Well, we started off. We didn't talk much—even Swatty didn't. We went past his barn, and he went in to say good-bye to his dog, but we didn't dare take him along, because somebody might know us by him, so he whined and cried when we went away. We didn't say anything much until we got to the city limits and then Swatty said, “Well, anyway, now the town police can't touch us, because we are out of town, and they can't touch anybody out of town”, and Bony began to cry.
But he didn't cry loud—he just sort of sniggered to himself and wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. I guess maybe I cried, too, but not very loud, either.
If it hadn't been for being hung I would have gone back, and I would have told the minister all about killing the man, because I kept thinking about Mamie Little and that some other boy would play with her and grow up and marry her, and maybe I'd never see her again, even if he didn't marry her. Swatty was the only one that didn't cry a little. He didn't have to, because he let on to be mad at us for being mushies, and he swore instead. He swore at me and Bony, and I could have kept from crying, too, if I could have swore, but I couldn't because I gave it up when I got religion.
After we got beyond the houses that are beyond the city limits we went across the vacant lots and across the old fair grounds and down over the hill. We got down to the river road and climbed over the fence and got under the bob-wire fence on the other side of the road and went through the cornfield. We forgot about our footprints.
When we got to the edge of the cornfield Bony wouldn't go any farther. He was scared to go any nearer the dead man. Swatty and me crawled under the wires and went across the railroad track, and before we were across them we dodged back into the cut alongside the track, and Swatty dropped flat in the weeds. So I dropped flat, too. The reason was that there were eight or ten men on the front deck of the shanty house, and I don't know how many more inside.
They had found the man we had murdered.
We just lay there and held our breath. I couldn't think of anything, I was so scared again. I just remembered how “murder will out,” and how a murderer will always come back to where he murdered anybody, and that there we were, and that as soon as they saw us they'd know we were the murderers, because we had come back. I don't know what Swatty was doing, and I didn't know what I was doing, but I guess as soon as I was able I-started to try to dig a hole in the railroad embankment with my finger nails, to crawl into and hide, because that was what I was doing when I heard the men come up the other side of the embankment.
They were coming up from the shanty boat, and one of the men was saying, “Steady now! Keep that door level, can't you?” So I couldn't dig any more. My fingers wouldn't work. My arms and legs felt as if they were full of cold ice water, and I couldn't lift up my hands to put my hat on tighter, which I wanted to do because I could feel my hair lifting up and lifting my hat up. I didn't think about being hung or anything, but just how awful it would be if the men let the door tip and rolled the murdered man down on top of us. I guess I ought to have thought of how innocent I was, but I didn't. I didn't even think of being religious. I just felt my backbone creep and my hair lift up and my arms and legs get colder and colder.
We heard the men carrying the dead man away. I couldn't move, and I guess I would never have dared to move again if it hadn't been for Swatty. As soon as we couldn't hear the men any more Swatty lifted his head and crawled up the embankment and looked. I wouldn't have done it for a million billion quadrillion dollars. He looked, and when he saw they weren't thinking of us, but were all looking at the dead man on the door and going away from us down the railroad track he scrabbled up the rest of the embankment and scrabbled across the track and down the other side. He was back right away, with the target rifle, and then he told me to get up and get away from there, but I couldn't get up. So he kicked me two or three times hard, and when he kicked me on my hip bone I got mad and forgot to be so scared and got up. We ran through the cornfield and got Bony, and all three of us got across the road and ran up the hillside into the woods as hard as we could run.
I don't know how many miles we ran. We ran until we had to fall down because our legs wouldn't work any more. We sat in the bushes awhile and rested, and then we went on, but we walked mostly. We only ran once in a while. We came to a road we didn't know, but it went sort of west; and we went on down that road a long way and that night we slept in a haystack—not because it was cold but to be hid. The next morning we went on again, and before noon we were mighty hungry. Bony was hungriest, and he cried a lot, and I cried a little, but Swatty was willing to fight us whenever we wanted to stop and rest too long, because it wasn't safe yet. We were a long way from Arizona or Montana or wherever we were going, and it was just about the time the sheriff and everybody would start out to find us if they thought we were the murderers. We just plugged along and felt mean and tired, and I thought about Mother and Mamie Little a lot. I felt so bad I almost didn't care if they did catch me and hang me. That's the way Bony felt, too, but Swatty kept us going.
Swatty went up to a house about supper time and asked for some bread and butter, and he got it and brought part of it to us. Then he made us go on, because he said we ought to get as far from that house as we could after we'd been seen there. So we went until I was ready to die, and we found a hayrick in a field and we were just going to hide in it when three men on horseback and some in a buggy—two more—came up the road and saw us and shouted at us.
Well, we knew it was all up. The men started to climb over the fence, and we walked toward them because we knew we couldn't get away, and it was just as well to be hung as to be shot trying to run away. I guess it was the most awful feeling I ever had in my life.
When we got up to them one of the men was Swatty's father and another was my minister. As soon as Swatty got there his father took him by the collar of his coat, and shook him and hit him on the side of the head and told him what he thought of him for running away and making so much trouble; but when he let go of him Swatty just dropped down on the grass and shut his eyes, because he was so played out that all he had to be was shook, and he went unconscious. So Bony started to cry and the minister said, “Shame!” and then Swatty's father got red in the face, and dropped on his knees beside Swatty and picked him up and kissed him. He cried. It was the first time I ever saw a man cry.
So then I guessed I'd confess the whole thing to my minister, and I did. The other men were all trying to get Swatty to open his eyes and my minister listened to me. He listened to all of it—all about the murder and all. Then he put his hand on my shoulder, and he said, “You poor boy! And you thought I was hunting you down?” And I said, “How long will it be before they hang us?” And he said, “George, I hope you will never be hung, because that man wasn't murdered. He was a suicide, and he wrote a letter about it before he went to do it.” So I started to say how glad I was and, when I come to, I was at a farmhouse and my minister was trying to get me to drink some milk.
So after while we went home. Father wasn't there, because he was out with some other folks hunting for us, but Mother and Fan and a lot of people were, and my minister told them all about it, and the women all cried to think of us three all alone with a murder on our minds and our legs tired, I guess, and not much to eat. But I was so tired I didn't care. I was so tired I didn't care who was there. I was so tired I was n't even glad I wasn't a murderer. Then somebody came out from behind the women where she had been, where they wouldn't notice her much, and she didn't look at me or anybody. She just said:
“Well, I guess I'll go home now.”
