and then we used to see it. Anybody would know it was a haunted house just by looking at it. The glass in the windows was all gone and boards, any old boards, were nailed across the windows, and the doors were either nailed up or broken in and hanging crooked on one hinge. The paint was all off and the chimneys had toppled over and the bricks and mortar were all scattered down the roof and some on the porch roof. The shingles were all curled up and there were bare patches where they had blown off.
It was a big house, two stories and a half, and there was a porch all across the front, but at one corner the porch post had rotted down so that the porch roof sagged almost to the floor there, and the rest of the roof was all skewish. The floor of the porch where we were was all dry-rotted and some of the boards were gone, and the grass and weeds grew up through the floor everywhere. The yard was all weeds, as high as a man, and tangled blackberry bushes, and at night, so Swatty and all the kids said, something white used to come to the windows and stand there, and you could hear moans. It was a haunted house all right. All the boys knew that and all the boys kept away from it. And there we were, right on the porch and the rain just drowning us.
“Come on, we got to get him inside,” Swatty said, and he took hold of Bony again.
I didn't want to. It was bad enough to be on the porch of a haunted house or anywhere near it, but the thunder and lightning and rain and wind and everything made all things kind of different than on other days. It wasn't like real; it was like dreams. It was like the end of the world, when you don't think what you do but just do it; and so I took hold of Bony and helped.
We got Bony to the front door and into the hall of the house. In there it was so black we couldn't see except when the lightning flashed, and then we couldn't see much. The rain was blowing in at the door and running down the hall. The old house shook and trembled. A brick or something rolled down the roof and thumped on the porch roof.
We got Bony into a dry corner of the hall and let him sit on the floor and Swatty tried to feel Bony's leg to see if it was broken or what, and while he was doing that there came a big crash and the rain stopped coming in at the front door. It was the porch roof. It had blown down the rest of the way, shutting up the door and shutting us in. But we didn't know then that we were shut in. We were just frightened by the noise. We thought maybe the house had been struck by lightning.
Well, after that it was darker in the house than ever. We didn't get the light from the lightning through the door any more, and we only got it through the cracks between the boards at the windows. We just stood there, me and Swatty, and Bony on the floor, and listened to the storm and the water swashing against the house and to the old house creaking and grating, and Bony moaned over his ankle and cried because of everything. I was just plain scared. I just stood and got more and more scared. I tried to listen whether the creaking and grating was the house or ghosts, and I listened so hard my ears seemed to reach out. I didn't dare to breathe. Pretty soon I was too scared for any use. I said, “Swatty!”
“What?” he answered back.
“I'm scared,” I said.
Well, then Bony began to beller loud.
“Aw, shut up!” Swatty told him. “I'm scared, too, ain't I? Feel my wrist,” he says to me, “it's all goose flesh, ain't it? That's how scared I am, but it don't do any good to beller about it.”
So we just stayed there. Bony held on to Swatty's ankle with one hand and I sort of edged over so I was close to Swatty, and we just waited, because that was all there was to do. So after a while the storm let up. It rained a little yet, but the thunder and lightning stopped. The wind blew some, but not so much. It was pretty dark in the house. We knew it must be getting toward night.
“I guess we can go now,” Swatty said, and I was glad of it. We boosted Bony up so he could hobble on one leg between us and we went to the front door. Well, we couldn't get out!
And that wasn't the worst of it; every other way out was boarded up! We went all around the first floor and tried all the windows and the back door and they were all boarded up. We were fastened tight into the Haunted House.
It was pretty bad going into the dark rooms, one after another, not knowing whether something would jump out at you, and I guess me and Bony wouldn't have done it if Swatty hadn't made us. But there wasn't any way out, and that wasn't the worst. There wasn't even a little piece of board to pry the boards off the windows. There, wasn't a loose brick or anything. Nothing but dust, and maybe a couple of pieces of paper.
“What'll we do?” I asked, awfully scared. “Garsh! I don't know!” Swatty said. “We got to get out somehow. We'll starve to death here if we don't. We got to get something to pry off a board from a window.”
Well, there wasn't anything to pry one off with. Not down where we were. So Swatty said, all of a sudden:
“Come on! I'm going to see if there's anything we can get upstairs.”
“Aw, no, Swatty!” I begged. “Don't go up there! I don't want to go up!”
“Well, you don't have to, do you?” he said. “I didn't ask you to. I said I was going.”
So he went alone, and I stayed down with Bony. We were all alone in the dark down there and Swatty went up the stairs. He went up a step at a time and then stopped and listened, and then he went up another step and listened. Pretty soon he got to the top of the stairs and then we heard him going from one room to smother and feeling with his foot for a board or something that would do to pry our way out. Then we didn't hear him for a minute, I guess.
Pretty soon he came to the head of the stairs. He leaned over the balusters.
“Hey! George! Come on up,” he said in a whisper. “There ain't nothing up here. I want to go up in the attic.”
Bony wouldn't go. Swatty had to come down and talk to him like a Dutch uncle and tell him what he thought of him, and then he blubbered while we were helping him up the stairs. He said it was all right for us to go up because if anything—he didn't say a ghost, because he was afraid to, but that was what he meant—jumped out at us we could run, but he couldn't because his ankle was sprained. But we got him up all right.
We got him up and I stayed with him at the head of the stairs, and Swatty went and opened the attic stair door. He opened it, and then he stood there a second. Even where I was I could hear it. It was like a groan—like a long, sick sort of groan—and it was from up there in the attic. I turned so stiff and cold I couldn't open or shut my lips. I couldn't breathe. I was like ice, numb and cold all over except my hair pulled upward all over my head. A ghost could have come and put its cold hand on me and I couldn't have moved.
“Oh! Oh—!” came that long moan from up in the attic. Bony stood up, and his ankle gave way and he fell down the stairs—all the way to the bottom.
He stayed there, just calling out, “Swatty, Swatty!” over and over.
It was dark there now, dead dark. All at once I screamed. Something had touched me on the arm.
“Aw, shut up!” Swatty said, because it was Swatty that had touched me. “Shut up and don't be a baby! I've got to go up there, and you've got to go up with me.”
“Why?”
“Because I don't want to go up there alone,” he said. “That's why if you want to know.”
“What do you want to go up for, anyway?”
“Well, you won't go up alone, will you? And Bony won't go up alone, will he? Somebody's got to go up and see if there's anything up there we can pry our way out with. Come on! That noise ain't nothin' but the wind, or maybe an owl, or something else.” So I had to go. I made Swatty go first, and he went up the attic stairs real slow, and I didn't crowd him any, you bet! At the top of the stairs he stopped short. So I stopped short.
“What's the matter?” I whispered. Swatty stood still.
“There's something up here or somebody—something alive,” he whispered back in terror.
And there was! Between the moans I could hear it breathe, a long breath, like “Ah-ah!” So the next thing I knew I was down two flights of stairs at the front door, trying to scratch my way through the porch roof with my finger nails, and Bony was hanging onto my legs, and we were both scared stiff. I guess it wasn't so long after we heard something breathe in the attic, about a second after, maybe. And I couldn't scratch my way out. So I began to yell: “Swatty! Oh, Swatty! Come here; why don't you come here? Oh, Swatty, come!” And Bony yelled too. We both did. I guess we both cried, we were so scared and frightened and afraid. Shut in a haunted house like that and something moaning and breathing in the attic! Anybody would be scared. Anybody but Swatty.
