The Boy Escapes from Orphan Asylum—The Boy and His Chum Had Red
Letter Days—The Boy Is Adopted by New Friends.
There is not much fun in being an orphan until you escape from the
orphan asylum, and I want to say that my chum and myself have had two
red letter days in the town where we seemed to drop out of a balloon
into the hearts of the country people.
They took up a subscription to buy clothes for us, and dressed us up,
and we looked as though we had been clothing dummies in front of a
clothing store, and then the people got into a quarrel as to who should
adopt us.
A farmer drew my chum and wanted him to get acquainted with some mules
and drive six mules to haul fertilizer on the farm. My chum had to set
on a saddle on one mule, and drive the other five mules by using one
line, which he pulled and hauled to make them gee round grand right and
left.
The fat woman adopted me because I was such a dear little thing. She was
one of those hay widows, whose husband got plenty of her sauce, and took
to the tall timber, and all she wanted to do was to hug me, and tell me
that if I had not dropped into her life, out of that balloon, she would
have kicked the bucket, and I thought of how any bucket I ever saw would
have collapsed, for she had a foot like a fiddle box.
She made me tell her the story of my past life, and when she found I was
Peck’s Bad Boy, and I thought I had made my story so sanguinary that she
would want me to go away, so she could have a quiet life, she just froze
to me and said she could see that she had been selected by Providence to
take the badness out of me, and she went to work hypnotizing me, and
giving me absent treatment on my meals, to take my strength for
wickedness away, and then she got me so weak I could not hug back when
she squeezed me, and you can imagine the condition a growing boy would
be in who could not do his share of the hugging.
The second day of my sentence to be her adopted son, with all my crimes
on my head, she let me go out on the farm to visit my chum, and there is
where my whole new life changed.
My chum was driving his mules around the farm, and I was riding behind
him on the wheel mule, when a balloon from St. Louis came over, and the
men in the balloon yelled to us to grab hold of the rope as they wanted
to land in the field. The mules began to act up and my chum couldn’t
control them, and I jumped off the mule and grabbed the rope and gave it
a hitch around the pole of the wagon, and that settled it with the
mules. They rolled their fawn like eyes around at the great gas bag that
was swaying over the wagon, with the two men yelling, and the mules
started to run, with the wagon and the balloon, around that field, the
balloon striking the fence occasionally, and a tree once in a while, the
men yelling for us to cut the rope, and the mules braying and saying
mule prayers, and me chasing along to try and cut the rope, and my chum
hanging on to the ears of the wheel mule, and the farmers rushing into
the field from every direction to stop the mules, and the men in the
balloons using the worst language.
[Illustration: Grabbed the Balloon Rope and Gave It a Hitch Around the
Pole.]
The mules had run around the field several times, and the balloon was
doing its best to keep up, when I yelled to the men in the balloon, “Why
don’t you throw out your anchor?” and they then seemed to recollect
about the anchor, and they threw it out, and when it caught fast in the
ground the mules pulled loose from the wagon and went through a fence,
and started for Texas, and I guess they are going yet. My chum got off
all right, except he was so scared he could not stand up. Well, we had a
time straightening things out, the farmers wanted to lynch the balloon
men, and make them pay for the mules, but in rolling up the balloon to
take to the station, to ship to St. Louis, I found a mail bag, and I
told the farmers these balloonists were carrying the U. S. mail, and any
man that laid hands on the government mail could be imprisoned for life
for treason, and I scared the farmers so they gave the balloonists their
dinner, and hauled the balloon to the station with the whole bunch of
us, and when the balloonists went away on the train they told my chum
and me that if we would come to St. Louis they would give us jobs
carrying off balloons, and they would teach us how to fly. Gee, but that
was nuts for us. To rise, at once, from being mule drivers and adopted
boys, to a place in balloon society, was what we wanted, and my chum and
I deserted our more or less happy homes and began to plan to jump a
freight train bound for St. Louis.
[Illustration: “Any Man That Lays Hands on the Government Mail Can Be
Imprisoned for Life for Treason.”]