“Why, Mamie Little, have you been waiting up all this while?” my mother said. “You should be in bed, child.”
So she didn't look at me, and I didn't look at her. She just went home. But then I knew I was glad I wasn't a murderer. Because I knew that Mamie Little wouldn't have thought I'd got religion very good if all I'd got let me go around murdering men in shanty boats. And I didn't want Mamie Little to think that about me, because—well, I didn't know why, I just thought it.
Well, I guess the nearest Swatty ever came to having a lot of money was the time Mr. Murphy got it and Swatty didn't. It was a thousand and five hundred dollars, and if Swatty didn't get it Mamie Little ought to have had it; and if Mamie Little didn't get it I ought to have had it; but we didn't any of us get it, because Mr. Murphy got it.
I told you about the time Mamie Little got mad at me because I had been prohibition and changed over to anti-prohibition because Swatty could lick me, and about how her father had the prohibition newspaper. Well, he kept publishing in his newspaper that the saloons ought to be closed; so one day somebody blew up Mr. Little's house with dynamite—only it was gunpowder. But they called it dynamite. They called the men that blew up the house the dynamiters. They blew up two other houses, too, and that was why Mr. Murphy was in town. He was a detective. He came and worked in the sawmill, and nobody knew he was a detective until he got the money me or Swatty or Mamie Little ought to have had.
Me and Swatty and Bony was sitting on the empty manure bin back of our barn, smoking cornsilk cigarettes, and that reminded us of the time we were up the river smoking driftwood grapevine cigarettes, when we saw Slim Finnegan steal the gunpowder, and we got to talking about it.
“Well, if anybody ever finds out Slim Finnegan stole it he won't stab me!” Swatty said; “because he wouldn't think I told on him, because I ain't prohibition and I never was; and I guess Slim and everybody knows it.”
So that made me and Bony feel pretty scared, because everybody knew Slim Finnegan was a stabber. He'd just as soon stab you as not. I don't remember whether he ever had stabbed anybody; but I guess he had, because everybody said so. Anyway, he was always showing us the knife he stabbed fellers with when he wanted to stab them, and he said he'd stab any of us for two cents. The knife had a staghorn handle and a six-inch blade, with a curve in it and a spring in the back that, when you pressed it, snapped the blade open all ready to stab with.
Once, when he met me when I was alone, he grabbed me by the neck and backed me against a fence post, and pulled out the knife and opened it. I bellered and said: “Aw, lemme alone, Slim! I never done nothin' to you!” And he said he knew mighty well I hadn't and that I'd better not try to, because he was a stabber, and if I did anything he didn't like he'd cut my heart out and leave it sticking to the fence post with the knife in it, to show fellers not to monkey with Slim Finnegan. So I said I'd never, never do anything he didn't want me to, and please to let me go. So he said, well, he guessed he'd stab me, anyway, while he had me; and he put the point of his knife against my stomach and leaned up against me, so that all he had to do was lean a little harder against the handle of the knife and I'd be stabbed.
I thought I was going to be killed, sure. I held my breath, and my bones felt like water; and just then he laughed at me and bumped my head against the post three times and threw me down on the grass and went away.
That was before me and Swatty and Bony saw him set the lumber yard afire too. After we saw him set the lumber yard afire we were all more scared of him than ever; even Swatty was scared of him, and said so. When we saw him set the lumber yard afire Slim was in our class at school; but he was twice as big as anybody in our room, because he only went to school when he wanted to and he didn't want to very often; and after the fire he quit going to school. I guess he went bumming for a while.
The first I knew about Slim Finnegan was when I was a little bit of a kid and not big enough to ride belly buster or knee gut on a sled or slide down the big hills. I had a high sled and rode on it sitting down, and rode from the sidewalk into the gutter, and things like that. So my father got me a new sled on my birthday, a clipper sled with half-round irons, and it was painted red and was named Dexter. I took it out on the hill where the big kids were sliding and tried to ride belly buster on it, which is lying flat on your stomach and steering with both feet, like knee gut is lying on one knee and steering with the other foot, but the runners on my sled were so slick that when I put the sled down it slid away before I could get onto it.
So I was trying that when Slim Finnegan came up. I hadn't ever seen him before, but he acted nice and said the way I was trying to get onto the sled wasn't the right way and he would show me how. So he took my sled and ran away and belly busted onto it. He went down the hill like a flash. I watched him until I couldn't tell which was Slim and which was some other feller, away down the hill, and then I couldn't tell any one from any other, and I waited for him to come back. One feller came up the hill, and then another and dozens came up, but Slim didn't come back with my sled; and after a while I began to blubber the way kids do, and a girl I didn't know took me by the arm and led me home, saying, “Don't cry, Georgie! Don't cry, Georgie!” all the way.
So the girl told my mother somebody had stolen my sled, and that was the first I knew it was stolen. When my father came home he asked me what the boy was like that took my sled and I told him, and he went out and after a long time he came back and he had my sled. It was all painted over with fresh drab paint except where my father had scraped the paint off to show that it was my sled. He said: “That drunken Finnegan's dirty son stole it!” So that was the first I knew of Slim Finnegan.
When I got old enough to play away from the house I mighty soon knew that Slim Finnegan was the feller that would sneak up on us little kids when we were playing marbles and grab up our marbles and steal them and, if we said anything, twist our arms behind us until we yelled. He was the one that would sit in the long grass out in the field when we played ball and, if the ball came near him, grab it up and put it in his pocket and laugh at us. He was the one that, if he came on us when we were fishing, would throw our worm can in the Slough and take the fish we had caught, and then swear at us. He was a sneak and a thief and a tough, and his father was a tough and a drunkard; and it wasn't safe to send your washing to Mrs. Finnegan because sometimes she got drunk and didn't do it for a week, and sometimes it didn't all come back.
Well, Swatty said that Slim Finnegan wouldn't stab him, because he was anti-prohibition and Slim was too; so Bony thought maybe he'd better turn anti-prohibition, and he did. And I hoped Slim knew I had turned, but I was afraid he didn't.