Afterward, the next time we got together after Bony's ankle was well and after the manager of the Poor Farm had given us each a watch and chain for what we did, Swatty said he wasn't scared when he heard the groaner breathe, because he had heard his folks's cow when it had the colic, and that was the way the cow groaned and breathed when it had it. Anyway, when I ran away from him and left him alone he stood and listened, and then he went up the last step and listened again. It was black up there. So he said, “Who's there?” and waited and the groaning kept on. So he walked right over toward where the groaning kept coming from. He walked slowly, pushing one foot ahead of him and holding out both hands, because the floor might not be all there, and all at once his foot hit something hard and cold. He was barefoot, like all of us.
It might have been a snake. It might have been anything, for all Swatty knew, but he bent down and felt it with his hand. I wouldn't have done it for a million dollars, and Bony wouldn't have done it for ten million dollars! No, sir! So at first Swatty thought it was an old scythe blade somebody had left there, and he was mighty glad anyway, because it would do to pry the boards off a window and let us out, but when he tried to pick it up it was held onto.
Well, I guess I might as well say it right out. It was a sword, and it was Mrs. Groogs's sword, and it was old Mrs. Groogs that was holding onto the other end of the sword and lying there and groaning and breathing! It was her son's sword, and he had been killed in the war Grant and Lincoln and Swatty's father had been in, and when she ran away from the Poor Farm and they couldn't find out where she had gone, that was all she took and that was where she went to die—there in the attic of the Haunted House. She went there because she was kind of crazy and thought the mother of a son that had died for his country oughtn't to die in the Poor House. But she didn't die in it, either, because the Woman's Relief Corps rented a room for her and the city gave her Outside Support again.
So if it hadn't been for us Mrs. Groogs would have starved to death in the Haunted House, and if it hadn't been for her and her sword maybe we would have starved to death in it. So I guess it was all right.
So that time none of us got licked when we got home. Swatty didn't because his father was a G.A.R. and Mrs. Groogs was a G.A.R.-ess, and I didn't because my folks were glad I hadn't been struck by lightning, and Bony didn't because his folks were moral suasion. They jawed him.
Well, a good many things happened that vacation. Fan stayed over at Chicago and Herb Schwartz began studying to be a lawyer in Judge Hannan's law office. Miss Carter went off to a school somewhere but I don't know whether she was teaching or learning. Mamie Little was down at Betzville, on a farm, and Lucy never did tag along with us anyway, so it looked as if me and Swatty and Bony was going to have one of the best vacations we ever had. We used to go up to our cave and work on it. Scratch-Cat went with us mostly, but we didn't count her for a girl. So it looked pretty good.
Me and Swatty and Bony liked vacation because we never did have time to do all we wanted to do when school kept. What we wanted to do most was to finish up our cave in the clay bank up Squaw Creek. The Graveyard Gang had chased us away from it, but that was all right when vacation came because the Graveyard Gang kids all have to go to work when school is over. Some of them work for the farmers on the Island, and some work in the sawmills. So we went up and looked at the cave.
The cave was all right. The Graveyard Gang had fixed up the door and made it look better, and the stove was there, and they had made another room to the cave, in behind, only it wasn't all dug out yet. So me and Swatty and Bony and Scratch-Cat thought we would finish digging the new room and then, maybe, we would get a Gatling gun or something and put it in the cave, so we could hold the fort when school began again and the Graveyard Gang tried to chase us out again. Swatty said maybe his uncle would give him a Gatling gun for his birthday if he wrote to Derlingport and asked him. So me and Bony thought that sounded good, and we went ahead and dug at the cave.
Well, it looked like we was going to have the best vacation we ever had. I guess we ought to have known that when everything looked so bully something was going to spoil it all. It was too good to be right. Swatty's mother's cow went dry, and Swatty didn't have to go home early to get her from the pasture so he could deliver the milk around to the neighbors, and that was too good to be right; and Bony sort of stopped bawling at every little thing, and that wasn't like him. We ought to have knowed something was going to happen.
It was too nice. Most always, in vacation, my mother made me and my sister wash and wipe the dinner dishes at noon, and it didn't do any good to drop plates and break them, or whine, or get a bad headache all of a sudden; I had to wipe. There ought to be a law so boys couldn't wipe dishes, but there ain't; so about all I could ever do was to wipe them as mean as I could and leave the butter between the tines of the forks when my sister didn't wash it all out.
Well, when this vacation came I thought I'd have to start in wiping the doggone dishes again; but I didn't. My mother got back the hired girl we had off and on. Her name was Annie Dombacher and she was a strong girl and a happy one, and she didn't care any more for work than shucks. She could wash and wipe dishes and enjoy it, so maybe she was crazy; but what did I care if she was? She pitched in and even carried in her own wood, and made a jar of cookies every two days. I thought it was bully. I ought to have knowed better. I ought to have knowed that mothers don't get hired girls that will carry in the wood and everything unless they've got something mean they are going to do to a fellow pretty soon.
The first thing that happened was Bony. Me and Swatty had got so we didn't hardly think of Bony as a cry-baby any more, and here all at once he was different. He used to come yelling and “yoo-ooing” to meet us, and then one noon he come sort of sneaking, like a dog you've told to go home and thrown a stone at. He come up to us, mighty quiet and looking pretty sick, and didn't say nothing.
“What's the matter, Bony?” Swatty asked.
“Nothing. You 'tend your own business, can't you?” he answered back.
But it wasn't scrappy the way he said it; it was whiny.
So I started to say something, but Swatty stopped me.
“Aw! let him be!” he said. “If he wants to be a whine-cat let him be one. What do we care?”
So we let him. He came along to the cave with us and dug; but he didn't seem to have no fun. It wouldn't have taken much to make him blubber. He acted ashamed, that's what!
Well, that was one day, and the next morning he was just as bad. We teased him some that morning, but he took it and never jawed back. Then he went down to the creek to get a drink, and me and Swatty talked about him. Bony's father and mother fought a good deal with their jaws sometimes, like when we thought Bony's father was going across the river to kill himself and we went to keep him from it, and me and Swatty decided there must be a big fight going on at Bony's house, because that always makes a fellow feel cheap and mean. So we said we wouldn't tease him about it. So Bony came back and we dug awhile and went home to dinner.
And the next thing was that Mamie Little came back from Betzville and began playing with Lucy and Toady Williams again, and that made me feel mean. And then Fan came back from Chicago.
So, one day after dinner I had to go for an errand for my mother, and when I came back Swatty and Bony hadn't come yet, but Mamie Little was at our house waiting for my sister. She was on the front terrace braiding the grass where it was long. So I picked some grass and made a ball of it and threw it at her and she said to stop, and I got some more and was going to throw it at her, and I felt pretty good, because she said: “Oh, George! now don't!” but just then my father came out of the house, so I stopped. I had thought he had gone already. I stood and didn't do anything until he went by, and then I happened to think I had left my nigger-shooter on my bureau in my room and I went to get it.
