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Contents

CHAP. PAGE

IX. How Pony did not quite get off

WITH THE Circus 152

X. The Adventures that Pony's

cousin, Frank Baker, had
WITH a Pocketful of Money . 165

XI. How Jim Leonard planned for

Pony Baker to run off on a
Raft 192

XII. How Jim Leonard backed out,

and Pony had to give it up . 208

}

Illustrations

€t

ALL THE FELLOWS CAME ROUND

AND ASKED HIM WHAT HE WAS

GOING TO DO NOW " FrorUispi^c*

BEING DRESSED SO WELL WAS ONE

OF THE WORST THINGS THAT

WAS DONE TO HIM BY HIS

MOTHER " Facing p. 4

' I'LL LEARN THAT UMB TO SLEEP

IN A cow-barn!'" " 50

REAL INDIANS, IN BLANKETS, WITH

BOWS AND ARROWS " . . . . " 90

VERY SMILING- LOOKING" ... " I24

HE BEGAN BEING COLD AND STIFF

WITH HER THE VERY NEXT

MORNING" " 144

FRANK BAKER WAS ONE OF THOSE

FELLOWS THAT EVERY MOTHER

WOULD FEEL HER BOY WAS SAFE

WITH" " 166

'WHY, YOU AIN'T AFRAID, ARE

YOU, PONY?'" "204

The Flight of Pony Baker

PONY'S MOTHER, AND WHY HE HAD A
RIGHT TO RUN OFF

IF there was any fellow in the Boy's
Town fifty years ago who had a good
reason to run o£f it was Pony Baker. Pony
was not his real name; it was what the boys
called him, because there were so many fel-
lows who had to be told apart, as Big Joe
and Little Joe, and Big John and Little
John, and Big Bill and LitUe Bill, that they
got tired of telling boys apart that way;
and after one of the boys called him Pony
Baker, so that you could know him from
his cousin Frank Baker, nobody ever called
him anything else.
You would have known Pony from the

The Flight of Pony Baker

other Frank Baker, anyway, if you had seen
them together, for the other Frank Baker
was a tall, lank, tow-headed boy, with a face
so full of freckles that you could not have
put a pin-point between them, and large,
bony hands that came a long way out of his
coat -sleeves; and the Frank Baker that I
mean here was little and dark and round,
with a thick crop of black hair on his nice
head ; and he had black eyes, and a smooth,
swarthy face, without a freckle on it. He
was pretty well dressed in clothes that fitted
him, and his hands were small and plump.
His legs were rather short, and he walked
and ran with quick, nipping steps, just Hke
a pony; and you would have thought of a
pony when you looked at him, even if that
had not been his nickname.

That very thing of his being dressed so
well was one of the worst things that was
done to him by his mother, who was always
disgracing him before the other boys, though
she may not have known it. She never was
willing to have him go barefoot, and if she
could she would have kept his shoes on him

Pony's Mother

the whole summer; as it was, she did keep
them on till all the other boys had been bare-
foot so long that their soles were as hard
as horn; and they could walk on broken
glass, or anything, and had sttmiped the
nails off their big toes, and had grass cuts
under their little ones, and yam tied into
them, before Pony Baker was allowed to
take his shoes off in the spring. He would
have taken them off and gone barefoot with-
out his mother's knowing it, and many of
the boys said that he ought to do it ; but then
she would have found it out by the look of
his feet when he went to bed, and maybe
told his father about it.

Very likely his father would not have
cared so much; sometimes he would ask
Pony's mother why she did not turn the boy
barefoot with the other boys, and then she
would ask Pony's father if he wanted the
child to take his death of cold; and that
would hush him up, for Pony once had a
little brother that died.

Pony had nothing but sisters, after that^
and this was another thing that kept him

The Flight of Pony Baker

from having a fair chance with the other
fellows. ' His mother wanted him to play
with his sisters, and she did not care, or else
she did not know, that a girl-boy was about
the meanest thing there was, and that if
you played with girls you could not help
being a girl-boy. Pony liked to play with
his sisters well enough when there were no
boys around, but when there were his mother
did not act as if she could not see any dif-
ference. The girls themselves were not so
bad, and they often coaxed their mother to
let him go off with the other boys, when she
would not have let him without. But even
then, if it was going in swimming, or fish-
ing, or skating before the ice was very thick,
she would show that she thought he was
too little to take care of himself, and would
make some big boy promise that he would
look after Pony ; amd all the time Pony would
be gritting his teeth, he was ^o mad.

Once, when Pony stayed in swimming all
day with a crowd of fellows, she did about
the worst thing she ever did ; she came down
to the river-bank and stood there, and called

Pony^ s Mother

to the boys, to find out if Pony was with
them; and they all had to get into the water
up to their necks before they could bear to
answer her, they were so ashamed ; and Pony
had to put on his clothes and go home with
her. He could see that she had been crying,
and that made him a Uttle sorry, but not so
very; and the most that he was afraid of
was that she would tell his father. But
if she did he never knew it, and that night
she came to him after he went to bed, and
begged him so not to stay in swimming the
whole day any more, amd told him how fright-
ened she had been, that he had to promise ;
and then that made him feel worse than
ever, for he did not see how he could break
his promise.

She was not exactly a bad mother, and
she was not exactly a good mother. If she
had been really a good mother she would
have let him do whatever he wanted, and
never made any trouble, amd if she had been
a bad mother she would not have let him
do anything ; and then he could have done it
without her letting him. In some ways she

Pony's Mother

trying to make anything she would help
him all she could, but if it was something
that you had to use a knife with she was not
much help.

It always seemed to Pony that she be-
grudged his going with the boys, and she
said how nice he used to keep his clothes
before, and had such pretty manners, and
now he was such a sloven, and was so rude
and fierce that she was almost afraid of him.
He knew that she was making fun about
being afraid of him; and if she did hate to
have him go with some of the worst boys,
still she was willing to help in lots of ways.
She gave him yam to make a ball with, and
she covered it for him with leather. Some-
times she seemed to do things for him that
she would not do for his sisters, and she
often made them give up to him when they
had a dispute.

She made a distinction between boys and
girls, and did not make him help with the
housework. Of course he had to bring in
wood, but all the fellows had to do that, and
they did not count it; what they hated was

The Flight of Pony Baker

was good enough; she would let him take
out things to the boys in the back yard from
the table, and she put apple-butter or molasses
on when it was hot biscuit that he took out.
Once she let him have a birthday party, and
had cake and candy-pulling and lemonade,
and nobody but boys, because he said that
boys hated girls; even his own sisters did
not come. Sometimes she would give him
money for ice-cream, and if she could have
got over being particular about his going in
swimming before he could swim, and pistols
and powder and such things, she would have
done very well.

She was first-rate when he was sick, and
nobody could take care of him like her, cool-
ing his pillow and making the bed easy,
and keeping everybody quiet ; and when he
began to get well she would cook things
that tasted better than anything you ever
knew : stewed chicken, and toast with gravy
on, and things like that. Even when he
was well, and just lonesome, she would sit
by his bed if he asked her, till he went to
sleep, or got quieted down; and if he was

Pony's Mother

trying to make anything she would help
him all she could, but if it was something
that you had to use a knife with she was not
much help.

The Flight of Pony Baker

having to chum, or wipe dishes after com-
pany. Pony's mother never made him do
anything Uke that; she said it was girls'
work; and she would not let him learn to
milk, either, for she said that milking was
women's work, and all that Pony had to
do with the cow was to bring her home from
the pasture in the evening.

Sometimes when there was company she
would let him bring in a boy to the second
table, and she gave them all the preserves
and cake that they could eat. The kind of
company she had was what nearly all the
mothers had in the Boy's Town ; they asked
a whole lot of other mothers to supper, and
had stewed chicken and hot biscuit, and tea
and coffee, and quince and peach preserves,
and sweet tomato pickles, and cake with
jelly in between, and pound-cake with frost-
ing on, and buttered toast, and mayb^ fried
eggs and ham. The fathers never seemed
to come; or, if the father that belonged in
the house came, he did not go and sit in the
parlor with the mothers after supper, but
went up-town, to the post-office, or to some

Pony s Mother

of the lawyers' offices, or else a store, and
talked politics.

Pony never thought his mother was good
looking, or, rather, he did not think anything
about that, amd it always seemed to him that
she must be a pretty old woman; but once
when she had company, and she came in
from the kitchen with the last dish, and put it
on the table, one of the nicest of the other
mothers came up, and put her arm around
Pony's mother, and said:

''How pretty you do look, Mrs. Baker!
I just want to kiss you on those red cheeks.
I should say you were a girl, instead of hav-
ing all those children."

Pony was standing out on the porch with
his five sisters, and when he looked in through
the door, and saw his mother with her head
thrown back laughing, and her face flushed
from standing over the stove to cook the
supper, and her brown hair tossed a little,
he did think that she was very nice looking,
and like the girls at school that were in the
fourth reader ; and she was very nicely dress-
ed, too, in a white muslin dress, with the blue

The Flight of Pony Baker

check apron she had been working in flung
behind the kitchen door, as she came into the
sitting-room carrying the dish in one hand.
He did not know what the other mother
meant by saying "all those children"; for
it was a small family for the Boy's Town,
and he thought she must just be fooling.

Sometimes his mother would romp with the
children, or sing them funny, old-fashioned
songs, such as people used to sing when the
country was first settled and everybody Uved
in log cabins. When she got into one of her
joking times she woidd call Pony " Honey 1
Honey 1'' like the old colored aunty that had
the persimmon-tree in her yard ; and if she
had to go past him she woidd wind her arm
around his head and mumble the top of it
with her Ups; and if there were any of the
fellows there, and Pony would fling her arm
away because he hated to have her do it be-
fore them, she would just laugh.

Of course, if she had been a good mother
about everjrthing else Pony would not have
minded that, but she was such a very bad
mother about letting him have fun, some-

Pony^ s Mother

times, that Pony could not overlook it, as
he might have done. He did not think that
she ought to call him Pony before the boys,
for, though he did not mind the boys' calling
him Pony, it was not the thing for a fellow's
mother, and it was sure to give them the
notion she babied him at home. Once, after
she called him "Pony, dear I" the fellows
mocked her when they got away, and all of
them called him " Pony, dear I" till he began
to cry and to stone them.

But the worst of her ways was about
powder, and her not wanting him to have it,
or not wanting him to have it where there
was fire. She would never let him come
near the stove with it, after one of the fellows
had tried to dry his powder on the stove when
it had got wet from being pumped on in his
jacket-pocket while he was drinking at the
pump, and the fellow forgot to take it ofif the
stove quick enough, and it almost blew his
mother up, and did pretty nearly scare her
to death ; and she would not let him keep it
in a bottle, or anything, but just loose in a
paper, because another of the fellows had

The Flight of Pony Baker

begun to pour powder once from a bottle
onto a coal of fire, and the fire ran up the
powder, and blew the bottle to pieces, and
filled the fellow's face so full of broken glass
that the doctor was nearly the whole of that
Fourth of July night getting it out. So,
although she was a good mother in some
things, she was a bad mother in others, and
these were the great things; and they were
what gave him the right to run off.

THE RIGHT THAT PONY HAD TO RUN
OFF, FROM THE WAY HIS FATHER

ACTED

PONY had a right to run oflf from some
of the things that his father had done,
but it seemed to him that they were mostly
things that his mother had put his father
up to, and that his father would not have
been half as bad if he had been let alone.
In the Boy's Town the fellows celebrated
Christmas just as they did Fourth of July, by
firing off pistols and shooting crackers, and
one Christmas one of the fellows' pistols burst
and blew the ball of his thiunb open, and
when a crowd of the fellows helped him past
Pony's house, crying and limping (the pain
seemed to go down his leg, and lame him).
Pony's mother made his father take Pony's
pistol right away from him, and not let him

The Flight of Pony Baker

have it till after New Year's ; and what made
it worse was that Pony had faithf idly kept
his promise to her that he would not fire
anything out of his pistol but paper wads,
while all the other fellows were firing shot,
and tacks, and Uttle marbles, out of theirs ;
and some of them tried to shame him into
breaking his word, and he had to stand their
calling him cry-baby, and everything.

Then, she would not let his father get
him a gim to go hunting with, because he
would have to fire something besides wads
out of that, and would be sure to kill himself.
Pony told her that he would not kill himself,
and tried to laugh her out of the notion, but
it was no use, and he never had a gun till
he was twelve years old ; he was nine at the
time I mean. One of the fellows who was
only eight was going to have a gim as soon
as his brother got done with his.

She would hardly let his father get him a
dog, and I suppose it was something but
Pony's disappointment about the gun that
made her agree to the dog at last; even then
she would not agree to his having it before it

The Right Pony Had to Run Off

had its eyes open, when the great thing about
a puppy was its not having its eyes open, and
it was fully two weeks old before he was al-
lowed to bring it home, though he was taken
to choose it before it could walk very well,
and he went every day afterwards to see how
it was getting along, and to watch out that
it did not get changefl with the other little
dogs. The first night after he got it to his
own house, the dog whined so with home-
sickness that it kept everybody awake till
Pony went to the woodshed, where it was in
the clothes-basket, and took it into his own
bed ; then it went to sleep, and did not whine
a bit. His father let him keep it there that
one night, but the next he made him put it
out again, because he said it would get the
house full of fleas; and he said if it made
much more trouble he would make Pony take
it back.

He was not a very good father about
money, because when Pony went to ask
him for a five-cent piece he always wanted
to know what it was for, and even when it
was for a good thing a fellow did not air
* 17

The Flight of Pony Baker

ways like to tell. If bis father did not think
it was a good thing he woidd not let Pony
have it, and then Pony would be ashamed
to go back to the boys, for they would say
his father was stingy, though perhaps none
of them had tried to get money from their
own fathers.

Every now and then the fellows tried to
learn to smoke, and that was a thing that
Pony's father would not let him do. He
would let him smoke the driftwood twigs,
which the boys picked up alor^ the rivw
shore and called smoke-wood, or he would
let him smoke grapevine or the pods of the
catalpa, which were just like cigars, but he
was mean about real tobacco. Once, when
he found a cigar in Pony's pocket, he threw
it into the fire, and said that if he ever knew
him to have another he would have a talk
with him.

He was pretty bad about wanting Pony
to weed his mother's flower-beds and about
going regularly to school, and always getting
up in time for school. To be sure, if a show
or a circus came along, he nearly always
i8

The Right Pony Had to Run Off

took Pony in, but then he was apt to take the
girls, too, and he did not like to have Pony
go off with a crowd of boys, which was the
only way to go into a show; for if the fellows
saw you with your family, all dressed up,
and maybe with your shoes on, they would
make fun of you the next time they caught
you out.

He made Pony come in every night before
nine o'clock, and even Christmas Eve, or the
night before Fourth of July, he would not
let him stay up the whole night. When he
went to the city, as the boys called the large
town twenty miles away from the Boy's
Town, he might get Pony a present or he
might not, but he would not promise, be-
cause once when he promised, he forgot it,
and then Pony's mother scolded him.

There were some boys' fathers in the Boy's
Town who were good fathers, and let their
children do whatever they pleased, and Pony
could not help feeling rather ashamed before
these boys. If one of that sort of fellows'
fathers passed a crowd of boys, they would
not take any notice of their boys; but if

The Flight of Pony Baker

Pony's father came along^ he wotdd very
likely say, "Well, Pony!" or something like
that, and then all the fellows would hollo,
"Well, Pony! Well, Pony!" and make fun
of his father, when he got past, and walk like
him, or something, so that Pony would be
so mad he would hardly know what to do.
He hated to ask his father not to speak to
him, or look at him, when he was with the
fellows, but it seemed to him as if his father
ought to know better without asking.

There were a great many things Uke that
which no good father would have done,
but the thing that made Pony lose all
patience, and begin getting ready to run off
right away, was the way his father behaved
when Pony got mad at the teacher one day,
and brought his books home, and said he
was not going back to that school any more.
The reason was because the teacher had put
Pony back from third reader to the second
and made him go into a class of Uttle fellows
not more than seven years old. It happened
one morning, after a day when Pony had
read very badly in the afternoon, and though

The Right Pony Had to Run Off

he had explained that he had read badly be-
cause the weather was so hot, the teacher
said he might try it in the second reader till
the weather changed, at any rate; and the
whole school laughed. The worst of it was
that Pony was really a very good reader, and
could speak almost -the best of any of the
boys; but that afternoon he was lazy, and
would not pay attention.

At recess, after the teacher had put him
back, all the fellows came round and asked
him what he was going to do now; and he
just shut his teeth and told them they would
see; and at noon they did see. As soon as
school was dismissed, or even before. Pony
put all his books together, and his slate,
and tied them with his slate-pencil string,
and twitched his hat down off the peg, and
strutted proudly out of the room, so that not
only the boys but the teacher, too, could see
that he was leaving school. The teacher
looked on and pretended to smile, but Pony
did not smile; he kept his teeth shut, and
walked stiflly through the door, and straight
home, without speaking to any one. That

The Flight of Pony Baker

was the way to do when you left school in
the Boy's Town, for then the boys would
know you were in earnest ; and none of them
would try to spealc to you, either ; they would
respect you too much.

Pony's mother knew that he had left school
as soon as she saw him bringing home his
books, but she only looked sorry and did not
say anything. She must have told his father
about it when he came to dinner, though,
for as soon as they sat down at the table his
father began to ask what the trouble was.
Pony answered very haughtily, and said that
old Archer had put him back into the second
reader, and he was not going to stand it, and
he had left school.

"Then," said his father, "you expect to
stay in the second reader the rest of your
Ufe?"

This was something that Pony had never
thought of before ; but he said he did not care,
and he was not going to have old Archer put
him back, anyway, and he began to cry.

It was then that his mother showed herself
a good mother, if ever she was one, and said

i
I

The Right Pony Had to Run Off

she thought it was a shame to put Pony back
and mortify him before the other boys, and
she knew that it must just have happened
that he did not read very well that afternoon
because he was sick, or something, for usu-
ally he read perfectly.

His father said, "My dear girl, my dear
girl!" and his mother hushed up and did not
say anything more ; but Pony could see what
she thought, and he accused old Archer of
always putting on him and always trying to
mortify him.

That's all very well,'' said his father,
but I think we ought to give him one more
trial; and I advise you to take your books
back again this afternoon, and read so well
that he will put you into the fourth reader
to-morrow morning."

Pony understood that his father was just
making fun about the fourth reader, but was
in earnest about his going back to school;
and he left the table and threw himself on
the lounge, with his face down, and cried.
He said he was sick, and his head ached, and
he could not go to school; his father said

The Flight of Pony Baker

that he hoped his headache would wear off
in the course of the afternoon, but if he was
worse they would have the doctor when he
came home from school.

Then he took his hat and went out of the
front dodr to go up town, and Pony screamed
out, " Well, ni run off ; that's what 111 dol"

His father did not take any notice of him,
and his mother only said, "Pony, Ponyl"
while his sisters sill stood round frightened
at the way Pony howled and thrashed the
lounge with his legs.

But before one o'clock Pony washed his
face and brushed his hair, and took his books
and started for school. His mother tried to
Idss him, but he pushed her off, for it seemed
to him that she might have made his father
let him stay out of school, if she had tried,
and he was not going to have any of her
pretendii^. He made his face very cold and
hard as he marched out of the bouse, for he
never meant to come back to that house any
more. He meant to go to school that after-
; soon as school was out he was
1 off.