Well, one day that spring—but pretty late—me and Swatty and Bony went down to the levee and hired a skiff from Higgins like we always did; and we rowed across the Mississippi to the Illinois shore above the old ferry landing. I guess maybe we were after turtle eggs; so when we saw the shore was all mud Swatty said:
“Let's row up to the head of the Slough and row down the Slough.”
“What for?” I asked him.
“Oh, just for cod!” he says. So we did.
We rowed up to the place where the Slough branches off from the river, and there was a good deal of water in the Slough yet, so we rowed down the Slough until we came almost to the ferry road, and then we thought we would stop and get some grapevine driftwood to smoke, and we did. We rowed to the shore of the Slough and got out and found plenty of driftwood where it had lodged against the bushes and tree roots, and we lit up and smoked and sat awhile just doing that.
Then Swatty said: “Come on! Let's go over to that sand by the powder house and see if there are any turtle eggs there yet.”
That was a good place for turtle eggs, because the sand was hotter there sooner than anywhere else. It was a sort of cleared place without many trees or bushes, all soft sand and not very far from the ferry road. So we walked along down the Slough and pretty soon we came to a skiff pulled up on the shore. I was nearest, so I jumped into it; but Swatty didn't. He said:
“Garsh! You'd better get out of that skiff. Some feller has just left that skiff there, because his footprints on the bow seat ain't dry yet. If he came back and seen us playing in his skiff he'd like as not give us good and plenty!”
And that was right, because when a feller rows over from town or anywhere he don't like kids to fool with his skiff; because if the skiff got away how could he get back to town? So if they catch you in their skiffs they bat you a good one. So I got out of the skiff and Swatty went on ahead, and me and Bony followed; and we come to the sandy place by the powder house.
A powder house is a little square shack about as big as a closet, covered with sheet iron and painted red for danger. This was the only one on the Illinois side, but there were two more on the Iowa side, up the river from town a good ways; and the reason they were so far from town was because the wholesale grocers sold powder, but the city didn't allow them to keep any inside the city limits. When they sold some they sent over to get it. The powder houses were painted with big letters to say Danger! and that nobody must shoot at them or build a fire near them, or they might explode. So that was why this one was in the middle of the sandy place sand can't burn like grass does.
So we come through the bushes to where we could see the powder house and we all stopped short right there, for there was Slim Finnegan coming out of the powder house with a bag over his shoulder, with what anybody could tell was an iron powder keg in it. As soon as we saw him he saw us and we dodged back into the bushes and ran. We ran pretty far, and then we stopped and listened and didn't hear anything; so we hid down behind a log and waited. We knew that if Slim Finnegan found us he'd stab us or something. Anyway, we thought he would. Me and Bony did. I guess Swatty did too.
After we had waited what seemed like a couple of hours—but I guess it was about half a minute—Swatty put his head up above the log and looked, and didn't see anything. Then he got up and went round the log and started to go back to the powder house. Bony didn't say anything, because he was too scared, but I yelled, “Swatty! Swatty!” in a whisper, because I wanted him to come back; but he just turned and motioned us to be still, and he went on. He walked as careful as he could. Pretty soon he came back and dropped down behind the log again.
“It's Slim Finnegan, all right,” he said—only he said “orl right,” like he always does; “and he's stealing a keg of powder”—only he said it sort of like “kerg of powder.”
“What'd you see, Swatty?” I whispered.
“I seen him shift the bag from one shoulder to the other,” Swatty said, “and I could see the ridges on the keg, all right! If we wanted to we could tell the police and they'd put him in jail.”
“Aw, don't, Swatty!” I said. “If you do that he'll wait until he gets out and then he'll stab all of us. Aw, don't tell the police, Swatty!”
“Maybe I will and maybe I won't,” Swatty said. “I ain't made up my mind yet what I'll do. I ain't afraid of his old stabbin' knife, I tell you that! He can't scare me! There ain't any Slim Finnegan that ever lived could scare me. If he pulled his old frog stabber on me I'd—”
He stopped short and I saw him put out one hand and grab the log, and his face looked like a dead man's, and then I looked up from the callus I was fixing on my foot and I saw Slim Finnegan too. He was standing right in front of us with a pistol in his hand and the pistol was pointed right at us. He had a mean-looking face, sort of foxy and sort of sneery, and now it had a sort of grin on it, and it was ugly. It was the kind of grin he had when he twisted a little kid's arm and made him scream. He was just like he always was, sort of muddy-haired and yellowfaced and slouchy in the shoulders, and tobacco juice in the corners of his mouth. He looked just the way he always looked when he was going to have some fun hurting somebody.
I felt pretty sick, I felt hot in the stomach, as if a bullet had already made a hot hole there. I sort of twitched in different places as each place got to thinking it was the place the bullet was going to hit. I don't know what Bony did; I had all I wanted to do without thinking of anybody else. All of a sudden Slim opened his dirty mouth and swore at us the worst anybody ever heard.
“Get up out of there, you”—something—“rats!” he said in the meanest voice he had. “Get up!”
So we got up.
“You get along there, now!” he ordered, swearing some more; and he waved us where to go.
We didn't say a word, not even Swatty. We just went; and instead of thinking I felt the bullet coming into my stomach I thought I felt it coming into the joints of my back. I put my hand behind me to sort of help stop it if it came. That way he sent us through the brush to the sandy place. He walked us toward the powder house, and then, all at once, he shouted at us to throw down our grapevine cigarettes. He asked us if we wanted to blow him to hell. So we threw them down.
Then he came up to me and hit me on the side of the head and knocked me down in the sand, and threw Bony on top of me, and slapped Swatty so he staggered; but Swatty didn't fall. He swore back at Slim, and Slim slapped him again and knocked him down. For a million dollars I would n't have sworn back at a stabber that had a pistol; but that's how Swatty is. Anyway, he was the only one of us that could swear good enough to make it worth while swearing back.
Well, Slim had left the door of the powder house open and when he had us all knocked down he came over and kicked at us, and I was the one he kicked. He swore all the time, a steady stream, and it was the thoroughest swearing I ever heard. It sounded like business. Then he jerked Swatty up and slung him toward the powder house and slung him inside, and then he took me and Bony and slung us the same way. He slung us all into the powder house.