We laid down on the platform of the station that night and went to sleep
and I dreamed that I sailed across the ocean in a balloon, and landed in
a park in Paris, and when the populace came to welcome us to dear old
France, Pa was one of the first to see me, and he fell upon my neck, and
when the people were going to give me a reception, and a cross of the
Legion of Honor, for being the first to cross the ocean in a balloon, Pa
told them I was his boy, and Pa wanted to take all the credit for my
grand achievement, and when I woke up a watchman at the station kicked
us off the platform like we were tramps, and we walked down the tracks
and were so mad we wanted to throw stones at the switch lights, and my
chum wanted to put a tie on the track to wreck a train, but I persuaded
him that it was that kind of revenge that caused the enmity between
tramps and the richer class. Then he wanted to set fire to a tank car of
kerosene, because Rockafeller owned the railroad, and the watchman who
kicked us was an agent of the Standard Oil Company. If I hadn’t been a
pretty good citizen there would have been a bon-fire sure, but I showed
my chum that we were only temporary tramps, and that in a few days we
would achieve success, and own railroads, and that we should show an
example of patience, and strive to become members of the four hundred.
So we refrained from getting even, and Rockafeller was not kept awake by
hearing that another tank car of oil had gone skyward.
We were pretty hungry, but tightened up our belts and pretty soon a
freight car stopped on a side track and a brakeman came along with a
lantern and I gave him the last half dollar I had and told him we wanted
to land in St. Louis, and he looked us over and pointed to a car, and we
hustled in and he locked the side door of the car, and we were alone in
the dark, hungry and thirsty.
We found a part of a bale of hay, and scattered some on the floor and
went to sleep, and I never slept better on a spring mattress, but I
dreamed of home, and all the fun I had ever had, making it hot for other
people, playing tricks on them, but now all was changed, and I felt that
I was on my own resources, making my own way in the world, handicapped
by always having an easy life.
Along towards daylight in the morning some horses began to paw and
whinner and a colly dog began to bark in the car, and some sheep bleated
in the car, and as morning came, and a little light came in the car,
which was hitting the high places, running at high speed, so it shook us
out of our hay bed, we looked around starved and stiff, and sick at
heart.
When the train stopped I walked through the car, over bags of oats, and
looked at the horses, and wished I was a horse. The dog was a watch dog,
and when I got near him he snarled and grabbed a mouthful of my new
pants and held on and shook me, and I yelled and got away.
As it grew lighter I saw a box near the dog, and in it were some square
things that my practiced eye, as the son of an old hunter, told me were
dog biscuit, a sort of petrified dough and meat scraps made for high
class dogs that are not allowed to eat scraps from the table, and I told
my chum we would have breakfast. It took me half an hour to steal a few
dog biscuit away from that dog, and all the time he was trying to make
his breakfast off of me, but I finally poked out enough for breakfast,
and I called my chum to partake of the repast. He said he always had to
have some kind of breakfast food before he ate meat, so I cut into a bag
of oats, and gave him a handful, and there we sat and chewed away,
trying to imagine that we were happy, and thinking of coffee and
pancakes and sausage, and waffles, and biscuit and honey.
It was probably the worst breakfast ever eaten by anybody. The dog
biscuits were so hard we had to pound them on the floor with a
currycomb, and that did not help the flavor much.
After breakfast we laid down on the hay with a horse blanket over us,
and slept till noon, when we heard water being poured into the tin
trough for the horses, and we quenched our thirst, and ate more dog
biscuit, and I hoped that other boys would hear of our distress, and
that no boys would ever run away from a happy home again.
My chum and I talked over the depression in the money market, and the
panic in Wall street, and tried to think we were better off than
millionaires who did not know where the next meal was coming from, and
with our stomachs full, and no care on our minds, we wished we could
give some of our dog biscuit to the hungry rich.
While we were thinking of the good one can do with a few dog biscuit,
there was a terrible crash, the car jumped on the ties and reared up,
and finally rolled over and down a bank and all was still as death,
except that the boiler of the engine was blowing off steam, and the
horses were groaning, and the confounded dog that chewed me was dead.
Men run over the cars, and chopped with axes, and finally a fire engine
began to throw water on the burning cars, my chum and I were wedged
under bales of hay, one of my legs was asleep, and we both yelled
murder, and finally the fire was out, the side was chopped out of the
car, and they took us out and put us in an ambulance and the brakeman
who had let us into the car said, “Tickets, please,” and the ambulance
was driven to a hospital at East St. Louis, and they wanted to amputate
us, just for practice. One of the hospital attendants asked me who I
was, and when I told him I was “Peck’s Bad Boy,” traveling for my
health, he said, “Well, you are certainly getting what is coming to
you,” and I guess that is no lie.
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