Sleep in a cow-barn“‘i’ll learn that limb tosleep in a cow-barn!’”
But this was a good while after. At the time the people saw Jim Leonard standing safe with Blue Bob on the pier, they set up a regular election cheer, and they would have believed anything Jim Leonard said. They all agreed that Blue Bob had a right to go home with Jim and take him to his mother, for he had saved Jim’s life, and he ought to have the credit of it.
Before this, and while everybody supposed that Jim Leonard would surely be drowned, some of the people had gone up to his mother’s cabin to prepare her for the worst. She did not seem to understand exactly, and she kept round getting breakfast, with her old clay pipe in her mouth; but when she got it through her head, she made an awful face, and dropped her pipe on the door-stone and broke it; and then she threw her check apron over her head and sat down and cried.
But it took so long for her to come to this that the people had not got over comfortingher and trying to make her believe that it was all for the best, when Blue Bob came up through the bars with his hand on Jim’s shoulder, and about all the boys in town tagging after them.
Jim’s mother heard the hurrahing and pulled off her apron, and saw that Jim was safe and sound there before her. She gave him a look that made him slip round behind Blue Bob, and she went in and got a table-knife, and she came out and went to the pear-tree and cut a sucker.
She said, “I’ll learn that limb to sleep in a cow-barn when he’s got a decent bed in the house!” and then she started to come towards Jim Leonard.
THE SCRAPE THAT JIM LEONARD GOT THE BOYS INTO
As I said, it was in the spring that Jim Leonard’s hair-breadth escape happened. But it was late in the summer of that very same year that he got Pony Baker and all the rest of the boys into about one of the worst scrapes that the Boy’s Town boys were ever in.
At first, it was more like a dare than anything else, for when Jim Leonard said he knew a watermelon patch that the owner had no use for, the other boys dared him to tell where it was. He wagged his head, and said that he knew, and then they dared him to tell whose patch it was; and all at once he said it was Bunty Williams’s, and dared them to come and get the melons with him. None of the boys in the Boy’s Town would take adare, and so they set off with Jim Leonard, one sunny Saturday morning in September.
Some of the boys had their arms round one another’s necks, talking as loud as they could into one another’s faces, and some whooping and holloing, and playing Indian, and some throwing stones and scaring cats. They had nearly as many dogs as there were boys, and there were pretty nearly all the boys in the neighborhood. There seemed to be thirty or forty of them, they talked so loud and ran round so, but perhaps there were only ten or eleven. Hen Billard was along, and so were Piccolo Wright and Archie Hawkins, and then a great lot of little fellows.
Pony Baker was not quite a little fellow in age; and there was something about him that always made the big boys let him go with their crowd. But now, when they passed Pony’s gate and his mother saw them, and because it was such a warm morning and she thought they might be going down to the river and called out to him, “You mustn’t go in swimming, Pony, dear; you’ll get the ague,” they began to mock Ponyas soon as they got by, and to hollo, “No, Pony, dear! You mustn’t get the ague. Keep out of the water if you don’t want your teeth to rattle, Pony, dear!”
This made Pony so mad that he began to cry and try to fight them, and they all formed in a ring round him and danced and whooped till he broke through and started home. Then they ran after him and coaxed him not to do it, and said that they were just in fun. After that they used Pony first-rate, and he kept on with them.
Jim Leonard was at the head, walking along and holloing to the fellows to hurry up. They had to wade the river, and he was showing off how he could hop, skip, and jump through, when he stepped on a slippery stone and sat down in the water and made the fellows laugh. But they acted first-rate with him when they got across; they helped him to take off his trousers and wring them out, and they wrung them so hard that they tore them a little, but they were a little torn already; and they wrung them so dry that he said they felt splendid when he got themon again. One of his feet went through the side of the trouser leg that was torn before it got to the end, and made the fellows laugh.
When the boys first started Jim said he had got to go ahead so as to be sure that they found the right patch. He now said that Bunty Williams had two patches, one that he was going to sell the melons out of, and the other that he was going to let them go to seed in; and it was the second melon patch that he had deserted.
But pretty soon after they got over the river he came back and walked with the rest of the boys, and when they came to a piece of woods which they had to go through, he dropped behind. He said it was just the place for Indian, and he wanted to be where he could get at them if they started up when the boys got by, as they would very likely do.
Some of the big fellows called him a cowardy-calf; but he said he would show them when the time came, and most of the little boys believed him and tried to get in front. It was not long before he stopped and asked, What if he could not find the rightpatch? But the big boys said that they reckoned he could if he looked hard enough, and they made him keep on.
One of the dogs treed a squirrel, and Jim offered to climb the tree and shake the squirrel off; but Hen Billard said his watermelon tooth was beginning to trouble him, and he had no time for squirrels. That made all the big boys laugh, and they pulled Jim Leonard along, although he held back with all his might and told them to quit it. He began to cry.
Pony Baker did not know what to make of him. He felt sorry for him, but it seemed to him that Jim was acting as if he wanted to get out of showing the fellows where the patch was. Pony lent him his handkerchief, and Jim said that he had the toothache, anyway. He showed Pony the tooth, and the fellows saw him and made fun, and they offered to carry him, if his tooth ached so that he could not walk, and then suddenly Jim rushed ahead of the whole crowd.
They thought he was trying to run away from them, and two or three of the big fellowstook after him, and when they caught up with him, the rest of the boys could see him pointing, and then the big boys that were with him gave a whoop and waved their hats, and all the rest of the boys tore along and tried which could run the fastest and get to the place the soonest.
They knew it must be something great; and sure enough it was a watermelon patch of pretty near an acre, sloping to the south from the edge of the woods, and all overrun with vines and just bulging all over with watermelons and muskmelons.
The watermelons were some of the big mottled kind, with lightish blotches among their darker green, like Georgia melons nowadays, and some almost striped in gray and green, and some were those big, round sugar melons, nearly black. They were all sizes, but most of them were large, and you need not “punk” them to see if they were ripe. Anybody could tell that they were ripe from looking at them, and the muskmelons, which were the old-fashioned long kind, were yellow as gold.
Now, the big fellows said, you could see why Bunty Williams had let this patch go to seed. It was because they were such bully melons and would have the best seeds; and the fellows all agreed to save the seeds for Bunty, and put them where he could find them. They began to praise Jim Leonard up, but he did not say anything, and only looked on with his queer, sleepy eyes, and said his tooth ached, when the fellows plunged down among the melons and began to burst them open.
They had lots of fun. At first they cut a few melons open with their knives, but that was too slow, and pretty soon they began to jump on them and split them with sharp-edged rocks, or anything, to get them open quick. They did not eat close to the rind, as you do when you have a melon on the table, but they tore out the core and just ate that; and in about a minute they forgot all about saving the seeds for Bunty Williams and putting them in one place where he could get them.