“I'll teach you to go blattin' about me when you see me!” he said. “Dirty little rats! I'll learn you a lesson! You 'll never come your sneakin' spy in' on me again! You'll have enough when I get through with you this time. You want to know what I'm goin' to do with you?”
Well, we did sort of want to know, but we didn't say so.
“I'm goin' to lock you in there,” he said; “and I'm goin' to leave you in there to starve, like the dirty sneaks you are. I'll teach you to go tellin' lies about me! You'd go and say I stole that can of powder, wouldn't you? Well, I didn't steal it—see? I bought it. I bought it and they sent me over to get it. It's none of your business, anyway. You sneakin' rats!”
Bony started to cry. Slim told him to shut up, and he did. He scowled at us.
“No, by”—something—he said, swearing; “starving is too good for tattle-tellin' rats like you. Somebody might come and let you out. I know what I'm goin' to do to you. I'm goin' to lock you in and then I'm goin' to set a fire and blow you to a million pieces. I'll blow you up, like the sneakin' rats you are!”
I can't make it sound the way it sounded to us, because I can't swear the way he did. He swore, to show he meant it, and then he slammed the iron-covered door and we heard the iron bar scrape as he put it across the door, and we heard the padlock click into the staple. We were in the dark, darker dark than I was ever in before. Bony began to cry sort of funny, like a sick animal with a voice that was too weak to cry very good. All I can remember was that I put out my hands and felt Swatty and hung onto his coat with both hands.
I hung on and held my breath and waited for the explosion to come. We heard Slim cracking sticks across his knee; we could hear the sticks snap. Then we heard him piling the sticks against the outside of the powder house, and pretty soon we heard scratch! scratch!—like a match on a box. It was the hardest waiting for anything I ever did. Waiting to be blown up is always like that, I guess.
The place where he was piling the sticks was one of the front corners of the powder house, and there wasn't so very much powder in the house, and what there was was in different piles, for the different kinds and sizes of kegs. All of a sudden Swatty pushed my hands off him and stooped down and began feeling on the floor in the corner where the fire was going to be. There were four or five little kegs of powder in that corner and Swatty began picking them up and putting them on one of the other piles that was not so near the corner. I guess nobody but Swatty would have thought of doing that; but when he started I started, too, and we moved the powder as fast as we could. Then the door opened.
Slim had taken off the padlock and the iron bar so quietly we hadn't heard him, and when he opened the door he caught us shifting the kegs.
“Come out of there!” he said. “Now you know what I'll do to you if you go telling about me. If I ever hear you have mentioned my name, or if you ever say it to each other, I'll get you and bring you over here and finish this job right!”
Well, we guessed he'd do it.
“I'd have done it now,” he said, “only I don't want to blow up powder that don't belong to me. And here's the keg I had,” he said, throwing one into the powder house. “Now, you get! And if you ever say a word you 'll know what 'll happen to you. Get!”
We ran. We ran like scared deer, and all I wanted to do was to get as far away as I could. We ran a long way up the Slough and then Swatty stopped, and I stopped because he stopped, but Bony kept on running.
“Come on!” I said to Swatty. “What you stopping for?”
“Hide in there,” he said, pointing to some bushes. “I'll come back.”
He crouched Indian fashion and went toward the Slough and out of sight. It was quite awhile before he came back.
“Garsh, he's a liar!” he said when he came back. “That keg of powder he stole wasn't the one he put back. He's got that one in his skiff yet. It was another one he put back.”
“Swatty, you ain't goin' to tell on him, are you?” I asked.
“You bet I ain't!” he said. “I just wanted to know. You bet I ain't going to tell; if I did he'd stab us in a minute.”
Well, I guess we waited round an hour before we went home, and then we were mighty glad there was any of us left to go home, because we had all thought we were going to be blown into such little pieces nobody would ever find any of us again.
Now about the dynamiters: After I had marched in the prohibition parade because Mamie Little's father was a prohibition man—there was prohibition in Iowa, all over, and for a while Riverbank didn't have any saloons because it was against the law. So Slim Finnegan's father got a shanty boat and started a saloon on it across the river, where there wasn't prohibition; and Slim helped tend bar, and then other bumboats started, and pretty soon I guess folks got tired of that and the saloons started up again in Riverbank, so people could get drunk without having to hire a skiff and go across the river.
So three or four or five men made up their minds they would stop the saloons again, and they started in to do it. Mamie Little's father was one of them, because he printed the newspaper that wanted the saloons closed; so one night three or four of the men's houses were blown up with gunpowder, but the fuse went out on the other keg, so it didn't blow up its house. But three of them were blown up. That was about three months after me and Swatty and Bony saw Slim Finnegan steal the keg of powder; and right away we thought of that and that Slim Finnegan was one of the men that blew up the houses.
Gee! We was scared! All we could think of was that now Slim Finnegan would come round and stab us, so we wouldn't tell on him. One whole afternoon we hid in the old box stall in my barn and didn't dare talk above a whisper; and we had my target rifle, because if Slim came we were going to sell our lives dearly.
But that was afterward. We went to see the blown-up houses first—right after breakfast the morning after the night they were blown up—and they were all pretty bad. Everybody said it was a miracle nobody was killed, and how Mamie Little and her folks walked across the bare rafters and got out, and everything like that. So then the mayor offered five hundred dollars reward and the governor offered a thousand dollars more; and there was a big meeting downtown one night and everybody gave money to hire detectives to catch the dynamiters.
There were lots of detectives came to Riverbank; I guess maybe there were a thousand. Everybody said it would be just a little while before the dynamiters were all caught and sent to prison; but pretty soon everybody began saying the detectives were no good, and that Mr. Murphy, who was the one the committee had hired, was just pretending it was worth while to detect, and that he would never get the dynamiters, and that all he was staying in Riverbank for was to get the money the committee paid him every week. All he found out, I guess, was that the dynamite was gunpowder and that some of it was stole from the powder house across the river and some from the powder houses up the river. But me and Swatty and Bony knew who stole it. That's why we were scared.