The Right Pony Had to Run Off

When the fellows saw him coming back
with his books they knew how it was, but
they did not mock him, for he had done
everything that he could, and all that was
expected of anybody in such a case. A
boy always came back when he had left
school in that way, and nobody supposed
but what he would; the thing was to leave
school; after that you were not to blame,
whatever happened.

Before recess it began to be known among
them that Pony was going to run off, be-
cause his father had made him come back,
and then they did think he w£is somebody;
and as soon as they got out at recess they all
crowded round him and began to praise
him up, and everything, and to tell him
that they would nm off, too, if their fathers
sent them back ; and so he began to be glad
that he was going to do it. They asked
him when he was going to run off, and he
told them they would see ; and pretty soon it
was understood that he was going to nm
off the same night.

When school was out a whole crowd of

The Flight of Pony Baker

them started with him, and some of the
biggest fellows walked alongside of him,
and talked down over their shoulders to him,
and told him what he must do. They said
he must not start till eifter dark, 2ind he
must watch out (or the constable till he got
over the corporation line and then nobody
could touch him. They said that they
would be waiting round the comer for him
as soon as they had their suppers, and one
of them would walk along with him to the
end of the first street and then another would
be waiting there to go with him to the end
of the next, and so on till they reached the
corporation Une. Very likdy his father
would have the constable waiting there to
stop him, but Pony ought to start to run
across the line and then the fellows would
rush out and trip up the constable and hold
him down till Pony got safe across. He
ought to hollo, *hen he was across, and
that would let them know that he was safe
and they would be ready to let the constable
up, and begin to run before he could grab

The Right Pony Had to Ran Off

Everybody thought that was a splendid
plan except Archy Hawkins, that all the
fellows called Old Hawkins ; his father kept
one of the hotels, and Old Hawkins used to
catch frogs for the table; he was the one
that the frogs used to know by sight, and
when they saw him they would croak out:
"Here comes Hawkins 1 Here comes Haw-
kins I Look outl'' and jump off the bank
into the water and then come up among
the green slime, where nobody but Old Haw-
kins could see them. He was always jok-
ing and getting into scrapes, but still the
boys liked him and thought he was pretty
smart, and now they did not mind it when
he elbowed the big boys away that were
talking to Pony and told them to shut up.

"You just listen to your uncle. Pony I''
he said. "These fellows don't know any-
thing about running off. I'll tell you how
to do it; you mind your uncle I It's no use
trying to get away from the constable, if
he's there, for hell catch you as quick as
Hghtning, and he won't mind these fellows
any more than fleas. You oughtn't try to

The Flight of Pony Baker

start till along about midnight, for the con-
stable will be in bed by that time, and you
won't have any trouble. You must have
somebody to wake you up, and some of the
fellows ought to be outside, to do it. You
listen to your grandfather! You ought to
tie a string around your big toe, and let the
string hang out of the window, the way you
do Fourth of July eve ; and then just as soon
as it strikes twelve, the fellows ought to tug
away at the string till you come hopping
to the window, and tell 'em to stop. But
you got to whisper, and the fellows mustn't
make any noise, either, or your father will
be out on them in a minute. Hell be watch-
ing out, to - night, anyway, I reckon, be-
cause — "

Old Hawkins was walking backward in
front of Pony, talking to him, and showing
him how he must hop to the window, and all
at once he struck his heel against a root in
the sidewalk, and the first thii^ he knew
he sat down so hard that it about knocked
the breath out of him.

All the fellows laughed, and anybody else

The Right Pony Had to Run Off

would have been mad, but Old Hawkins
was too good-natured; and he got up and
brushed himself, and said: ''Say I let's go
down to the river and go in, before supper,
anyway."

Nearly all the fellows agreed, and Old
Hawkins said: "Come along. Pony! You
got to come, tool"

But Pony stiflBiy refused, partly because it
seemed to him pretty mean to forget all
about his running away, like that, and
partly because he had to ask his mother
before he went in swimming. A few of the
little fellows kept with him all the way home,
but most of the big boys went along with
Old Hawkins.

One of them stayed with Pony and the
Uttle boys, and comforted him for the way
the rest had left him. He was a fellow who
was always telling about Indians, and he
said that if Pony could get to the Indians,
anywhere, and they took a fancy to him,
they would adopt him into their tribe, if it
was just after some old chief had lost a son
in battle. Maybe they would offer to kill

the Flight of Pony Baket

him first, and they would have to hold a
council, but if they did adopt him, it would
be the best thing, because then he would
soon turn into an Indian himself, and for-
get how to speak English; and if ever the
Indians had to give up their prisoners, and
he was brought back, and his father and
mother came to pick him out, they might
know him by some mark or other, but he
would not know them, and they would have
to lei him go back to the Indians again. He
said that was the very best way, and the
only way, but the trouble would be to get to
the Indians in the first place. He said he
knew of one reservation in the north part of
the State, and he promised to find out if
there were any other Indians living nearer;
the reservation was about a hundred miles
ofif, and it would take Pony a good while
to go to them.

The name of this boy was Jim Leonard.
But now, before I go the least bit further
with the story of Pony Baker's rimning
away, I have got to tell about Jim Leonard,
and what kind of boy he was, and the scrape

The Right Pony Had to Run Off

that he once got Pony and the other boys
into, and a hair-breadth escape he had him-
self, when he came pretty near being drowned
in a freshet ; and I will begin with the hair-
breadth escape, because it happened before
the scrape.

JIM LEONARD'S HAIR-BREADTH ESCAPE

JIM LEONARD'S stable used to stand on
the flat near the river, and on a rise of
ground above it stood Jim Leonard's log-
cabin. The boys called it Jim Leonard's
log -cabin, but it was really his mother's,
and the stable was hers, too. It was a log
stable, but up where the gable began the
logs stopped, and it was weather-boarded the
rest of the way, and the roof was shingled.

Jim Leonard said it was all logs, once,
and that the roof was loose clap-boards, held
down by logs that ran across them, like the
roofs in the early times, before there were
shingles or nails, or anything, in the coun-
try. But none of the oldest boys had ever
seen it like that, and you had to take Jim
Leonard's word for it if you wanted to be-

Jim Leonardos Hair-breadth Escape

lieve it. The little fellows nearly all did ; but
everybody said afterwards it was a good
thing for Jim Leonard that it was not that
kind of roof when he had his hair-breadth
escape on it. He said himself that he would
not have cared if it had been; but that was
when it was all over, and his mother had
whipped him, and everything, and he was
telling the boys about it.

He said that in his Pirate Book lots of
fellows on rafts got to land when they were
shipwrecked, and that the old-fashioned
roof would have been just like a raft, any-
way, and he could have steered it right
across the river to Delorac's Island as easy I
Pony Baker thought very likely he could,
but Hen Billard said:

''Well, why didn't you do it, with the
kind of a roof you had?"

Some of the boys mocked Jim Leonard ; but
a good many of them thought he could have
done it if he could have got into the eddy that
there was over by the island. If h» could
have landed there, once, Jje could have
camped out and lived on fish till the river fell.

» 33

The Flight of Pony Baker

It was that spring, about fifty-tour years
ago, when the freshet, which always came
in the spring, was the worst that anybody
could remember. The country above the
Boy's Town was under water, for miles and
miles. The river bottoms were flooded so
that the com had to be all planted over again
when the water went down. The freshet
tore away pieces of orchard, and apple-trees
in bloom came saihng along with logs and
fence isuls and chicken-coops, and pretty
soon dead cows and horses. There was a
dog chained to a d(^-kennet that went by,
howUng awfully; the boys would have
given anything if they could have saved
him, but the yellow river whirled him out of
sight behind the middle pier of the bridge,
which everybody was watching from the
bank, expectii^ it to go any minute. The
water was up within four or five feet of the
bridge, and the boys believed that if a good
big 1<^ had come along and hit it, the bridge
're been knocked loose from its
carried down the river,
it would, anA perhaps it would
34

Jim Leonardos Hair-breadth Escape

not. The boys all ran to watch it as soon
as school was out, and stayed till they had
to go to supper. After supper some of their
mothers let them come back and stay till
bedtime, if they would promise to keep a
full yard back from the edge of the bank.
They coidd not be sure just how much a
yard was, and they nearly all sat down on
the edge and let their legs hang over.

Jim Leonard was there, holloing and rim-
ning up and down the bank, and showing
the other boys things away out in the river
that nobody else could see ; he said he saw a
man out there. He had not been to supper,
and he had not been to school all day, which
might have been the reason why he would
rather stay with the men and watch the
bridge than go home to supper; his mother
would have been waiting for him with a
sucker from the pear-tree. He told the boys
that while they were gone he went out with
one of the men on the bridge as far as the
middle pier, and it shook like a leaf; he
showed with his hand how it shook.

Jim Leonard was a fellow who beheved he

The Flight of Pony Baker

did all kinds of things that he would like to
have done : and the big bojrs just laughed.
That made Jim Leonard mad, and he said
that as soon as the bridge began to go, he
was going to run out on it and go with it:
and then they would see whether he was a
Uar or not I They mocked him and danced
round him till he cried. But Pony Baker,
who had come with his father, believed that
Jim Leonard would really have done it:
and at any rate, he felt sorry for him when
Jim cried.

He stayed later than any of the little fel-
lows, because his father was with him, and
even all the big boys had gone home except
Hen Billard, when Pony left Jim Leonard
on the bank and stumbled sleejaly away,
with his hand in his father's.

When Pony was gone. Hen Billard said :
"Well, going to stay all night, Jim?"

And Jim Leonard answered back, as cross

as could be, " Yes, I ami" And he said the

men who were sitting up to watch the bridge

were going to give him some of their coffee,

nd that would keep him awake. But per-

Jim Leonardos Hair-breadth Escape

haps he thought this because he wanted
some cofifee so badly. He was awfully hun-
gry, for he had not had anything since
breakfast, except a piece of bread-and-butter
that he got Pony Baker to bring him in his
pocket when he came down from school at
noontime.

Hen Billard said, " Well, I suppose I won't
see you any more, Jim; good-bye," and went
away laughing ; and after a while one of the
men saw Jim Leonard hanging about, and
asked him what he wanted there, at that
time of night; and Jim could not say he
wanted cofifee, and so there was nothing for
him to do but go. There was nowhere for
him to go but home, and he sneaked ofif in
the dark.

When he came in sight of the cabin he
could not tell whether he would rather have
his mother waiting for him with a whipping
and some supper, or get to bed somehow
with neither. He climbed softly over the
back fence and crept up to the back door,
but it was fast; then he crept round to the
front door, and that was fast, too. There

The Flight of Pony Baker

was no light in the house, and it was per-
fectly still.

All of a sudden it struck him that he could
sleep in the stable-loft, and he thought what
a fool he was not to have thought of it before.
The notion brightened him up so that he
got the gourd that hung beside the well-
curb and took it out to the stable with him ;
for now he remembered that the cow would
be there, unless she was in somebody's
garden-patch or cornfield.

He noticed as he walked down towards
the stable that the freshet had come up over
the flat, and just before the door he had to
wade. But he was in his bare feet and he
did not care; if he thought anything, he
thought that his mother would not come out
to milk till the water went down, and he
would be safe till then from the whipping
he must take, sooner or later, for plaj^ng
hooky.

Sure enough, the old cow was in the sta-
ble, and she gave Jim Leonard a snort of
welcome and then lowed anxiously. He
fumbled through the dark to her side, and

Jim Leonardos Hair-breadth Escape

began to milk her. She had been milked
only a few hours before, and so he got only
a gourdful from her. But it was all strip-
pings, and rich as cream, and it was smok-
ing warm. It seemed to Jim Leonard that
it went down to his very toes when he poured
it into his throat, and it made him feel so
good that he did not know what to do.

There really was not anything for him to
do but to cUmb up into the loft by the ladder
in the comer of the stable, and lie down on
the old last year's fodder. The rich, warm
milk made Jim Leonard awfully sleepy, and
he dropped off almost as soon as his head
touched the corn-stalks. The last thing he
remembered was the hoarse roar of the fresh-
et outside, and that was a lulling music in
his ears.

The next thing he knew, and he hardly
knew that, was a soft, jolting, sinking mo-
tion, first to one side and then to another;
then he seemed to be going down, down,
straight down, and then to be drifting off
into space. He rubbed his eyes, and found
it was full dayUght, although it was the

The Flight of Pony Baker

daylight of early morning; and while he
lay looking out of the stable-loft window
anA. trying to make out what it all meant,
he felt a wash of cold water along his back,
and his bed of fodder melted away imder
him and around him, and some loose planks
of the loft floor swEun weltering out of the
window. Then he knew what had. hap-
pened. The flood had stolen up while he
slept, and sapped the walls of the stable;
the logs had given way, one after another,
and had let him down, with the roof, into
the water.

He got to his feet as well as he coiald, and
floundered over the rising and falling boards
to the window in the floating gable. One
look outside showed him his mother's Ic^-
cabin safe on its rise of ground, and at the
comer the old cow, that must have escaped
through the stable door he had left open,
and passed the night among the cabbages.

oi etasA to catch sight of Jim Leonard

le put his head out, and she lowed to

Leonard did not stop to make any
40

Jim Leonardos Hair-breadth Escape

answer. He clambered out of the window
and up onto the ridge of the roof, and there,
in the company of a large gray rat, he set
out on the strangest voyage a boy ever made.
In a few moments the current swept him
out into the middle of the river, and he was
sailing down between his native shore on
one side and Delorac's Island on the other.
All roimd him seethed and swirled the
yellow flood in eddies and ripples, where
drift of all sorts danced and raced. His
vessel, such as it was, seemed seaworthy
enough. It held securely together, fitting
like a low, wide cup over the water, and
perhaps finding some buoyancy from the
air imprisoned in it above the window. But
Jim Leonard was not satisfied, and so far
from being proud of his adventure, he was
frightened worse even than the rat which
shared it. As soon as he could get his voice,
he began to shout for help to the houses on
the empty shores, which seemed to fly back-
ward on both sides while he lay still on the
gulf that swashed around him, and tried to
drown his voice before it swallowed him up.

The Flight of Pony Baker

At the same time the bridge, which had
looked so far ofif when he first saw it, was
rushing swiftly towards him, and getting
nearer and nearer.

He wondered what had become of all the
people and all the boys. He thought that
if he were safe there on shore he should not
be sleeping in bed while somebody was out
in the river on a roof, with nothing but a
rat to care whether he got drowned or not.

Where was Hen Billard, that alwajrs
made fun so; or Archy Hawkins, that
pretended to be so good-natured; or Pony
Baker, that seemed to Uke a fellow so much?
He began to call for them by name: ''Hen
Billard — O Henl Help, help I Archy Haw-
kins, O Archy I Fm drowning ! Pony, Pony,
O Ponyl Don't you see me. Pony?''

He could see the top of Pony Baker's
house, and he thought what a good, kind
man Pony's father was. Surely he would
try to save him; and Jim Leonard began
to yell: ''0 Mr. Baker! Look here, Mr.
Baker! It's Jim Leonard, and I'm floating
down the river on a roof! Save me, Mr.

Jim Leonardos Hair-breadth Escape

Baker, save me I Help, help, somebody I
Firel Fire! Fire! Murderl Firel"

By this time he was about crazy, and did
not half know what he was saj^ng. Just in
front of where Hen Billard's grandmother
lived, on the street that ran along the top of
the bank, the roof got caught in the branches
of a tree which had drifted down and stuck
in the bottom of the river so that the branches
waved up and down as the current swashed
through them. Jim Leonard was glad of
anjrthing that would stop the roof, and at
first he thought he would get off on the tree.
That was what the rat did. Perhaps the
rat thought Jim Leonard really was crazy
and he had better let him have the roof to
himself; but the rat saw that he had made a
mistake, and he jumped back again after he
had swung up and down on a limb two or
three times. Jim Leonard felt awfully when
the rat first got into the tree, for he remem-
bered how it said in the Pirate Book that
rats always leave a sinking ship, and now
he beUeved that he certainly was gone. But
that only made him hollo the louder, and he

The Flight of Pony Baker

holloed so loud that at last he made some-
body hear.

It was Hen Billard's grandmother, and
she put her head out of the window with her
night-cap on, to see what the matter was.
Jim Leonard caught sight of her sind he
screamed, "Fire, fire, fire I I'm drownding,
Mrs. Billard! Oh, do somebody comel"

Hen Billard's grandmother just gave one
yell of "Fire! The world's a-bumin' up.
Hen Billard, and you layin' there sleepin'
axiA not helpin' a biti Somebody's out
there in the riverl" and she rushed into the
room where Hen was, and shook him.

He bounced out of bed emd pulled on his
pantaloons, and was down-stairs in a min-
ute. He ran beffeheaded over to the bank,
and when Jim Leonard saw him coming he
holloed ten times as loud: "It's me, HenI
It's Jim Leonard I Oh, do get somebody to
come out anA save met Fire!"

As soon as Hen heard that, and felt sure

it was not a dream, which he did in about

half a second, he began to yell, too, and to

oQw "How did you get there? Fire, fire,

Jim Leonardos Hair-breadth Escape

firel What are you on? Fire I Are you
in a tree, or what? Fire, firel Are you in a
flat-boat? Fire, fire, fire! If I had a skiff
—firel"

He kept racing up and down the bank, and
back and forth between the bank and the
houses. The river was almost up to the
top of the bank, and it looked a mile wide.
Down at the bridge you could hardly see
any light between the water and the bridge.

Pretty soon people began to look out of
their doors and windows, and Hen Billard's
grandmother kept screaming, "The world's
a-bumin' up! The river's on firel" Then
boys came out of their houses; and then
men with no hats on; and then women and
girls, with their hair half down. The fire-
bells began to ring, and in less than five
minutes both the fire companies were on the
shore, with the men at the brakes and the
foremen of the companies holloing through
their trtmipets.

Then Jim Leonard saw what a good thing
it was that he had thought of holloing fire.
He felt sure now that they would save him

The Flight of Pony Baker

somehow, and he made up his mind to save
the rat, too, and pet it, and maybe go around
and exhibit it. He would name it Bolivar;
it was just the color of the elephant BoUvar
that came to the Boy's Town every year.
These things whirled through his brain
while he watched two men setting out in a
skiff towards him.

They started from the shore a Uttle above
him, and they meant to row slanting across
to his tree, but the current, when they got
fairly into it, swept them far below, and
they were glad to row back to land again
without ever getting anywhere near him.
At the same time, the tree-top where his roof
was caught was pulled southward by a sud-
den rush of the torrent; it opened, and the
roof slipped out, with Jim Leonard and the
rat on it. They both joined in one squeal
of despair as the river leaped forward with
them, and a dreadful "Oh I" went up from
the people on the bank.