Some of the fellows went into the edgeof the woods to eat their melons, and then came back for more; some took them and cracked them open on the top rail of the fence, and then sat down in the fence corner and plunged their fists in and tore the cores out. Some of them squeezed the juice out of the cores into the shells of the melons and then drank it out of them.
Piccolo Wright was stooping over to pull a melon and Archie Hawkins came up behind him with a big melon that had a seam across it, it was so ripe; and he brought it down on Piccolo’s head, and it smashed open and went all over Piccolo. He was pretty mad at first, but then he saw the fun of it, and he took one end of the melon and scooped it all out, and put it on in place of his hat and wore it like a helmet. Archie did the same thing with the other end, and then all the big boys scooped out melons and wore them for helmets. They were all drabbled with seeds and pulp, and some of the little fellows were perfectly soaked. None of them cared very much for the muskmelons.
Somehow Pony would not take any of themelons, although there was nothing that he liked so much. The fellows seemed to be having an awfully good time, and yet somehow it looked wrong to Pony. He knew that Bunty Williams had given up the patch, because Jim Leonard said so, and he knew that the boys had a right to the melons if Bunty had got done with them; but still the sight of them there, smashing and gorging, made Pony feel anxious. It almost made him think that Jim Leonard was better than the rest because he would not take any of the melons, but stayed off at one side of the patch near the woods, where Pony stood with him.
He did not say much, and Pony noticed that he kept watching the log cabin where Bunty Williams lived on the slope of the hill about half a mile off, and once he heard Jim saying, as if to himself: “No, there isn’t any smoke coming out of the chimbly, and that’s a sign there ain’t anybody there. They’ve all gone to market, I reckon.”
It went through Pony that it was strange Jim should care whether Bunty was at home or not, if Bunty had given up the patch, buthe did not say anything; it often happened so with him about the things he thought strange.
The fellows did not seem to notice where he was or what he was doing; they were all whooping and holloing, and now they began to play war with the watermelon rinds. One of the dogs thought he smelled a ground-squirrel and began to dig for it, and in about half a minute all the dogs seemed to be fighting, and the fellows were yelling round them and sicking them on; and they were all making such a din that Pony could hardly hear himself think, as his father used to say. But he thought he saw some one come out of Bunty’s cabin, and take down the hill with a dog after him and a hoe in his hand.
He made Jim Leonard look, and Jim just gave a screech that rose above the din of the dogs and the other boys, “Bunty’s coming, and he’s got his bulldog and his shotgun!” And then he turned and broke through the woods.
All the boys stood still and stared at the hill-side, while the dogs fought on. The nextthing they knew they were floundering among the vines and over the watermelon cores and shells and breaking for the woods; and as soon as the dogs found the boys were gone, they seemed to think it was no use to keep on fighting with nobody to look on, and they took after the fellows.
The big fellows holloed to the little fellows to come on, and the little fellows began crying. They caught their feet in the roots and dead branches and kept falling down, and some of the big fellows that were clever, like Hen Billard and Archie Hawkins, came back and picked them up and started them on again.
Nobody stopped to ask himself or any one else why they should be afraid of Bunty if he had done with his melon patch, but they all ran as if he had caught them stealing his melons, and had a right to shoot them, or set his dog on them.
They got through the woods to the shore of the river, and all the time they could hear Bunty Williams roaring and shouting, and Bunty Williams’s bulldog barking, and itseemed as if he were right behind them. After they reached the river they had to run a long way up the shore before they got to the ripple where they could wade it, and by that time they were in such a hurry that they did not stop to turn up their trousers’ legs; they just splashed right in and splashed across the best way they could. Some of them fell down, but everybody had to look out for himself, and they did not know that they were all safe over till they counted up on the other side.
Everybody was there but Jim Leonard, and they did not know what had become of him, but they were not very anxious. In fact they were all talking at the tops of their voices, and bragging what they would have done if Bunty had caught them.
Piccolo Wright showed how he could have tripped him up, and Archie Hawkins said that snuff would make a bulldog loosen his grip, because he would have to keep sneezing. None of them seemed to have seen either Bunty’s shotgun or his bulldog, but they all believed that he had them because JimLeonard said so, just as they had believed that Bunty had got done with his melon patch, until all at once one of them said, “Where is Jim Leonard, anyway?”
Then they found out that nobody knew, and the little fellows began to think that maybe Bunty Williams had caught him, but Hen Billard said: “Oh, he’s safe enough, somewheres. I wish I had him here!”
Archie Hawkins asked, “What would you do to him?” and Hen said: “I’d show you! I’d make him go back and find out whether Bunty really had a bulldog with him. I don’t believe he had.”
Then all the big boys said that none of them believed so, either, and that they would bet that any of their dogs could whip Bunty’s dog.
Their dogs did not look much like fighting. They were wet with running through the river, and they were lying round with their tongues hanging out, panting. But it made the boys think that something ought to be done to Jim Leonard, if they could ever find him, and some one said that they oughtto look for him right away, but the rest said they ought to stop and dry their pantaloons first.
Pony began to be afraid they were going to hurt Jim Leonard if they got hold of him, and he said he was going home; and the boys tried to keep him from doing it. They said they were just going to build a drift-wood fire and dry their clothes at it, and they told him that if he went off in his wet trousers he would be sure to get the ague. But nothing that the boys could do would keep him, and so the big fellows said to let him go if he wanted to so much; and he climbed the river bank and left them kindling a fire.
When he got away and looked back, all the boys had their clothes off and were dancing round the fire like Indians, and he would have liked to turn back after he got to the top, and maybe he might have done so if he had not found Jim Leonard hiding in a hole up there and peeping over at the boys. Jim was crying, and said his tooth ached awfully, and he was afraid to go home andget something to put in it, because his mother would whale him as soon as she caught him.
He said he was hungry, too, and he wanted Pony to go over into a field with him and get a turnip, but Pony would not do it. He had three cents in his pocket—the big old kind that were as large as half-dollars and seemed to buy as much in that day—and he offered to let Jim take them and go and get something to eat at the grocery.
They decided he should buy two smoked red herrings and a cent’s worth of crackers, and these were what Jim brought back after he had been gone so long that Pony thought he would never come. He had stopped to get some apples off one of the trees at his mother’s house, and he had to watch his chance so that she should not see him, and then he had stopped and taken some potatoes out of a hill that would be first-rate if they could get some salt to eat them with, after they had built a fire somewhere and baked them.
They thought it would be a good plan to dig one of these little caves just under theedge of the bank, and make a hole in the top to let the smoke out; but they would have to go a good way off so that the other fellows could not see them, and they could not wait for that. They divided the herrings between them, and they each had two crackers and three apples, and they made a good meal.