I went into the house and up the stairs on the jump and busted into my room, and then stopped mighty short because my mother was in my room. She was at my bureau and had a drawer pulled out and was taking out some of my clothes. So I grabbed my nigger-shooter off the bureau and was going to go mighty quick, because mothers always think of something for you to do when they see you.
“George,” she said, “you are going over to your Aunt Nell's to stay a week or two. I'll get your clothes all ready, and I want you to be a good boy while you're there and be as little trouble as possible.”
“Aw, gee!” I said. “What do I have to go over there for?”
It made me sick, because Aunt Nell is always trying to do right by me when I'm over there and combing my hair and making me wash my feet before I go to bed and everything. So I said:
“Aw, gee! I don't want to!”
My mother went right on taking clothes out of my bureau.
“I'm going to tell you something, Georgie, and then perhaps you will be more reasonable. You and Lucy are going to Aunt Nell's because there is a little new baby coming here. Now, will you be a good boy and say nothing more?”
“Yes'm,” I said, and I got out of the room pretty quick. I tiptoed down the stairs and stood at the bottom. I didn't know whether to go out or not. Bony and Swatty were out there now, and Mamie Little and Scratch-Cat, and I didn't know how I would dare talk to them. I sort of felt like they would see it in my face. If they did I would feel so mean I'd die.
I guess you know how a fellow feels about it. Any fellow would almost rather go to jail than have a baby come to his house. The fellows yell at him, “Aw, Georgie, you got a baby at your house.” And he knows it is so and he can't tell them they're liars.
But just then my mother came out of my room and said: “Georgie!”
So I got out of the front door in a hurry. I was afraid she was going to say something about it again. Women don't know any better; they'll say anything right out and think it is all right and don't care how a fellow feels sick to hear it. So I skipped. I went down to the front gate, and Swatty and Bony and Mamie Little and Scratch-Cat were there. Bony was off to one side, looking sick, and Swatty was “Awing” at Mamie Little about something, but I felt too mean and cheap to “Aw!” back at him, like I ought to have done. I let him “Aw!” I got as far away from Mamie Little as I could and went over and sat by Bony and Scratch-Cat.
Well, all at once I guessed maybe I knew what was the matter with Bony, because I felt just like the way he had been acting. So I said:
“Say, Bony, are you going to have a baby at your house?”
He got sort of red and didn't dare look at me. Then he began to cry, mad-like.
“I don't care!” he blubbered out. “If you tell anybody I'll lick you, I will, I don't care who you are! I'll—I'll shoot you. I'll kill you!” Scratch-Cat didn't laugh. She just said, “Oh!” So I knew that was it. So just then Mamie Little called out, “Oh, Georgie.” But I just hollered, “Aw, shut up!” So I said: “Aw, come on, Swatty, let's go up to the cave.”
Well, just then my sister came out of the house. She had on a clean dress, and she came hippety-hopping down the walk as happy as could be and happier. She came right down to where Swatty was teasing Mamie Little, and she said:
“Mamie! Mamie! What do you think? We're going to have a little new baby!”
Well, I got up and climbed over the fence and ran. I don't know how I ever got over a fence so quick—pickets and all—but I did, and I ran up the street with my hands over my ears. I knew Swatty knew and Mamie Little knew and that they were thinking: “Ho! Georgie is going to have a new baby at his house.” And I was trying to run away. When I came to the corner I dodged behind it, and stopped.
Almost right away Bony came and Swatty came right after him, and Scratch-Cat after Swatty, but we made her go back again. We didn't want any girls around at all. Swatty was almost as sore as me and Bony was. He just threw himself down on the grass and said, “Garsh!”
“Well, you don't need to go and blame me,” I said. “I ain't the only one. Bony's going to have one at his house, too.”
So then Swatty sat up.
“Aw, garsh!” he said. “You and Bony's always spoiling all our fun. I ought to have knowed what was the matter with him, and now you 'll be the same way. You bet I don't have no babies coming to my house, making everybody grouchy. But you and Bony don't care; you don't care how you spoil the fun.”
Bony didn't say anything, but it made me mad. “Well, it ain't my fault, is it?” I asked. “I don't want no baby to come to my house, do I? I didn't order it from the doctor, did I?”
“What doctor?” Swatty asked. “What has a doctor got to do with it?”
“Well, a doctor brings it, don't he?” I asked.
“No, he don't!” Swatty said. “A stork brings it.”
“My mother told me so a million times, and I guess she knows, don't she?”
“Aw! That's in Germany,” I said. “I know that, I guess. In Germany a stork brings it, but how can it in the United States where there ain't no storks? Did you ever see a stork in the United States?”
“Well, no,” Swatty had to say, because he didn't. “Well, you've seen plenty of doctors in the United States, haven't you?” I asked.
“Yes,” Swatty had to say, because he had. He saw Doctor Miller almost every day, starting out or coming back with his old gray mare. He was our doctor and Bony's folks' doctor, but Swatty's folks had Doctor Benz, because they were German and water-curers. Doctor Miller was a big-piller. So Swatty had to say yes.
“Well,” I said, “don't that prove it?” Of course it did. Swatty had to say it did. So he said:
“Well, garsh! if doctors bring them in the United States I guess I would n't be sitting around whining if I was you and Bony. I know what I'd do!”
“What would you do?” I asked.
“I wouldn't let a doctor bring any, that's what I wouldn't do,” said Swatty. “I'd find out what doctor was going to bring it, and I'd fix him all right, you bet your boots!”
“Well, Doctor Miller is going to bring them, if anybody does,” I said. “He's our doctor and he's Bony's doctor, ain't he? What can me and Bony do, I'd like to know?”
“Well, I could help you, couldn't I?” Swatty wanted to know. “I would n't have to go back on you just because Doctor Miller isn't our doctor, would I?”
“Well, what would we do, then?” I asked, but you bet I felt a whole lot better; if Swatty was willing to help us it was different. He was a good helper. Bony looked better, too.
Swatty pulled a handful of grass and fooled with it and I could see he was thinking mighty hard.
“We've got the cave, ain't we?” he said after while. “Well, then, all we've got to do is to get Doctor Miller and put him in the cave and keep him there, and then he can't do anything about it, can he?”
Of course that was so. I wouldn't have thought of it, and Bony would n't, but Swatty thought of it in less than a minute. But right away I thought of how hard it would be to do. If Doctor Miller had been a kid it would have been easy, but he was a man and he was a mighty big man, too. He was bigger around than any man in town, I guess, and almost as tall.
I asked Swatty, and he said of course we couldn't grab Doctor Miller and push him a mile or so out to the cave and boost him up the clay bank and into the cave.
“We've got to think out a plan,” he said, only he said “plam,” like he always does, and “gart,” instead of “got.” So we thought, and it wasn't any use. So Swatty said we might as well go out to the cave and do some work and think out there. So we went.
The more I thought the more I couldn't think of anything. All I could think of was how big Doctor Miller was, and I guess Bony thought the same thing. I thought of his whiskers, too.
You 're always kind of scared of a doctor, almost like you're scared of a minister. They ain't like common folks. Common folks are just men, except when they are your fathers; but ministers and doctors are men and something else, and Doctor Miller was more doctory than any other doctor in town. That was why so many folks had him. He had red-brown whiskers and nothing on his chin or upper lip, and his whiskers were not stiff and tough like whiskers generally are, but smooth and silky and fluffy. He laughed a lot, too, and was always smiling, but he knew all about your insides better than you did. It is creepy to see a man smiling so much and feel that he knows more about you than you do yourself. And so you were mighty scared of him.