And you bet we were mighty scared! We made a fort in the hayloft of my barn, with loopholes to shoot my target rifle through, so we could flee to it if Slim Finnegan came round, and pop him from behind the fort before he could stab us. Swatty got us to do that. He was going to show us how to fix the barn stairs with each step on a hinge so when we pulled a rope the steps would drop and make a slide, so that whenever Slim tried to come up the steps he would get just part way and then slide down again; but when we tried to pry the treads of the steps loose the nails were rusted and the treads split; so we thought we'd better not.
We got up a signal word—only it was Swatty thought of it—so that when any of us saw Slim we could say it, and we'd know we had to run for shelter to our fort. The word was Vamoose! But it was too long, so Swatty shortened it. He made it Vam!
We did everything we could to get ready not to be stabbed. We made daggers out of some kitchen knives I got in my kitchen, and Swatty showed us how to do it while me and Bony turned the grindstone. We sharpened them on both edges and made points on them and tied string round the handles in loops, so we could hang them on our suspender buttons and let them hang down inside our pants. Swatty showed me how to carry my target rifle stuck down one pants leg, too, so it wouldn't be visible. It made me walk stiff-legged, like I was lame, but Swatty said that was a good thing—it would throw Slim Finnegan off his guard. Swatty showed us how to stand back to back when Slim Finnegan attacked us, so we would have a dagger in each direction and he couldn't stab us in the backs.
Whenever we could we got together and Swatty told us new ways to keep from being stabbed, because he said he knew a feller in Derlingport—where he had visited once—who was fixed just like we were, with a big feller after him; and Swatty remembered other things he had done. He didn't remember them all at once, but every day he remembered a new one. When he remembered them we did them. One of them was to rub our knee joints with sewing-machine oil, so they would be limber and we could run like a deer when Slim Finnegan took after us. Before he got through Swatty remembered a lot of things like that. We did them.
Well, after a while I guess we sort of forgot about Slim Finnegan, because he didn't come round to stab us. Maybe it was because Swatty couldn't remember any more of the things the feller in Derlingport had done, and maybe it was because school began again. We sort of turned the fort in my hayloft into a dressing room for a circus. Swatty was ringmaster. So then Bony's birthday started to come and his mother thought she'd have a party for him, because they had a new parlor carpet and had had the dining-room papered. So she had it.
At first Bony said he wasn't going to his party, because there would be girls there and they would want to play kissing games; but Swatty said, Aw! he wasn't afraid to kiss all the girls there were in the world! and that if Bony would go to the party he would go too. So I said if Bony and Swatty would go I would go. I said, Aw! I bet I wasn't afraid to kiss all the girls in the world, either! only I bet I wouldn't kiss Mamie Little if she asked me a million times, because she was mad at me. So we went to Bony's party.
It was a pretty good party. Right at first it wasn't much because the girls sat on one side of the room and tried to keep their white dresses from getting wrinkled, and the boys sat on the other side. It wouldn't have been any fun at all, that first part, only Swatty had brought some beans in his pocket and we had some fun shooting them at the girls with our thumbs. Every once in a while Bony's mother would come in from the kitchen and clap her hands and say:
“Come, now! We must all have a good time! All you boys and girls think of a game and play it. Bony”—only she called him Harold—“I'm surprised you don't start a game!”
So then Bony wished he hadn't come to his party. So after a while Bony's mother said to the cook:
“Well, Maggie, we'd better give them the refreshments now, instead of later; they won't liven up until they are fed.”
We went into the dining-room and all sat round the big table, and we began to have a good time. Us kids would get up and sneak round and steal a girl's cake or something, and she would holler and be mad; and then we started in to pull their hair-bows, and maybe their hair a little, and they would slap at us and scold and giggle. They pretended they didn't like it; but they did. So pretty soon some of them got up and chased us round the table, and after the ice cream it turned out we were playing tag; and Bony's mother said:
“Heaven save the furniture! But, anyway, I'm glad they've waked up!”
Well, I didn't pull Mamie Little's hair, or anything. I guess I wanted to, but I sort of didn't dare. All she did was to make a face at me once across the table, and when I threw a little piece of cake at her she brushed it off her dress and said:
“I consider that very rude!”
So then we went into the parlor again and got to playing kissing games—Copenhagen and post-office, and games like that. So then we played pillow. I guess the girls like it because there isn't so much game and there is more kissing, and I guess the boys don't care because by the time you get to playing pillow they're used to it. You take a sofa pillow and drop it in front of the girl you want to kiss and drop on your knees, and she drops on her knees and then she kisses you. Then she takes the pillow and drops it in front of the fellow she wants to kiss next, and she kneels on it, and she kisses him. So I guess Kate White dropped the pillow in front of me and kissed me; and then I took the pillow and looked round the row of chairs.
I saw Mamie Little and she looked as if she was trying to look as if she didn't want me to drop the pillow in front of her, but really did want me to. I didn't know what to do. Toady Williams was in the next chair to Mamie Little. I guess maybe I wanted Mamie Little to kiss me, but I was sort of scared to put the pillow in front of her. I got sort of hot. So, all of a sudden, I dropped the pillow right in front of her and plumped down on my knees. Everybody laughed and clapped their hands, except Toady Williams.
But Mamie Little didn't plump down on her knees in front of me. She stuck her chin in the air and said:
“No; thank you.”
I guess I got hotter than I ever was in my life. I was burning hot. And I guess I was pretty mad. I got up and held the pillow by one corner.
“All right for you, then!” I said; and all I thought of was to make her sorry for making me look silly before the whole crowd. “All right for you! I know who dynamited your house, and now I won't tell!”
Well, right away she got down on her knees. She took the pillow from me and got down on her knees on it. So I kneeled down on it, too, and she let me kiss her on the cheek. It was the softest cheek I ever kissed, I guess. So then she got up, and took the pillow and looked around the circle for a boy to drop it in front of, and when she didn't drop it in front of Toady Williams the very first thing, I felt fine. Swatty leaned over to me and said:
“Garsh! Now you done it!”
“Well,” I said back, “I got a right to tell if I want to, haven't I?”
“No, you hain't,” Swatty said. “If you tell then Slim Finnegan will stab the whole three of us.”
“Well, let him stab!” I said, because that was how I felt just then, because Mamie Little had not put the pillow down in front of Toady Williams but in front of Bony, and that didn't mean much, because it only meant that she wanted Bony to have it next, because he would give it to Lucy. So, when he went to kiss Mamie she turned her head and he hardly got any kiss at all, and she had let me kiss her fair and solid. So I felt pretty good. I felt as if she was going to be my girl again. And I guess she was, because when somebody put the pillow in front of her again, she came right to me with it, and that time it was a good kiss too. I felt great!