Then they went to a pump at the nearest house, where the woman said they might have a drink, and drank themselves full. They wanted awfully to ask her for some salt, but they did not dare to do it for fear she would make them tell what they wanted it for. So they came away without, and Jim said they could put ashes on their potatoes the way the Indians did, and it would be just as good as salt.
They ran back to the river bank, and ran along up it till they were out of sight of the boys on the shore below, and then they made their oven in it, and started their fire with some matches that Jim Leonard had in his pocket, so that if he ever got lost in the woods at night he could make a fire and keepfrom freezing. His tooth had stopped aching now, and he kept telling such exciting stories about Indians that Pony could not seem to get the chance to ask why Bunty Williams should take after the boys with his shotgun and bulldog if he had given up the watermelon patch and only wanted it for seed.
The question lurked in Pony’s mind all the time that they were waiting for the potatoes to bake, but somehow he could not get it out. He did not feel very well, and he tried to forget his bad feelings by listening as hard as he could to Jim Leonard’s stories. Jim kept taking the potatoes out to see if they were done enough, and he began to eat them while they were still very hard and greenish under the skin. Pony ate them, too, although he was not hungry now, and he did not think the ashes were as good as salt on them, as Jim pretended. The potato he ate seemed to make him feel no better, and at last he had to tell Jim that he was afraid he was going to be sick.
Jim said that if they could heat some stones, and get a blanket anywhere, andput it over Pony and the stones, and then pour water on the hot stones, they could give him a steam bath the way the Indians did, and it would cure him in a minute; they could get the stones easy enough, and he could bring water from the river in his straw hat, but the thing of it was to get the blanket.
He stood looking thoughtfully down at Pony, who was crying now, and begging Jim Leonard to go home with him, for he did not believe he could walk on account of the pain that seemed to curl him right up. He asked Jim if he believed he was beginning to have the ague, but Jim said it was more like the yellow janders, although he agreed that Pony had better go home, for it was pretty late, anyway.
He made Pony promise that if he would take him home he would let him get a good way off before he went into the house, so that Pony’s father and mother should not see who had brought him. He said that when he had got off far enough he would hollo, and then Pony could go in. He wasfirst-rate to Pony on the way home, and helped him to walk, and when the pain curled him up so tight that he could not touch his foot to the ground, Jim carried him.
Pony could never know just what to make of Jim Leonard. Sometimes he was so good to you that you could not help thinking he was one of the cleverest fellows in town, and then all of a sudden he would do something mean. He acted the perfect coward at times, and at other times he was not afraid of anything. Almost any of the fellows could whip him, but once he went into an empty house that was haunted, and came and looked out of the garret windows, and dared any of them to come up.
He offered now, if Pony did not want to go home and let his folks find out about the melon patch, to take him to his mother’s log-barn, and get a witch-doctor to come and tend him; but Pony said that he thought they had better keep on, and then Jim trotted and asked him if the jolting did not do him some good. He said he justwished there was an Indian medicine-man around somewhere.
They were so long getting to Pony’s house that it was almost dusk when they reached the back of the barn, and Jim put him over the fence. Jim started to run, and Pony waited till he got out of sight and holloed; then he began to shout, “Father! Mother!Omother! Come out here! I’m sick!”
It did not seem hardly a second till he heard his mother calling back: “Pony! Pony! Where are you, child? Where are you?”
“Here, behind the barn!” he answered.
Pony’s mother came running out, and then his father, and when they had put him into his own bed up-stairs, his mother made his father go for the doctor. While his father was gone, his mother got the whole story out of Pony—what he had been doing all day, and what he had been eating—but as to who had got him into the trouble, she said she knew from the start it must be Jim Leonard.
After the doctor came and she told himwhat Pony had been eating, without telling all that he had been doing, the doctor gave him something to make him feel better. As soon as he said he felt better she began to talk very seriously to him, and to tell him how anxious she had been ever since she had seen him going off in the morning with Jim Leonard at the head of that crowd of boys.
“Didn’t you know he couldn’t be telling the truth when he said the man had left his watermelon patch? Didn’t any of the boys?”
“No,” said Pony, thoughtfully.
“But when he pretended that he shouldn’t know the right patch, and wanted to turn back?”
“We didn’t think anything. We thought he just wanted to get out of going. Ought they let him turn back? Maybe he meant to keep the patch all to himself.”
His mother was silent, and Pony asked, “Do you believe that a boy has a right to take anything off a tree or a vine?”
“No; certainly not.”
“Well, that’s what I think, too.”
“Why, Pony,” said his mother, “is there anybody who thinks such a thing can be right?”
“Well, the boys say it’s not stealing. Stealing is hooking a thing out of a wagon or a store; but if you can knock a thing off a tree, or get it through a fence, when it’s on the ground already, then it’s just like gathering nuts in the woods. That’s what the boys say. Do you think it is?”
“I think it’s the worst kind of stealing. I hope my boy doesn’t do such things.”
“Not very often,” answered Pony, thoughtfully. “When there’s a lot of fellows together, you don’t want them to laugh at you.”
“O Pony, dear!” said his mother, almost crying.
“Well, anyway, mother,” Pony said, to cheer her up, “I didn’t take any of the watermelons to-day, for all Jim said Bunty had got done with them.”
“I’m so glad to think you didn’t! And you must promise, won’t you, never to touch any fruit that doesn’t belong to you?”
“But supposing an apple was to drop over the fence onto the sidewalk, what would you do then?”
“I should throw it right back over the fence again,” said Pony’s mother.
Pony promised his mother never to touch other people’s fruit, but he was glad she did not ask him to throw it back over the fence if it fell outside, for he knew the fellows would laugh.
His father came back from going down-stairs with the doctor, and she told him all that Pony had told her, and it seemed to Pony that his father could hardly keep from laughing. But his mother did not even smile.
“How could Jim Leonard tell them that a man would give up his watermelon patch, and how could they believe such a lie, poor, foolish boys?”
“They wished to believe it,” said Pony’s father, “and so did Jim, I dare say.”
“He might have got some of them killed, if Bunty Williams had fired his gun at them,” said Pony’s mother; and he could see thatshe was not half-satisfied with what his father said.
“Perhaps it was a hoe, after all. You can’t shoot anybody with a hoe-handle, and there is nothing to prove that it was a gun but Jim’s word.”
“Yes, and here poor Pony has been so sick from it all, and Jim Leonard gets off without anything.”
“You are always wanting the tower to fall on the wicked,” said Pony’s father, laughing. “When it came to the worst, Jim didn’t take the melons any more than Pony did. And he seems to have wanted to back out of the whole affair at one time.”
“Oh! And do you think that excuses him?”
“No, I don’t. But I think he’s had a worse time, if that’s any comfort, than Pony has. He has suffered the fate of all liars. Sooner or later their lies outwit them and overmaster them, for whenever people believe a liar he is forced to act as if he had spoken the truth. That’s worse thanhaving a tower fall on you, or pains in the stomach.”