Some of the firemen had run down to the
bridge when they saw that the skiff was not
going to be of any use, and one of them had

Jim Leonardos Haif'breadth Escape

got out of the window of the bridge onto the
middle pier, with a long pole in his hand.
It had an iron hook at the end, and it was the
kind of pole that the men used to catch drift-
wood with and drag it ashore. When the
people saw Blue Bob with that pole in his
hand, they understood what he was up to.
He was going to wait till the water brought
the roof with Jim Leonard on it down to the
bridge, and then catch the hook into the
shingles and pull it up to the pier. The
strongest current set close in aroxmd the
middle pier, and the roof would have to pass
on one side or the other. That was what
Blue Bob argued out in his mind when he
decided that the skiff would never reach
Jim Leonard, and he knew that if he could
not save him that way, nothing could save
him.

Blue Bob must have had a last name, but
none of the Uttle fellows knew what it was.
Everybody called him Blue Bob because he
had such a thick, black beard that when he
was just shaved his face looked perfectly
blue. He knew all about the river and its

The Flight of Pony Baker

ways, and if it had been of any use to go
out with a boat, he would have gone. That
was what all the boys said, when they fol-
lowed Blue Bob to the bridge and saw him
getting out on the pier. He was the only
person that the watchman had let go on the
bridge for two days.

The water was up within three feet of the
floor, and if Jim Leonard's roof slipped by
Blue Bob's guard and passed under the
bridge, it would scrape Jim Leonard ofiF,
and that would be the last of him.

All the time the roof was coming nearer
the bridge, sometimes slower, sometimes
faster, just as it got into an eddy or into the
current; once it seemed almost to stop, and
swayed completely round ; then it just darted
forward.

Blue Bob stood on the very point of the
pier, where the strong stone-work divided
the current, and held his hooked pole ready
to make a clutch at the roof, whichever side
it took. Jim Leonard saw him there, but
although he had been holloing and yeUing
and crying all the time, now he was still.

Jim Leonardos Hair-breadth Escape

He wanted to say, "0 Bob, save me I" but
he could not make a sound.

It seemed to him that Bob was going to
miss him when he made a lunge at the roof
on the right side of the pier; it seemed to
him that the roof was going down the left
side ; but he felt it quiver and stop, and then
it ^ave a loud crack and went to pieces, and
flimg itself away upon the whirling and
dancing flood. At first Jim I^eonard thought
he had gone with it; but it was only the rat
that tried to run up Blue Bob's pole, and
slipped ofif into the water; and then some-
how Jim was hanging onto Blue Bob's
hands and scrambling onto the bridge.

Blue Bob always said he never saw any
rat, and a good many people said there never
was any rat on the roof with Jim Leonard;
they said that he just made the rat up.

He did not mention the rat himself for
several days; he told Pony Baker that he
did not think of it at first, he was so excited.

Pony asked his father what he thought,
and Pony's father said that it might have
been the kind of rat that people see when
4 49

The Flight of Pony Baker

they have been drinking too much, and
that Blue Bob had not seen it because he
had signed the temperance pledge.

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 Ufe, 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 comforting

Jim Leondfd^s Hair-breadth Escape

her 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 pull-
ed 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-bam when he's got a decent bed in the
house I" and then she started to come towards
Jim Leonard.

THE SCRAPB THAT JIM LEONARD GOT

THE BOYS INTO

AS I said, it was in the spring that Jim
/j^ 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 any-
thing 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 a

The Boys in a Scrape

dare^ and so they set ofif with Jim Leonaid,
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 pla5dng 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 Uttle 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 pass-
ed 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 Pony

The Flight of Pony Baker

as soon as they got by, and to hollo, "No,
Pony, dear I You mustn't get the ague.
Keep out of the water if you don't want your
teeth to rattle. Pony, dear I"

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 whoop-
ed 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 ofiF 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 Uttle torn
already; and they wrung them so dry that
he said they felt splendid when he got them

The Boys in a Scrape

on agsdn. 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 Bxmty WiUiams 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
Uttle 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 right

The Flight of Pony Baker

patch? 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 fellows

The Boys in a Scrape

took 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 nowa-
days, 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.

The Flight of Pony Baker

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
Bimty, 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, arid
said his tooth ached, when the fellows plung-
ed 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 WiUiams
and putting them in one place where he could
get them.

Some of the fellows went into the edge

The Boys in a. Scrape

of 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 comer
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 the

The Flight of Pony Baker

melons^ although there was nothing that he
liked so much. The fellows seemed to be
having an awfully good time, and yet some-
how it looked wrong to Pony. He knew that
Bimty 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 WiUiams 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, but

The Boys in a Scrape

he 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 fight-
ing, and the fellows were yelUng roimd 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 next

The Flight of Pony Baker

thing they knew they were floijndering
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.

igh the woods to the shore
ill the time they cotdd hear
•oaring and shouting, and
I bulldog barking, and it
62 ,

The Boys in a Scrape

seemed 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 snufif 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 Jim

The Flight of Pony Baker

Leonard said so, just as they had beUeved
that Bunty had got done with his melon
patch, until all at once one of them said,
"Where is Jim Leonardf anjnvay?"

Then they found out that nobody knew,
and the Httle 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 I"

Archie Hawkins asked, " What would you
do to him?" and Hen said: "I'd show you I
I'd make him go back and find out whether
Bunty really had a bulldog with him. I
don't beheve he had."

Then all the big boys said that none of
them believed so, either, and that they wotdd
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 ought

The Boys in a Scrape

to 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 dan-
cing 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 and
s 65

The Flight of Pony Baker

get 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 woidd 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 woidd he first-rate if they
could get some salt to eat them with, after
they had built a fire somewhere and baked
them.

hey thought it would be a good plan to
one of these little caves just under the
66

The Boys in a. Scrape

edge 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 crack-
ers 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 keep

The Flight of Pony Baker

from freezing. His tooth had stopped aching
now^ and he kept telling such exciting stories
about Indians that Pony cotdd not seem to
get the chance to ask why Bimty Williams
should take after the boys with his shotgun
and bulldog if he had given up the water-
melon patch and only wanted it for seed.

The question lurked in Pony's mind all
the time that they were waiting for the pota-
toes 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 cotdd 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, and

The Boys in a. Scrape

put 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 beUeve he could walk on account of
the pain that seemed to curl him right up.
He asked Jim if he beUeved he was begin-
ning 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 was

The Flight of Pony Baker

first-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 some-
thing 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 moth-
er's log-bam, 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
do him some good. He said he just
70

The Boys in a Scrape

wished 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 bam^ and Jim put him over
the fence. Jim started to run, suid Pony
waited till he got out of sight and holloed;
then he began to shout, " Father I Mother !
O mother I Come out here I 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 runi^ng 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 him

The Flight of Pony Baker

what 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."

The Boys in a Scrape

"'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 oflf
a tree, or get it through a fence, when it's on
the ground already, then it's just like gath-
ering 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, thought-
fully. "When there's a lot of fellows to-
gether, you don't want them to laugh at
you."

"0 Pony, dear I" said his mother, almost
crying.

"Well, anyway, mother," Pony said, to
cheer her up, " I didn't take any of the water-
melons to-day, for all Jim said Bunty had
got done with them."

"I'm so glad to think you didn't! And
you niust promise, won't you, never to touch
any fruit that doesn't belong to you?"

The Flight of Pony Baker

"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 I^reonard tell them that a
man would give up his watermelon patch,
and how cotdd they beUeve such a Ue, poor,
fooHsh 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 that

The Boys in a Scrape

she 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 I And do you think that excuses
himr'

"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 be-
lieve a liar he is forced to act as if he had
spoken the truth. That's worse than hav-

The Flight of Pony Baker

ing a tower fall on you, or pains in the stom-
ach."

Pony's mother was silent for a moment as
if she could not answer, and then she sstid,
"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 to

The Flight of Pony Baker

the lake^ and Jim said, 'Til 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 Uke the notion of
Uving 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 Uttle 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 wotdd think
he was afraid to hve 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, bum you, maybe. But it ain't
likely but what they'll adopt you; and if

About Running Away

they do they'll take you down to the river,
and wash you and scrub you, so's to get all
the white man oflf, 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 nm
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 cotdd get to the Ind-
ians twice as soon as he could on a freight-
boat. But the trouble was that Pony was
so Uttle that they did not believe they wotdd
take him either for a driver or a cabin-boy;
and he said he was not going to hide in the

The Flight of Pony Bsker

cargo, 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 himt the rats, and then Pony would be
foimd 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 they

About Running Away

could go and find Piccolo and ask him
whether he would do it. They found him
up at the canal basin, where he was fishing
oflf the stem 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 be-
cause 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 hollo-
ing at once, and teUing him what they wanted
him to do, and he thought it was a first-rate
notion, but he kept on fishing, without get-
ting 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 rain-
ing, or else the boat had leaked, and it was
pretty full of water; and the fellows got down
6 8i

The Flight of Pony Baker

on 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 Pic-
colo 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, OF keep in out of the rain, and they
said they wished they were going to run oft,
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. Thej* said that Piccolo
o hook the boat some Friday night,
82

About Running A<way

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 oflf 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
wotdd 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, any-
way. If they travelled on Sunday, and a
storm came up, just as likely as not the boat
would get struck by Ughtning, and if it did,
the Ughtning would run out along the rope
and kill the horse and Piccolo, too, if he was
riding. But the way for Piccolo to do was

The Flight of Pony Baker

always to come aboard when it b^an 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 de-
fend 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 oflf, 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 oflf every lit-
tle 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 wotdd be sure to send it back
from the reservation by Piccolo, for he
should want it himself on the Fourth, which

About Running Away

was coming in about three weeks. An-
other fellow that had five cents, which he
was saving up till he could get ten, to buy
a pack of shobting-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 will-
ing to run away from hq^ie, and yet be so
anxious to keep his promise to his mother
that he would not use a pistol to defend him-
self 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 Simday with it.

After a while Piccolo came to the Uttle
hatch-door, and looked down into the cabin
where the boys were sitting and talking at

The Flight of Pony Baker

the tops of their voices; but in about a min-
ute 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 I"

They looked round, and at the open win-
dow 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 gang-
way 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 stand-
ing 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 be-
tween it and the bank, but he scrambled up
out of the water like Ughtning, and ran
after the rest. He was pretty long-legged,
and he soon caught up, but he was just rain-

About Running A<way

ing water from his clothes, and it made the
fellows laugh so that they cotdd 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 Pony

The Flight of Pony Baker

cotild reach the reservation without a canal-
boat. That was the reeison why they had to
give up the notion of his going to the Ind-
ians ; and if anybody had told them that the
Indians were going to come to Pony they
would have said he was joking, or else cra-
zy; 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 ofif the boat (and had to go home
bareheaded and te]l his mother all about
what happened, though his clothes were dry
enough/ and he might have got ofif 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 fel-
low in the whole Boy's Town when the Ind-
ians came.

The way they came to town was this:
The white people around the reservation
got tired of having them there, or else they

The Flight of Pony Baker

want£d 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 reserva-
tion; 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 reser-
vation beyond that river.

The boys did not know anything about
this, and they would not have cared much
if they had. All they knew was that one
momii^ (and it happened to be Saturday)
three czinal-boats, full of Indians, came into
the basin. Nobody ever ■knew which boy
saw them first. It seemed as if all the fel-
lows 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
I Indians, in blankets,
IS, warriors, squaws, pa-
ling, they almost went
ood many of the Indians
vent over to the court-
90

Indians in the Boy^s Town

mj iiiM 1^ ■-■ 11 I II II II ■ ' ■ ■ — ■ ■ ,_, ^^

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 ar-
rows 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 thej'^
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 some-
thing."

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 Jim

The Flight of Pony Baker

Leonard 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 goit^ 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 tdl 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 oflf
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 stoD him from hiilf so many things as
1 do, and lately his father had got
92

Indians in the Boy^s To<ivn

to being very good to him : let him he in bed
in the morning, and did not seem to notice
when he stayed out with the boys at night,
telUng 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 when-
ever 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 quar-
ter, so that he could buy two packs of shoot-
ing-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 :

'" Youll be very careful. Pony, won't you?

The Flight of Pony Baker

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 ofif 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 I" 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, be-
cause it made him not want to run ofif so much.

■ ^1 ■ LWm ii i mmt v 11 n m^^m^^fK^i^

I ^ p I ■ ' ^' I

Indians in the Boy^s Town

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 ofif 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 go-
ing? It's your only chance. Why, Pony,

The Flight of Pony Baker

what are you afraid of? Hain't you always
wanted to sleep out-doors and not do any-
thing 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 sujk-
pose 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 no^^."

"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 be-
gan to come around to hear what Jim Leon-
ard was saying to Pony. A good many of

Indians in the Boy* s Town

the Indians had gone ofif 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 war-
path, 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 hplloing
now when you get hurt?"

Pony confessed that he holloed a little;
the others tried to look as if they never hol-
loed 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 just
7 97

The Plight of Pony Baker

reach 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 mus-
cles 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 grad-
ually so that you won't mind hardly any-
thing. 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, owl Oh, my foot! Oh, it's
broken; I know it is! Oh, run for the doc-
tor, 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, fuid 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 on

Indians in the Boy^s Town

the 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, be-
cause 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 smile

The Flight of Pony Baker

when 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 aroimd three days with-
out 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 oflf 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 ! Woidd 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 ran

100

W it

Indians in the Boy^s Town

away, jumping and jeering till they got out
of sight. It was about dinner-time, any-
way.

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 oflf. 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 try-
ing his foot, and pretty soon they found he
coidd 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
oflf to the Indians. He about gave up run-
ning oflf 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 oflf both his packs of shooting-crackers;
and though she had forbidden him to go

lOI

The Flight of Pony Baker

down to the river-bank where the men were
firing oflf 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 swinmiing 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 \n& 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 shamed

102

Indians in the Boy^s Town

him 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 Uttle behind, so as to see that
nothing happened to him; and when they
were just starting oflf 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 thej:ourt-house the boys
kept snickering and whispering, "Don't
stump your toe, child," and "Be careful of
the child, boys," and things Uke 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 and

103

The Flight of Pony Baker

treated 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 Usten-
ing to his cousin, Frank Baker, teUing 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 oflf again from Pony, and
say what it was that Frank told; and after
that I can go on with Pony's nmning off.

VII

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 celebrat-
ing with the rest of the boys, that he hardly
knew what to do. He had a lewy (as the
old Spanish real used to be called in south-
em 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 he

IQ5

The Flight of Pony Baker

was 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
biunped 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 Bot-
tom 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 ap-
ples 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, and

io6

How Frank Baker Spent the Fourth

he 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, be-
cause the Bakers had no stable, and saddled
him, and was oflf 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 have

107

The Flight of Pony Baker

to be whipped up again; and then the whole
thing would have to be gone through with
the same as at first. The bovs 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 coidd have shot one easily, for
squirrels are not afraid of you when you
are on horseback; and, as it was, Jake Mil-
race 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 jiunped,
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 told

I08

How Frank Baker Spent the Fourth

them 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 after-
wards 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 bam, and he
said that Dave was out in the pasture haul-
ing 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 in

109

The Flight of Pony Baker

the Fourth of July, anyway. They found
Dave easily enough, and he answered Jake's
"Hello I" 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 snarl-
ing 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 IjAd come to
spend the Fourth of July with iDave.

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 bare-
foot 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 hauhng

How Frank Baker Spent the Fourth

his rails. The boys took that for a kind of
hint, and they pulled oflf their roundabouts
and set to work with him.

Frank thought it was not exactly like the
Foiulh, but he did not say an3^thing, 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 imloading 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 hanidled them, or you
would get your hands stuck full of splin-
ters. 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 the

III

The Flight of Pony Baker

blazing sun till the sweat poured off their
faces, and Prank 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 any-
thing, and pretty soon he had his reward.
When they got hsdf 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'
tegs. 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 yelfMng and howling back for more;
and hopiang round and baiking; 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 paw-
iw branches, and came back and fought
112

" BEING DRESSED SO WELL WAS ONE OF THE

WORST THINGS THAT WAS DONE TO HIM

BY HIS MOTHER "

How Frank Baker Spent the Fourth

the bumblebees till they drove them oflF.
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
oflf, they dug their nest out; it was beauti-
fully built in regular cells of gray paper,
and there was a httle 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 oflF
to the bam. 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 good
8 113

The Flight of Pony Baker

butter. The Boy's Town boys did not like
the looks of the fat pork, but they were wolf-
himgry, 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-
peisture, 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
d they were they had come ; but
st quiet, and told them to wsiit till
le to the swimming-hole,
while they were in the tree that
114

How Frank Baker Spent the Fourth

something 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 1" he holloed.
"That's mean! What are you throwin'
that light in my face for?"

But he laughed at the joke, and he laugh-
ed more when Dave shouted back, "I ain't
throwin' no Ught 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, laugh-
ing : " Oh, 111 tell you I It's one of the pieces
of tin we strung along that line in the corn-
field to keep the crows off, com-plantin'
time."

115

The Flight of Pony Baker

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 1" he called
towards the field. "Oh, he's gone now!" he
said to the other boys, craning their necks
out to see, too. " But he was doing 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 com -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."

ii6

I^yui Frank Baker Spent the Fourth

The others said they reckoned so, too,
and they all got down from the tree, and
started for the swinmiing-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 heani it thunder. By that time they
were on the edge of the woods, and there
came a flash of lightning and a loud thun-
der-clap, and the rain began to fedl in big
drops. The boys saw a bam in the field
they bad reached, and they ran for it;
and they had just got into it when the
rain came down with all its might. Sud-
denly Jake said: "111 tell you whatt Let's
take ofi our clothes and have a shower-
batht" 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
plaj^ng Indians, and they pretended the
bam was a settler's cabin, and they were
stealing up on it through the tall shocks of
wheat. They captured it easily, i
said if the hghtning would only
117

The Flight of Pony Baker

and 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 Uved 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 comer of the bam, 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 Indiam^ now. You
let go my hair."

"Who's touchin' your old hair?" Jake

Ii8

How Frank Baker Spent the Fourth

shouted back, from the inside ol the b£im.
" You must be crazy. Hurry up, if you're
ever goin' to attack us. I want to get out
in the rain, myself, awhile."

Prank was outside, pretending to be at
work in the field, and weiiting for the Ind-
ians to creep on him, and when Jake shouted
for Dave to hurry, he looked over his shoul-
der and saw a white figiue, naked like his
own, flit round the left-hand comer of the
bam. Then he had to stoop over, so that
Dave could tomahawk him easily, and he
did not see anything mdre, but Jake yelled
from the bam: "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 comer of the bam.

" You're crazy yourself, Jake. There ain't
nobody here but me and Freink,"

"There is, too!" Jake retorted. "Or there
was, half a second ago."

But Dave was busy st
119

The Flight of Pony Baker

who was bending over, pretending to hoe,
and after he had tomahawked Frank, he
gave the scalp-halloo, and Jake came run-
ning out of the bam, and had to be chased
round it twice, so that he could fall breath-
less on his own threshold, and be scalped
in full sight of his family. Then Dave
pretended to be a war -party of Wyandots,
and he gathered up sticks, and pretended
to set the barn on fire. By this time Frank
and Jake had come to life, and were Wyan-
dots, too, and they all joined hands and
danced in front of the bam.

"There! There he is again!" shouted
Jake. "Who's crazy now, I should like to
know?"

"Where? Where?" yelled both the other
boys.

" There ! Right in the bam door. Or he
%oas, quarter of a second ago," said Jake,
and they all dropped one another's hands,
and rushed into the bam and began to
search it.