Well, we didn't think of anything, and I went home feeling pretty mean and went in the alley way and my mother was keeping supper for me and had my things and sister's all ready for us to go over to Aunt Nell's and after supper she kissed us and we went. She gave me a dollar and she gave Sis fifty cents, and she hugged us a long time before she let us go.
The next morning Aunt Nell started right in on me. She made me go upstairs and brush my hair again and looked at my finger nails and in my ears, and then said I didn't look as well as usual and wanted to know if I slept well. I got away as soon as I could and went up to the cave. Swatty and Bony was there already, digging at the roof of the back room of the cave.
“What you doing that for?” I asked. “If you dig up there much more the roof will bust through.”
“Well, ain't that what we want it to do?” Swatty asked.
“Why do we?” I asked back.
“You come on and help us work,” he said, “and I'll tell you why.”
So I helped them work and Swatty told me he had thought of a bully plan. I wouldn't have thought of it in a thousand years. I had stayed awake all night—or anyway almost half an hour—trying to think how we could get Doctor Miller into the cave, and all I could think of was grabbing him somehow and tying ropes to him and yanking him up to the door of the cave, and I knew we couldn't do it, because we weren't strong enough. But Swatty had thought it all out, like he always does. I might have known he would.
We went ahead and dug at the roof of the cave, and pretty soon we dug through to daylight. It took us all day and the dirt we got we spaded into the tunnel between the two rooms and filled it up good and solid, except a short way out of the front room. The next day we worked hard, too. We dug out more of the roof of the back room, and then worked on the door of the cave so we could fasten it up sound and quick when we got the doctor in it. We took the stove out and everything else he could use to dig with, and when we had to go home for supper we had it all ready. Swatty said so.
Well, all of us knew Jake Hines, the doctor's hired man, and he was foreman of Fearless Hose Company No. 2, and every night he went over to the hose-house and played cards after he got his work done at the doctor's. I went to bed about nine o'clock, but I left my clothes on, and when I thought it was midnight I got up and went downstairs and went out into the alley. Swatty was there already, sitting in the shadow of Doc Miller's manure box, but Bony hadn't come, so we guessed he was a 'fraid-cat and didn't dare. So we went ahead without him.
The doctor's old gray mare was standing with her head at the little square window, and Swatty got on the manure box and climbed in. He opened the stable door and I went in after him. The old mare looked around at us, but she didn't make any trouble, and Swatty untied the halter strap and we led her out into the alley. We led her across the public square, and down into the creek and then up the creek to where our cave was. She came right along as easy as anything and we got her up the bank and to where we had caved in the roof of the back cave. She didn't want to go down there. I guess she thought it was kind of funny to be taken into a hole like that, but a doctor's horse is used to being out at night and to going into all sorts of places, and at last she set her front feet and slid down. It was pretty steep, but she went down easy. Swatty tied the halter strap to one of her front feet and we left her there.
We went back home and I went to bed. I was pretty scared. I thought the doctor would get up in the morning and see his mare was gone and would get a lot of people and police and there would be crowds hunting the mare. I had pretty bad dreams. I dreamed I was hung about eight times for horse stealing.
When I got up in the morning I was mighty sick of it, you bet. I made up my mind I wouldn't do any more, no matter how many babies the doctor brought to our house. I would stay at Aunt Nell's and let on I didn't know anything about gray mares or anything. I was through.
So about nine o'clock, Swatty came to Aunt Nell's to get me, and he was just hopping, he was so tickled.
“Garsh!” he said. “It's better than I ever thort it would be. I came through the alley and Jake Hines was sitting on the manure box waiting for the mare to come home. And what do you think?”
“What?” I asked.
“He said he would give me a quarter if I found the mare,” Swatty said. “He said he guessed he had left the stable door open and she had wandered away and maybe she would come back, but if I hunted around and found her and brought her back he would give me a quarter. So I'm hunting around for her.”
Well, I didn't feel so bad. Bony came and said it wasn't because he was scared that he didn't come out last night, but because he had gone to sleep and hadn't waked up. So Swatty talked some more and we all felt fine. We seen it was bully. So I took my dollar, like we had fixed it for me to do, and I bought some bread and some butter and some things to eat while Swatty and Bony went out to the cave. We didn't want Doctor Miller to starve to death while we had him locked in the cave because that would be murder. So I took what I had bought to the cave and we put it where the doctor could see it, and then we went down to the doctor's house. It was about ten o'clock. We went to the front door and rung the bell and Mrs. Miller came to the door.
“Is Doctor Miller at home?” Swatty asked.
She said he was, and Swatty told her we had found his horse, and she said she would tell him. He came right out. He looked sort of jolly and he said: “Well, boys, I suppose you are looking for a reward. Did you bring old Jenny home?”
“No, sir,” Swatty said. “We would of but we couldn't. We couldn't get her out of the hole.”
So he wanted to know what hole and Swatty told him. He told him we had a cave up the creek and that it looked like the old mare had walked on top of the cave and fell through. He asked if she was hurt and we said she wasn't, we guessed, but she wouldn't come out for us. He got his hat.
“Come on,” he said; “I'll see about it.”
Well, he took us out the back way to the stable and yelled for Jake, and Jake came.
“Jake,” he said, “these boys have found Jenny, and she's fallen into a hole and they can't get her out.”
“All right,” Jake said; “I'll go with them.”
You could have knocked me over with a feather. We hadn't thought of that. The doctor started to go back to the house. Then he stopped.
“Just wait a minute,” he said. “I think I'll go with you. If the mare is hurt, I may be able to attend to her right there.”
When the doctor came out with his medicine case we started, and me and Swatty pretended to be eager to hurry up. Bony sort of held back behind. The doctor talked to us a lot. He was sort of happy and good-natured about it, like fat men are, and joked some how far it was. We took him out the Graveyard Road and down into the creek bottom and showed him the mouth of our cave up the bank.
“Well, well,” he said. “This is mountain climbing indeed! If I had much of this to do I'd be a smaller and a better man.”
He made me carry his medicine case so he could use both hands, and I went first. Then Jake came and then the doctor, and then Swatty and then Bony. When we got to the door of the cave I stopped and Jake looked in.
“Where's the mare?” he said. “I don't see no mare.”
He turned to look back and the doctor was just behind him, panting pretty hard.
“What?” the doctor asked, and he stepped up. I started to say it was the back cave the mare was in, but just then the doctor bumped against me and went sort of down on his knees. It was as dark as pitch. Swatty had slammed the door shut against the doctor and jolted him into the cave, and me and Jake with him. I heard Swatty fastening the cave door, and there we were—me and the doctor and Jake. We were locked in the cave.
I was the first one to know what Swatty had done, and I pounded on the door and hollered for them to let us out, but they didn't do it. Jake was just standing and saying:
“I'll be dumed! I'll be dumed!”
“What does this mean?” Doctor Miller asked.
I didn't know what to say, I was so scared. But I didn't have to say anything. Jake said it.