Pony’s mother was silent for a moment as if she could not answer, and then she said, “Well, all I know is, I wish there was no such boy in this town as Jim Leonard.”
ABOUT RUNNING AWAY TO THE INDIAN RESERVATION ON A CANAL-BOAT, AND HOW THE PLAN FAILED
Now, anybody can see the kind of a boy that Jim Leonard was, pretty well; and the strange thing of it was that he could have such a boy as Pony Baker under him so. But, anyway, Pony liked Jim, as much as his mother hated him, and he believed everything Jim said in spite of all that had happened.
After Jim promised to find out whether there was any Indian reservation that you could walk to, he pretended to study out in the geography that the only reservation there was in the State was away up close to Lake Erie, but it was not far from the same canal that ran through the Boy’s Town tothe lake, and Jim said, “I’ll tell you what, Pony! The way to do will be to get into a canal-boat, somehow, and that will take you to the reservation without your hardly having to walk a step; and you can have fun on the boat, too.”
Pony agreed that this would be the best way, but he did not really like the notion of living so long among the Indians that he would not remember his father and mother when he saw them; he would like to stay till he was pretty nearly grown up, and then come back in a chief’s dress, with eagle plumes all down his back and a bow in his hand, and scare them a little when he first came in the house and then protect them from the tribe and tell them who he was, and enjoy their surprise. But he hated to say this to Jim Leonard, because he would think he was afraid to live with the Indians always. He hardly dared to ask him what the Indians would do to him if they did not adopt him, but he thought he had better, and Jim said:
“Oh, burn you, maybe. But it ain’t likely but what they’ll adopt you; and ifthey do they’ll take you down to the river, and wash you and scrub you, so’s to get all the white man off, and then pull out your hair, a hair at a time, till there’s nothing but the scalp-lock left, so that your enemies can scalp you handy; and then you’re just as good an Indian as anybody, and nobody can pick on you, or anything. The thing is how to find the canal-boat.”
The next morning at school it began to be known that Pony Baker was going to run off on a canal-boat to see the Indians, and all the fellows said how he ought to do it. One of the fellows said that he ought to get to drive the boat horses, and another that he ought to hide on board in the cargo, and come out when the boat was passing the reservation; and another that he ought to go for a cabin-boy on one of the passenger-packets, and then he could get to the Indians twice as soon as he could on a freight-boat. But the trouble was that Pony was so little that they did not believe they would take him either for a driver or a cabin-boy; and he said he was not going to hide in thecargo, because the boats were full of rats, and he was not going to have rats running over him all the time.
Some of the fellows thought this showed a poor spirit in Pony, and wanted him to take his dog along and hunt the rats; they said he could have lots of fun; but others said that the dog would bark as soon as he began to hunt the rats, and then Pony would be found out and put ashore in a minute. The fellows could not think what to do till at last one of them said:
“You know Piccolo Wright?”
“Yes.”
“Well, you know his father has got a boat?”
“Yes. Well?”
“Well, and he’s got a horse, too; and everything.”
“Well, what of it?”
“Get Piccolo to hook the boat and take Pony to the reservation.”
The fellows liked this notion so much that they almost hurrahed, and they could hardly wait till school was out and theycould go and find Piccolo and ask him whether he would do it. They found him up at the canal basin, where he was fishing off the stern of his father’s boat. He was a pretty big boy, though he was not so very old, and he had a lazy, funny face and white hair; and the fellows called him Piccolo because he was learning to play the piccolo flute, and talked about it when he talked at all, but that was not often. He was one of those boys who do not tan or freckle in the sun, but peel, and he always had some loose pieces of fine skin hanging to his nose.
All the fellows came up and began holloing at once, and telling him what they wanted him to do, and he thought it was a first-rate notion, but he kept on fishing, without getting the least bit excited; and he did not say whether he would do it or not, and when the fellows got tired of talking they left him and began to look round the boat. There was a little cabin at one end, and all the rest of the boat was open, and it had been raining, or else the boat had leaked, and it was pretty full of water; and the fellows got downon some loose planks that were floating there, and had fun pushing them up and down, and almost forgot what they had come for. They found a long pump leaning against the side of the boat, with its spout out over the gunwale, and they asked Piccolo if they might pump, and he said they might, and they pumped nearly all the water out after they had got done having fun on the planks.
Some of them went into the cabin and found a little stove there, where Pony could cook his meals, and a bunk where he could sleep, or keep in out of the rain, and they said they wished they were going to run off, too. They took more interest than he did, but they paid him a good deal of attention, and he felt that it was great to be going to run off, and he tried not to be homesick, when he thought of being down there alone at night, and nobody near but Piccolo out on the towpath driving the horse.
The fellows talked it all over, and how they would do. They said that Piccolo ought to hook the boat some Friday night,and the sooner the better, and get a good start before Saturday morning. They were going to start with Pony, and perhaps travel all night with him, and then get off and sleep in the woods, to rest themselves, and then walk home; and the reason that Piccolo ought to hook the boat Friday night was that they could have all Saturday to get back, when there was no school.
If the boat went two miles an hour, which she always did, even if she was loaded with stone from Piccolo’s father’s quarry, she would be fifteen miles from the Boy’s Town by daybreak; and if they kept on travelling night and day, and Pony drove the horse part of the time, they could reach the Indian reservation Monday evening, for they would not want to travel Sunday, because it was against the law, and it was wicked, anyway. If they travelled on Sunday, and a storm came up, just as likely as not the boat would get struck by lightning, and if it did, the lightning would run out along the rope and kill the horse and Piccolo, too, if he was riding. But the way for Piccolo to do wasalways to come aboard when it began to rain, and that would keep Pony company a little, and they could make the horse go by throwing stones at him.
Pony and Piccolo ought to keep together as much as they could, especially at night, so that if there were robbers, they could defend the boat better. Of course, they could not make the horse go by throwing stones at him in the dark, and the way for them to do was for Pony to get out and ride behind Piccolo. Besides making it safer against robbers, they could keep each other from going to sleep by talking, or else telling stories; or if one of them did doze off, the other could hold him on; and they must take turn about sleeping in the daytime.
But the best way of all to scare the robbers was to have a pistol, and fire it off every little once in a while, so as to let them know that the boat was armed. One of the fellows that had a pistol said he would lend it to Pony if Pony would be sure to send it back from the reservation by Piccolo, for he should want it himself on the Fourth, whichwas coming in about three weeks. Another fellow that had five cents, which he was saving up till he could get ten, to buy a pack of shooting-crackers, said he would lend it to Pony to buy powder, if he only felt sure that he could get it back to him in time. All the other fellows said he could do it easily, but they did not say how; one of them offered to go and get the powder at once, so as to have it ready.