They could not find anybody, and Dave
Black said: "Well, he's the quickest feller!

I2Q

How Frank Baker Spent the Fourth

Must 'a' got up into the mow, and jumped
out of the window, and broke for the woods
while we was lookin' down here. But if
I get my hands onto him, oncetl"

They all talked and shouted and quar-
relled and laughed at once ; but they had to
give the other fellow up; he had got away
for that time, and they ran out into the
rain again to let it wash ofiF the dust and
chafif, which they had got all over them in
their search. The rain felt so good and
cool that they stood still and took it with-
out playing any more, and talked quietly.
Dave decided that the fellow who had given
them the slip was a new boy whose folks
had come into the neighborhood since school
had let out in the spring, so that he had
not got acquainted yet; but Dave allowed
that he would teach him a few tricks as
good as his own when he got at him.

The storm left a solid bank of clouds in
the east for a while after it was all blue in
the western half of the sky, and a rainbow
came out against the clouds. It looked
so firm and thick that Dave said you could

121

The Flight of Pony Baker

cut it with a scythe. It seemed to come
solidly down to the ground in the woods in
front of the hay-mow window, and the boys
said it would be easy to get the crock of
gold at the end of it if they were only in
the woods. ''Ill bet that feller's helpin'
himself/' said Dave, and they began to
wonder how many dollars a crock of gold
was worth, anyhow; they decided about a
milUon. Then they wondered how much
of a crock full of gold a boy could get into
his pockets; and they all laughed when
Jake said he reckoned it would depend upon
the size of the crock. ''I don't beUeve that
fellow could carry much of it away if he
hain't got more on than he had in front of
the bam." That put Frank in mind of the
puzzle about the three men that found a
treasure in the road when they were travel-
ling together: the bUnd man saw it, and
the man without arms picked it up, and the
naked man put it in his pocket It was
the first time Dave had heard the puzzle,
and he asked, "Well, what's the answer?"
But before Frank could tell him, Jake started

' 122

Haw Frank Baker Spent the Fourth

up and pointed to the end of the rainbow,
where it seemed to go into the ground against
the woods.

"Oh! look! look!" he panted out, and
they all looked, but no one could see any-
thing except Jake. It made him mad.
"Why, you must be bUnd!" he shouted,
and he kept pointing. " Don't you see him?
There, there 1 Oh, now, the rainbow's go-
ing out, and you can't see him any more.
He's gone into the woods again. Well, I
don't know what your eyes are good for,
anyway."

He tried to tell them what he had seen ;
he could only make out that it must be the
same boy, but now he had his clothes on :
white linen pantaloons and roundabout, like
what you had on May day, or the Fourth
if you were going to the Sunday-school
picnic. Dave wanted him to tell what he
looked like, but Jake could not say anything
except that he was very smiling-looking,
and seemed as if he would like to be with
him; Jake said he was just going to hollo
for him to come over when the rainbow be-

L23

The Flight of Pony Baker

gan to go out; and then the fellow slipped
back into the woods ; it was more like melt-
ing into the woods.

" And how far ofif do you think you could
see a boy smile?" Dave asked^ scornfully.

''How far ofif can you say a rainbow is?"
Jake retorted.

'' I can say how far ofif that piece of woods
is/' said Dave, with a laugh. He got to
his feet, and began to pull at the other boys,
to make them get up. "Come along, if
you're ever goin' to the swimmin'-hole."

The sun was bright and hot, and (he boj^s
left the bam, and took across the field to
the creek. The storm must have been very
heavy, for the creek was rushing along bank-
full, and there was no sign left of Dave's
swimming-hole. But they had had such a
glorious shower-bath that they did not want
to go in swimming, anyway, and they stood
and watched the yellow water pouring over
the edge of a mill-dam that was there, till
Dave happened to think of building a raft
and going out on the dam. Jake said,
"First rate!" and they all rushed up to a

124

VERY SMILING-LOOKING*

How Frank Baker Spent the Fourth

place where there were some boards on the
bank ; and they got pieces of old rope at the
mill, and tied the boards together, till they
had a good raft, big enough to hold them,
and then they pushed it into the water and
got on it. They said they were on the Ohio
River, and going from Cincinnati to Louis-
ville. Dave had a long pole to push with,
like the boatmen on the keel-boats in the
early times, and Jake had a board to steer
with; Frank had another board to paddle
with, on the other side of the raft from Dave ;
and so they set on their journey.

The dam was a wide, smooth sheet of
water, with trees growing round the edge,
and some of them hanging so low over it
that they almost touched it. The boys made
trips back and forth across the dam, and
to and from the edge of the fall, till they
got tired of it, and they were wanting some-
thing to happen, when Dave stuck his pole
deep into the muddy bottom, and set his
shoulder hard against the top of the pole,
with a "Here she goes, boys, over the
Falls of the Ohio I" and he ram along

125

The Flight of Pony Baker

the edge of the raft from one end to the
other.

Frank and Dave had both straightened
up to watch him. At the stem of the raft
Dave tried to pull up his pole for another
good push^ but it stuck fast in the mud at
the bottom of the dam, and before Dave
knew what he was about, the raft shot from
imder his feet, and he went overboard with
his pole in his hand, as if he were taking a
flying leap with it. The next minute he
dropped into the water heels first, and went
down out of sight. He came up blowing
water from his mouth, and holloing and
laughing, and took after the raft, where the
other fellows were jumping up and down,
and bending back and forth, and screaming
and yelUng at the way he looked hurrying
after his pole, and then dangling in the air,
and now showing his black head in the
water Uke a musk-rat swimming for its hole.
They were having such a good time mock-
ing him that they did not notice how his
push had sent the raft swiftly in under the
trees by the shore, and the first thing they

126

Ho<u) Frank Baker Spent the Fourth

knew, one of the low branches caught them,
and scraped them both off the raft into the
water, ahnost on top of Dave. Then it was
Dave's turn to laugh, and he began : " What's
the matter, boys? Want to help find the
other end of that pole?"

Jake was not under the water any longer
than Dave had been, but Frank did not
come up so soon. They looked among the
brush by the shore, to see if he was hiding
there and fooling them, but they could not
find him. " He's stuck in some snag at the
bottom," said Dave; "we got to dive for
him"; but just then Frank came up, and
swam feebly for the shore. He crawled out
of the water, and after he got his breath,
he said, "I got caught, down there, in the
top of an old tree."

" Didn't I tell you so?" Dave shouted into
Jake's ear.

"Why, Jake was there till I got loose,"
said Frank, looking stupidly at him.

"No, I wasn't," said Jake. "I was up
long ago, and I was just goin' to dive for
you; so was Dave."

127

The Flight of Pony Baker

"Then it was that other fellow," said
Frank. "I thought it didn't look over-
much like Jake, anyway."

"Oh, pshaw I" Dave jeered. "How could
you tell, in that muddy water?"

"I don't know," Frank answered. "It
was all hght round him. Looked like he
had a piece of the rainbow on him, or fox-
fire."

''I reckon if I find him," said Dave, "111
take his piece of rainbow ofiF'n him pretty
quick. That's the fourth time that feller's
fooled us to-day. Where d'you s'pose he
came up? Oh, I knowl He got out on the
other side under them trees, while we was
huntin' for Frank, and not noticin'. How'd
he look, anyway?"

"I don't know; I just saw him half a
second. Kind of smiling, and like he want-
ed to play."

"Well, I know him," said Dave. "It's
the new boy, and the next time I see him —
Oh, hello I There goes our raft I"

It was drifting slowly down towards the
edge of the dam, and the boys all three

128

How Frank Baker Spent the Fourth

pltinged into the water again^ and swam
out to it, and climbed up on it.

They had the greatest kind of a time,
and when they had played castaway sailors,
Frank and Jake wanted to send the raft
over the edge of the dam; but Dave said it
might get into the head-race of the mill
and tangle itself up in the wheel, and spoil
the wheel.

So they took the raft apart and carried
the boards on shore, and then tried to think
what they would do next. The first thing
was to take off their clothes and see about
drying them. But they had no patience
for that; and so they wrung them out as
dry as they could and put them on again;
they had left their roimdabouts at Dave's
house, anyway, and so had nothing on but a
shirt and trousers apiece. The sun was out
hot after the rain, and their clothes were
almost dry by the time they got to Dave's
house. They went with him to the woods-
pasture on the way, and helped him drive
home the cows, and they wanted him to
get his mother to make his father let him

9 129

The Flight of Pony Baker

cut it with a scythe. It seemed to come
soUdly down to the ground in the woods in
front of the hay-mow window, and the boys
said it wotdd be easy to get the crock of
gold at the end of it if they were only in
the woods. "I'll bet that feller's helpin'
himself/' said Dave, and they began to
wonder how many dollars a crock of gold
was worth, anyhow; they decided about a
milUon. Then they wondered how much
of a crock full of gold a boy could get into
his pockets; and they all laughed when
Jake said he reckoned it woidd depend upon
the size of the crock. ''I don't beUeve that
fellow cotdd carry much of it away if he
hain't got more on than he had in front of
the bam." That put Frank in mind of the
puzzle about the three men that found a
treasure in the road when they were travel-
ling together: the bUnd man saw it, and
the man without arms picked it up, and the
naked man put it in his pocket. It was
the first time Dave had heard the puzzle,
and he asked, "Well, what's the answer?"
But before Frank could tell him, Jake started

122

HofwFtMk B^ker Spent the Fourtk

up and pointed to the end of the ninbow.
where it seemed to go into the ground against
the woods.

"Oh! look! look!*' he panted out> and
they an looked^ but no one could see any-
thing except Jake. It made him mad.
"Why, you must be Uind!" he shouted,
and he kept pointing. '* DonH 3rou see him?
There, there! Oh, now, the rainbows go-
ing out, and 3rou can*t see him any more.
He's gone into the woods again. WdU I
don't know what your eyes are good for»
anyway."

He tried to tdl them w*hat he had seen;
he could only make out that it must be the
same boy, but now he had his clothes on :
white Unen pantaloons and roimdabout, like
what you had on May day, or the Fourth
if you were going to the Sunday-school
picnic. Dave wanted him to tell what he
looked like, but Jake could not say anything
except that he was very smiling-looking,
and seemed as if he woidd like to be with
him; Jake said he was just going to hollo
for him to come over when the rainbow be-

L23

The Flight of Pony Baker

gan to go out; and then the fellow sUpped
back into the woods ; it was more like melt-
ing into the woods.

" And how far off do you think you coidd
see a boy smile?" Dave asked, scornfully.

'^How far off can you say a rainbow is?"
Jake retorted.

"\ can say how far off that piece of woods
is," said Dave, with a laugh. He got to
his feet, and began to pull at the other boys,
to make them get up. "Come along, if
you're ever goin' to the swimmin'-hole."

The sun was bright and hot, and the boys
left the bam, and took across the field to
the creek. The storm must have been very
heavy, for the creek was rushing along bank-
full, and there was no sign left of Dave's
swimming-hole. But they had had such a
glorious shower-bath that they did not want
to go in swimming, anyway, and they stood
and watched the yellow water pouring over
the edge of a mill-dam that was there, till
Dave happened to think of building a raft
and going out on the dam. Jake said,
"First rate I" and they all rushed up to a

124

VERY SMILING-LOOKINC"

How Frank Baker Spent the Fourth

The dam was a wide, smooth sheet of
water, with trees growing round the edge,
and some of them hanging so low over it
that they almost touched it. The boys made
trips back and forth across the dam, and
to and from the edge of the fall, till they
got tired of it, and they were wanting some-
thing to happen, when Dave stuck his pole
deep into the muddy bottom, and set his
shoulder hard against the top of the pole,
with a ''Here she goes, boys, over the
Falls of the Ohio I" and he ran along

125

The Flight of Pony Baker

the edge of the raft from one end to the
other.

Frank and Dave had both straightened
up to watch him. At the stem of the raft
Dave tried to pull up his pole for another
good push, but it stuck fast in the mud at
the bottom of the dam, and before Dave
knew what he was about, the raft shot from
luider his feet, and he went overboard with
his pole in his hand, as if he were taking a
flying leap with it. The next minute he
dropped into the water heels first, and went
down out of sight. He came up blowing
water from his mouth, and holloing and
laughing, and took after the raft, where the
other fellows were jimiping up and down,
and bending back and forth, and screaming
and yelling at the way he looked hurrying
after his pole, and then dangling in the air,
and now showing his black head in the
water hke a musk-rat swimming for its hole.
They were having such a good time mock-
ing him that they did not notice how his
push had sent the raft swiftly in under the
trees by the shore, and the first thing they

126

Ho<u) Frank Baker Spent the Fourth

Jake was not imder the water any longer
than Dave had been, but Frank did not
come up so soon. They looked among the
brush by the shore, to see if he was hiding
there and fooUng them, but they could not
find him. " He's stuck in some snag at the
bottom," said Dave; "we got to dive for
him"; but just then Frank came up, and
swam feebly for the shore. He crawled out
of the water, and after he got his breath,
he said, "I got caught, down there, in the
top of an old tree."

"Didn't I tell you so?" Dave shouted into
Jake's ear.

"Why, Jake was there till I got loose,"
said Frank, looking stupidly at him.

"No, I wasn't," said Jake. "I was up
long ago, and I was just goin' to dive for
you; so was Dave."

127

The Flight of Pony Baker

"Then it was that other fellow/' said
Frank. "I thought it didn't look over-
much Uke Jake, anyway."

"Oh, pshaw I" Dave jeered. "How coidd
you tell, in that muddy water?"

"I don't know," Frank answered. "It
was all hght round him. Looked like he
had a piece of the rainbow on him, or fox-
fire."

"I reckon if I find him," said Dave, "111
take his piece of rainbow ofiF'n him pretty
quick. That's the fourth time that feller's
fooled us to-day. Where d'you s'pose he
came up? Oh, I know I He got out on the
other side under them trees, while we was
huntin' for Frank, and not noticin'. How'd
he look, anyway?"

"I don't know; I just saw him half a
second. Kind of smiling, and like he want-
ed to play."

"Well, I know him," said Dave. "It's
the new boy, and the next time I see him —
Oh, hello I There goes our raftl"

It was drifting slowly down towards the
edge of the dam, and the boys all three

128

Ho<w Frank Baker Spent the Fourth

plunged into the water again, and swam
out to it, and climbed up on it.

So they took the raft apart and carried
the boards on shore, and then tried to think
what they would do next. The first thing
was to take off their clothes and see about
drying them. But they had no patience
for that; and so they wrung them out as
dry as they cotdd and put them on again;
they had left their roimdabouts at Dave's
house, anyway, and so had nothing on but a
shirt and trousers apiece. The sun was out
hot after the rain, and their clothes were
almost dry by the time they got to Dave's
house. They went with him to the woods-
pasture on the way, and helped him drive
home the cows, and they wanted him to
get his mother to make his father let him

9 129

The Flight of Pony Baker

go up to the Boy's Town with them and
see the fireworks; but he said it would be
no use; and then they understood that if
a man was British, of course he would not
want his boy to celebrate the Fourth of
July by going to the fireworks. They felt
sorry for Dave, but they both told him that
they had had more f im than they ever had
in their lives before, and they were coming
the next Fourth and going to bring their
guns with them. Then they could shoot
quails or squirrels, if they saw any, and
the firing would celebrate the Fourth at the
same time, and his father could not find
any fault.

It seemed to Frank that it was awful to
have a father that was British; but when
they got to Dave's house, and his father
asked them how they had spent the after-
noon, he did not seem to be so very bad.
He asked them whether they had got caught
in the storm, and if that was what made
their clothes wet, and when they told him
what had happened, he sat down on the
wood-pile and laughed till he shook all over.

130

How Frank Baker Spent the Fourth

Then Frank and Jake thought they had
better be going home, but Dave's mother
would not let them start without something
to eat ; and she cut them each a sUce of bread
the whole width and length of the loaf, and
spread the slices with butter, and then apple-
butter, and then brown sugar. The boys
thought they were not hungry, but when
they began to eat they found out that they
were, and before they knew it they had eaten
the sUces all up. Dave's mother said they
must come and see Dave again some time,
and she acted real clever ; she was an Amer-
ican, anyway.

They got their horses and started home.
It was almost sundown now, and they
heard the turtle-doves cooing in the woods,
and the bob -whites whistling from the
stubble, and there were so many squirrels
among the trees in the woods-pastures, and
on the fences, that Frank could hardly get
Jake along; and if it had not been for Jake's
horse, that ran whenever Frank whipped up
his pony, they would not have got home till
dark. They smelt ham frying in some of

131

The Flight of Pony Baker

the hotises they passed, and that made them
awfully hungry; one place there was coflfee,
too.

When they reached Frank's house he
found that his mother had kept supper hot
for him, and she came out and said Jake
must come in with him, if his family would
not be uneasy about him ; and Jake said he
did not believe they would. He tied his
horse to the outside of the cow-house, and
he came in, and Frank's mother gave them
as much baked chicken as they cotdd hold,
with hot bread to sop in the gravy; and she
had kept some coflfee hot for Frank, so that
they made another good meal. They told
her what a bully time they had had, and
how they had fallen into the dam; but she
did not seem to think it was funny; she
said it was a good thing they were not all
drowned, and she believed they had taken
their deaths of cold, anyway. Frank was
afraid she was going to make him go up
stairs and change his clothes, when he
heard the boys begin to sound their call
of ''Ee-o-wee" at the front door, and he

132

How Frank Baker Spent the Fourth

and Jake snatched their hats and ran out.
There was a lot of boys at the gate; Hen
Billard was there, and Archy Hawkins and
Jim Leonard; there were some little fel-
lows, and Frank's cousin Pony was there;
he said his mother had said he might stay
till his father came for him.

Hen Billard had his thumb tied up from
firing too big a load out of his brass pistol.
The pistol burst, and the barrel was all
curled back like a dandelion stem in water;
he had it in his pocket to show. Archy
Hawkins's face was full of little blue specks
from pouring powder on a coal and getting
it flashed up into his face when he was blow-
ing the coal; some of his eye-winkers were
singed off. Jim Leonard had a rag round
his hand, and he said a whole pack of shoot-
ing-crackers had gone off in it before he
could throw them away, and burned the skin
off ; the fellows dared him to let them see it,
but he would not; and then they mocked
him. They all said there had never been
such a Fourth of July in the Boy's Town
before; and Frank and Jake let them brag

133

The Flight of Pony Baker

as much as they wanted to, and when the
fellows got tired, and asked them what they
had done at Pawpaw Bottom, and they said,
''Oh, nothing much; just helped Dave Black
haul rails," they set up a jeer that you could
hear a mile.

Then Jake said, as if he just happened
to think of it, "And fought bumblebees."

And Frank put in, "And took a shower-
bath in the thunder-storm."

And Jake said, "And eat mulberries."

And Frank put in again, "And built a
raft."

And Jake said, "And Dave got pulled
into the mill-dam."

And Frank wound up, ''And Jake and I
got swept overboard."

By that time the fellows began to feel
pretty small, and they crowded round and
wanted to hear every word about it. Then
Jake and Frank tant£|lized them, and said
of course it was no Fourth at all, it was
only just fun, till the fellows could not stand
it any longer, and then Frank jumped up
from where he was sitting on his front steps,

134

How Frank Baker Spent the Fourth

and holloed out, "I'll show you how Dave
looked when his pole pulled him in/' and
he acted it all out about Dave's pole pulling
him into the water.

