A BOY'S TOWN ADVENTURES: The Flight of Pony Baker, Boy Life, A Boy's Town & Years of My Youth. William Dean Howells
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really run off. He was a boy that Pony had never seen, though he had heard of him. He lived at the other end of the town, below the bridge, and almost at the Sycamore Grove. He had the name of being a wild fellow; his father was a preacher, but he could not do anything with him.
Now, Jim Leonard said, Pony must run off right away, and not wait for the river to rise, or anything. As soon as the river rose, Jim would follow him on the raft; but Pony must start first, and he must take the pike for the city, and sleep in fence corners. They must provision him, and not eat any of the things before he started. He must not take a bundle or anything, because if he did people would know he was running off, or maybe they would think he was a runaway slave from Kentucky, he was so dark-complexioned. At first Pony did not like it, because it seemed to him that Jim Leonard was backing out; but Jim Leonard said that if two of them started off at the same time, people would just know they were running off, and the constable would take them up before they could get across the corporation line. He said that very likely it would rain in less than a week, and then he could start after Pony on the raft, and be at the Ohio River almost as soon as Pony was.
He said, “Why, you ain’t afraid, are you, Pony?” And Pony said he was not afraid; for if there was anything that a Boy’s Town boy hated, it was to be afraid, and Pony hated it the worst of any, because he was sometimes afraid that he was afraid.
They fixed it that Pony was to sleep the next Friday night in the barn, and the next morning, before it was light, he was to fill his pockets with the provisions and run off.
Every afternoon he took out a piece of bread-and-butter with meat between and hid it in the hay, and Jim Leonard brought some eggs. He said he had no chance to boil them without his mother seeing, but he asked Pony if he did not know that raw eggs were first-rate, and when Pony said no, he said, “Well, they are.” They broke one of the eggs when they were hiding them, and it ran over the bread-and-butter, but they wiped it off with hay as well as they could, and Jim Leonard said maybe it would help to keep it, anyway.
When he came round to Pony’s house the next Friday afternoon from school he asked him if he had heard the news, and when Pony said no, he said that the fellow that ran off had been taken up in the city by the watchman. He was crying on the street, and he said he had nowhere to sleep, and had not had anything to eat since the night before.
Pony’s heart seemed to be standing still. He had always supposed that as soon as he ran off he should be free from all the things that hindered and vexed him; and, although he expected to be sorry for his father and mother, he expected to get along perfectly well without them. He had never thought about where he should sleep at night after he got to the city, or how he should get something to eat.
“Now, you see, Pony,” said Jim Leonard, “what a good thing it was that I thought about provisioning you before you started. What makes you look so?”
Pony said, “I’m not looking!”
Jim Leonard said, “You’re not afraid, are you, just because that fellow got took up? You’re not such a cowardy-calf as to want to back out now?”
The tears came into Pony’s eyes.
“Cowardy-calf yourself, Jim Leonard! You’ve backed out long ago!”
“You’ll see whether I’ve backed out,” said Jim Leonard. “I’m coming round to sleep in the barn with you to-night, and help you to get a good start in the morning. And maybe I’ll start myself to-morrow. I will if I can get anybody to help me make the raft and bring it through the woods. Now let’s go up into the loft and see if the provisions are all safe.”
They dug the provisions up out of the hay and Jim Leonard broke one of the eggs against the wall. It had a small chicken in it, and he threw it away. Another egg smelt so that they could hardly stand it.
“I don’t believe these eggs are very good,” said Jim Leonard. “I got them out of a nest that the hen had left; mother said I might have them all.” He broke them one after another, and every one had a chicken in it, or else it was bad. “Well, never mind,” he said. “Let’s see what the bread-and-butter’s like.” He bit into a piece, but he did not swallow any. “Tastes kind of musty; from the hay, I reckon; and the meat seems kind of old. But they always give the sailors spoilt provisions, and this bread-and-butter will do you first-rate, Pony. You’ll be so hungry you can eat anything. Say, you ain’t afraid now, are you, Pony?”
“No, not now,” said Pony, but he did not fire up this time as he did before at the notion of his being afraid.
Jim Leonard said, “Because, maybe I can’t get mother to let me come here again. If she takes a notion, she won’t. But I’m going to watch out, and as soon as supper’s over, and I’ve got the cow into the lot, and the morning’s wood in, I’m going to try to hook off. If I don’t get here to stay all night with you I’ll be around bright and early in the morning, to wake you and start you. It won’t be light now much before six, anyway.”
XII. How Jim Leonard Backed Out, and Pony Had To Give It Up
It all seemed very strange to Pony. First, Jim Leonard was going to run off with him on a raft, and then he was going to have Pony go by land and follow him on the raft; then suddenly he fixed it so that Pony was going alone, and he was going to pass the last night with him in the barn; and here, all at once, he was only coming, maybe, to see him off in the morning. It made Pony feel very forlorn, but he did not like to say anything for fear Jim Leonard would call him cowardy-calf.
It was near sunset, on a cool day in the beginning of October, and the wind was stirring the dry blades in the corn-patch at the side of the barn. They made a shivering sound, and it made Pony lonesomer and lonesomer. He did not want to run off, but he did not see how he could help it. Trip stood at the wood-house door, looking at him, but he did not dare to come to Pony as long as he was near the barn. But when Pony started towards the house Trip came running and jumping to him, and Pony patted him and said, “Poor Trip, poor old Trip!” He did not know when he should see such another dog as that.
The kitchen door was open, and a beautiful smell of frying supper was coming out. Pretty soon his mother came to the open door, and stood watching him patting Trip. “Well, have you made up with poor old Trip, Pony? Why don’t you come in, child? You look so cold, out there.”
Pony did not say anything, but he came into the kitchen and sat in a corner beyond the stove and watched his mother getting the supper. In the dining-room his sisters were setting the table and his father was reading by the lamp there. Pony would have given almost anything if something had happened just to make him tell what he was going to do, so that he could have been kept from doing it. He saw that his mother was watching him all the time, and she said: “What makes you so quiet, child?”
Pony said, “Oh, nothing,” and his mother asked, “Have you been falling out with Jim Leonard?”
Pony said no, and then she said, “I almost wish you had, then. I don’t think he’s a bad boy, but he’s a crazy fool, and I wish you wouldn’t go with him so much. I don’t like him.”
All of a sudden Pony felt that he did not like Jim Leonard very much himself. It seemed to him that Jim Leonard had not used him very well, but he could not have told how.
After supper the great thing was how to get out to the barn without any one’s noticing. Pony went to the woodshed door two or three times to look out. There were plenty of stars in the sky, but it seemed very dark, and he knew that it would be as black as pitch in the barn, and he did not see how he could ever dare to go out to it, much less into it. Every time he came back from looking he brought an armload of wood into the kitchen so that his mother would not notice.
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