THE SCRAPE THAT JIM LEONARD
GOT THE BOYS INTO
As I said, it was in the spring that Jim Leonard's hair-breadth escape
happened. But it was late in the summer of that very same year that he got
Pony Baker and all the rest of the boys into about one of the worst
scrapes that the Boy's Town boys were ever in.
At first, it was more like a dare than anything else, for when Jim Leonard
said he knew a watermelon patch that the owner had no use for, the other
boys dared him to tell where it was. He wagged his head, and said that he
knew, and then they dared him to tell whose patch it was; and all at once
he said it was Bunty Williams's, and dared them to come and get the melons
with him. None of the boys in the Boy's Town would take a dare, and so
they set off with Jim Leonard, one sunny Saturday morning in September.
Some of the boys had their arms round one another's necks, talking as loud
as they could into one another's faces, and some whooping and holloing,
and playing Indian, and some throwing stones and scaring cats. They had
nearly as many dogs as there were boys, and there were pretty nearly all
the boys in the neighborhood. There seemed to be thirty or forty of them,
they talked so loud and ran round so, but perhaps there were only ten or
eleven. Hen Billard was along, and so were Piccolo Wright and Archie
Hawkins, and then a great lot of little fellows.
Pony Baker was not quite a little fellow in age; and there was something
about him that always made the big boys let him go with their crowd. But
now, when they passed Pony's gate and his mother saw them, and because it
was such a warm morning and she thought they might be going down to the
river and called out to him, "You mustn't go in swimming, Pony, dear;
you'll get the ague," they began to mock Pony as soon as they got by, and
to hollo, "No, Pony, dear! You mustn't get the ague. Keep out of the water
if you don't want your teeth to rattle, Pony, dear!"
This made Pony so mad that he began to cry and try to fight them, and they
all formed in a ring round him and danced and whooped till he broke
through and started home. Then they ran after him and coaxed him not to do
it, and said that they were just in fun. After that they used Pony
first-rate, and he kept on with them.
Jim Leonard was at the head, walking along and holloing to the fellows to
hurry up. They had to wade the river, and he was showing off how he could
hop, skip, and jump through, when he stepped on a slippery stone and sat
down in the water and made the fellows laugh. But they acted first-rate
with him when they got across; they helped him to take off his trousers
and wring them out, and they wrung them so hard that they tore them a
little, but they were a little torn already; and they wrung them so dry
that he said they felt splendid when he got them on again. One of his
feet went through the side of the trouser leg that was torn before it got
to the end, and made the fellows laugh.
When the boys first started Jim said he had got to go ahead so as to be
sure that they found the right patch. He now said that Bunty Williams had
two patches, one that he was going to sell the melons out of, and the
other that he was going to let them go to seed in; and it was the second
melon patch that he had deserted.
But pretty soon after they got over the river he came back and walked with
the rest of the boys, and when they came to a piece of woods which they
had to go through, he dropped behind. He said it was just the place for
Indian, and he wanted to be where he could get at them if they started up
when the boys got by, as they would very likely do.
Some of the big fellows called him a cowardy-calf; but he said he would
show them when the time came, and most of the little boys believed him and
tried to get in front. It was not long before he stopped and asked, What
if he could not find the right 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 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 nowadays, and some almost
striped in gray and green, and some were those big, round sugar melons,
nearly black. They were all sizes, but most of them were large, and you
need not "punk" them to see if they were ripe. Anybody could tell that
they were ripe from looking at them, and the muskmelons, which were the
old-fashioned long kind, were yellow as gold.
Now, the big fellows said, you could see why Bunty Williams had let this
patch go to seed. It was because they were such bully melons and would
have the best seeds; and the fellows all agreed to save the seeds for
Bunty, and put them where he could find them. They began to praise Jim
Leonard up, but he did not say anything, and only looked on with his
queer, sleepy eyes, and said his tooth ached, when the fellows plunged
down among the melons and began to burst them open.
They had lots of fun. At first they cut a few melons open with their
knives, but that was too slow, and pretty soon they began to jump on them
and split them with sharp-edged rocks, or anything, to get them open
quick. They did not eat close to the rind, as you do when you have a melon
on the table, but they tore out the core and just ate that; and in about a
minute they forgot all about saving the seeds for Bunty Williams and
putting them in one place where he could get them.
Some of the fellows went into the edge 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 corner and plunged
their fists in and tore the cores out. Some of them squeezed the juice out
of the cores into the shells of the melons and then drank it out of them.