But Pony told him it would not be of any use, for he had promised his mother that he would not touch a pistol or powder before the Fourth. None of the fellows seemed to think it was strange that he should be willing to run away from home, and yet be so anxious to keep his promise to his mother that he would not use a pistol to defend himself from robbers; and none of them seemed to think it was strange that they should not want Piccolo, if he hooked his father’s boat, to travel on Sunday with it.
After a while Piccolo came to the little hatch-door, and looked down into the cabin where the boys were sitting and talking atthe tops of their voices; but in about a minute he vanished, very suddenly for him, and they heard him pumping, and then before they knew it, they heard a loud, harsh voice shouting, “Heigh, there!”
They looked round, and at the open window of the cabin on the land-side they saw a man’s face, and it seemed to fill the whole window. They knew it must be Piccolo’s father, and they just swarmed up the gangway all in a bunch. Some of them fell, but these hung on to the rest, somehow, and they all got to the deck of the cabin together, and began jumping ashore, so that Piccolo’s father could not catch them. He was standing on the basin bank, saying something, but they did not know what, and they did not stop to ask, and they began to run every which way.
They all got safely ashore, except Jim Leonard; he fell over the side of the boat between it and the bank, but he scrambled up out of the water like lightning, and ran after the rest. He was pretty long-legged, and he soon caught up, but he was justraining water from his clothes, and it made the fellows laugh so that they could hardly run, to hear him swish when he jolted along. They did not know what to do exactly, till one of them said they ought to go down to the river and go in swimming, and they could wring Jim Leonard’s clothes out, and lay them on the shore to dry, and stay in long enough to let them dry. That was what they did, and they ran round through the backs of the gardens and the orchards, and through the alleys, and climbed fences, so that nobody could see them. The day was pretty hot, and by the time they got to the river they were all sweating, so that Jim’s clothes were not much damper than the others. He had nothing but a shirt and trousers on, anyway.
After that they did not try to get Piccolo to hook his father’s boat, for they said that his father might get after them any time, and he would have a right to do anything he pleased to them, if he caught them. They could not think of any other boat that they could get, and they did not know how Ponycould reach the reservation without a canal-boat. That was the reason why they had to give up the notion of his going to the Indians; and if anybody had told them that the Indians were going to come to Pony they would have said he was joking, or else crazy; but this was really what happened. It happened a good while afterwards; so long afterwards that they had about forgotten he ever meant to run off, and they had got done talking about it.
HOW THE INDIANS CAME TO THE BOY’S TOWN AND JIM LEONARD ACTED THE COWARD
Jim Leonard was so mad because he lost his chip-hat in the canal basin, when he fell off the boat (and had to go home bareheaded and tell his mother all about what happened, though his clothes were dry enough, and he might have got off without her noticing anything, if it had not been for his hat) that he would not take any interest in Pony. But he kept on taking an interest in Indians, and he was the most excited fellow in the whole Boy’s Town when the Indians came.
The way they came to town was this: The white people around the reservation got tired of having them there, or else they wanted their land, and the government thought it might as well move them out West, where there were more Indians, there were such a very few of them on the reservation; and so it loaded them on three canal-boats and brought them down through the Boy’s Town to the Ohio River, and put them on a steamboat, and then took them down to the Mississippi, and put them on a reservation beyond that river.
Real Indians“real indians, in blankets, with bows and arrows”
The boys did not know anything about this, and they would not have cared much if they had. All they knew was that one morning (and it happened to be Saturday) three canal-boats, full of Indians, came into the basin. Nobody ever knew which boy saw them first. It seemed as if all the fellows in the Boy’s Town happened to be up at the basin at once, and were standing there when the boats came in. When they saw that they were real Indians, in blankets, with bows and arrows, warriors, squaws, papooses, and everything, they almost went crazy, and when a good many of the Indians came ashore and went over to thecourt-house yard and began to shoot at quarters and half-dollars that the people stuck into the ground for them to shoot at, the fellows could hardly believe their eyes. They yelled and cheered and tried to get acquainted with the Indian boys, and ran and got their arrows for them, and everything; and if the Indians could only have stayed until the Fourth, which was pretty near now, they would have thought it was the greatest thing that ever happened. Jim Leonard said they belonged to a tribe that had been against the British in the last war, and were the friends of the Long Knives, as they called the Americans. He said that he read it in a book; and he hunted round for Pony Baker, and when he found him he said: “Come here, Pony; I want to tell you something.”
Any other time all the other fellows would have crowded around and wanted to know what it was, but now they were so much taken up with the Indians that none of them minded him, and so he got a good chance at Pony alone. Pony was afraid that JimLeonard wanted him to run off with the Indians, and this was just what he did want.
He said: “You ought to get a blanket and stain your face and hands with walnut juice, and then no one could tell you from the rest of the tribe, and you could go out with them where they’re going and hunt buffaloes. It’s the greatest chance there ever was. They’ll adopt you into the tribe, maybe, as soon as the canal-boats leave, or as quick as they can get to a place where they can pull your hair out and wash you in the canal. I tell you, if I was in your place, I’d do it, Pony.”
Pony did not know what to say. He hated to tell Jim Leonard that he had pretty nearly given up the notion of running off for the present, or until his father and mother did something more to make him do it.
Ever since the boys failed so in trying to get Piccolo to hook his father’s boat for Pony to run off in, things had been going better with Pony at home. His mother did not stop him from half so many things as she used to do, and lately his father had gotto being very good to him: let him lie in bed in the morning, and did not seem to notice when he stayed out with the boys at night, telling stories on the front steps, or playing hide-and-go-whoop, or anything. They seemed to be a great deal taken up with each other and not to mind so much what Pony was doing.
His mother let him go in swimming whenever he asked her, and did not make him promise to keep out of the deep water. She said she would see, when he coaxed her for five cents to get powder for the Fourth, and she let him have one of the boys to spend the night with him once, and she gave them waffles for breakfast. She showed herself something like a mother, and she had told him that if he would be very, very good she would get his father to give him a quarter, so that he could buy two packs of shooting-crackers, as well as five cents’ worth of powder for the Fourth. But she put her arms around him and hugged him up to her and kissed his head and said:
“You’ll be very careful, Pony, won’t you?You’re all the little boy we’ve got, and if anything should happen to you—”
She seemed to be almost crying, and Pony laughed and said: “Why, nothing could happen to you with shooting-crackers”; and she could have the powder to keep for him; and he would just make a snake with it Fourth of July night; put it around through the grass, loose, and then light one end of it, and she would see how it would go off and not make the least noise. But she said she did not want to see it; only he must be careful; and she kissed him again and let him go, and when he got away he could see her wiping her eyes. It seemed to him that she was crying a good deal in those days, and he could not understand what it was about. She was scared at any little thing, and would whoop at the least noise, and when his father would say: “Lucy, my dear girl!” she would burst out crying and say that she could not help it. But she got better and better to Pony all the time, and it was this that now made him ashamed with Jim Leonard, because it made him not want to run off so much.