“I know mighty well what this means, Doc,” he said. “This is some of Tom Foley's work, this is. He's been trying to get me out of the foremanship of Fearless Hose No. 2 for the last three years, and we've got the annual election to-night. He knows mighty well if I ain't there to-night he can put it over on me, and this is his game. I'm mighty sorry you got drug into it, Doc; but I'll make him suffer for this when I get out!”
He struck a match and saw the food I had brought. He kept striking more matches and looking around the cave.
“Yes, by Susan!” he said. “Look at the food. This is Foley's work—the great big mush! He thinks this is a good joke. I'll show him! Son,” he said to me, “did Foley talk to you?”
“No, sir,” I said.
“I knew it!” Jake said. “It's that Swatty kid. He's a terror, he is. Well, son, don't you mind; we'll mighty soon get out of here.”
I felt a whole lot better. But I guess the doctor didn't.
“Get out? How'll we get out?” he wanted to know. “If your friend Foley fixed this up, you may be sure he did not expect you to get out to-night. And I've got to get out. I've got two important cases, and I must get out.”
“Oh, we'll get out, Doc,” said Jake. And he lit another match.
He looked at the door and tried it, butting into it with his shoulder. But we had fixed it dandy. It didn't give at all. It was like butting a rock. He tried it awhile, and then he said, but not so gay: “Well, we'll have to dig out.”
“Then, Jake, let us dig,” said the doctor. And they dug. I dug too, but mostly I only pretended to dig. It was dark in there and you couldn't see, and clay isn't anything to dig with your fingers. Jake and the doctor had pocket knives, but you know how much you can dig with a pocket knife. But they had the right idea. They didn't try to dig through the tunnel, like me and Swatty thought they would. They dug around the door.
Well, when Swatty and Bony had locked us in they went and sat on the bank across the creek to see what would happen. Nothing happened. Then Swatty got to thinking. He didn't worry about Jake, because Jake was a hired man and nobody ever knew when he would get home; but he knew my aunt would want to know where I was. That made him think of Mrs. Miller, and she would want to know where the doctor was. He was mighty worried. We had thought that maybe we could keep the doctor in the cave a couple of weeks until everything was all right, but he knew right away that me and Jake and the doctor couldn't live on the food I had put in the cave, and he knew my aunt would start out to find where I was, and Mrs. Miller to find out where Doctor Miller was. He was mighty worried, and he didn't know what to do. So he didn't do anything.
It turned out like he thought it would. My aunt was mad when I did not come home to dinner, and madder when I didn't come home to supper, but when I didn't come home at all she was worried almost crazy and she got my father to go hunt for me. He hunted awhile, and then he got some other men to hunt for me, because he had to go home.
They hunted all night. Along toward morning the hunters who were hunting for me ran into the hunters who were hunting for Doctor Miller. They had Swatty with them, because Mrs. Miller had said Swatty had come to the house and the doctor had gone away with him. They were trying to make Swatty tell where the doctor went, but he wouldn't. He just let on like he was crying and said he didn't know.
Well, the hunters who were hunting for Doctor Miller had just started out, because Mrs. Miller hadn't got worried until toward morning, because she thought he was attending to his business. But toward morning my father and Bony's father came to his house, and it was at their houses Mrs. Miller thought Doctor Miller was. So she was frightened and got some men to hunt him.
I guess I went to sleep about ten or eleven o'clock that night while Jake find Doctor Miller were still digging. I woke up all of a sudden and there I was in the cave, and the door open and men coming in and Doctor Miller brushing off his hands. Him and Jake had almost dug a way out, but the hunters had got Swatty to tell where we were. So about the first thing I heard was a man saying:
“Where's that Swatty? Don't let him get away!”
But he had got. We didn't see him for about a week. He went over into Illinois and got a job with a farmer.
Well, all the way home Jake kept talking about Tom Foley and what he would do to him, and when the hunters heard it they laughed like sixty and said it was the best joke they ever heard. They said they would have to hand it to Foley—he was a dandy. So I guess they told Foley so. I guess he listened to them and didn't let on, only said he didn't do it, and of course they didn't believe him, because he had been elected foreman of Fearless Hose No. 2, like Jake had said he would be. So Foley got sort of proud of it and let them think. So me and Bony and Swatty never got anything, except Swatty got licked for being away for a week, and that was all right; it was worth it for the fun we had.
But the worst of it was that all of it wasn't any use. We had gone to all the work for nothing. We had caved up the wrong doctor. We ought to have caved up Doctor Wilmeyer and Doctor Brown. Because while we had Doctor Miller caved up, and thought we had everything fine and dandy, it was Doctor Wilmeyer and Doctor Brown who were the ones all the time. When we got home from the cave with the hunters there was a new baby at our house and one at Bony's house, and they had brought them. And that wasn't the worst—they were both girls. So we had done worse than nothing, because if we had left Doctor Miller alone he might, anyway, have brought boys.
Well, when we came to find out about it the new babies at my and Bony's houses weren't near as hard to bear as we had thought they would be. One reason was because they came at vacation time, when we didn't have to go to school, and the other was that they didn't make us take them out in baby carriages like we was afraid they would. One thing was that they was too fresh yet, and the other was that they wouldn't trust them to such young hoodlums anyway.
At our house Fan spent most of her time loving the new kid, and Lucy and Mamie Little didn't do much but hang around and coax to hold the baby a minute, and Toady Williams just hung around and waited for Mamie Little to come out and play. I guessed that I would never have anything to do with Mamie Little again, but that when I got a new girl it would be a different kind, like Scratch-Cat. I wished I hadn't got religion, or anything that I'd got because of Mamie Little.
A lot of us got religion at once, because that's how you usually get it. It makes it easier and you don't feel so foolish going up front.
Well, they had this revival at our church the winter before the vacation I'm telling about. When they had it I was having Mamie Little for my secret girl and she went up in front, so I got religion and went up in front too. But you see I'd ought to have waited, because it made me feel a lot worse about murdering a man. Or maybe it didn't. I guess Swatty felt almost as bad as I did. We both felt awful bad. Swatty didn't go to our church, he went to the German Lutheran church, and nobody in that church ever got religion, they just had it. At our church we didn't have it until we got it, and mostly we got it when there was a revival meeting, and that was when I got it.
So, I guess it was a lot worse for me when the thing happened that I'm going to tell you, because I had religion and Swatty hadn't.
Well, the way it happened was this way: I'm awfully croupy. I don't know anybody that's as croupy as I am, so they rub hot goose grease on me when I get to honking and then make me swallow a lot out of a spoon, and that was all right when I was little enough so they could hold my nose, but after I got big Mother said she wouldn't struggle with me another time, and she changed and gave me a dime a spoonful. So I took the old stuff because if I hadn't took it Father would have licked me, and I'd have had to take it anyway. So I got a dime a spoonful. So I bought a target rifle with the money, when I had enough, and then the rifle got broke and I couldn't get it fixed until my mother gave me three dollars because I had been such a good boy when the new baby came.
So then all the kids were coming over to my yard to shoot all the time—Swatty and Bony and the whole lot of them—and we shot at tin cans and things against the barn, but we weren't any of us very good shooters. I guess Swatty was the best. Or maybe I was about as good as he was.