Piccolo Wright was stooping over to pull a melon and Archie Hawkins came
up behind him with a big melon that had a seam across it, it was so ripe;
and he brought it down on Piccolo's head, and it smashed open and went all
over Piccolo. He was pretty mad at first, but then he saw the fun of it,
and he took one end of the melon and scooped it all out, and put it on in
place of his hat and wore it like a helmet. Archie did the same thing with
the other end, and then all the big boys scooped out melons and wore them
for helmets. They were all drabbled with seeds and pulp, and some of the
little fellows were perfectly soaked. None of them cared very much for the
muskmelons.
Somehow Pony would not take any of the melons, although there was nothing
that he liked so much. The fellows seemed to be having an awfully good
time, and yet somehow it looked wrong to Pony. He knew that Bunty Williams
had given up the patch, because Jim Leonard said so, and he knew that the
boys had a right to the melons if Bunty had got done with them; but still
the sight of them there, smashing and gorging, made Pony feel anxious. It
almost made him think that Jim Leonard was better than the rest because he
would not take any of the melons, but stayed off at one side of the patch
near the woods, where Pony stood with him.
He did not say much, and Pony noticed that he kept watching the log cabin
where Bunty Williams lived on the slope of the hill about half a mile off,
and once he heard Jim saying, as if to himself: "No, there isn't any smoke
coming out of the chimbly, and that's a sign there ain't anybody there.
They've all gone to market, I reckon."
It went through Pony that it was strange Jim should care whether Bunty was
at home or not, if Bunty had given up the patch, but 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
fighting, and the fellows were yelling round them and sicking them on; and
they were all making such a din that Pony could hardly hear himself think,
as his father used to say. But he thought he saw some one come out of
Bunty's cabin, and take down the hill with a dog after him and a hoe in
his hand.
He made Jim Leonard look, and Jim just gave a screech that rose above the
din of the dogs and the other boys, "Bunty's coming, and he's got his
bulldog and his shotgun!" And then he turned and broke through the woods.
All the boys stood still and stared at the hill-side, while the dogs
fought on. The next thing they knew they were floundering among the vines
and over the watermelon cores and shells and breaking for the woods; and
as soon as the dogs found the boys were gone, they seemed to think it was
no use to keep on fighting with nobody to look on, and they took after the
fellows.
The big fellows holloed to the little fellows to come on, and the little
fellows began crying. They caught their feet in the roots and dead
branches and kept falling down, and some of the big fellows that were
clever, like Hen Billard and Archie Hawkins, came back and picked them up
and started them on again.
Nobody stopped to ask himself or any one else why they should be afraid of
Bunty if he had done with his melon patch, but they all ran as if he had
caught them stealing his melons, and had a right to shoot them, or set his
dog on them.
They got through the woods to the shore of the river, and all the time
they could hear Bunty Williams roaring and shouting, and Bunty Williams's
bulldog barking, and it 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 snuff would make a bulldog loosen his grip, because he would
have to keep sneezing. None of them seemed to have seen either Bunty's
shotgun or his bulldog, but they all believed that he had them because
Jim Leonard said so, just as they had believed that Bunty had got done
with his melon patch, until all at once one of them said, "Where is Jim
Leonard, anyway?"
Then they found out that nobody knew, and the little fellows began to
think that maybe Bunty Williams had caught him, but Hen Billard said: "Oh,
he's safe enough, somewheres. I wish I had him here!"
Archie Hawkins asked, "What would you do to him?" and Hen said: "I'd show
you! I'd make him go back and find out whether Bunty really had a bulldog
with him. I don't believe he had."
Then all the big boys said that none of them believed so, either, and that
they would bet that any of their dogs could whip Bunty's dog.
Their dogs did not look much like fighting. They were wet with running
through the river, and they were lying round with their tongues hanging
out, panting. But it made the boys think that something ought to be done
to Jim Leonard, if they could ever find him, and some one said that they
ought 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 dancing round the fire like Indians, and he would have liked to turn
back after he got to the top, and maybe he might have done so if he had
not found Jim Leonard hiding in a hole up there and peeping over at the
boys. Jim was crying, and said his tooth ached awfully, and he was afraid
to go home and 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 would not do it. He had three cents in
his pocket--the big old kind that were as large as half-dollars and seemed
to buy as much in that day--and he offered to let Jim take them and go and
get something to eat at the grocery.
They decided he should buy two smoked red herrings and a cent's worth of
crackers, and these were what Jim brought back after he had been gone so
long that Pony thought he would never come. He had stopped to get some
apples off one of the trees at his mother's house, and he had to watch his
chance so that she should not see him, and then he had stopped and taken
some potatoes out of a hill that would be first-rate if they could get
some salt to eat them with, after they had built a fire somewhere and
baked them.