He dug his toe into the turf in the court-house yard under the locust-tree, and did not say anything till Jim Leonard asked him if he was afraid to go off and live with the Indians, because if he was going to be a cowardy-calf like that, it was all that Jim Leonard wanted to do with him.
Pony denied that he was afraid, but he said that he did not know how to talk Indian, and he did not see how he was going to get along without.
Jim Leonard laughed and said if that was all, he need not be anxious. “The Indians don’t talk at all, hardly, even among each other. They just make signs; didn’t you know that? If you want something to eat you point to your mouth and chew; and if you want a drink, you open your mouth and keep swallowing. When you want to go to sleep you shut your eyes and lean your cheek over on your hand, this way. That’s all the signs you need to begin with, and you’ll soon learn the rest. Now, say, are you going with the Indians, or ain’t you going? It’s your only chance. Why, Pony,what are you afraid of? Hain’t you always wanted to sleep out-doors and not do anything but hunt?”
Pony had to confess that he had, and then Jim Leonard said: “Well, then, that’s what you’ll do if you go with the Indians. I suppose you’ll have to go on the warpath with them when you get out there; and if it’s against the whites you won’t like it at first; but you’ve got to remember what the whites have done to the Indians ever since they discovered America, and you’ll soon get to feeling like an Indian anyway. One thing is, you’ve got to get over being afraid.”
That made Pony mad, and he said: “I ain’t afraid now.”
“I know that,” said Jim Leonard. “But what I mean is, that if you get hurt you mustn’t hollo, or cry, or anything; and even when they’re scalping you, you mustn’t even make a face, so as to let them know that you feel it.”
By this time some of the other fellows began to come around to hear what Jim Leonard was saying to Pony. A good many ofthe Indians had gone off anyway, for the people had stopped sticking quarters into the ground for them to shoot at, and they could not shoot at nothing. Jim Leonard saw the fellows crowding around, but he went on as if he did not notice them. “You’ve got to go without eating anything for weeks when the medicine-man tells you to; and when you come back from the warpath, and they have a scalp-dance, you’ve got to keep dancing till you drop in a fit. When they give a dog feast you must eat dog stew until you can’t swallow another mouthful, and you’ll be so full that you’ll just have to lay around for days without moving. But the great thing is to bear any kind of pain without budging or saying a single word. Maybe you’re used to holloing now when you get hurt?”
Pony confessed that he holloed a little; the others tried to look as if they never holloed at all, and Jim Leonard went on:
“Well, you’ve got to stop that. If an arrow was to go through you and stick out at your back, or anywhere, you must justreach around and pull it out and not speak. When you’re having the sun-dance—I think it’s the sun-dance, but I ain’t really certain—you have to stick a hook through you, right here”—he grabbed Pony by the muscles on his shoulders—“and let them pull you up on a pole and hang there as long as they please. They’ll let you practise gradually so that you won’t mind hardly anything. Why, I’ve practised a good deal by myself, and now I’ve got so that I believe if you was to stick me with—”
All of a sudden something whizzed along the ground and Jim Leonard stooped over and caught one of his feet up in his hand, and began to cry and to hollo: “Oh, oh, oh! Ow, ow, ow! Oh, my foot! Oh, it’s broken; I know it is! Oh, run for the doctor, do, Pony Baker! I know I’m going to die! Oh, dear, oh dear, oh dear!”
All the boys came crowding around to see what the matter was, and the men came, too, and pretty soon some one found an arrow in the grass, and then they knew that it was a stray arrow that had hit Jim Leonard onthe side of the foot, after missing one of the dimes that was stuck in the ground. It was blunt, and it had not hurt him that anybody could see, except rubbed the skin off a little on the ankle-bone. But Jim Leonard began to limp away towards home, and now, as the Indians had all gone back to their boats, and the fellows had nothing else to do, they went along with him.
Archy Hawkins held him up on one side, and Hen Billard on the other, and Archy said, “I tell you, when I heard Jim yell, I thought it was a real Indian,” and Hen said:
“I thought it was the scalp-halloo.”
Archy said, “The way I came to think it was a real Indian was that a real Indian never makes any noise when he’s hurt,” and Hen said:
“I thought it was the scalp-halloo, because Jim was stooping over as if he was tearing the scalp off of a white man. He’s been practising, you know.”
“Well, practice makes perfect. I reckon if Jim hasn’t got so far that he would smilewhen you scalped him, or just laugh if you shot an arrow through him, or would let you stick a hook into him, and pull him up to the top of a pole, it’s because he’s begun at the other end. I’ll bet he could eat himself full of dog stew, and lay around three days without stirring.”
Jim Leonard thought the fellows had come along to pity him and help him; but when he heard Archy Hawkins say that, and Hen Billard began to splutter and choke with the laugh he was holding in, he flung them off and began to fight at them with his fists, and strike right and left blindly. He broke out crying, and then the fellows made a ring around him and danced and mocked him.
“Hey, Jim, what’d you do if they pulled your hair out?”
“Jimmy, oh, Jim! Would you hollo much louder if they tomahawked you?”
“Show your uncle how to dance till you drop, Jim.”
They kept on till Jim Leonard picked up stones to stone them, and then they all ranaway, jumping and jeering till they got out of sight. It was about dinner-time, anyway.
No one was left but Pony Baker. He stooped down over Jim when he sat crying over his foot. “Does it hurt you much, Jimmy?” he asked.
“Yes, it hurts dreadfully, Pony. The skin’s all rubbed off. I’m afraid it’s broken my leg.”
“Well, let me help you home,” said Pony. “Your mother can tie it up, then.”
He made Jim lean on him, and keep trying his foot, and pretty soon they found he could walk with it nearly the same as the other foot, and before they got to Jim’s house they were talking and laughing together.
After that, Pony Baker gave up running off to the Indians. He about gave up running off altogether. He had a splendid Fourth of July. His mother would not let him stay up the whole of the night before, but she let him get up at four o’clock, and fire off both his packs of shooting-crackers; and though she had forbidden him to godown to the river-bank where the men were firing off the cannon, he hardly missed it. He felt sleepy as soon as his crackers were done, and another fellow who was with him came into the parlor, and they both lay down on the carpet and went to sleep there, and slept till breakfast-time. After breakfast he went up to the court-house yard, with some other fellows, and then, after dinner, when they all came round and begged, and the big fellows promised to watch out for Pony, his mother let him go out to the second lock with them, and go in swimming in the canal. He did not know why this should be such a great privilege, but it was. He had never been out to the second lock before. It was outside of the corporation line, and that was a great thing in itself.