Jake waited till he was done, and then
he jumped up and said, '* I'll show you how
Frank and me looked when we got swept
overboard," and he acted it out about the
limb of the tree scraping them oflf the raft
while they were laughing at Dave and not
noticing.

As soon as they got the boys to yelling,
Jake and Frank both showed how they
fought the bumblebees, and how the dogs
got stung, and ran round trying to rub the
bees ofif against the ground, and your legs,
and everything, till the boys fell down and
rolled over, it made them laugh so. Jake
and Frank showed how they ran out into
the rain from the bam, and stood in it, and
told how good and cool it felt ; and they told
about sitting up in the mulberry-tree, and
how twenty boys could not have made the
least hole in the berries. They told about
the quails and the squirrels ; and they show-

135

The Flight of Pony Baker

ed how Frank had to keep whipping up his
pony, and how Jake's horse kept wheeling
and running away; and some of the fellows
said they were going with them the next
Fourth.

Hen Billard tried to turn it ofif , and said :
"Pshaw! You can have that kind of a
Fourth any day in the country. Who's
going Up to the court-house yard to see the
fireworks?"

He and Archy Hawkins and the big boys
ran oS., whooping, and the little fellows
felt awfully, because their mothers had
said they must not go. Just then. Pony
Baker's father came for him, and he said
he guessed they could see the fireworks
from Frank's front steps; and Jake stayed
with Frank, and Frank's father came out,
and his aunt and mother leaned out of the
window, and watched, while the Roman
candles shot up, and the rockets cUmbed
among the stars.

They were all so much taken up in watch-
ing that they did not notice one of the neigh-
bor women who had come over from her

How Frank Baker Spent the Fourth

house and joined them^ till Mrs. Baker hap-
pened to see her, and called out: "Why,
Mrs. Fogle, where did you spring from?
Do come in here with Manda and me. I
didn't see you, in your black dress.''

"No, Tm going right back/' said Mrs.
Fogel. "I just come over a minute to see
the fireworks — for Wilford; you can't see
them from my side."

"Oh," said Mrs. Baker, softly. "Well,
I'm real glad you came. You ought to
have heard the boys, here, telling about
the kind of Fourth they had at Pawpaw^
Bottom. I don't know when I've laughed
so much."

"Well, I reckon it's just as well I wasn't
here. I couldn't have helped in the laughing
much. It seems pretty hard my Wilford
coiddn't been having a good time with the
rest to-day. He was always such a Fourth-
of-July boy."

"But he's happy where he is> Mrs. Fogle,"
said Mrs. Baker, gently.

"Well, I know he'd give anything to
been here with the boys to-day — I don't

137

The Flight of Pony Baker

care where he is. And he's been here, too;
I just know he has; IVe felt him, all day
long, teasing at me to let him go ofif with
your Frank and Jake, here; he just fairly
loved to be with them, and he never done
any harm. Oh, my, myl I don't see how
I used to deny him/'

She put up her apron to her face, and
ran sobbing across the street again to her
own house; they heard the door close after
her in the dark.

"I declare," said Mrs. Baker, "I've got
half a mind to go over to her."

Better not," said Pony Baker's father.
Well, I reckon you're right, Henry," Mrs.
Baker assented.

They did not talk gayly any more; when
the last rocket had climbed the sky, Jake
Milrace rose and said in a whisper he must
be going.

After he was gone, Frank told, as if he
had just thought of it, about the boy that
had fooled them so, at Pawpaw Bottom; and
he was surprised at the way his mother and
his uncle Henry questioned him up about it.

138

(€

How Frank Baker Spent the Fourth

''Well, now/' she said, "I'm glad poor
Mrs. Fogle wasn't here, or — " She stopped,
and her brother-in-law rose, with the hand of
his sleepy little son in his own.

"1 think Pony had better say good-night
now, while he can. Frank, you've had a re-
markable Fourth. Good-night, all. I wish
I had spent the day at Pawpaw Bottom
myself."

Before they slept that night. Pony's moth-
er said: "Well, I'd just as soon you'd kept
that story to yourself till morning, Henry.
I shall keep thinking about it, and not sleep
a wink. How in the world do you account
for it?"

"I don't account for it," said Pony's fa-
ther.

"Now, that won't do! What do you
think?"

"Well, if it was one boy that saw the
fourth boy it might be a simple case of
lying."

" Frank Baker never told a Ue in his life.
He couldn't."

Perhaps Jake could, or Dave. But as

139

The Flight of Pony Baker

they all three saw the boy at diflferent times,
why, it's — "

''What?"

"It's another thing."

"Now, you can't get out of it that way,
Henry. Do you beUeve that the child long-
ed so to be back here that — "

"Ah, who knows? There's something
very strange about all that. But we can't
find our way out, except by the short-cut
of supposing that nothing of the kind hap-
pened."

"You can't suppose that, though, if all
three of the boys say it did."

"I can suppose that they think it hap-
pened, or made each other think so."

Pony's mother drew a long sigh. "Well,
I know what I shall always think," she

vra

HOW PONY BAKER CAME PRETTY NEAR
RUNNING OFF WITH A CIRCUS

JUST before the circus came/ about the
end of July^ something happened that
made Pony mean to run off more than any-
thing that ever was. His father and mother
were coming home from a walk, in the even-
ing; it was so hot nobody could stay in the
house, and just as they were coming to the
front steps Pony stole up behind them and
tossed a snowball which he had got out of
the garden at his mother, just for fun. The
flower struck her very softly on her hair,
for she had no bonnet on, and she gave a
jump and a hollo that made Pony laugh;
and then she caught him by the arm and
boxed his ears.

"Oh, my goodness! It was you, was it,
you good-for-nothing boy? I thought it

141

The Flight of Pony Baker

was a bat I'' she said, and she broke out
cryiiig and ran into the house, and would
not mind his father, who was calling after
her, "Lucy, Lucy, my dear child 1"

Pony was crying, too, for he did not intend
to frighten his mother, and when she took
his fun as if he had done something wicked
he did not know what to think. He stole oflE
to bed and he lay there crying in the dark and
expecting that she would come to him, as she
always did, to have him say that he was
sorry when he had been wicked, or to tell
him that she was sorry, when she thought
she had not been quite fair with him. But
she did not come, and after a good while his
father came and said: "Are you awake.
Pony? I am sorry your mother misunder-
stood your fun. But you mustn't mind it,
dear boy. She's not well, and she's very
nervous."

"I don't care!" Pony sobbed out. "She
won't have a chance to touch me again!"
For he had made up his mind to run off
with the circus which was coming the next
Tuesday.

142

Pony Near Runs Off with a Circus

He turned his face away, sobbing, and his
father, after standing by his bed a moment,
went away without sa3nng anything but,
"Don't forget your prayers. Pony. Youll
feel differently in the morning, I hope/'

Pony fell asleep thinking how he would
come back to the Boy's Town with the circus
when he was grown up, and when he came
out in the ring riding three horses bareback
he would see his father and mother and
sisters in one of the lower seats. They
would not know him, but he would know
them, and he would send for them to come
to the dressing-room, and would be very
good to them, all but his mother; he would
be very cold and stiff with her, though he
would know that she was prouder of him
than all the rest put together, and she would
go away almost crying.

He began being cold and stiff with her the
very next morning, although she was better
than ever to him, and gave him waffles for
breakfast with unsalted butter, and tried to
pet him up. That whole day she kept trying
to do things for him, but he would scarcely

143

The Flight of Pony Baker

speak to her ; and at night she came to him
and said, " What makes you act so strangely.
Pony? Are you offended with your mother?''

"Yes, I am!" said Pony, haughtily, and
he twitched away from where she was sitting
on the side of his bed, leaning over him.

"On account of last night. Pony?" she
asked, softly.

"I reckon you know well enough," said
Pony, and he tried to be disgusted with her
for her being such a hypocrite, but he had
to set his teeth hard, hard, or he would have
broken down crying.

" If it's for that, you mustn't. Pony, dear.
You don't know how you frightened me.
When your snowball hit me, I felt sure it was
a bat, and I'm so afraid of bats, you know. I
didn't mean to hurt my poor boy's feelings
so, and you mustn't mind it any more. Pony. "

She stooped down and kissed him on the
forehead, but he did not move or say any-
thing ; only, after that he felt more forgiving
towards his mother. He made up his mind
to be good to her along with the rest when
he came back with the circus. But still he

144

Pony Near Runs Off with a Circus

meant to nm ofif with the circus. He did not
see how he coidd do anything else, for he had
told all the boys that day that he was going
to do it; and when they just laughed, and
said: "Oh yes. Think you can fool your
grandmother! It'll be Uke running ofif
with the Indians/' Pony wagged his head,
and said they would see whether it woidd
or not, and offered to bet them what they
dared.

The morning of the circus day all the fel-
lows went out to the corporation line. to meet
the circus procession. There ^ere ladies
and knights, the first thing, riding on spotted
horses; and then a band chariot, all made up
of swans and dragons. There were about
twenty baggage wagons ; but before you got
to them there was the greatest thing of all.
It was a chariot drawn by twelve Shetland
ponies, and it was shaped like a big shell,
and aroimd in the bottom of the shell there
were little circus actors, boys and girls,
dressed in their circus clothes, and they all
looked exactly like fairies. They scarce
seemed to see the fellows, as they ran along-

145

The Flight of Pony Baket

side of their chariot, but Hen Billard and
Archy Hawkins, who were always cutting
up^ got close enough to throw some peanuts
to the circus boys, and some of the little
circus girls laughed, and the driver looked
around and cracked his whip at the fellows,
and they all had to get out of the way then.

Jim Leonard said that the circus boys
and girls were all stolen, and nobody was
allowed to come close to them for fear they
would try to send word to their friends.
Some of the fellows did not believe it, and
wanted to know how he knew it; and he said
he read it in a paper; after that nobody could
deny it But he said that if you went with
the circus men of your own free will they
woidd treat you first-rate; only they woidd
give you burnt brandy to keep you Httle;
nothing else but burnt brandy woidd do it,
but that woidd do it, sure.

Pony was scared at first when he heard that
most of the circus fellows were stolen, but
he thought if he went of his own accord he
would be all right. Still, he. did not feel so
much Uke running off with the circus as he

146

Pony Near Runs Off with a Circus

did before the circus came. He asked Jim
Leonard whether the circus men made all
the children drink burnt brandy; and Archy
Hawkins and Hen Billard heard him ask,
and began to mock him. They took him
up between them, one by his arms and the
other by the legs, and ran along with him,
and kept saying, " Does it want to be a great
big circus actor? Then it shall, so it shall,"
and, "We'll tell the circus men to be very
careful of you. Pony dear I " till Pony wriggled
himself loose and began to stone them.

After that they had to let him alone, for
when a fellow began to stone you in the
Boy's Town you had to let him alone, unless
you were going to whip him, and the fellows
only wanted to have a little fun with Pony.
But what they did made him all the more
resolved to run away with the circus, just to
show them.

He helped to carry water for the circus
men's horses, along with the boys who
earned their admission that way. He had
no need to do it, because his father was going
to take him in, anyway ; but Jim Leonard

147

The Flight of Pony Baker

said it was the only way to get acquainted
with the circus men. Still Pony was afraid
to speak to them, and he would not have
said a word to any of them if it had not been
for one of them speaking to him first, when
he saw him come lugging a great pail of
water, and bending far over on the right to
balance it.

"That's right/' the circus man said to
Pony. "If you ever fell into that bucket
you'd drown, sure."

He was a big fellow, with funny eyes, and
he had a white bull-dog at his heels; and all
the fellows said he was the one who guarded
the outside of the tent when the circus began,
and kept the boys from hooking in under
the curtain.

Even then Pony woidd not have had the
courage to say anything, but Jim Leonard
was just behind him with another bucket
of water, and he spoke up for him. "He
wants to go with the circus."

They both set down tlieir buckets, and
Pony felt himself turning pale when the
circus man came towards them. "Wants

148

Pony Near Runs Off with a Circus

to go with the circus, heigh? Let's have a
look at you. ' ' He took Pony by the shoulders
and turned him slowly round, and looked at
his nice clothes, and took him by the chin.
"Orphan?" he asked.

Pony did not know what to say, but Jim
Leonard nodded; perhaps he did not know
what to say, either; but Pony felt as if the3'^
had both told a lie.

''Parents living?" The circus man look-
ed at Pony, and Pony had to say that they
were.

He gasped out, "Yes," so that you could
scarcely hear him, and the circus man said :

"Well, that's right. When we take an
orphan, we want to have his parents living,
so that we can go and ask them what sort
of a boy he is."

He looked at Pony in such a friendly,
smiling way that Pony took courage to ask
him whether they woidd want him to drink
burnt brandy.

"What for?"

"To keep me little."

"Oh, I see." The circus man took oflf

149

The Flight of Pony Baker

his hat and rubbed his forehead with a silk
handkerchief, which he threw into the top
of his hat before he put it on again. " No,
I don't know as we will. We're rather short
of giants just now. How woidd you like to
drink a glass of elephant milk every morning
and grow into an eight-footer?"

Pony said he didn't know whether he woidd
like to be quite so big; and then the circus
man said perhaps he would rather go for an
India-rubber man; that was what they called
the contortionists in those days.

''Let's feel of you again." The circus
man took hold of Pony and felt his joints.
"You're put together pretty tight; but I
reckon we coidd make you do if you'd let
us take you apart with a screw-driver and
limber up the pieces with rattlesnake oil.
Wouldn't Uke it, heigh? Well, let me see!"
The circus man thought a moment, and then
he said: "How would double-somersaidts
on four horses bareback do?"

Pony said that would do, and then the
circus man said : " Well, then, we've just hit
it, because our double-somersaidt, four-horse

150

Pony Near Runs Off with a Circus

bareback is just going to leave us, and we
want a new one right away. Now, there's
more than one way of joining a circus, but
the best way is to wait on your front steps
with your things all packed up, and the pro-
cession comes along at about one o'clock in
the morning and picks you up. Which'd
you rather do?"

Pony pushed his toe into the turf, as he
always did when he was ashamed, but he
made out to say he woidd rather wait out on
the front steps.

"Well, then, that's all setfled," said the
circus man. "We'll be along," and he was
going away with his dog, but Jim Leonard
called after him:

"You hain't asked him whereabouts he
Uves."

The circus man kept on, and he said, with-
out looking around, "Oh, that's all right.
We've got somebody that looks after that."

"It's the magician," Jim Leonard whis-
pered to Pony, and they walked away,

HOW PONY DID NOT QUITE GET OFF
WITH THE CIRCUS

A CROWD of the fellows had been waiting
to know what the boys had been talking
about to the circus man; but Jim Leonard
said: "Don't you tell. Pony Baker!" and he
started to run, and that made Pony run,
too, and they both ran till they got away
from the fellows.

" You have got to keep it a secret ; for if a
lot of fellows find it out the constable 11 get
to know it, and he'll be watching out around
the comer of your house, and when the pro-
cession comes along and he sees you're real-
ly going he'll take you up, and keep you in
jail till your father comes and bails you out.
Now, you mind!"

Pony said, "Oh, I won't tell anybody,"

152

How Pony Did Not Quite Get Off

and when Jim Leonard said that if a circus
man was to feel him over, that way, and act
so kind of pleasant and friendly, he would
be too proud to speak to anybody. Pony
confessed that he knew it was a great thing
all the time.

"The way 11 be," said Jim Leonard, ''to
keep in with him, and he'll keep the others
from picking on you; they'll be afraid to,
on account of his dog. You'll see, he'll
be the one to come for you to-night; and
if the constable is there the dog won't let
him touch you. I never thought of that."

Perhaps on account of thinking of it now
Jim Leonard felt free to tell the other fellows
how Pony was going to run^flf, for when a
crowd of them came along he told them.
They said it was splendid, and they said that
if they coidd make their mothers let them,
or if they could get out of the house without
their mothers knowing it, they were going
to sit up with Pony and watch out for the
procession, and bid him good-bye.

At dinner-time he found out that his fa-
ther was going to take him and allr his sisters

153

The Flight of Pony Baker

to the circus, and his father and mother were
so nice to him, asking him about the proces-
sion and everything, that his heart ached at
the {bought of nmning away from home and
leaving them. But now he had to do it;
the circus man was coming for him, and he
coidd not back out; he did not know what
would happen if he did. It seemed to him
as if his mother had done everything she
could to make it harder for him. She had
stewed chicken for dinner, with plenty of
gravy, and hot biscuits to sop in, and peach
preserves afterwards; and she kept helping
him to more, because she said boys that
followed the circus around got dreadfully
hungry. The eating seemed to keep his
heart down; it was trying to get into his
throat all the time; and he knew that she
was being good to him, but if he had not
known it he would have believed his mother
was just doing it to mock him.

Pony had to go to the circus with his father
and sisters, and to get on his shoes and a
clean collar. But a crowd of the fellows were
there at the tent door to watch out whether

154

How Pony Did Not Quite Get Off

the circus man would say anything to him
when he went in; and Jim Leonard rubbed
up against him, when the man passed with
his dog and did not even look at Pony, and
said : " He's just pretending. He don't want
your father to know. He'll be round for
you, sure. I saw him kind of smile to one
of the other circus men."

It was a splendid circus, and there were
more things than Pony ever saw in a circus
before. But instead of hating to have it
over, it seemed to him that it would never
come to an end. He kept thinking and
thinking, and wondering whether he woidd
like to be a circus actor ; and when the one
came out who rode four horses bareback
and stood on his head on the last horse,
and drove with the reins in his teeth. Pony
thought that he never coidd learn to do it;
and if he coidd not learn he did not know
what the circus men would say to him. It
seemed to him that it was very strange he
had not told that circus man that he didn't
know whether he could do it or not; but he
had not, and now it was too late.

155

The Flight of Pony Baker

A boy came around calling lemonade, and
Pony's father bought some for each of the
children, but Pony could hardly taste his.

''What is the matter with you. Pony?
Are you sick?" his father asked.

"No. I don't care for any; that's all.
I'm well," said Pony; but he felt very mis-
erable.

After supper Jim Leonard came round and
went up to Pony's room with him to help
him pack, and he was so gay about it and
said he only wished he was going, that Pony
cheered up a little. Jim had brought a large
square of checked gingham that he said he
did not believe his mother would ever want,
and that he would tell her he had taken if
she asked for it. He said it would be the
very thing for Pony to carry his clothes in,
for it was light and strong and woidd hold a
lot. He helped Pony to choose his things out
of his bureau drawers: a pair of stockings
and a pair of white pantaloons and a blue
roundabout, and a collar, and two handker-
chiefs. That was all he said Pony would
need, because he would have his circus clothes

156

How Pony Did Not Quite Get Off

right away, and there was no use taking
things that he would never wear.