They thought it would be a good plan to dig one of these little caves just
under the 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 crackers and three apples,
and they made a good meal.
Then they went to a pump at the nearest house, where the woman said they
might have a drink, and drank themselves full. They wanted awfully to ask
her for some salt, but they did not dare to do it for fear she would make
them tell what they wanted it for. So they came away without, and Jim said
they could put ashes on their potatoes the way the Indians did, and it
would be just as good as salt.
They ran back to the river bank, and ran along up it till they were out of
sight of the boys on the shore below, and then they made their oven in it,
and started their fire with some matches that Jim Leonard had in his
pocket, so that if he ever got lost in the woods at night he could make
a fire and keep from freezing. His tooth had stopped aching now, and he
kept telling such exciting stories about Indians that Pony could not seem
to get the chance to ask why Bunty Williams should take after the boys
with his shotgun and bulldog if he had given up the watermelon patch and
only wanted it for seed.
The question lurked in Pony's mind all the time that they were waiting for
the potatoes to bake, but somehow he could not get it out. He did not feel
very well, and he tried to forget his bad feelings by listening as hard as
he could to Jim Leonard's stories. Jim kept taking the potatoes out to see
if they were done enough, and he began to eat them while they were still
very hard and greenish under the skin. Pony ate them, too, although he was
not hungry now, and he did not think the ashes were as good as salt on
them, as Jim pretended. The potato he ate seemed to make him feel no
better, and at last he had to tell Jim that he was afraid he was going to
be sick.
Jim said that if they could heat some stones, and get a blanket anywhere,
and 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 believe he could
walk on account of the pain that seemed to curl him right up. He asked Jim
if he believed he was beginning to have the ague, but Jim said it was more
like the yellow janders, although he agreed that Pony had better go home,
for it was pretty late, anyway.
He made Pony promise that if he would take him home he would let him get
a good way off before he went into the house, so that Pony's father and
mother should not see who had brought him. He said that when he had got
off far enough he would hollo, and then Pony could go in. He was
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 something
mean. He acted the perfect coward at times, and at other times he was not
afraid of anything. Almost any of the fellows could whip him, but once he
went into an empty house that was haunted, and came and looked out of the
garret windows, and dared any of them to come up.
He offered now, if Pony did not want to go home and let his folks find out
about the melon patch, to take him to his mother's log-barn, and get a
witch-doctor to come and tend him; but Pony said that he thought they had
better keep on, and then Jim trotted and asked him if the jolting did not
do him some good. He said he just 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 barn, and Jim put him over the fence. Jim
started to run, and Pony waited till he got out of sight and holloed; then
he began to shout, "Father! Mother! _O_ mother! Come out here! I'm sick!"
It did not seem hardly a second till he heard his mother calling back:
"Pony! Pony! Where are you, child? Where are you?"
"Here, behind the barn!" he answered.
Pony's mother came running out, and then his father, and when they had put
him into his own bed up-stairs, his mother made his father go for the
doctor. While his father was gone, his mother got the whole story out of
Pony--what he had been doing all day, and what he had been eating--but as
to who had got him into the trouble, she said she knew from the start it
must be Jim Leonard.
After the doctor came and she told him 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."
"Why, Pony," said his mother, "is there anybody who thinks such a thing
can be right?"
"Well, the boys say it's not stealing. Stealing is hooking a thing out of
a wagon or a store; but if you can knock a thing off a tree, or get it
through a fence, when it's on the ground already, then it's just like
gathering nuts in the woods. That's what the boys say. Do you think it
is?"
"I think it's the worst kind of stealing. I hope my boy doesn't do such
things."
"Not very often," answered Pony, thoughtfully. "When there's a lot of
fellows together, you don't want them to laugh at you."
"O Pony, dear!" said his mother, almost crying.
"Well, anyway, mother," Pony said, to cheer her up, "I didn't take any of
the watermelons to-day, for all Jim said Bunty had got done with them."
"I'm so glad to think you didn't! And you must promise, won't you, never
to touch any fruit that doesn't belong to you?"
"But supposing an apple was to drop over the fence onto the sidewalk, what
would you do then?"
"I should throw it right back over the fence again," said Pony's mother.
Pony promised his mother never to touch other people's fruit, but he was
glad she did not ask him to throw it back over the fence if it fell
outside, for he knew the fellows would laugh.
