"I know that," said Jim Leonard. "But what I mean is, that if you get hurt
you mustn't hollo, or cry, or anything; and even when they're scalping
you, you mustn't even make a face, so as to let them know that you feel
it."
By this time some of the other fellows began to come around to hear what
Jim Leonard was saying to Pony. A good many of the Indians had gone off
anyway, for the people had stopped sticking quarters into the ground for
them to shoot at, and they could not shoot at nothing. Jim Leonard saw the
fellows crowding around, but he went on as if he did not notice them.
"You've got to go without eating anything for weeks when the medicine-man
tells you to; and when you come back from the warpath, and they have a
scalp-dance, you've got to keep dancing till you drop in a fit. When they
give a dog feast you must eat dog stew until you can't swallow another
mouthful, and you'll be so full that you'll just have to lay around for
days without moving. But the great thing is to bear any kind of pain
without budging or saying a single word. Maybe you're used to holloing
now when you get hurt?"
Pony confessed that he holloed a little; the others tried to look as if
they never holloed at all, and Jim Leonard went on:
"Well, you've got to stop that. If an arrow was to go through you and
stick out at your back, or anywhere, you must just 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 muscles on his shoulders--"and
let them pull you up on a pole and hang there as long as they please.
They'll let you practise gradually so that you won't mind hardly anything.
Why, I've practised a good deal by myself, and now I've got so that I
believe if you was to stick me with--"
All of a sudden something whizzed along the ground and Jim Leonard stooped
over and caught one of his feet up in his hand, and began to cry and to
hollo: "Oh, oh, oh! Ow, ow, ow! Oh, my foot! Oh, it's broken; I know it
is! Oh, run for the doctor, do, Pony Baker! I know I'm going to die! Oh,
dear, oh dear, oh dear!"
All the boys came crowding around to see what the matter was, and the men
came, too, and pretty soon some one found an arrow in the grass, and then
they knew that it was a stray arrow that had hit Jim Leonard on 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, because Jim was stooping over as if he
was tearing the scalp off of a white man. He's been practising, you know."
"Well, practice makes perfect. I reckon if Jim hasn't got so far that he
would smile 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 around three days without
stirring."
Jim Leonard thought the fellows had come along to pity him and help him;
but when he heard Archy Hawkins say that, and Hen Billard began to
splutter and choke with the laugh he was holding in, he flung them off and
began to fight at them with his fists, and strike right and left blindly.
He broke out crying, and then the fellows made a ring around him and
danced and mocked him.
"Hey, Jim, what'd you do if they pulled your hair out?"
"Jimmy, oh, Jim! Would you hollo much louder if they tomahawked you?"
"Show your uncle how to dance till you drop, Jim."
They kept on till Jim Leonard picked up stones to stone them, and then
they all ran away, jumping and jeering till they got out of sight. It was
about dinner-time, anyway.
No one was left but Pony Baker. He stooped down over Jim when he sat
crying over his foot. "Does it hurt you much, Jimmy?" he asked.
"Yes, it hurts dreadfully, Pony. The skin's all rubbed off. I'm afraid
it's broken my leg."
"Well, let me help you home," said Pony. "Your mother can tie it up,
then."
He made Jim lean on him, and keep trying his foot, and pretty soon they
found he could walk with it nearly the same as the other foot, and before
they got to Jim's house they were talking and laughing together.
After that, Pony Baker gave up running off to the Indians. He about gave
up running off altogether. He had a splendid Fourth of July. His mother
would not let him stay up the whole of the night before, but she let him
get up at four o'clock, and fire off both his packs of shooting-crackers;
and though she had forbidden him to go down to the river-bank where the
men were firing off the cannon, he hardly missed it. He felt sleepy as
soon as his crackers were done, and another fellow who was with him came
into the parlor, and they both lay down on the carpet and went to sleep
there, and slept till breakfast-time. After breakfast he went up to the
court-house yard, with some other fellows, and then, after dinner, when
they all came round and begged, and the big fellows promised to watch out
for Pony, his mother let him go out to the second lock with them, and go
in swimming in the canal. He did not know why this should be such a great
privilege, but it was. He had never been out to the second lock before. It
was outside of the corporation line, and that was a great thing in itself.
After supper, Pony's mother let him fire off his powder-snake, and she
even came out and looked at it, with her fingers in her ears. He promised
her that it wouldn't make any noise, but she could not believe him; and
when the flash came, she gave a little whoop, and ran in-doors. It shamed
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 little behind, so as to see that nothing happened to
him; and when they were just starting off what should she do but hollo to
his father from the door where she was standing, "Do be careful of the
child, Henry!" It did not seem as if she could be a good mother when she
tried, and she was about the afraidest mother in the Boy's Town.
All the way up to the court-house the boys kept snickering and whispering,
"Don't stump your toe, child," and "Be careful of the child, boys," and
things like that till Pony had to fight some of them. Then they stopped.
They were afraid his father would hear, anyway.
But the fireworks were splendid, and the fellows were very good to Pony,
because his father stood in the middle of the crowd and 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 listening to his cousin, Frank Baker, telling about the fun he had
been having at a place called Pawpaw Bottom; and the strange thing that
happened there, if it did happen, for nobody could exactly find out. So I
think I had better break off again from Pony, and say what it was that
Frank told; and after that I can go on with Pony's running off.