After supper, Pony’s mother let him fire off his powder-snake, and she even came out and looked at it, with her fingers in her ears. He promised her that it wouldn’t make any noise, but she could not believe him; and when the flash came, she gave a little whoop, and ran in-doors. It shamedhim before the boys, for fear they would laugh; and she acted even worse when his father wished to let him go up to the court-house yard to see the fireworks.
A lot of the fellows were going, and he was to go with the crowd, but his father was to come a little behind, so as to see that nothing happened to him; and when they were just starting off what should she do but hollo to his father from the door where she was standing, “Do be careful of the child, Henry!” It did not seem as if she could be a good mother when she tried, and she was about the afraidest mother in the Boy’s Town.
All the way up to the court-house the boys kept snickering and whispering, “Don’t stump your toe, child,” and “Be careful of the child, boys,” and things like that till Pony had to fight some of them. Then they stopped. They were afraid his father would hear, anyway.
But the fireworks were splendid, and the fellows were very good to Pony, because his father stood in the middle of the crowd andtreated them to lemonade, and they did not plague, any more, going home. It was ten o’clock when Pony got home; it was the latest he had ever been up.
The very Fourth of July before that one he had been up pretty nearly as late listening to his cousin, Frank Baker, telling about the fun he had been having at a place called Pawpaw Bottom; and the strange thing that happened there, if it did happen, for nobody could exactly find out. So I think I had better break off again from Pony, and say what it was that Frank told; and after that I can go on with Pony’s running off.
HOW FRANK BAKER SPENT THE FOURTH AT PAWPAW BOTTOM, AND SAW THE FOURTH OF JULY BOY
It was the morning of the Fourth, and Frank was so anxious to get through with his wood-sawing, and begin celebrating with the rest of the boys, that he hardly knew what to do. He had a levvy (as the old Spanishrealused to be called in southern Ohio) in his pocket, and he was going to buy a pack of shooting-crackers for ten cents, and spend the other two cents for powder. He had no pistol, but he knew a fellow that would lend him his pistol part of the time, and he expected to have about the best Fourth he ever had. He had been up since three o’clock watching the men fire the old six-pounder on the river-bank; and hewas going to get his mother to let him go up to the fireworks in the court-house yard after dark.
But now it did not seem as if he could get wood enough sawed. Twice he asked his mother if she thought he had enough, but she said “Not near,” and just as Jake Milrace rode up the saw caught in a splinter of the tough oak log Frank was sawing and bumped back against Frank’s nose; and he would have cried if it had not been for what Jake began to say.
He said he was going to Pawpaw Bottom to spend the Fourth at a fellow’s named Dave Black, and he told Frank he ought to go too; for there were plenty of mulberries on Dave’s father’s farm, and the early apples were getting ripe enough to eat, if you pounded them on a rock; and you could go in swimming, and everything. Jake said there was the greatest swimming-hole at Pawpaw Bottom you ever saw, and they had a log in the water there that you could have lots of fun with. Frank ran into the house to ask his mother if he might go, andhe hardly knew what to do when she asked him if there was wood enough yet to get dinner and supper. But his Aunt Manda was spending the summer with his mother, and she said she reckoned she could pick up chips to do all the cooking they needed, such a hot day; and Frank ran out to the cow-house, where they kept the pony, because the Bakers had no stable, and saddled him, and was off with Jake Milrace in about a minute.
The pony was short and fat and lazy, and he had to be whipped to make him keep up with Jake’s horse. It was not exactly Jake’s horse; it was his sister’s husband’s horse, and he had let Jake have it because he would not be using it himself on the Fourth of July. It was tall and lean, and it held its head so high up that it was no use to pull on the bridle when it began to jump and turn round and round, which it did every time Frank whipped his pony to keep even with Jake. It would shy and sidle, and dart so far ahead that the pony would get discouraged and would lag back, and haveto be whipped up again; and then the whole thing would have to be gone through with the same as at first. The boys did not have much chance to talk, but they had a splendid time riding along, and when they came to a cool, dark place in the woods they pretended there were Indians; and at the same time they kept a sharp eye out for squirrels. If they had seen any, and had a gun with them, they could have shot one easily, for squirrels are not afraid of you when you are on horseback; and, as it was, Jake Milrace came pretty near killing a quail that they saw in the road by a wheat-field. He dropped his bridle and took aim with his forefinger, and pulled back his thumb like a trigger; and if his horse had not jumped, and his finger had been loaded, he would surely have killed the quail, it was so close to him. They could hear the bob-whites whistling all through the stubble and among the shocks of wheat.
Jake did not know just where Dave Black’s farm was, but after a while they came to a blacksmith’s shop, and the blacksmith toldthem to take a lane that they would come to on the left, and then go through a piece of woods and across a field till they came to a creek; then ford the creek and keep straight on, and they would be in sight of the house. It did not seem strange to Frank that they should be going to visit a boy without knowing where he lived, but afterwards he was not surprised when Dave Black’s folks did not appear to expect them. They kept on, and did as the blacksmith told them, and soon enough they got to a two-story log-cabin, with a man in front of it working at a wheat-fan, for it was nearly time to thresh the wheat. The man said he was Dave Black’s father; he did not act as if he was very glad to see them, but he told them to put their horses in the barn, and he said that Dave was out in the pasture hauling rails.
Frank thought that was a queer way of spending the Fourth of July, but he did not say anything, and on their way out to the pasture Jake explained that Dave’s father was British, and did not believe much inthe Fourth of July, anyway. They found Dave easily enough, and he answered Jake’s “Hello!” with another when the boys came up. He had a two-horse wagon, and he was loading it with rails from a big pile; there were two dogs with him, and when they saw the boys they came towards them snarling and ruffling the hair on their backs. Jake said not to mind them—they would not bite; but they snuffed so close to Frank’s bare legs that he wished Dave would call them off. They slunk away, though, when they heard him speak to the boys; and then Jake Milrace told Dave Black who Frank was, and they began to feel acquainted, especially when Jake said they had come to spend the Fourth of July with Dave.
He said, “First rate,” and he explained that he had his foot tied up the way they saw because he had a stone-bruise which he had got the first day he began to go barefoot in the spring; but now it was better. He said there was a bully swimming-hole in the creek, and he would show them where it was as soon as he had got done haulinghis rails. The boys took that for a kind of hint, and they pulled off their roundabouts and set to work with him.