That was all right, and I guess nobody cared anything, only Mother was always putting her head out of the window and saying, “Boys, do be careful with that gun!” So one day Swatty come over, like he always does, and he says, “Say! we can't shoot the rifle any more!” And I says, “Why can't we?” And Swatty says, “They made a law that we can't.” And I says, “Who made a law that we can't?” And Swatty says, “The city council made a law that nobody can shoot inside the city limits.”
So I guessed they had, because that winter they had made a law we couldn't slide down Third Street hill, and if they made a law like that they might make almost any kind of a law. So Swatty says, “If we want to shoot we've got to go outside the city limits.” And I said—I don't know what I said but I guess I said that was so.
So, anyway, we didn't shoot in my yard any more, and that wasn't our fault but the fault of the city council. So that was one of the things we thought of after we killed the man; but it didn't seem to make us feel much better, like you'd think it would. I guess there wasn't anything could make us feel better. Nobody wants to be hanged unless he has to be, I guess.
Well, it was vacation time, anyway, and we didn't want to shoot all the time because part of the time we wanted to do something else. Only when we wanted to go rowing on the river we took the rifle along anyway, because sometimes we rowed up beyond the city limits and then it was all right to shoot if we wanted to.
So one day me and Swatty and Bony we went up the river in a skiff. We always hired a skiff from old Higgins because it was ten cents an hour or three hours for a quarter from him, and Rogers charged ten cents straight. So when we got into the skiff and Higgins gave us the oars he said, “Well, boys, have a good time, but don't shoot anybody with that cannon.” And we said, all right, we wouldn't. We took turns rowing, like we always did, and pretty soon we got to the Slough, and we rowed in and shot at turtles awhile, and then Bony said, “Gee! the mosquitoes are eating me up,” and they were eating all of us up, so we floated out onto the river and just floated. We threw the bailing can over and shot at it until it went down, and just about then we were going past the old shanty boat, and we began to shoot at that.
It was up on the mud and partly sunk into it and the hull was so rotten you could kick a hole in it, and it wasn't anybody's anyway. Everybody had thrown stones at the windows in the side and broken them and nobody cared, I guess; but nobody had broken all the windows in the end toward the river, because that end was toward the river, so we shot at the windows. At first we couldn't hit them and we drifted below, but we rowed back again and in closer and then we all hit them. We hit them a lot of times, until they were all smashed out, and we began to say who had hit the most times, and Swatty said, “Let's go ashore and see who is the best shot. I bet I am.” So we went.
So we shot at cans and things, and Swatty was the best shot, and then nobody said anything but we just thought we'd go on the shanty boat for fun. We climbed up on the little front deck, and Bony was first, and Swatty was next, and then I come. So Bony pushed the door open and looked in, and he stood there looking in and didn't move, and then, all at once he made a sound—well, I don't know what kind of sound it was. It was a frightened sound. I guess it was like the sound a rabbit makes when you step on it by mistake. And then he turned, and his face was so scary it frightened me and Swatty and we turned and jumped off the front deck onto the railroad bank; but Bony jumped sideways off the deck and landed on the cracked crust that was over the mud the shanty boat was stuck in. He went right through the crust and over his knees in the mud, but me and Swatty was so scared we started to run down the railroad track as fast as we could.
Pretty soon we stopped, because the sand between the ties was full of sandburs, and then we didn't know what we were running for, so we looked back. Bony was sort of swimming on top of the mud crust and he was crying as hard as he could cry, but not loud. He was trying to get away from the shanty boat as fast as he could, and every time he got a foot out of the mud and tried to step he broke through the crust again, so he sort of laid on the crust and bellied along. He looked like an alligator swimming in the mud, and he was crying like an alligator, too. Only I guess it is crocodiles that cry. Bony was trying to get to the skiff, and Swatty knew that if Bony got there before we did he would get in the skiff and go home and leave us. So we picked the sandburs out of our feet and tried to hurry, but Bony got to the skiff and got in and pushed off.
We ran and hollered, but he didn't stop. He was so frightened that the oars jumped out from between the pins almost every time he pulled on them, and he was crying hard; but he rowed the boat pretty fast because he was working his arms so hard. Swatty and me hollered at him and told him what we would do to him if he didn't come back, but it didn't do any good. He was too scared. All he wanted to do was to get away.
Well, we tried to throw stones at him, to bring him back, but we couldn't throw that far and we just stood and watched him row down-river as hard as he could.
“Say, what do you think he saw in there?” Swatty said after while.
“I don't know what he saw,” I said. “What do you think he saw?”
“I don't know what he saw, but I'm going to see what he saw,” Swatty said.
Swatty was always like that. If anybody saw anything he wanted to see it too.
“I ain't afraid to see it,” he said.
“Well, I ain't afraid if you ain't afraid,” I said.
So we climbed up on the deck of the shanty house again. We climbed up careful and went to the door and peeked in.
As soon as I had the first peek I turned, and jumped off the deck and started to run, but Swatty just stood and looked. I hollered at him. I guess I was crying, too.
“Swatty! Swatty, come on! Oh, Swatty, come on, Swatty!” I hollered.
He turned his head and looked at me and then he looked back into the shanty boat. All he said to me was, “Shut up!”
I guess you know what we saw when we looked into the shanty boat. There was almost a whole page about it in the paper later on. He—the man—was lying there on the floor of the shanty boat in the broken bottles and straw and the dry mud that had sifted in when the river was high. He was lying on his face with his feet to the door and he was sort of crumpled up with one hand stretched out. He was dead. One side of his face was up and there was blood from the place in his forehead where he had been shot. It was on the floor.
I didn't dare run away without Swatty, because I guess I was as scared as Bony had been, and I didn't dare go back to the shanty boat, so I just stood, and all at once I began to shake all over, the same as a wet kitten shakes in cold weather. I couldn't help shaking. I felt pretty sick. But most of all I was scared.
I thought Swatty was going to stand there forever, looking into the shanty boat, but pretty soon he went inside, and that shows he's as brave as he always brags he is. I wouldn't have gone in for a million billion quadrillion dollars. In a minute he come out and he dropped off the end of the deck and sort of crouched low. He kept crouched low as he come up the railroad bank, and he crouched low when he dodged down the other side, so I crouched low, too, and went down the other side of the railroad bank. And when Swatty come up to me I saw he was scared, too, but he wasn't scared the way I was. I was just scared because I'd seen a dead man, but Swatty was frightened.
There was a lot of tall ragweed and a pile of railroad ties in the bottom of the cut along side the railroad track, and Swatty went right in close to the pile of ties where the ragweed hid everything and he sat down there. He looked pretty frightened.
“Well,” he said, “we killed him.”
That was the first I'd thought that we'd killed the dead man; but the minute Swatty said it I knew we had killed him by shooting through the windows of the shanty boat. I couldn't shake any more than I had been shaking so I just kept on shaking like I had been, but I got sicker at my stomach. When I was through being sick Swatty he got mad.
“Stop shaking like that!” he said. “We've gone and done it and we've got to think what we 're going to do about it. Stop shaking and help me think.”
“I c-c-c-can't stop sh-sh-sh-shaking!” I said. “I w-w-w-would if I c-c-c-c-could, w-w-w-wouldn't I?”