His father came back from going down-stairs with the doctor, and she told
him all that Pony had told her, and it seemed to Pony that his father
could hardly keep from laughing. But his mother did not even smile.
"How could Jim Leonard tell them that a man would give up his watermelon
patch, and how could they believe such a lie, poor, foolish boys?"
"They wished to believe it," said Pony's father, "and so did Jim, I dare
say."
"He might have got some of them killed, if Bunty Williams had fired his
gun at them," said Pony's mother; and he could see that 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! And do you think that excuses him?"
"No, I don't. But I think he's had a worse time, if that's any comfort,
than Pony has. He has suffered the fate of all liars. Sooner or later
their lies outwit them and overmaster them, for whenever people believe a
liar he is forced to act as if he had spoken the truth. That's worse than
having a tower fall on you, or pains in the stomach."
Pony's mother was silent for a moment as if she could not answer, and then
she said, "Well, all I know is, I wish there was no such boy in this town
as Jim Leonard."
V
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 lake, and Jim said, "I'll tell you what, Pony! The way to do
will be to get into a canal-boat, somehow, and that will take you to the
reservation without your hardly having to walk a step; and you can have
fun on the boat, too."
Pony agreed that this would be the best way, but he did not really like
the notion of living so long among the Indians that he would not remember
his father and mother when he saw them; he would like to stay till he was
pretty nearly grown up, and then come back in a chief's dress, with eagle
plumes all down his back and a bow in his hand, and scare them a little
when he first came in the house and then protect them from the tribe and
tell them who he was, and enjoy their surprise. But he hated to say this
to Jim Leonard, because he would think he was afraid to live with the
Indians always. He hardly dared to ask him what the Indians would do to
him if they did not adopt him, but he thought he had better, and Jim said:
"Oh, burn you, maybe. But it ain't likely but what they'll adopt you; and
if they do they'll take you down to the river, and wash you and scrub
you, so's to get all the white man off, and then pull out your hair, a
hair at a time, till there's nothing but the scalp-lock left, so that your
enemies can scalp you handy; and then you're just as good an Indian as
anybody, and nobody can pick on you, or anything. The thing is how to find
the canal-boat."
The next morning at school it began to be known that Pony Baker was going
to run off on a canal-boat to see the Indians, and all the fellows said
how he ought to do it. One of the fellows said that he ought to get to
drive the boat horses, and another that he ought to hide on board in the
cargo, and come out when the boat was passing the reservation; and another
that he ought to go for a cabin-boy on one of the passenger-packets, and
then he could get to the Indians twice as soon as he could on a
freight-boat. But the trouble was that Pony was so little that they did
not believe they would take him either for a driver or a cabin-boy; and he
said he was not going to hide in the 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
hunt the rats, and then Pony would be found out and put ashore in a
minute. The fellows could not think what to do till at last one of them
said:
"You know Piccolo Wright?"
"Yes."
"Well, you know his father has got a boat?"
"Yes. Well?"
"Well, and he's got a horse, too; and everything."
"Well, what of it?"
"Get Piccolo to hook the boat and take Pony to the reservation."
The fellows liked this notion so much that they almost hurrahed, and they
could hardly wait till school was out and they 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 off the stern of his father's boat. He was a pretty
big boy, though he was not so very old, and he had a lazy, funny face and
white hair; and the fellows called him Piccolo because he was learning to
play the piccolo flute, and talked about it when he talked at all, but
that was not often. He was one of those boys who do not tan or freckle in
the sun, but peel, and he always had some loose pieces of fine skin
hanging to his nose.
All the fellows came up and began holloing at once, and telling him what
they wanted him to do, and he thought it was a first-rate notion, but he
kept on fishing, without getting the least bit excited; and he did not say
whether he would do it or not, and when the fellows got tired of talking
they left him and began to look round the boat. There was a little cabin
at one end, and all the rest of the boat was open, and it had been
raining, or else the boat had leaked, and it was pretty full of water; and
the fellows got down 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 Piccolo if they might pump, and
he said they might, and they pumped nearly all the water out after they
had got done having fun on the planks.
Some of them went into the cabin and found a little stove there, where
Pony could cook his meals, and a bunk where he could sleep, or keep in out
of the rain, and they said they wished they were going to run off, too.
They took more interest than he did, but they paid him a good deal of
attention, and he felt that it was great to be going to run off, and he
tried not to be homesick, when he thought of being down there alone at
night, and nobody near but Piccolo out on the towpath driving the horse.