Frank thought it was not exactly like the Fourth, but he did not say anything, and they kept loading up the rails and hauling them to the edge of the field where Dave’s father was going to build the fence, and then unloading them, and going back to the pile for more. It seemed to Frank that there were about a thousand rails in that pile, and they were pretty heavy ones—oak and hickory and walnut—and you had to be careful how you handled them, or you would get your hands stuck full of splinters. He wondered what Jake Milrace was thinking, and whether it was the kind of Fourth he had expected to have; but Jake did not say anything, and he hated to ask him. Sometimes it appeared to Frank that sawing wood was nothing to it; but they kept on loading rails, and unloading them in piles about ten feet apart, where they were wanted; and then going back to the big pile for more. They worked away in theblazing sun till the sweat poured off their faces, and Frank kept thinking what a splendid time the fellows were having with pistols and shooting-crackers up in the Boy’s Town; but still he did not say anything, and pretty soon he had his reward. When they got half down through the rail-pile they came to a bumblebees’ nest, which the dogs thought was a rat-hole at first. One of them poked his nose into it, but he pulled it out quicker than wink and ran off howling and pawing his face and rubbing his head in the ground or against the boys’ legs. Even when the dogs found out that it was not rats they did not show any sense. As soon as they rubbed a bee off they would come yelping and howling back for more; and hopping round and barking; and then when they got another bee, or maybe a half-dozen (for the bees did not always fight fair), they would streak off again and jump into the air, and roll on the ground till the boys almost killed themselves laughing.
The boys went into the woods, and got pawpaw branches, and came back and foughtthe bumblebees till they drove them off. It was just like the battle of Bunker Hill; but Frank did not say so, because Dave’s father was British, till Dave said it himself, and then they all pretended the bees were Mexicans; it was just a little while after the Mexican War. When they drove the bees off, they dug their nest out; it was beautifully built in regular cells of gray paper, and there was a little honey in it; about a spoonful for each boy.
Frank was glad that he had not let out his disappointment with the kind of Fourth they were having; and just then the horn sounded from the house for dinner, and the boys all got into the wagon, and rattled off to the barn. They put out the horses and fed them, and as soon as they could wash themselves at the rain-barrel behind the house, they went in and sat down with the family at dinner. It was a farmer’s dinner, as it used to be in southern Ohio fifty years ago: a deep dish of fried salt pork swimming in its own fat, plenty of shortened biscuit and warm green-apple sauce, with goodbutter. The Boy’s Town boys did not like the looks of the fat pork, but they were wolf-hungry, and the biscuit were splendid. In the middle of the table there was a big crock of buttermilk, all cold and dripping from the spring-house where it had been standing in the running water; then there was a hot apple-pie right out of the oven; and they made a pretty fair meal, after all.
After dinner they hauled more rails, and when they had hauled all the rails there were, they started for the swimming-hole in the creek. On the way they came to a mulberry-tree in the edge of the woods-pasture, and it was so full of berries and they were so ripe that the grass which the cattle had cropped short was fairly red under the tree. The boys got up into the tree and gorged themselves among the yellow-hammers and woodpeckers; and Frank and Jake kept holloing out to each other how glad they were they had come; but Dave kept quiet, and told them to wait till they came to the swimming-hole.
It was while they were in the tree thatsomething happened which happened four times in all that day, if it really happened: nobody could say afterwards whether it had or not. Frank was reaching out for a place in the tree where the berries seemed thicker than anywhere else, when a strong blaze of light flashed into his eyes, and blinded him.
“Oh, hello, Dave Black!” he holloed. “That’s mean! What are you throwin’ that light in my face for?”
But he laughed at the joke, and he laughed more when Dave shouted back, “I ain’t throwin’ no light in your face.”
“Yes, you are; you’ve got a piece of look-in’-glass, and you’re flashin’ it in my face.”
“Wish I may die, if I have,” said Dave, so seriously that Frank had to believe him.
“Well, then, Jake Milrace has.”
“I hain’t, any such thing,” said Jake, and then Dave Black roared back, laughing: “Oh, I’ll tell you! It’s one of the pieces of tin we strung along that line in the corn-field to keep the crows off, corn-plantin’ time.”
The boys shouted together at the joke on Frank, and Dave parted the branches for a better look at the corn-field.
“Well, well! Heigh there!” he called towards the field. “Oh, he’s gone now!” he said to the other boys, craning their necks out to see, too. “But hewasdoing it, Frank. If I could ketch that feller!”
“Somebody you know? Let’s get him to come along,” said Jake and Frank, one after the other.
“I couldn’t tell,” said Dave. “He slipped into the woods when he heard me holler. If it’s anybody I know, he’ll come out again. Don’t seem to notice him; that’s the best way.”
For a while, though, they stopped to look, now and then; but no more flashes came from the corn-field, and the boys went on cramming themselves with berries; they all said they had got to stop, but they went on till Dave said: “I don’t believe it’s going to do us any good to go in swimming if we eat too many of these mulberries. I reckon we better quit, now.”
The others said they reckoned so, too, and they all got down from the tree, and started for the swimming-hole. They had to go through a piece of woods to get to it, and in the shadow of the trees they did not notice that a storm was coming up till they heard it thunder. By that time they were on the edge of the woods, and there came a flash of lightning and a loud thunder-clap, and the rain began to fall in big drops. The boys saw a barn in the field they had reached, and they ran for it; and they had just got into it when the rain came down with all its might. Suddenly Jake said: “I’ll tell you what! Let’s take off our clothes and have a shower-bath!” And in less than a minute they had their clothes off, and were out in the full pour, dancing up and down, and yelling like Indians. That made them think of playing Indians, and they pretended the barn was a settler’s cabin, and they were stealing up on it through the tall shocks of wheat. They captured it easily, and they said if the lightning would only strike itand set it on fire so it would seem as if the Indians had done it, it would be great; but the storm was going round, and they had to be satisfied with being settlers, turn about, and getting scalped.
It was easy to scalp Frank, because he wore his hair long, as the town boys liked to do in those days, but Jake lived with his sister, and he had to do as she said. She said a boy had no business with long hair; and she had lately cropped his close to his skull. Dave’s father cut his hair round the edges of a bowl, which he had put on Dave’s head for a pattern; the other boys could get a pretty good grip of it, if they caught it on top, where the scalp-lock belongs; but Dave would duck and dodge so that they could hardly get their hands on it. All at once they heard him call out from around the corner of the barn, where he had gone to steal up on them, when it was their turn to be settlers: “Aw, now, Jake Milrace, that ain’t fair! I’m an Indian, now. You let go my hair.”
“Who’s touchin’ your old hair?” Jakeshouted back, from the inside of the barn. “You must be crazy. Hurry up, if you’re ever goin’ to attack us. I want to get out in the rain, myself, awhile.”
Frank was outside, pretending to be at work in the field, and waiting for the Indians to creep on him, and when Jake shouted for Dave to hurry, he looked over his shoulder and saw a white figure, naked like his own, flit round the left-hand corner of the barn. Then he had to stoop over, so that Dave could tomahawk him easily, and he did not see anything more, but Jake yelled from the barn: “Oh, you got that fellow with you, have you? Then he’s got to be settler next time. Come on, now. Oh, do hurry up!”
Frank raised his head to see the other boy, but there was only Dave Black, coming round the right-hand corner of the barn.