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 for pawpaws, and found about a bushel; they put them in
cornmeal 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 off 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'll 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 off he would run off, too; and that the way for them to do would be to
take the boards of that shanty 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 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 like 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 everything 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 Indians, 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 Leonard 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.
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 lived 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
burn 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. When 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 Leonard so much. He's had nobody else
with 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 affection. What do you talk about
together?"
"Oh, dreams, and magic, and pirates," said Pony.
His father laughed, but his mother said, "I know hell 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
hurrahing for him for President some day." Pony 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 anything, 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 barn. That got them to playing in the barn
most of the time, and they used to stay in the hay-loft, where Jim Leonard
told Pony the stories 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
sudden, "I've thought of the very thing, Pony Baker."