Jim did these up in the square of gingham,
and he tied it across eater-cornered twice, in
double knots, and showed Pony how he
could put his hand through and carry it
just as easy. He hid it under the bed for
him, and he told Pony that if he was in
Pony's place he should go to bed right away
or pretty soon, so that nobody would think
anything, and maybe he could get some
sleep before he got up and went down to
wait on the front steps for the circus to
come along. He promised to be ^l^ere with
the other boys and keep them from fooling
or making a noise, or doing anything to
wake his father up, or make the constable
come. " You see. Pony," he said, " if you
can nm ofif this year, and come back with
the circus next year, then a whole lot of
fellows can run ofif. Don't you see that?"

Pony said he saw that, but he said he
wished some of the other fellows were going
now, because he did not know any of the
circus boys and he was afraid he might feel

157

the Flight of Pony Battef

kind of lonesome. But Jim Leonard said
he would soon get acquainted, and, any-
way, a year would go before he knew it,
and then if the other fellows could get oflf
he would have plenty of company.

As soon as Jim Leonard was gone Pony
undressed and got into bed. He was not
sleepy, but he thought maybe it would be
just as well to rest a little while before the
circus procession came along for him; and,
anyway, he could not bear to go down-stairs
and be with the family when he was going
to leave them so soon, and not come back
for a whole year.

After a good while, or about the time he
usually came . in from playing, he heard
his mother saying: "Where in the world is
Pony? Has he come in yet? Have you
seen him, girls ? Pony I Pony V she
called.

But somehow Pony could not get his voice

I up out of his throat; he wanted to answer

her, but he could not speak. He heard her

say, "Go out to the front steps, girls, and

see if you can see him," and then he heard

158

How Pony Did Not Quite Get Off

her coming up the stairs; and she came
into his room, and when she saw him lying
there in bed she said : *' Why, I beUeve in
my heart the child's asleep! Pony I Are
you awake?"

Pony made out to say no, and his mother
said: "My I what a fright you gave me I
Why didn't you answer me? Are you sick.
Pony? Your father said you didn't seem
well at the circus; and you didn't eat any
supper, hardly."

Pony said he was first-rate, but he spoke
very low, and his mother came up and sat
down on the side of his bed.

"What is file matter, child?" She bent
over and felt his forehead. " No, you haven't
got a bit of fever," she said, and she kissed
him, and began to tumble his short black
hair in the way she had, and she got one
of his hands between her two, and kept
rubbing it. "But you've had a long, tire-
some day, and that's why you've gone to
bed, I suppose. But if you feel the least
sick. Pony, I'll send for the doctor."

Pony said he was not sick at all; just

159

The Flight of Pony Baker

tired; and that was true; he felt as if he
never wanted to get up again.

His mother put her arm under his neck,
and pressed her face close down to his, and
said very low: "Pony, dear, you don't
feel hard towards your mother for what she
did the other night?"

He knew she meant boxing his ears, when
he was not to blame, and he said: "Oh
no," and then he threw his arms round her
neck and cried; and she told him not to cry,
and that she would never do such a thing
again; but she was really so frightened she
did not know what she was doing.

When he quieted down she said: "Now
say your prayen:. Pony, ' Our Father,' " and
she said " Our Father '' all through with him,
and after that, " Now I lay me," just as when
he was a very little fellow. After they had
finished she stooped over and kissed him
again, and when he turned his face into his
pillow she kept smoothing his hair with her
hand for about a minute. Then she went
away.

Pony cotdd hear them stirring about for a

i6o

How Pony Did Not Quite Get Off

good while down-stairs. His father came in
from up-town at last and asked:

"Has Pony come in?" and his mother
said:

" Yes^ he's up in bed. I wouldn't disturb
him^ Henry. He's asleep by this time."

His father said: "I don't know what to
make of the boy. If he keeps on acting so
strangely I shall have the doctor see him
in the morning."

Pony felt dreadfully to think how far away
from them he should be in the mornings and
he would have given anything if he could
have gone down to his father and mother and
told them what he was going to do. But it
did not seem as if he could.

By-and-by he began to be sleepy, and then
he dozed off, but he thought it was hardly a
minute before he heard the circus band, and
knew that the procession was coming for him.
He jumped out of bed and put on his things
as fast as he could ; but his roundabout had
only one sleeve to it, somehow, and he had to
button the lower buttons of his trousers to
keep it on. He got his bundle and stole
" i6i

The Flight of Pony Baker

down to the front door without seeming to
touch his feet to anjrthing, and when he got
out on the front steps he saw the circus
magician coming along. By that time the
music had stopped and Pony could not see
any procession. The magician had on a
tall, peaked hat, Hke a witch. He took up
the whole street, he was so wide in the black
glazed gown, that hung from his arms when
he stretched them out, for he seemed to be
groping along that way, with his wand in one
hand, like a blind man.

He kept saying in a kind of deep, shaking
voice: "It's all glory; it's all glory," and
the sound of those words froze Pony's blood.
He tried to get back into the house again,
so that the magician should not find him,
but when he felt for the door-knob there was
no door there anywhere; nothing but a
smooth wall. Then he sat down on the steps
and tried to shrink up so Httle that the ma-
gician would miss him; but he saw his wide
goggles getting nearer and nearer; and then
his father and the doctor were standing by
him looking down at him, and the doctor said :

162

How Pony Did Not Quite Get Off

"He has been walking in his sleep; he
must be bled/' and he got out his lancet,
when Pony heard his mother calling : " Pony,
Pony I What's the matter? Have you got
the nightmare?" and he woke up, and found
it was just morning.

The sun was shining in at his window,
and it made him so glad to think that by
this time the circus was far away and he
was not with it, that he hardly knew what
to do.

He was not very well for two or three days
afterwards, and his mother let him stay out
of school to see whether he was really going
to be sick or not. When he went back most
of the fellows had forgotten that he had been
going to run ofiF with the circus. Some of
them that happened to think of it plagued
him a Uttle and asked how he Hked being a
circus actor.

Hen Billard was the worst; he said he
reckoned the circus magician got scared
when he saw what a whaler Pony was, and
told the circus men that they would have
to get a new tent to hold him; and that was

i6.i

The Flight of Pony Baker

the reason why they didn't take him. Archy
Hawkins said : " How long did you have to
wait on the front steps. Pony, dear?" But
after that he was pretty good to him, and said
he reckoned they had better not any of them
pretend that Pony had not tried to run off if
they had not been up to see.

Pony himself could never be exactly sure
whether he had waited on the front steps and
seen the circus magician or not. Sometimes
it seemed all of it Uke a dream, and some-
times only part of it. Jim Leonard tried to
help him make it out, but they could not. He
said it was a pity he had overslept himself,
for if he had come to bid Pony good-bye, the
way he said, then he could have told just how
much of it was a dream and how much was
not.

THE ADVENTURES THAT PONY'S COUSIN,
FRANK BAKER, HAD WITH A POCK-
ETFUL OF MONEY

VERY likely Pony Baker would not have
tried to run ofl any more if it had not
been for Jim Leonard. He was so glad he
had not got off with the circus that he did
not mind any of the things at home that
used to vex him; and it really seemed as if
his father and mother were trying to act
better. They were a good deal taken up
with each other, and sometimes he thought
they let him do things they would not have
let him do if they had noticed what he asked.
His mother was fonder of him than ever,
and if she had not kissed him so much before
the fellows he would not have cared, for when
they were alone he Uked to have her pet him.

165

The Flight of Pony Baker

But one thing was, he could never get her
to Uke Jim Leonard, or to beUeve that Jim
was not leading him into mischief whenever
they were oflf together. She was always
wanting him to go with his cousin Frank,
and he would have Hked to ask Frank about
nmning oflf, and whether a fellow had better
do it; but he was ashamed, and especially
after he heard his father tell how splendidly
Frank had behaved with two thousand dollars
he was bringing from the city to the Boy's
Town; Pony was afraid that Frank would
despise him, and he did not hardly feel fit
to go with Frank, anyway.

Frank Baker was one of those fellows that
every mother would feel her boy was safe
with. She would be sure that no crowd he
was in was going to do any harm or come
to any, for he would have an anxious eye
out for everybody, and he would stand be-
tween the crowd and the mischief that a
crowd of boys nearly always wants to do.
His own mother felt easy about the younger
children when they were with Frank; and
in a place where there were more chances

l66

" PRANK BAKER WAS ONE OF THOSE FELLOWS

THAT EVERY MOTHER WOULD FEEL HER

BOY WAS SAFE WITH "

The Adventures of Pony's Cousin

for a boy to get sucked Under mill-wheels,
and break through ice, and fall from bridges,
or have his fingers taken ofiF by machinery
than any other place I ever heard of, she
no more expected anything to happen to
them, if he had them in charge, than if she
had them in charge herself.

As there were a good many other children
in the family, and Mrs. Baker did her own
work, like nearly every mother in the Boy's
Town, Frank almost always had some of
them in charge. When he went hunting,
or fishing, or walnutting, or berrying, or
in swimming, he usually had one or two
younger brothers with him; if he had only
one, he thought he was having the greatest
kind of a time.

He did not mind carrying his brother on
his back when he got tired, although it was
not exactly the way to steal on game, and
the gun was a heavy enough load, anyway;
but if he had not got many walnuts, or any
at all — ^as sometimes happened — ^it was not
a great hardship to haul his brother home
in the wagon. To be sure, when he wanted

167

<»;

The Flight of Pony Baker

to swim out with the other big boys it was
pretty trying to have to keep an eye on his
brother, and see that he did not fall into the
water from the bank where he left him.

He was a good deal more anxious about
other boys than he was about himself, and
once he came near getting drowned through
his carelessness. It was in winter, and the
canal basin had been frozen over; then most
of the water was let out from under the ice,
and afterwards partly let in again. This
lifted the ice-sheet, but not back to its old
level, and the ice that clung to the shores
shelved steeply down to the new level.
Frank stepped on this shore ice to get a
shinny-ball, and sUpped down to the edge of
the ice-sheet, which he would be sure to go
under into the water. He holloed with all
his might, and by good luck some people
came and reached him a stick, by which
he pulled himself out.

The scare of it haunted him for long after,
but not so much for himself. Whenever he
was away from home in the winter he would
see one of his younger brothers slipping down

i68

The Adventures of Pony^s Cousin

the shore ice and going under the ice-sheet,
and he woiild break into a cold sweat at the
idea. This shows just the worrying kind
of boy Frank was; and it shows how used
he was to having care put upon him, and
how he would even borrow trouble when he
had none.

It generally happens with any one who
makes himself useful that other people make
him useful, too, and all the neighbors put
as much trust in Frank as his mother, and
got him to do a good many things that they
would not have got other boys to do. They
could not look into his face, a little more care-
worn than it ought to be at his age, without
putting perfect faith in him, and trying to
get something out of him. That was how
he came to do so many errands for mothers
who had plenty of boys of their own; and he
seemed to be called on in any sort of trouble
or danger, when the fathers were up-town,
and was always chasing pigs or cows out of
other people's gardens, and breaking up their
hens from setting, or going up trees with hives
to catch their bees when they swarmed.

169

The Flight of Pony Baker

I suppose this was how he came to be trust-
ed with that pocketful of money, and why-
he had a young brother along to double his
care at the time.

The money was given him in the city, as
the Boy's Town boys always called the large
place about twenty miles away, where Frank
went once with his mother when he was eleven
years old. She was going to take passage
there on a steamboat and go up the Ohio
River to visit his grandmother with his sis-
ters, while Frank was to go back the same
day to the Boy's Town with one of his young
brothers.

They all drove down to the city together in
the carriage which one of his uncles had got
from the livery stable, with a driver who was
to take Frank and his brother home. This
uncle had been visiting Frank's father and
mother, and it was his boat that she was
going on. It lay among a hundred other
boats, which had their prows tight together
along the landing for half a mile up and
down the sloping shore. It was one of the
largest boats of all, and it ran every week

170

The Adventures of Pony^s Cousin

from Cincinnati to Pittsburg, and did not
take any longer for the round trip than an
ocean steamer takes now for the voyage from
New York to Liverpool.

The children all had dinner on board, such
a diimer as there never was in any house:
roast beef and roast chicken; beefsteak and
ham in chafing-dishes with lamps burning
under them to keep them hot; pound-cake
with frosting on, and pies and pickles, corn-
bread and hot biscuit ; jelly that kept shaking
in moulds ; ice-cream and Spanish pudding ;
coffee and tea, and I do not know what all.

When the children had eaten all they cotdd
hold, and made their uncle laugh till he al-
most cried, to see them trying to eat every-
thing, their mother went ashore with them,
and walked up the landing towards the hotel
where the carriage was left, so as to be with
Frank and his Httle brother as long as she
cotdd before they started home. She was
about one of the best mothers in the Boy's
Town, and Frank hated to have her go away
even on a visit.

She kept giving him charges about all the

171

The Flight of Pony Baker

things at home, and how he must take good
care of his little brothers, and see that the
garden gate weis f£istened so that the cows
could not get in, and feed the chickens reg-
ularly, and put the cat out every night, and
not let the dog sleep under his bed ; and they
were so busy talkii^ and feeling sorry that
they got to the hotel before they knew it.

There, whom should they see but one of
the Boy's Town merchants, who was in the
city on business, and who seemed as glad to
meet them as if they were his own relations.
They were glad, too, for it made them feel
as if they had got back to the Boy's Town
when he came up and spoke to Mrs. Baker.
They had started from home after a very
early breakfast, and she said it seemed as
if they had been gone a year already. The
merchant told her that he had been looking
everywhere for somebody he knew who was
going to the Boy's Town; and then he told
Mrs. Baker that he had two thousand dollars
which he wanted to send home to his partner,
and he asked her if she could take it for him
en she went back.
172

The Adventures of Pony^s Cousin

"Well, indeed, indeed, I'm thankful I'm
not going/Mr. Bushelll" Mrs. Baker said.
"And I wouldn't have supposed I could be,
I'm so homesick. I'm going up the river
on a visit to mother; but if I was going
straight back, I wouldn't take your two
thousand dollars for the half of it. I would
be afraid of losing it, or getting robbed and
murdered. I don't know what wouldn't hap-
pen. I would be happy to oblige you, but
^ indeed, indeed I couldn't!"

The merchant said he was sorry, but if she
was not going home he supposed he would
have to find some one who was. It was
before the days of sending money by ex-
press, or telegraphing it, and the merchant
told her he was afraid to trust the money in
the mail. He asked her who was going to
take her carriage home, and she told him the
name of the driver from the livery stable in
the Boy's Town, who had come to the city
with them.

Mr. Bushell seemed dreadfully disap-
pointed, but when she went on to say how
anxious she was that the driver should get

173

The Flight of Pony Baker

Frank and his brother home before dark,
he brightened up all of a sudden, and he
asked, "Is Frank going back?" and he
looked down into Frank's face and smiled,
as most people did when they looked into
Frank's face, and he asked, "What's the
reason Frank couldn't take it?"

Mrs. Baker put her arm across Frank's
breast and pulled him away, and said, " In-
deed, indeed, the child just sha'n't, and that's
all about iti"

But Mr. Bushell took the boy by the arm
and laughed. "Let's feel how deep your
pants' pocket is," he said; and he put his
hand into the pocket of Frank's nankeen
trousers and felt; and then, before Mrs. Baker
could stop him, he drew a roll of bank-notes
out of his own pocket and pushed it into
Frank's. "There, it's just a fit I Do you
think you'd lose it?"

No, he wouldn't lose it," said his mother,
and that's just it I He'd worry about it
every minute, and I would worry about
him I"

She tried to make the merchant take the

174

The Adventures of Pony^s Cousin

money back, but he kept joking ; and then he
turned serious, and told her that the money
had to be put in the bank to pay a note, and
he did not know any way to get it to his
partner if she would not let Frank take it;
that he was at his wits' end. He said he
would as Uef trust it with Frank as with
any man he knew ; that nobody would think
the boy had any money with him; and he
fairly begged her to let Frank take it for
him.

He talked to her so much that she began to
give way a little. She felt proud of his being
willing to trust Frank, and at last she con-
sented. Mr. Bushell explained that he wish-
ed his partner to have the money that even-
ing, and she had to agree to let Frank carry
it to him as soon as he got home.

The Boy's Town was built on two sides of
a river. Mr. Bushell's store was across the
river from where the Bakers Uved, and she
said she did not want the child to have to
go through the bridge after dark. Perhaps
it was her anxiety about this that began the
whole trouble; for when the driver came with

175

The Flight of Pony Baker

the carriage, she could not help asking him
if he was sure to get home before sundown.
That made him drive faster than he might
have done, perhaps; at any rate, he set off
at a quick trot after Mr. Bushell had helped
put the two boys in. Mrs. Baker gathered
her Uttle girls together and went back to the
boat with her heart in her mouth, as she
afterwards said.

The driver got out of the city without
trouble, but when he came to the smooth
turnpike road, it seemed to Frank that the
horses kept going faster and faster, till they
were fairly flying over the ground. The
driver pulled and pulled at the reins, and
people began to hollo, " Look out where you're
going!" when they met them or passed them,
and all at once Frank began to think the
horses were running away. He had not
much chance to think about it, though, he
was so busy keeping his little brother from
bouncing off the seat and out of the carriage,
and in feeling if Mr. Bushell 's money was
safe ; and he was not certain that they were
running away till he saw people stopping

176

The Adventures of Pony^s Cousin

and staring, and then starting after the
carriage.

The horses tore along for two or three
miles; they thundered through the covered
bridge on Mill's Creek, and passed the Four-
Mile House. By the time they reached the
little village beyond it they had the turn-
pike to themselves; every team coming and
going drove into the gutter.

At the village a large, fat butcher, who was
sitting tilted back in a chair at the door of his
shop, saw the carriage coming in a whirlwind
of dust, and he knew what the matter was.
There was a horse standing at the hitching
rail, and the butcher just had time to untie
him and jump into the saddle when the run-
aways flew by. He took after them as fast
as his horse could go, and overhauled them
at the end of the next bridge and brought
them to a stand.

It had really been nothing but a race
against time. No one was hurt; the horses
were pretty badly blown, that was all; but
the carriage was so much shaken up that it
had to be left at a wagon-shop, where it could

177

J
J J

The Flight of Pony Baket

not be mended till morning. The two boys
were taken back to Four-Mile House, where
they would have to pass the night.

Frank worried about his father, who would
be expecting them home that evening; but
he was glad his mother did not know what
had happened. He was thankful enough
when he felt his brother all over and foimd
him safe and sound, and then put his hand
on his pocket and foimd that Mr. Bushell's
money was still there. He did not eat very
much supper, and he went to bed early, after
he had put his brother in bed and seen him
fall asleep almost before he got through his
prayers.

Frank was very tired, and pretty sore from
the jouncing in the carriage; but he was too
worried to be sleepy. He began to think.
What if some one should get Mr. Bushell's
money away from him in the night, while
he was asleep? And then he was glad that
he did not feel like sleeping. He got up and
put on his clothes and sat down by the win-
dow, Ustening to his brother's breathing and
looking out into the dark at the heat-Ught-

178

The Adventures of Pony^s Cousin

ning in the west. The day had been very
hot and the night was close, without a breath
of wind. By -and -by all the noises about
the house died away, and he knew every-
body had gone to bed. The lantern under
the tavern porch threw a dim light out into
the road ; some dogs barked away ofif . There
was no other sound, and the stillness was
awful. He kept his hand on the pocket that
had the money in it.