When us boys was getting our hats, when the party was over, Swatty came up to me.
“If you tell her I'm going to lick you,” he said.
“All right—lick!” I said. “I ain't afraid of your lickings. Lick all you want to. I told her I'd tell and you nor nobody else can't make me a liar!”
So Mamie Little waited for me at the front door, and when I came out I knew she had waited so I could walk home with her, and I did.
“Well, I'm glad we aren't mad any more,” she said when we were walking along.
“Ah! who was mad? I wasn't mad,” I said. “Well, I ain't mad now,” she said. “Who was it blew up our house?”
“Oh, somebody!” I said.
We walked a little way and then she said:
“Who blew up our house?”
“Slim Finnegan,” I said.
“How do you know he did?” she said.
“Because me and Swatty and Bony saw him steal the powder to do it with,” I told her, “We was over in Illinois and we saw him steal it from the powder house that's over there.”
So we talked about that and when we got home to her house she told me to come up on the porch, and I did; and then she opened the door and called for her father, and he came to the door.
“Papa, this is Georgie,” she said; “and he knows who blew up our house.”
Well, he took me inside the house and asked me to tell all about it, and I told him, and Mamie sat in a chair and listened to me tell it. When he had asked me everything he could think of he went to the door with me and said:
“George, you are a fine boy!”
I said:
“Yes, sir!” and then I said, “Good-bye, Mamie!” And she said:
“I don't like that mean old Toady Williams.” So I went home.
That evening Mr. Murphy, the detective, came up to my house and Mr. Little came with him; and Mr. Murphy asked me all the questions Mr. Little had asked, and a lot more, and I told him all about Slim Finnegan. He asked where Swatty and Bony lived and how to get to their houses. So then Mr. Murphy said:
“If the boy is telling the truth this may be more important than we imagined. I have thought for some time that the reason Slim Finnegan left town was because he knew something of this affair.”
So I guess that was the reason Slim Finnegan hadn't come around to stab us—he wasn't in Riverbank. I guess it was a month more before they found him down in Oklahoma and fetched him back to Riverbank because me and Swatty and Bony had oathed that he had stolen the keg of powder. Petty larceny was what it was called. That was what they arrested him for.
Well, come to find out, Slim Finnegan hadn't blown up anything, and it wasn't even his keg of powder that done it. He had stole the powder to load a shotgun with, to go hunting, and he showed Mr. Murphy the dry powder keg, with most of the powder in it yet. So he wasn't the dynamiter, after all.
But his father was. Mr. Murphy gave Slim Finnegan three degrees and said to him, “I guess you know who blew up the houses and if you don't tell I'll send you to the penitentiary for twenty years,” and Slim Finnegan—the mean sneak—told that his father and two other men had done it, and they were arrested and went to prison.
So me and Swatty and Bony talked about which of us ought to have the one-thousand-five-hundred-dollars reward, and we made up our minds that Swatty ought to have it because he was the one that went back and saw that Slim Finnegan was really stealing a keg of powder, and that if Swatty didn't get it I ought to have it, because I was the one that told Mamie Little, and that if I didn't get it Mamie Little ought to have it, because if it hadn't been for her I never would have told.
But none of us got it. Mr. Murphy got it. The only thing Swatty and Bony got was that they didn't get stabbed. And I got Mamie Little back for my secret girl again.
While Mamie Little's father's house was getting fixed up, after being dynamited, they went someplace else to live, and the only people that lived across the street from us were the Burtons. There weren't any Burtons to play with, because the only children they had was Tom Burton, who was older than my sister Fan, and that summer he began taking Fan to ride with the dandy horses and carriage the Burtons' hired man took care of.
The Burtons' hired man's name was Jimmy, and everybody called him that except Mrs. Burton—she called him James. I guess Jimmy was forty years old. Or maybe he was fifty, or thirty-five, or something. He was thin and balder than hired men generally are, and his only bad habit was putting angle worms in a pickle bottle and setting the bottle in the sun to dissolve the worms into angle-worm oil for his rheumatism in the winter; but summer was when the worms were, so he had to get a lot of worms in the summer to last through the winter.
Well, Jimmy had been with the Burtons six years and Annie, our hired girl, had been with us on and off, for five years. I guess everybody thought she hadn't any other name at all until one evening when Jimmy came over and knocked at the back door and asked Mother if Miss Dombacher was home. She wasn't, because she had gone to the Evangelical Lutheran Church; but after that Jimmy used to come over, and Annie would put two chairs out in the? yard under the apple tree and they would sit and talk. Or Jimmy would talk. He would talk and talk and talk, and every once in a while Annie would say, “Yes,” and, after she learned it, “No.” So, after a couple of years, Jimmy began to hold Annie's hand when he talked to her, and in a couple of years more they got engaged. I guess they liked each other.
I was in our dining-room one day, looking to see if Annie had put any fresh cookies in the jar in the closet, when I heard my mother say, “Oh, Annie!” in the kitchen, as if she was sorry about something. So then Annie said:
“I bin sorry to go avay, too, ma'am, but it is right everybody should get married once or twice.”
“I know,” my mother said; “but I don't know what I will ever do without you, Annie.”
So then Annie cried, and there were no cookies, so I went out.
Well, it was like this: Jimmy had been saving his money ever since Annie came to our house and now he had enough to get married on and buy a couple of acres; so they were going to be married, and he was going to leave the Burtons and raise garden stuff and peddle it. Annie was going to raise chickens and sell eggs, and they would have a cow and sell milk.
So now I come to the story part of the story. I guess what the story is about is that sometimes it is a good thing for a fellow to have a girl, because if Mamie Little hadn't been my girl maybe Jimmy and Annie would never have been married.
There were two parts about the story. One was that a circus was coming to town and me and Swatty weren't going; the other was that the schoolhouse wore out and they built a new one.
The night before the circus was coming there was going to be a reception in the dandy big new schoolhouse to raise money for a library. Everybody was going to go, and I guess everybody old enough was going to take his girl. Anyway me and Swatty and Bony got to talking about taking girls to parties and receptions and things, and the first thing you know we said we'd do it.
