Part 5

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.

VI

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 off the boat (and had to go home bareheaded and tell his mother all about what happened, though his clothes were dry enough, and he might have got off 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 fellow in the whole Boy's Town when the Indians came.

The way they came to town was this: The white people around the reservation got tired of having them there, or else they wanted 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 reservation; 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 reservation 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 morning (and it happened to be Saturday) three canal-boats, full of Indians, came into the basin. Nobody ever knew which boy saw them first. It seemed as if all the fellows 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 that they were real Indians, in blankets, with bows and arrows, warriors, squaws, papooses, and everything, they almost went crazy, and when a good many of the Indians came ashore and went over to the court-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 arrows 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 they 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 something."

[Illustration: "REAL INDIANS, IN BLANKETS, WITH BOWS AND ARROWS"]

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 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 going 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 tell 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 off 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 stop him from half so many things as she used to do, and lately his father had got to being very good to him: let him lie in bed in the morning, and did not seem to notice when he stayed out with the boys at night, telling 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 whenever 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 quarter, so that he could buy two packs of shooting-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:

"You'll be very careful, Pony, won't you? 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 off 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!" 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, because it made him not want to run off so much.

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 off 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 going? It's your only chance. Why, Pony, what are you afraid of? Hain't you always wanted to sleep out-doors and not do anything 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 suppose 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 now."

"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.