After a while Frank began to feel very
drowsy, and he thought he wotdd lie down
again, but he promised himself he would not
sleep, and he did not undress ; for if he took
his pantaloons ofif, he did not know how he
could make sure every minute that the money
was safe, unless he put it under his pillow.
He was afraid if he did that he might for-
get it in the morning, and leave it when he
got up.

He stretched himself on the bed beside his
brother, and it seemed to him that it was
hardly a second before he heard a loud crash
that shook the whole house; and the room
looked full of fire. Another crash came, and

179

The Flight of Pony Baker

then another, with a loud, stony kind of
rolling noise that seemed to go round the
world. Then he knew that he had been
asleep, and that this dreadf td noise was the
swift coming of a thunder-storm.

It was the worst storm that was ever
known in Mill Creek Valley, so the people
said afterwards, but as yet it was only be-
ginning. The thimder was deafening, and
it never stopped a moment. The Ughtning
hardly stopped, either; it filled the room
with a quivering blaze; at times, when it
died down, the night turned black as ink,
and then a flash came that lit up the fields
outside, and showed every stick and stone
as bright as the brightest day.

Frank was dazed at first by the glare and
the noise; then he jiunped out of bed, and
tried for two things: whether the money
was still safe in his pocket, and whether
his brother was alive. He never could tell
which he found out first ; as soon as he knew,
he felt a little bit better, but still his cheer-
fulness was not anything to brag of.

If his brother was alive, it seemed to be

i8o

The Adventures of Tony^s Cousin

more than any one else in the house was
besides himself. He could not hear a soul
stirring, although in that uproar there might
have been a full-dress parade of the Butler
Guards in the tavern, firing ofif their guns,
and he could not have heard them. He
looked out in the entry, but it was all dark
there except when he let the flashes of his
room into it. He thought he would light
his candle, for company, and so that the
lightning would not be so awfully bright.
He found his candlestick easily enough —
he could have found a pin in that glare —
but there were no matches.

So he decided to get along without the
candle. Every now and then he put his
hand in his pocket, or on the bulge outside,
to make sure of the money; and whenever
a very bright flash came, he would listen
for his brother's breathing, to tell whether
he had been struck by Ughtning or not. But
it kept thundering so that sometimes he
could not hear. Then Frank wotdd shake
him till the boy gave a sort of snort, and that
proved that he was still alive; or he would

l8l

The Flight of Pony Baker

put his ear to his brother's breast, and hsten
whether his heart was beating.

It alwa3^ was, and by -and -by the rain
began to fall. It fell in perfect sheets, and
the noise it made cotdd be heard through
the thunder. But Frank had always heard
that after it began to rain, a thunder-storm
was not so dangerous, and the air got fresher.
Still, it blazed and bellowed away, he could
never tell how long, and it seemed to him
that he must have felt a thousand times for
Mr. Bushell's money, and tried a thousand
times to find whether his brother had been
struck by lightning or not. Once or twice
he thought he would call for help; but he did
not think he could make anybody hear, and
he was too much ashamed to do it, anyway.

Between the times of feeling for the money
and seeing whether his brother was ahve, he
thought about his mother: how frightened
she would be if she knew what had happened
to him and his brother, after they left her.
And he thought of his father : how troubled
he must be at their not getting home. It
seemed to him that he must be to blame,

182

The Adventures of Pony^s Cousin

somehow, but he could not understand how,
exactly ; and he coidd not think of any way
to help it.

He wondered if the storm was as bad on
the river and in the Boy's Town, and whether
the Ughtning would strike the boat or the
house; the house had a lightning-rod, but
the boat could not have one, of course. He
felt pretty safe about his father and the
older-younger brother who had been left at
home with him; but he was not sure about
his mother and sisters, and he tried to im-
agine what people did on a steamboat in a
thunder-storm.

After a long time had passed, and he
thought it must be getting near morning,
he lay down again beside his brother, and
fell into such a heavy sleep that he did not
wake till it was broad day, and the sun was
making as much blaze in the curtainless
tavern -room as the lightning had made.
The storm was over, and everything was as
peaceful as if there had never been any such
thing as a storm in the world. The first
thing he did was to make a grab for his

183

The Flight of Pony Baker

pocket. The money was still there, and his
brother sleeping as soundly as ever.

After breakfast, the Uvery-stable man came
with the carriage, which he had got mended,
and Frank started home with his brother once
more. But they had sixteen miles to go
before they woidd reach the Boy's Town,
and the carriage had been so badly shat-
tered, or else the driver was so much afraid
of the horses, that he would not let them go
at more than a walk. Prank was anxious
to get home on his father's account; still
he would rather get home safe, and he did
not try to hurry the driver, for fear they
might not get home at all.

It was four o'clock in the afternoon when
they stopped at his father's house. His older-
younger brother, and the hired girl, whom
his mother had got to keep house while she
was gone on her visit, came out and took
his little brother in ; and the girl told Frank
his father had just been there to see whether
he had got back. Then he knew that his
father must have been as anxious as he had
been afraid he was. He did not wait to go

184

The Adventures of Pony^s Cousin

inside; he only kicked ofif the shoes he wore
to the city and started ofif for his father's
office as fast as his bare feet could carry him.

He found his father at the door. He did
not say very much, but Frank could see by
his face that he had been worrying; and
afterwards he said that he was just going
roimd to the livery stable the next minute
to get another team, and go down towards
the city to see what had become of them all.
Frank told him what had happened, and his
father put his arms round him, but still did
not say much. He did not say anything at
all about Mr. Bushell's money or seem to
think about it till Frank asked:

"Vd better take it right straight over to
his store, hadn't I, father?"

His father said he reckoned he had, and
Frank started away on the run again. He
wanted to get rid of that money so badly,
for it was all he had to worry about, after
he had got rid of his brother, that he was
out of breath, almast, by the time he reached
Mr. Bushell's store. But even then he could
not get rid of the money. Mr. Bushell had

185

The Flight of Pony Baker

told him to give it to his partner, but his
partner had gone out into the country, and
was not to be back till after supper.

Frank did not know what to do. He did
not dare to give it to any one else in the store,
and it seemed to him that the danger of hav-
ing it got worse every minute. He hung
about a good while, and kept going in and
out of the store, but at last he thought the
best thing woidd be to go home and ask
his father; and that was what he did.

By this time his father had gone home to
supper, and he found him there with his two
younger brothers, feeling rather lonesome,
with Frank's mother and his sisters all
away. But they cheered up together, and
his father said he had done right not to leave
the money, and he woidd just step over,
after supper, and give it himself to Mr.
Bushell's partner. He took the roll of bills
from Frank and put it into his own pocket,
and went on eating his supper, but when
they were done he gave the bills back to the
boy.

"After all, Frank, I believe 111 let you

i86

The Adventures of Pony* s Cousin

take that money to Mr. Bushell's partner.
He trusted it to you, and you ought to have
the glory; you've had the care. Do you
think youll be afraid to come home through
the bridge after sunset?''

The bridge was one of those old-fashioned,
wooden ones, roofed in and sided up, and it
stretched from shore to shore, like a tunnel,
on its piers. It was rather dim, even in the
middle of the brightest day, and none of
the boys liked to be caught in it after sunset.

Frank said he did not beUeve he should
be afraid, for it seemed to him that if he had
got through a runaway, and such a thunder-
storm as that was the night before, without
harm, he could surely get through the bridge
safely. There was not Ukely to be anybody
in it, at the worst, but Indian Jim, or Solo-
mon Whistler, the crazy man, and he be-
Ueved he cotdd run by them if they offered
to do anything to him. He meant to walk
as slowly as he cotdd, until he reached the
bridge, and then just streak through it.

That was what he did, and it was still
qtute light when he reached Mr. Bushell's

187

The Flig^ht of Pony Baker

store. His partner was there, sure enough,
this time, and Frank gave him the money,
and told him how he had been so long bring-
ing it. The merchant thanked him, and
said he was rather young to be trusted with
so much money, but he reckoned Mr. Bushell
knew what he was about.

" Did he count it when he gave it to you?"
he asked.

"No, he didn't," said Frank.

"Did you?"

" I didn't have a chance. He put it right
into my pocket, and I was afraid to take it
out."

Mr. Bushell 's partner laughed, and Frank
was going away, so as to get through the
bridge before it was any darker, but Mr.
Bushell's partner said, " Just hold on a min-
ute, won't you, Frank, till I count this," and
he felt as if his heart had jumped into his
throat.

What if he had lost some of the money?
What if somebody had got it out of his pocket,
while he was so dead asleep, and taken part
of it? What if Mr. Bushell had made a

i88

The Adventures of Pony^s Cousin

mistake, and not given him as much as he
thought he had? He hardly breathed while
Mr. Bushell's partner slowly counted the
bank-notes. It took him a long time, and
he had to wet his finger a good many times,
and push the notes to keep them from stick-
ing together. At last he finished, and he
looked at Frank over the top of his specta-
cles. "Two thousand?" he asked.

"That's what Mr. Bushell said," answered
the boy, and he could hardly get the words
out.

"Well, it's all here," said Mr. Bushell's
partner, and he put the money in his pocket,
and Frank turned and went out of the store.

He felt light, light as cotton, and gladder
than he almost ever was in his life before.
He was so glad that he forgot to be afraid
in the bridge. The fellows who were the
most afraid always ran through the bridge,
and those who tried not to be afraid walked
fast and whistled. Frank did not even think
to whistle.

His father was sitting out on the front
porch when he reached home, and he asked

189

The Flight of Pony Baker

Frank if he had got rid of his money, and
what Mr. Bushell's partner had said. Frank
told him all about it, and after a while his
father asked, "Well, Frank, do you Uke to
have the care of money?"

"I don't believe I do, father."

*' Which was the greater anxiety to you
last night, Mr. Bushell's money, or your
brother?"

Frank had to think awhile. " Well, I sup-
pose it was the money, father. You see, it
wasn't my own money."

"And if it had been your own money,
you wouldn't have been anxious about it?
You wouldn't have cared if you had lost it,
or somebody had stolen it from you?"

Frank thought again, and then he said
he did not believe he had thought about
that.

"Well, think about it now."

Frank tried to think, and at last he said,
"I reckon I should have cared."

"And if it had been your own money,
would you have been more anxious about it
than about your brother?"

190

The Adventures of Pony's Cousin

This time Frank was more puzzled than
ever; he really did not know what to say.

His father said : " The trouble with money
is, that people who have a great deal of it
seem to be more anxious about it than they
are about their brothers, and they think that
the things it can buy are more precious than
the things which all the money in the world
cannot buy. " His father stood up. " Better
go to bed, Frank. You must be tired. There
won't be any thunder - storm to - night, and
you haven't got a pocketful of money to
keep you awake."

HOW JIM LEONARD PLANNED FOR PONY
BAKER TO RUN OFF ON A RAFT

NOW we have got to go back to Pony
Baker again. The summer went along
till it got to be September, and the fellows
were beginning to talk about when school
would take up. It was almost too cold to
go in swimming; that is, the air made you
shiver when you came out, and before you
got your clothes on; but if you stood in the
water up to your chin, it seemed warmer
than it did on the hottest days of summer.
Only now you did not want to go in more
than once a day, instead of four or five times.
The fellows were gathering chinquapin
acorns most of the time, and some of them
were getting ready to make wagons to gather
walnuts in. Once they went out to the woods

192

Jim Leonardos Plan

for pawpaws, and found about a bushel;
they put them in commeal to grow, but they
were so green that they only got rotten.
The boys found an old shanty in the woods
where the farmer made sugar in the spring,
and some of the big fellows said they were
coming out to sleep in it, the first night they
got.

It was this that put Jim Leonard in mind
of Pony's running ofiF again. All the way
home he kept talking to Pony about it, and
Pony said he was going to do it yet, some
time, but when Jim Leonard wanted him to
tell the time, he would only say, "You 11
see," and wag his head.

Then Jim Leonard mocked him and dared
him to tell, and asked him if he would take
a dare. After that he made up with him,
and said if Pony would run ofiF he would
run ofiF, too; and that the way for them to
do would be to take the boards of that shan-
ty in the woods and build a raft. They
could do it easily, because the boards were
just leaned up against the ridge - pole, and
they could tie them together with pawpaw
«3 193

The Flight of Pony Baker

switches, they were so tough, and then some
night carry the raft to the river, after the
water got high in the fall, and float down
on it to the city.

"Why, does the river go past the city?"
Pony asked.

"Of course it does," said Jim Leonard,
and he laughed at Pony. "It runs into the
Ohio there. Where's your geography?"

Pony was ashamed to say that he did not
suppose that geography had anything to do
with the river at the Boy's Town, for it was
not down on the map, like Behring Straits
and the Isthmus of Suez. But he saw that
Jim Leonard really knew something. He did
not see the sense of carrying the raft two
miles through the woods when you could
get plenty of drift-wood on the river shore
to make a raft of. But he did not Uke to
say it for fear Jim Leonard would think he
was afraid to be in the woods after dark,
and after that he came under him more than
ever. Most of the fellows just made fun
of Jim Leonard, because- they said he was
a brag, but Pony began to believe every-

194

Jim Leonard's Plan

thing he said when he found out that he
knew where the river went to; Pony had
never even thought.

Jim was always talking about their plan
of running off together, now; and he said
they must fix everything so that it would
not fail this time. If they could only get
to the city once, they could go for cabin-
boys on a steamboat that was bound for New
Orleans ; and down the Mississippi they could
easily hide on some ship that was starting
for the Spanish Main, and then they would
be all right. Jim knew about the Spanish
Main from a book of pirate stories that he
had. He had a great many books and he was
always reading them. One was about Ind-
ians, and one was about pirates, and one
was about dreams and signs, and one was
full of curious stories, and one told about
magic and how to do jugglers' tricks; the
other was a fortune-telling book. Jim Leon-
ard had a paper from the city, with long
stories in, and he had read a novel once; he
could not tell the boys exactly what a novel
was, but that was what it said on the back.

195

The Flight of Pony Baker

After Pony and he became such friends he
told him everything that was in his books,
and once, when Pony went to his house, he
showed him the books. Pony was a little
afraid of Jim Leonard's mother; she was a
widow woman, and took in washing; she
Uved in a little wood-colored house down by
the river-bank, and she smoked a pipe. She
was a very good mother to Jim, and let him
do whatever he pleased — go in swimming
as much as he wanted to, stay out of school,
or anything. He had to catch drift-wood
for her to bum when the river was high;
once she came down to the river herself and
caught drift-wood with a long pole that had
a nail in the end of it to catch on with.

By the time school took up Pony and Jim
Leonard were such great friends that they
asked the teacher if they might sit together,
and they both had the same desk. \iTien
Pony's mother heard that, it seemed as if
she were going to do something about it.
She said to his father:

" I don't like Pony's going with Jim Leon-
ard so much. He's had nobody else with

196

Jim Leonardos Plan

him for two weeks, and now he's sitting
with him in school."

Pony's father said, "I don't believe Jim
Leonard will hurt Pony. What makes you
like him. Pony?"

Pony said, "Oh, nothing," and his father
laughed.

"It seems to be a case of pure aflFection.
What do you talk about together?"

"Oh, dreams, and magic, and pirates,"
said Pony.

His father laughed, but his mother said,
"I know he'll put mischief in the child's
head," and then Pony thought how Jim
Leonard always wanted him to run off, and
he felt ashamed; but he did not think that
running off was mischief, or else all the
boys would not be wanting to do it, and so
he did not say anything.

His father said, "I don't believe there's
any harm in the fellow. He's a queer chap. "

"He's so low down," said Pony's mother.

"Well, he has a chance to rise, then."
said Pony's father. " We may all be hurrah-
ing for him for President some day." Pony

197

The Flight of Pony Baker

could not always tell when his father was
joking, but it seemed to him he must be
joking now. " I don't believe Pony will get
any harm from sitting with him in school,
at any rate."

After that Pony's mother did not say any-
thing, but he knew that she had taken a
spite to Jim Leonard, and when he brought
him home with him after school he did not
bring him into the woodshed as he did with
the other boys, but took him out to the bam.
That got them to playing in the bam most
of the time, and they used to stay in the hay-
loft, where Jim Leonard told Pony the sto-
ries out of his books. It was good and warm
there, and now the days were getting chilly
towards evenings.

Once, when they were lying in the hay
together, Jim Leonard said, all of a sud-
den, "I've thought of the very thing. Pony
Baker."

Pony asked, "What thing?"

" How to get ready for running off," said
Jim Leonard, and at that Pony's heart went
down, but he did not like to show it, and Jim

198

Jim Leonard's Plan

I^eonard went on : " We've got to provision
the raft, you know, for maybe we'll catch on
an island and be a week getting to the city.
We've got to float with the current, anyway.
Well, now, we can make a hole in the hay
here and hide the provisions till we're ready
to go. I say we'd better begin hiding them
right away. I-.et's see if we can make a
place. Get away. Trip."

He W£is speaking to Pony's dog, that al-
ways came out into the bam with him and
stayed below in the carriage-room, whining
and yelping till they helped him up the ladder
into the loft. Then he always lay in one
comer, with his tongue out, and looking at
them as if he knew what they were saying.
He got up when Jim Leonard bade him, and
Jim pulled away the hay until he got down
to the loft floor.

"Yes, it's the very place. It's all solid,
and we can put the things down here and
cover them up with hay and nobody will
notice. Now, to-morrow you bring out a piece
of bread-and-butter with meat between, and I
will, too, and then we will see how it will do."

199

The Flight of Pony Baker

Pony brought his bread-and-butter the
next day. Jim said he intended to bring
some hard-boiled eggs, but his mother kept
looking, and he had no chance.

''Let's see whether the butter's sweet, be-
cause if it ain't the provisions will spoil be-
fore we can get off."

He took a bite, and he said, "My, that's
nice!" and the first thing he knew he ate
the whole piece up. " Well, never mind," he
said, "we can begin to-morrow just as well."

The next day Jim Leonard brought a ham-
bone, to cook greens with on the raft. He
said it would be first-rate; and Pony brought
bread-and-butter, with meat between. Then
they hid them in the hay, and drove Trip
away from the place. The day after that,
when they were busy talking. Trip dug the
provisions up, and, before they noticed, he
ate up Pony's bread-and-butter and was
gnawing Jim Leonard's ham -bone. They
cufiFed his ears, but they could not make him
give it up, and Jim Leonard said:

"Well, let him have it. It's all spoilt
now, anyway. But I'll tell you what, Pony

Jim Leonardos Plan

— ^weVe got to do something with that dog.
He's found out where we keep our provi-
sions, and now hell always eat them. I don't
know but what we'll have to kill him."

"Oh no!" said Pony. "I couldn't kill
Trip!"

"Well, I didn't mean kill him, exactly;
but do something. I'll tell you what — ^train
him not to follow you to the bam when he
sees you going."

Pony thought that would be a good plan,
and he began the next day at noon. Trip
tried to follow him to the bam, and Pony
kicked at him, and motioned to stone him,
and said: "Go home, sir I Home with you!
Home, I say!" till his mother came to the
back door.

"WTiy, what in the world makes you so
cross with poor Trip, Pony?" she asked.

" 111 teach him not to tag me round every-
where," said Pony.

His mother said: "Why, I thought you
liked to have him with you?"