The fellows talked it all over, and how they would do. They said that
Piccolo ought to hook the boat some Friday night, and the sooner the
better, and get a good start before Saturday morning. They were going to
start with Pony, and perhaps travel all night with him, and then get off
and sleep in the woods, to rest themselves, and then walk home; and the
reason that Piccolo ought to hook the boat Friday night was that they
could have all Saturday to get back, when there was no school.
If the boat went two miles an hour, which she always did, even if she was
loaded with stone from Piccolo's father's quarry, she would be fifteen
miles from the Boy's Town by daybreak; and if they kept on travelling
night and day, and Pony drove the horse part of the time, they could reach
the Indian reservation Monday evening, for they would not want to travel
Sunday, because it was against the law, and it was wicked, anyway. If they
travelled on Sunday, and a storm came up, just as likely as not the boat
would get struck by lightning, and if it did, the lightning would run out
along the rope and kill the horse and Piccolo, too, if he was riding. But
the way for Piccolo to do was always to come aboard when it began to
rain, and that would keep Pony company a little, and they could make the
horse go by throwing stones at him.
Pony and Piccolo ought to keep together as much as they could, especially
at night, so that if there were robbers, they could defend the boat
better. Of course, they could not make the horse go by throwing stones at
him in the dark, and the way for them to do was for Pony to get out and
ride behind Piccolo. Besides making it safer against robbers, they could
keep each other from going to sleep by talking, or else telling stories;
or if one of them did doze off, the other could hold him on; and they must
take turn about sleeping in the daytime.
But the best way of all to scare the robbers was to have a pistol, and
fire it off every little once in a while, so as to let them know that the
boat was armed. One of the fellows that had a pistol said he would lend it
to Pony if Pony would be sure to send it back from the reservation by
Piccolo, for he should want it himself on the Fourth, which was coming in
about three weeks. Another fellow that had five cents, which he was saving
up till he could get ten, to buy a pack of shooting-crackers, said he
would lend it to Pony to buy powder, if he only felt sure that he could
get it back to him in time. All the other fellows said he could do it
easily, but they did not say how; one of them offered to go and get the
powder at once, so as to have it ready.
But Pony told him it would not be of any use, for he had promised his
mother that he would not touch a pistol or powder before the Fourth. None
of the fellows seemed to think it was strange that he should be willing to
run away from home, and yet be so anxious to keep his promise to his
mother that he would not use a pistol to defend himself from robbers; and
none of them seemed to think it was strange that they should not want
Piccolo, if he hooked his father's boat, to travel on Sunday with it.
After a while Piccolo came to the little hatch-door, and looked down into
the cabin where the boys were sitting and talking at the tops of their
voices; but in about a minute he vanished, very suddenly for him, and they
heard him pumping, and then before they knew it, they heard a loud, harsh
voice shouting, "Heigh, there!"
They looked round, and at the open window of the cabin on the land-side
they saw a man's face, and it seemed to fill the whole window. They knew
it must be Piccolo's father, and they just swarmed up the gangway all in a
bunch. Some of them fell, but these hung on to the rest, somehow, and they
all got to the deck of the cabin together, and began jumping ashore, so
that Piccolo's father could not catch them. He was standing on the basin
bank, saying something, but they did not know what, and they did not stop
to ask, and they began to run every which way.
They all got safely ashore, except Jim Leonard; he fell over the side of
the boat between it and the bank, but he scrambled up out of the water
like lightning, and ran after the rest. He was pretty long-legged, and he
soon caught up, but he was just raining water from his clothes, and it
made the fellows laugh so that they could hardly run, to hear him swish
when he jolted along. They did not know what to do exactly, till one of
them said they ought to go down to the river and go in swimming, and they
could wring Jim Leonard's clothes out, and lay them on the shore to dry,
and stay in long enough to let them dry. That was what they did, and they
ran round through the backs of the gardens and the orchards, and through
the alleys, and climbed fences, so that nobody could see them. The day was
pretty hot, and by the time they got to the river they were all sweating,
so that Jim's clothes were not much damper than the others. He had nothing
but a shirt and trousers on, anyway.
After that they did not try to get Piccolo to hook his father's boat, for
they said that his father might get after them any time, and he would have
a right to do anything he pleased to them, if he caught them. They could
not think of any other boat that they could get, and they did not know
how Pony could reach the reservation without a canal-boat. That was the
reason why they had to give up the notion of his going to the Indians; and
if anybody had told them that the Indians were going to come to Pony they
would have said he was joking, or else crazy; but this was really what
happened. It happened a good while afterwards; so long afterwards that
they had about forgotten he ever meant to run off, and they had got done
talking about it.