“Well, you've got to stop shaking,” Swatty said. “If you go shaking all around town like that everybody will know we did it. If you don't stop shaking I'll lick you!”
I began to cry. I didn't cry because Swatty said he'd lick me but because I just had to cry. So Swatty tried to make me stop shivering. He took the backbone of my neck in his thumb and fingers and pinched it hard, because you can stop hiccoughs that way; but it didn't do any good. So he got madder.
“What are you shaking for, anyway?” he asked. “I ain't shaking.”
“W-well, y-y-you h-h-haven't got r-r-religion,” I said. “It's w-w-worse for anybody that's g-g-g-got r-r-religion to kill anybody.”
Well, he hauled off and hit me. He hit me in the jaw, and then he said what I wouldn't let anybody say about my getting religion, and I fought him. Then we stopped fighting and I was still shaking, but not so bad.
“Yah! Little sissy boy got religion!” he said. “Little sissy boy went and got religion 'cause he's stuck on Mamie Little!”
Well, that did make me mad! I lit into him, and we had another good fight, and pretty soon he said, “'Nuff!” and I stopped. So I started to tell him what I'd do to him if he ever said that again. I was crying, I guess.
“That's all right,” he said; “I just said it on purpose. I just said it to make you fight. You ain't shaking now.” And I wasn't. I'd got so mad I forgot to shake. So, as Swatty had just said what he said on purpose, I didn't care. So I stopped crying.
“Now you've got some sense,” Swatty said. “Don't you get that way again. We don't want to get hung, do we?”
I hadn't thought of that. Of course they would hang us if they found out we'd killed the man in the shanty boat, and it made us pretty sober. I guess I began to cry again.
“Oh, shut up!” Swatty said. “If you're going to blubber all the time, and not try to help, I wish I'd killed that man all by myself. You shut up and try to help me think what to do, or I'll go and tell everybody you killed him.”
“You won't do it!” I said.
“Yes, I will,” he said back. “And I'll prove it on you. You didn't look at that man and I did, and I know what kind of a man he is.”
“What kind of a man is he?” I asked.
“He's a tough kind,” Swatty said. “And if you don't shut up your bawling I'll say you and him got into an argument about religion, and you shot him because he wouldn't come and join in with you and get it. And folks will believe that, because you've just got it, and there ain't any other reason why any of us should kill him. I haven't got religion, have I?”
“Well,” I said, for I saw Swatty could do like he said, “what are we going to do, anyway?”
“We've got to keep from getting arrested and put into jail and hung,” Swatty said. “I don't know how, but we've got to. We've got to be careful, and not let anybody know we shot that man. If they find it out they'll hang us sure.”
“We didn't mean to shoot him,” I said. “We had a right to shoot outside the city limits.”
“We didn't have a right to shoot anybody,” said Swatty. “We had a right to see if there was anybody in the shanty boat before we shot at it. We'll all three be hung if they find out we did it.”
Well, I had an idea just then, but I didn't say it to Swatty. I didn't really think it, it just come. I knew as soon as I thought it that I wouldn't be so mean, and I knew Swatty wouldn't either. But it would have been easy enough for me and Swatty to say Bony did it. We was two to one. Maybe I would have said it if I hadn't got religion. But it made me feel better for a while to think that I'd thought it and hadn't said it. So the next thing I thought was that it would be mighty noble and true and religious if I'd go to the mayor or somebody and just say: “I killed a man up there at the old shanty boat on the river, but nobody is to blame but me. Swatty ain't and Bony ain't, so go ahead and hang me. I did it, and it was my target rifle.” But I thought that if I was going to be hung I'd not feel as lonesome if Swatty and Bony got hung too. Anyway, Swatty started to talk, and I forgot it.
“If Bony hadn't gone off with the skiff,” he said, “we'd be all right. We'd get in the skiff and row out to the middle of the river and lay flat in it, and nobody would see us. We could float down the river as far as we wanted to and hide in a cane-brake or somewhere. Or maybe, we'd row up the Missouri and hide in the Rocky Mountains. If they got after us we could turn bandits or something.”
“You could,” I said, “but I couldn't.”
“I forgot you'd got religion,” he said. “You'd have to start a ranch. But we can't do that, because Bony went off with the skiff.”
What we decided was that nobody would be apt to find the dead man that day. Maybe they'd never find him. Unless somebody like us happened to go into the old shanty boat he might never get found, and then, the next spring, when the Mississippi had her spring flood, or that same fall, if the water got high enough, we could come up and float the old shanty boat out of the mud and take her out in the river and sink her. We talked over a lot of things, and the more we talked the more it didn't seem so bad. It looked as if we had a chance not to get hung, after all.
I wanted to cut across the cornfield to the hill and go home that way, so that if anybody saw us they'd think we had been up in the woods and not near the shanty boat, but Swatty said that wouldn't do because our footprints would show in the cornfield, and detectives would trace us by them if they started out to find who murdered the man. He said it would be more innocent to go right down the railroad track, and if anybody asked us anything to say we hadn't been as far up as the shanty boat, and that Bony had got a stomach ache or something and gone home first with the boat. So we did that. We walked down the track. We talked about the murder all the time, and the more we talked the surer we were nobody would think we did it.
Well, we got to my gate all right, and Swatty and me crossed our hearts we wouldn't say anything about killing the man, and I tried to think how I'd act so nobody at home would think anything different than they always did, and I went into the house. It was pretty late. They were eating supper. So I went in and sat down, and Father scolded me a little for being late, like he does nearly every day, and then he said something else.
“Son,” he said, “after supper you'll get that target rifle of yours and turn it over to me.”
Well, I almost jumped out of my skin, I was so scared.
“Now, you needn't begin any of that,” he said. “I mean what I say. Do you know who was shot today?”
I was so scared I couldn't swallow my piece of meat. I choked on it.
“No, sir!” I said, pretty weakly.
“Well, Benny Judge shot his little sister,” said my father. “Only by the greatest luck she wasn't killed. As it is she has a bullet in her arm. Now, mind! I want that rifle.”
Well, I was glad and I was scared stiff, too.
I had left the target rifle on the rocks up by the shanty boat. I began to shake again because I knew somebody would find the target rifle and it had my initials on it, and when they found the dead man they would know I killed him. I guess my teeth chattered. Anyway I couldn't think of anything at all. I just wished I was dead, because after supper Father would want the rifle, and I didn't have it, and some one would find it and I would be hung.
Then Mother saw me shake, and she said, “What's the matter? Are you cold?”
“Y-y-yes'm,” I said. Well, it wasn't a lie. I was sort of cold.
“Father, the poor child is sick,” Mother said. “See him chatter his teeth.”
So Father looked at me. “Malaria,” he said. So he asked me if I had been up to the Slough, because he had been reading in a magazine about Slough mosquitoes biting you and giving you malaria. I didn't know what to say. It didn't look good to say I had been up there so near the old shanty boat, and I didn't like to lie about it, because I was on probation for getting religion. So I didn't say anything. I just shivered and chattered my teeth.
“Huh!” my father said. “I knew well enough something was the matter with that boy when he got religion. He's had this malaria spell coming on. Put him to bed and give him a big dose of quinine.” And then he said to me, “Just let me catch you up near that Slough again, understand? Get to bed, and quick! This family is just one thing after another!”