"I'm tired of it," said Pony; but when he
put his mother off that way he felt badly,

2QI

The Flight of Pony Baker

as if he had told her a lie, and he let Trip
come with him and began to train him again
the next day.

It was pretty hard work, and Trip looked
at him so mournfully when he drove him
back that he could hardly bear to do it ; but
Jim Leonard said it was the only way, and
he must keep it up. At last Trip got so that
he would not follow Pony to the bam. He
would look at him when Pony started and
wag his tail wistfully, and half jump a little,
and then when he saw Pony frown he would
let his tail drop and stay still, or walk off
to the woodshed and keep looking around
at Pony to see if he were in earnest. It made
Pony's heart ache, for he was truly fond of
Trip; but Jim Leonard said it was the only
way, and so Pony had to do it.

They provisioned themselves a good many
times, but after they talked a while they
always got hungry, or Jim Leonard did, and ^

then they dug up their provisions and ate
them. Once when he came to spend Satur-
day afternoon with Pony he had great news
to tell him. One of the boys had really run

202

Jim Leonardos Plan

ofif. He was a boy that Pony had never
seen, though he had heard of him. He
lived at the other end of the town, below
the bridge, and almost at the Sycamore
Grove. He had the name of being a wild
fellow; his father was a preacher, but he
could not do anything with him.

Now, Jim Leonard said. Pony must run
ofif right away, and not wait for the*river to
rise, or anything. As soon as the river rose,
Jim would follow him on the raft; but Pony
must start first, and he must take the pike
for the city, and sleep in fence comers. They
must provision him, and not eat any of the
things before he started. He must not take
a bundle or anything, because if he did people
would know he was running ofif, or maybe
they would think he was a runaway slave
from Kentucky, he was so dark-complexion-
ed. At first Pony did not like it, because it
seemed to him that Jim Leonard was back-
ing out; but Jim Leonard said that if two
of them started ofif at the same time, people
would just know they were running ofiF, and
the constable would take them up before they

203

The Flight of Pony Baker

could get across the corporation line. He
said that very likely it would rain in less
than a week, and then he could start after
Pony on the raft, and be at the Ohio River
almost as soon as Pony was.

He said, "Why, you ain't afraid, are
you. Pony?" And Pony said he was not
afraid ; for if there was anything that a Boy's
Town boy hated, it was to be afraid, and
Pony hated it the worst of any, because he
was sometimes afraid that he was afraid.

They fixed it that Pony was to sleep the
next Friday night in the bam, and the next
morning, before it was light, he was to fill
his pockets with the provisions and run ofif.

Every afternoon he took out a piece of
bread-and-butter with meat between and hid
it in the hay, and Jim Leonard brought some
eggs. He said he had no chance to boil
them without his mother seeing, but he asked
Pony if he did not know that raw eggs were
first-rate, and when Pony said no, he said,
"Well, they are." They broke one of the
eggs when they were hiding them, and it
ran over the bread-and-butter, but they

204

Jim Leonardos Plan

wiped it ofif with hay as well as they could,
and Jim Leonard said maybe it would help
to keep it, anyway.

When he came round to Pony's house the
next Friday afternoon from school he asked
him if he had heard the news, and when
Pony said no, he said that the fellow that
ran ofif had been taken up in the city by the
watchman. He was crying on the street, and
he said he had nowhere to sleep, and had not
had anything to eat since the night before.

Pony's heart seemed to be standing still.
He had always supposed that as soon as he
ran ofif he should be free from all the things
that hindered and vexed him; and, although
he expected to be sorry for his father and
mother, he expected to get along perfectly
well without them. He had never thought
about where he should sleep at night after he
got to the city, or how he should get some-
thing to eat.

" Now, you see. Pony," said Jim Leonard,
"what a good thing it was that I thought
about provisioning you before you started.
What makes you look so?"

205

The Flight of Pony Baker

Pony said, "rm not looking I"

Jim Leonard said, "You're not afraid,
are you, just because that fellow got took
up? You're not such a cowardy-calf as to
want to back out now?"

The tears came into Pony's eyes.

"Cowardy-calf yourself, Jim Leonard I
You've backed out long agol"

" You'll see whether I've backed out," said
Jim Leonard. " I'm coming roimd to sleep
in the bam with you to-night, and help you
to get a good start in the morning. And
maybe I'll start myself to-morrow. I will
if I can get anybody to help me make the
raft and bring it through the woods. Now
let's go up into the loft and see if the pro-
visions are all safe."

They dug the provisions up out of the hay
and Jim Leonard broke one of the eggs
against the wall. It had a small chicken
in it, and he threw it away. Another egg
smelt so that they could hardly stand it.

" I don't believe these eggs are very good,"
said Jim Leonard. " I got them out of a nest
that the hen had left; mother said I might

206

Jim Leonardos Plan

have them all." He broke them one after
another, and every one had a chicken m it,
or else it was bad. ''Well, never mind/'
he said. "Let's see what the bread- and-
butter's like." He bit into a piece, but he
did not swallow any. "Tastes kind of
musty; from the hay, I reckon; and the meat
seems kind of old. But they always give
the sailors spoilt provisions, and this bread-
and-butter will do you first-rate. Pony. You'll
be so hungry you can eat anything. Say,
you ain't afraid now, are you. Pony?"

" No, not now," said Pony, but he did not
fire up this time as he did before at the no-
tion of his being afraid.

Jim Leonard said, "Because, maybe I
can't get mother to let me come here again.
If she takes a notion, she won't. But I'm
going to watch out, and as soon as supper's
over, and I've got the cow into the lot, and
the morning's wood in, I'm going to try to
hook oflf. If I don't get here to stay all night
with you 111 be around bright and early in
the morning, to wake you and start you. It
won't be light now much before six, anyway. "

207

HOW JIM LEONARD BACKED OUT, AND
PONY HAD TO GIVE IT UP

IT all seemed very strange to Pony. First,
Jim Leonard was going to run ofif with
him on a raft, and then he was going to
have Pony go by land and follow him on
the raft; then suddenly he fixed it so that
Pony was going alone, and he was going to
pass the last night with him in the bam;
and here, all at once, he was only coming,
maybe, to see him ofif in the morning. It
made Pony feel very forlorn, but be did not
like to say an3rthing for fear Jim Leonard
would call him cowardy-calf.

It was near sunset, on a cool day in the
beginning of October, and the wind was
stirring the dry blades in the corn-patch at
the side of the bam. They made a shivering

208

How Jim Leonard Backed Out

sound, and it made Pony lonesomer and
lonesomer. He did not want to run ofif, but
he did not see how he coidd help it. Trip
stood at the wood -house door, looking at
him, but he did not dare to come to Pony
as long as he was near the bam. But when
Pony started towards the house Trip came
nmning knd jumping to him, and Pony
patted him and said, "Poor Trip, poor old
, Trip!" He did not ^rflow when he should
see such another dog as that.

The kitchen door was open, and a beauti-
ful smell of frying supper was coming out.
Pretty soon his mother came to the open
door, and stood watching him patting Trip.
''Wdl, have you made up with poor old
Trip, Pony? Why don't you come in,
child? You look so cold, out there."

Pony did not say anything, but he came
into the kitchen and sat in a comer beyond
the stove and watched his mother getting the
supper. In the dining-room his sisters were
setting the table and his father was reading
by the lamp there. Pony would have given
almost anything if something had happened

«4 209

The Flight of Pony Baker

just to nmke him tell what he was going to
do, so that he could have been kept from do-
ing it. He saw that his mother was watch-
ing him all the time, and she said : " What
makes you so quiet, child?"

Pony said, "Oh, nothing," and his mother
asked, " Have you been falling out with Jim
Leonard?"

Pony said no, and then she said, " I almost
wish you had, then. I don't think he's a
bad boy, but he's a crazy fool, and I wish
you wouldn't go with him so much. I don't
like him."

All of a sudden Pony felt that he did not
Uke Jim Leonard very much himself. It
seemed to him that Jim Leonard had not
used him very well, but he could not have
told how.

After supper the great thing was how to
get out to the bam without any one's notic-
ing. Pony went to the woodshed door two
or three times to look out. There were
plenty of stars in the sky, but it seemed very
dark, and he knew that it would be as black
as pitch in the bam, and he did not see how

210

Ho'U) Jim Leonard Backed Out

he could ever dare to go out to it, much less
into it. Every time he came back from look-
ing he brought an armload of wood into the
kitchen so that his mother would not notice.

The last time she said, "Why, you dear,
good boy, what a lot of wood you're bringing
for your mother," for usually Pony had to be
told two or three times before he would get
a single armload of wood.

When his mother praised him he was
ashamed to look at her, and so he looked
round, and he saw the lantern hanging by
the mantel-piece. When he saw that lantern
he sdmost wished that he had not seen it,
for now he knew that his last excuse was
gone, and he would really have to run ofif.
If it had not been for the lantern he could
have told Jim Leonard that he was afraid to
go out to the bam on account of ghosts, for
anybody would be afraid of ghosts; Jim
I-^eonard said he was afraid of them himself.
But now Pony could easily get the lantern
and take it out to the bam with him, and
if it was not dark the ghosts would not dare
to touch you.

211

The Flight of Pony Baker

He tried to think back to the beginning
of the time when he first intended to run ofif,
and find out if there was not some way of
not doing it; but he could not, and if Jim
Leonard was to come to the bam the next
morning to help him start, and shoidd not
find him there. Pony did not know what he
would do. Jim Leonard would tell all the
fellows, and Pony would never hear the last
of it. That was the way it seemed to him,
but his mind felt all fuzzy, and he could not
think very clearly about it.

When his mother finished up her work in
the kitchen he took the lantern from the nail
and slipped up the back stairs to his little
room, and then, after he heard his sisters go-
ing to bed and his father and mother talking
together quietly, he lit the lantern and stole
out to the bam with it. Nobody noticed him,
and he got safely inside the bam. He used
to like to carry the lantern very much, be-
cause it made the shadows of his legs, when
he walked, go like scissors-blades, and that
was fun ; but that night it did not cheer him
up, and it seemed as if nothing could cheer

212

HoHV Jim Leonard Backed Out

him up again. When Trip first saw him
come out into the woodshed with the lantern
he jumped up and pawed Pony and licked the
lantern, he was so glad, but when Pony went
towards the bam Trip stopped following
him and went back into the wood-house very
sadly. Pony would have given almost any-
thing to have Trip come with him, only, as
Jim Leonard said. Trip would whine or bark,
or something, and then Pony would be found
out and kept from running ofif.

The more he wanted to be kept from run-
ning ofif the more he knew he must not try
to be, and he let Trip go back when he would
have so gladly helped him up into the hay-
loft and slept with him there. He would not
have been afraid with Trip, and now he
found that he was dreadfully afraid. The
lantern-light was a charm against ghosts,
but not against rats, and the first thing
Pony knew when he got into the bam a
rat ran across his foot. Trip would have
kept the rats ofif. They seemed to just
swarm in the loft when Pony got up there,
and after he hung the lantern on a nail and

213

The Flight of Pony Baker

lay down in the hay they did not mind him
at all. They played all around, and two
of them got up on their hind legs once and
fought, or else danced. Pony could not tell
which. He could not sleep, and after a
while he felt the tears coming and he begaui
to cry, and he kept sobbing, and coidd not
stop himself.

When Pony's mother was ready to go to
bed she said to Pony's father: "Did Pony
say good-night to you?" and when he said
no, she said, "But he must have gone to
bed," and she ran up the stairs to see. She
came down again in about half a second
and she said, " He doesn't seem to be there,"
and she raced all through the house hunting
for him. In the kitchen she saw that the
lantern was gone and then she said: "I
might have known he was up to some mis-
chief, he was so quiet. This is some more
of Jim Leonard's work. Henry, I want you
to go right out and look for Pony. It's
half-past nine."

Then Pony's father knew that it would be
no use to talk and he started out. But the

214

How Jim Leonard Backed Out

whole street was quiet, and all the houses
were dark as if the people had gone to bed.
He went up town and to all the places where
the big boys were apt to play at night, and
he found Hen Billard and Archy Hawkins,
but neither of them had seen Pony since
school. They were both sitting on Hen Bil-
lard's front steps, because Archy Hawkins
was going to stay all night with him, auid
they were telling stories. When Pony's fa-
ther asked about Pony and seemed anxious
they tried to comfort him, but they could not
think where Pony could be. They said per-
haps Jim Leonard would know.

Then Pony's father went home, and the
minute he opened the front door Pony's
mother called out: "Have you found him?"

His father said: "No. Hasn't he come
in yet?" and he told her how he had been
looking everywhere, and she burst out cry-
ing.

" I know he's fallen into the canal and got
drowned, or something," and she wrung her
hands together; and then he said that Hen
Billard and Archy Hawkins thought Jim

215

The Flight of Pony Baker

Leonard would know, and he had only
stopped to see whether Pony had happened
to come in, and he was going straight to
Jim Leonard's mother's house; and Pony's
mother said: "Oh, go, go, go!" and fairly
pashed him out of the house.

By this time it was ten o'clock and going
on eleven, and all the town was as still as
death, except the dogs. Pony's father kept
on imtil he got down to the river-bank, where
Jim Leonard's mother lived, and he had to
knock and knock before he could make any-
body hear. At last Jim Leonard's mother
poked her head out of the window and asked
who was there, and Pony's father told her.

He said : " Is Jim at home, Mrs. Leonard?"
and she said:

"Yes, and fast asleep three hours ago.
What makes you ask?"

Then he had to tell her. " We can't find
Pony, and some of the boys thought Jim
might know where he is. I'm sorry to dis-
turb you, Mrs. Leonard. Good-night," and
he went back home.

When he got there he found Pony's mother

2i6

ffow Jim Leonard Backed Out

about crazy. He said now they must search
the house thoroughly; and they went down
into the cellar first, because she said she
knew Pony had fallen down the stairs and
killed himself. But he was not there, and
then they hunted through all the rooms and
looked under the tables and beds and into
the cupboards and closets, and he was not
there. Then they went into the wood-house
and looked there, and up into the wood-house
loft among the old stoves and broken furni-
ture, and he was not there. Trip was there,
and he made them think so of Pony that
Pony's mother took on worse than she had
yet.

" Now I'm going out to look in the barn,"
said Pony's father. " You stay quietly in the
house, Lucy."

Trip started to go with Pony's father, but
when he saw that he was going to the bam
he was afraid to follow him. Pony had trained
him so; and Pony's father went alone. He
shaded the candle that he was carrying with
his hand, and when he got into the bam he
put it down and stood and looked and tried

217

The Flight of Pony Baker

to think how he should do. It was dangerous
to go around among the hay with the candle,
and the lantern was gone.

Almost from the first Pony's father thought
that he heard a strange noise Uke some one
sobbing, and then it seemed to him that there
was a light up in the loft. He holloed out :
" Who's there?" and then the noise stopped,
but the light kept on. Pony's father holloed
out again : " Pony I Is that you. Pony?" and
then Pony answered, " Yes," and he began
sobbing again.

In less than half a second Pony's father
was up in the loft, and then down again
and out of the bam and into the yard with
Pony.

His mother was standing at the back door,
for she could not bear to stay in the house,
and Pony's father holloed to her : " Here
he is, Lucy, safe and sound!" and Pony's
mother holloed back:

"WeU, don't touch him, Henry! Don't
scold the child! Don't say a word to him!
Oh, I could just fall on my knees!"

Pony's father came along, bringing Pony

218

Ho<iv Jim Leonard Backed Out

and the lantern. Pony's hair and clothes
were all stuck full of pieces of hay, and his
face was smeared with hay-dust which he had
rubbed into it when he was crying. He had
got some of Jim Leonard's mother's hen's
eggs on him, and he did not smell very well.
But his mother did not care how he looked
or how he smelled. She caught him up into
her arms and just fairly hugged him into the
house, and there she sat down with him in her
arms, and kissed his dirty face, and his hair
all full of hay -sticks and spider-webs, and
cried till it seemed as if she was never going
to stop.

She would not let his father say anything
to him, but after a while she washed him,
and when she got him clean she made him
up a bed on the lounge and put him to sleep
there where she could see him. She said
she was not going to sleep herself that night,
but just stay up and realize that they had
got Pony safe again.

One thing she did ask him, and that was :
" What in the world made you want to sleep
in the bam. Pony?" and Pony was ashamed

219

The Flight of Pony Baker

to say he was getting ready to run ofif. He
began:

"Jim Leonard — " and his mother broke
out:

"I knew it was some of Jim Leonard's
work!" and she talked against Jim Leonard
until Pony fell asleep, and said Pony should
never speak to him again.

She and Pony's father sat up all night talk-
ing, and about daybreak he recollected that
he had left the candle burning in the bam,
and he ran out with all his might to get it be-
fore it set the bam on fire. But it had burn-
ed out without catching anything, and he
was coming back to the house when he met
Jim Leonard sneaking towards the bam
door. He pounced on him, and caught him
by the collar, and he said as savagely
as he could : " What are you doing here,
Jim?"

Jim Leonard was too scared to speak, and
Pony's father hauled him to the house door,
and holloed in to Pony's mother : " I've got
Jim Leonard here, Lucy " ; and she holloed
back:

220

How Jim Leonard Backed Out

"Oh, well, take him away, and don't let
me see the dreadful boy I" and Pony's father
said:

" I'll take him home to his mother, and see
what she has to say to him."

All the way down to the river-bank he did
not say a word to Jim Leonard, but when
they got to Jim Leonard's mother's house,
there she was with her pipe in her mouth
coming out to get chips to kindle the fire
with, and she said:

"I'd Uke to know what you've got my
boy by the collar for, Mr. Baker?"

Pony's father said: "I don't know my-
self; I'll let him tell you. Pony was hid in
the bam last night, and I just now caught
Jim prowling around on the outside. I
should like to hear what he wanted."

Jim Leonard did not say anything. His
mother gave him one look, and then she went
into the house and came out with a table-
knife in her hand.

She said, "I reckon I can get him to tell
you," and she went to a pear-tree that there
was before her house and cut a long sucker

221

The Flight of Pony Baker

from the foot of it. She came up to Jim
and then she said: "Tell!"

She did not have to say it twice, and in
about half a second he told how Pony had
intended to run ofif and how he put him up to
it, and everjrthing. Pony's father did not wait
to see what Jim Leonard's mother did to Jim.

When Pony woke in the morning he heard
his mother saying: "I could almost think
he had bewitched the child."

His father said: "It really seems like a
case of mesmeric influence."

Pony W£is sick for about a week after that.
When he got better his father had a very
solemn talk with him, and £isked why he ever
dreamed of running away from his home,
where they all loved him so. Pony could
not tell. All the things that he used to be so
mad about were Uke nothing to him now, and
he was ashamed of them. His father did not
try hard to make him tell. He explained to
him what a miserable boy he would have
been if he had really got away, and said he
hoped his night's experience in the bam
would be a lesson to him.

222

How Jim Leonard Backed Out

That was what it turned out to be. But it
seemed to be a lesson to his father and moth-
er, too. They let him do more things, and
his mother did not baby him so much before
the boys. He thought she was trjring to be
a better mother to him, and, perhaps, she
did not baby him so much because now he
had a Uttle brother for her to baby instead,
that was bom about a week after Pony tried
to run off.

THE END

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