I guess I said Swatty was afraid, and Swatty dared me back, and we both dared Bony, and so we wouldn't any of us take the dare. So Bony asked Lucy and she said she'd go with him if my mother would let her. When Bony told me I didn't believe him, but I asked Lucy and she said Bony had asked her, and that Mamie Little was as mad as mad because I hadn't asked Mamie. So I said:
“Aw! How could I ask her when I hain't seen her yet?”
“You could, too, see her, if you wanted to,” Lucy said. “You could see her every minute of every day, if you wasn't a 'fraid-cat.”
“'T ain't so. I'm not a 'fraid-cat!” I said.
“'T is so, and you are! 'Fraidie-cat! You ain't going to take Mamie Little, and you're her fellow!”
“I am, too, going to take her!” I said back.
But I wasn't going to take Mamie Little. I wouldn't have asked her for a million dollars. But I didn't have to ask her. I met her that afternoon. She was on the other side of the street and I just went along as if I didn't see her. So she called across: “Oo-oo! Georgie! You know!”
“Aw! What do I know?” I asked back.
“You know! The reception!” she said. Well, I just went along and didn't say anything. But that evening when I got home my mother said:
“I hear you are getting to be quite a beau, Georgie.”
I didn't know what she meant, so I said, “Huh?”
“Mrs. Little called this afternoon,” my mother said, “and she told me you had asked Mamie Little to go to the new school reception with you. That's very nice.”
I didn't say anything. It was Lucy, and I was mighty mad at her for telling Mamie Little I was going to take her; but I was kind of glad, too. I thought, “Well, anyway, Swatty and Bony are going to take girls.”
The reception was the next night, so when Swatty and Bony came over the next afternoon I told them I was going to take Mamie Little, and Swatty said that was right, everybody was going to take a girl.
So I asked him who he was going to take, because he had never let on he had a girl.
“Garsh!” he said, “I ain't going to take any girl!”
That made me sick. Me and Bony had stood right up like men and had asked girls, and Swatty had promised he would take one, and now he was backing out. So I said:
“Aw! You said you would take one!”
“Well, don't I know it?” Swatty said. “Of course I said I would, but I forgot.”
“What did you forget?” I asked.
“I forgot I was married,” Swatty said.
We were all sitting under our apple tree, out in the yard, and it was a good thing we were not sitting on a roof, because I would have fell off and killed myself, I was so surprised.
“Aw! When was you married?” I said.
“That time I went to Derlingport to visit my uncle,” Swatty said.
“Aw! Who did you marry?”
“A girl,” he said.
“Well, if you married a girl why didn't you ever tell us about it before?”
“Garsh! I can't remember everything that happened when I was in Derlingport, can I? Mebbe I forgot I was married.”
“Aw, pshaw!” I said. “What did you want to go and get married for, Swatty?”
“Well, I couldn't help it, could I?” he asked.
“You don't think I'd go and get married if I could help it, do you? My—my uncle made me.”
“Why did he make you?” asked Bony.
“Because my aunt had a felon on her finger. She had a felon on her finger and it almost killed her to dam stockings, so my uncle said if I wore any more holes in my stockings I'd have to get a wife of my own to dam them.”
So then we asked Swatty what his wife was like, and he told us a lot about her. She was an Indian princess, and when you first looked at her she looked all right, but pretty soon you saw she had a tomahawk in her belt and the edge of it was all dried over with blood, because she had had eight other husbands before Swatty, and she had got mad at all of them and had killed them and scalped them. She had an album on her parlor table, but instead of photographs in it she had the scalps of her husbands.
Swatty said there was just room in the scalp album for one more scalp, and that every once in a while when he was at her house having his stockings darned she would look at his head and kind of sigh.
Well, we talked it over, and Swatty made us promise never to tell any one he had been married, because if his mother knew it she would take him out in the stable and wale him with a strap. He said that was why he didn't dare take any girl to the new school reception, because if his wife heard of it she would be jealous and she would come down and tomahawk him and maybe kill him. And if she didn't kill him his mother would notice his scalp was gone, the next time she washed his head, and would wale him anyway.
Well, my mother helped me dress for the reception, and then she gave me twenty cents to spend. I had five cents of my own she didn't know about. So that was all right.
It was dark already. I went along, kind of dragging my hand along the pickets of the fences and wishing I was dead or something, and it got darker and darker. The new house Mamie Little lived in was away out over Grimes's Hill, and when I got to the door Mr. Little and Mrs. Little and Mamie were just getting ready to come out, and Mr. Little said: “Well! Here is our cavalier!”
Mamie and me walked in front, and it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be, but I kept feeling sort of chilly when I thought of going into the reception with Mamie. But before we got to the schoolhouse Mamie said to me:
“Say, Georgie! Don't you want a ticket for the circus?”
I said aw, I didn't want to take her ticket away from her; but she said she had one too, because her father was editor of the paper and he got them complimentary.
As soon as we got to the reception Mrs. Little said: “Now, you children run along and enjoy yourselves.”
Mamie said, right away: “Shall we get some ice cream first?”
I said that would be all right, because mebbe people wouldn't notice I was with Mamie Little and think I brought her. So we sat down at a table and a girl took our order and brought us strawberry and vanilla—big dishes—and passed us the cake and we took two pieces of cake apiece.
That was all right; but when we were eating Swatty and Bony came past and said: “Ho, Georgie! He brought a girl!”
That was all right for Bony! He had sneaked out of bringing a girl, and that was mighty mean, after he had gone and got me to bring one. I said I'd fix him when I got him, and he was scared, too! So then we ate our ice cream slow, to make it last longer, and I forgot how mean I felt because I had brought a girl, when whoever was opposite us got through and asked how much he owed.
“Let me see!” the girl said. “Two ice creams at ten cents is twenty cents, and two pieces of cake. That makes thirty cents.”
Well, I almost rammed my spoon down my throat! I had never thought about the cake being extra, and we had had four pieces, and that made twenty cents, and the ice cream was twenty cents so it made forty cents all together, and twenty-five cents was all the money I had! I was so scared my throat sort of closed up on me. I guess my face got as red as fire, and I leaned forward and took a big bite of cake, so Mamie Little would n't see how red my face was, and then I choked on the cake! I guess I never was so choked in my life. And I put a paper napkin up to my face and went out into the hall.