I got to bed pretty quick and Mother gave me one of the big capsules. She heated the scorched blanket at the kitchen stove and wrapped me up in it and put all the bed covers she could find on top of me. I started to sweat right away. So she said, “If you want anything I'll leave the door open and you can call me,” and she went down again. She told Father she guessed I was pretty sick because I looked like it, and all he said was, “Huh! boys!” And I guessed he was right, and I made up my mind to live a better and truer life, but I kept thinking of the man we had killed. I never sweat so much in my life.
All at once the doorbell rang and I sat right up in bed. I thought the police had come for me. But it wasn't the police; it was something just as bad—almost. It was old Higgins, the skiff man. He was talking to Father. He asked him if I had got home all right. So Father said I had, and I was sick and in bed. Then old Higgins said, “Well, I don't know what to make of it. Nobody brought my skiff back. Your boy and two other boys hired it off of me, and when it got late and they didn't bring it back I got frightened. You ask him where he left my skiff, and if they lost it somebody's got to pay me back for it.” Well, I was mighty scared. I guessed Bony had been so scared he had upset the skiff and got drowned, and maybe me and Swatty would get hung for that, too, though we did throw rocks at Bony to try to get him to come back. But, anyway, me and Swatty would have to tell why Bony had gone off in the skiff alone, and then they would know everything, and take us to jail and hang us. I crawled down under the covers and pretended to be asleep, but it wasn't any use, because Father shook me by the shoulder.
“Now, what?” he said, cross. “Here's Higgins, the skiff man, and he says you hired a skiff and didn't bring it back. What's the meaning of all this? And are you putting on this malaria on this account? Explain, young man!”
So I sat up and I said, “Bony took it.”
“Come, now, explain!” my father said.
“Well, we was up the river,” I said, “and me and Swatty and Bony got out of the skiff and—and we went ashore. So—so—then me and Swatty, we run down the railroad track a little way and—and when we looked back Bony was going to get into the skiff, and we hollered for him to wait for us, but he wouldn't. He got into it and rowed away.”
“And left you there?”
“Yes, sir.”
I guess he didn't believe it. I guess he thought I was just trying to put it onto Bony, to get out of it myself. He forgot I'd got religion, I guess. So he snapped his fingers the way he does when he's mad.
“Get out of that bed and get into your clothes and make haste about it!” he said, and I said, “Yes, sir!” and I got out of bed right away. I dressed quick.
Mother cried because it was wrong to make a sick boy dress and go over to Bony's house out of a sweat and I'd catch pneumonia; but I had to go. So nobody said anything on the way over, except Mr. Higgins tried to talk about what nice weather we were having, but Father wouldn't talk. I didn't like to go, because—well, I thought all Bony's folks would be crying because he was drowned when we got there; but of course if you think about it, they wouldn't know. So when we got to their house they weren't crying, but Mr. Booth—he was Bony's father—just come to the door in his socks and said, “Well, what is it now?” because I was there, and he knew something was the matter or I wouldn't be there with my father. So Father said, “Did your son come home?”
“Yes, he come home,” Mr. Booth said, “but he ain't well, and Ma put him to bed.”
I was glad he wasn't drowned, anyway. Unless he'd told about the dead man, and then maybe it wouldn't have been so bad if he had been drowned. So Father and Mr. Higgins told about the skiff, and Mr. Booth sent Bony's ma to up ask Bony. Pretty soon she came down.
“He's pretty sick,” she said. “He's complaining of pains in his arms and back and he's shaking like he had the ague; but I hope not, because his temp'ature ain't high. I guess maybe he caught a chill. And he tied the skiff under the creek bridge. He left the oars in it. But he shall never again play with those two boys! Never again! The idea of them running off and leaving my poor child to row home all alone!”
Well, that was a lie, but I wasn't sore at Bony because he's a coward and it was better for him to tell a lie like that than to blab about the dead man. Anyway, a fellow has to tell some lies until he gets religion. After that it's different.
“So you've been lying to me again!” Father said to me, but I didn't say anything. Saying it was a lie didn't make it a lie, and all he could do was lick me, anyway. But he didn't lick me, because he thought maybe I did have malaria because I'd got religion. I guess that was what he thought. So Mr. Higgins said, “Never mind, I'll get the skiff, but it will be about a dollar.” So Father paid him and said he would take it out of my allowance; but he hardly ever paid me my allowance, anyway, so that was all right. He just gave me an allowance so he could say he wouldn't pay it to me, I guess. Anyway, we went home.
Well, I stayed awake for hours, thinking about the murder and what we had better do about it, but maybe it was only a few minutes, and the next morning Swatty came over before I was out of bed. He waited for me in the side yard until I come down.
“Well,” he said, “have you thought of anything to do?”
I hadn't thought of anything except maybe I'd better go to the minister and tell him all about it. So Swatty said if I did that he would knock my head off, and I knew he would, if he could.
“Well, have you thought of anything, then?” I asked him.
So he told me he had sat up all night thinking about it. He said he had paced the floor with his hands behind him and his brow knotted in thought throughout the still hours of the night until cockcrow. I thought he was lying, but I didn't tell him so. I told him I went to sleep, and I told him about Bony and Mr. Higgins. I told him about the rifle we had left on the rocks. He said that complicated matters, but we would have to make the best of it.
Then he showed me the braided horsehair bridle he had in his pocket that his uncle had brought back from Texas, and the wooden tobacco pipe he had in the other pocket. He said we might have gone to Texas, only somebody in Texas might recognize the bridle and know it was the one his uncle had had, and then know him and connect him up with the murder in the shanty boat, so we would go to Montana or maybe New Mexico. He was n't sure which we would go to, but that it would be better to start right away.
Well, I didn't like to leave home and never come back until I was a big man with a beard, and the murder was forgotten about, but it seemed the only thing to do. I talked and Swatty talked, and it seemed the only way we could keep from being hung, because “murder will out,” as it says in our reader. I only had twenty-five cents that I hadn't paid Mr. Higgins for the skiff, and Swatty only had fourteen cents. We knew that was n't nearly enough money. We didn't know what Bony had, but afterward we found he only had a dime. But Swatty said we could get work to do in some of the places we would get to, and we could steal green com and roast it—only he would have to steal it, because it wouldn't be right for me.
We thought the best thing to do would be to start out of our back gate and go due west, and keep going west until we came to Montana or New Mexico, or wherever we got to, only we had to get the rifle first, because if we left it, it would be evidence against us, and anyway we might kill some game with it. We had it all fixed up how we would do, and just then Bony came over the back fence, and we told it all over again. We didn't think he would go with us, but he said he would.
So we talked it all over, and it wasn't like any other time we had ever talked anything over. Most times we just talked about running away but we didn't mean it, but this time it was a mighty serious thing and we meant it. Other times when we talked we were afraid to run away, but this time we were afraid not to. It was almost noon when we got ready to go, and just as we were going Mother saw us and called us back. She asked me if we were going to the woods, and we were, so I said we were, and she said we oughtn't to go without lunch, so she made us sandwiches, and we were glad to have them. I said “Good-bye, Mother,” and she said “Good-bye, son,” and she didn't know that maybe it was the last time she'd ever say it to me, but I knew it because maybe she would grow old and die before I ever came back.