I guess Mamie Little sat there at the table; I don't know. As soon as I was out in the hall I knew what I was going to do. I squeezed in among the people and got to the door and skipped.
As soon as I got home my father asked me did I take Mamie Little home; so I didn't say anything. I went right upstairs to bed. After while my father came up and asked me again if I had gone home with Mamie Little, so I said I hadn't; I said I didn't want to. I said her folks could take her home if they wanted to. So Father said he had a mind to lick me; but he didn't. So I guess Mamie Little got home all right. It wouldn't have helped her home if my father had licked me, but that's the way fathers are.
The next morning, about four o'clock, me and Swatty and Bony went down to see the circus unload. We saw it. And then we went up to the circus grounds and saw the tent go up and everything. So Bony said:
“Aw! Don't you wish you was going to the circus?”
So I said he needn't be so smart, that I was going, because I had a ticket. So then I remembered that I had the twenty cents my mother had given me to buy the ice cream with, only I hadn't spent it because I came away so quick. So I told Swatty he could have the ticket, because I had twenty-five cents to get into the circus with. So Swatty was glad. He said he'd be my Dutch uncle as long as I lived, and that the first dollar he saw rolling uphill he'd pay me back, if he could catch it.
Well, we walked downtown with the parade and saw it, and walked back to the circus grounds with it. Me and Swatty and Bony was the first to go into the tent. We were right up against the rope when the ticket taker let it down. So we hurried right through, because a lot of folks was pushing behind us. The ticket taker yelled something at us, but I didn't hear what it was and we scooted for the menagerie tent.
When we were looking at the ostriches in their cage Swatty got close beside me and said: “Lookee here!”
I looked down, and he had his ticket in his hand yet, because that was why the ticket taker had yelled at us. Swatty had sneaked in without giving his ticket.
“What did you do that for?” I said.
“Because I'm hungry,” he said.
“You can't eat your ticket,” I said.
“You wait and you'll see,” he said, so then we went into the big tent and we climbed up to the top row. When we poked our heads out we could see right down where the ticket taker was taking tickets and all the people were crowding to get in. Right down below us on the ground a bum, or tent man, was asleep on his face with his arm under his head. His coat was beside him. He was breathing hard.
So then Swatty leaned out as far as he could and waved the ticket he had, and called out who wanted to buy a ticket for a quarter. That was just like Swatty anyhow. He was pretty slick. So pretty soon a man said he'd buy the ticket, and he tossed a quarter up to Swatty. With a quarter we could get enough peanuts to keep alive until supper time.
Me and Swatty and Bony was just going to draw our heads in when we saw Jimmy and Annie. I was going to yell at them when I saw something that made me forget to yell. Swatty saw it, too.
There was a man standing by the ropes that made the narrow place people had to go through, but he was outside of the ropes on our side, and just when Jimmy came opposite him and got a step past him his hand went out like a flash and something dropped on the ground and the bum slid out his hand and grabbed what had dropped, and slid it under the coat and went on pretending he was asleep. The man by the ropes had picked Jimmy's wallet out of his pocket.
Well, I didn't know it, but Jimmy had all the money he was going to buy a farm with in that wallet. It was circus day, and he didn't dare leave it at home, because of thieves; so he brought it with him.
I didn't think of anything to do, and neither did Bony, but Swatty did. He looked down, and then slid one leg and then the other over the wall of the tent and hung there a second and looked down. He hand-over-handed a reach or two and then gave himself a sort of push and let go. He came down right on the bum's head, straddle of his neck, and yelled: “Police! Police!” Only he yelled it “Porlice! Porlice!” like he always says it. I guess the bum was surprised, but he reached up and grabbed Swatty.
It wasn't a fair fight, Swatty against a man, but it was a good one while it lasted. Everybody on the top seats stuck their heads out and yelled, and everybody down where Swatty was came running. One of the town cops was first—the cross-eyed one—and he leveled a lick at the bum with his club and caught Swatty across his breeches, and Swatty yelled and let go of the bum. He could fight one bum but he couldn't fight a cross-eyed policeman with a club, too.
The minute the bum got loose he dived under the tent. We saw him scutter along under the seats, and then we saw him come out away down the side of the tent and scoot. The cross-eyed cop started after him, but he never got him.
Swatty didn't run. He just stood on the bum's coat, with his feet spread out, and in a minute Jimmy and a lot of folks were crowded around him. Then he lifted up the coat. We could see it all. Under the coat was Jimmy's wallet and about six more. Jimmy just dropped on his wallet and hugged it. He sort of blubbered and didn't know what to do, so he kissed Swatty, and Swatty hit out at him and hit him in the chest.
By that time a circus man in uniform had come up. He had a big hickory club, peeled, and he pushed into the crowd. Behind him were four or five more circus men, but they had tent stakes.
“What's this row?” he asked.
Somebody started to tell him. The man that took the wallet from Jimmy was right there, and he turned away. So I shouted out:
“Hey, mister! there's the man that took it.”
The circus man looked around and the thief started to hurry. He didn't have a chance to hurry much. The circus man made one jump for him and caught him by the collar and gave one jerk, and the thief's coat and vest came off and his shirt ripped right off him. The other circus men were on him. If it had been me it would have killed me, but I guess he was tough.
When I turned around Mr. Little was standing right back of me. He had come up to see what it all was, so he could put it in his paper. When he saw it was me that had yelled, he said:
“Why, hello, it's our gallant cavalier! These hard seats are no place for a lady's man; come on over in the reserved seats.”
“I can't,” I said, “I've got to wait for Swatty.” He didn't know who Swatty was, so I told him. So when Swatty came in we went over into the reserved seats, right in front of the middle ring. So Mr. Little asked Swatty all about it, and Swatty told him, and Mr. Little wrote it down and went downtown to his paper with it. He told Mrs. Little to take good care of the three heroes. He meant me and Swatty and Bony.
So Jimmy and Annie got married. All Mamie Little ever said about my going home was:
“I guess you think you were pretty smart, going home and letting Papa take me home and pay for the ice cream!”
But that didn't hurt me any. Girls are always saying things like that.