The Flight of Pony Baker Part 7

"Well, I know him," said Dave. "It's the new boy, and the next time I see him--Oh, h.e.l.lo! There goes our raft!"

It was drifting slowly down towards the edge of the dam, and the boys all three plunged into the water again, and swam out to it, and climbed up on it.

They had the greatest kind of a time, and when they had played castaway sailors, Frank and Jake wanted to send the raft over the edge of the dam; but Dave said it might get into the head-race of the mill and tangle itself up in the wheel, and spoil the wheel.

So they took the raft apart and carried the boards on sh.o.r.e, and then tried to think what they would do next. The first thing was to take off their clothes and see about drying them. But they had no patience for that; and so they wrung them out as dry as they could and put them on again; they had left their roundabouts at Dave's house, anyway, and so had nothing on but a shirt and trousers apiece. The sun was out hot after the rain, and their clothes were almost dry by the time they got to Dave's house. They went with him to the woods-pasture on the way, and helped him drive home the cows, and they wanted him to get his mother to make his father let him go up to the Boy's Town with them and see the fireworks; but he said it would be no use; and then they understood that if a man was British, of course he would not want his boy to celebrate the Fourth of July by going to the fireworks. They felt sorry for Dave, but they both told him that they had had more fun than they ever had in their lives before, and they were coming the next Fourth and going to bring their guns with them. Then they could shoot quails or squirrels, if they saw any, and the firing would celebrate the Fourth at the same time, and his father could not find any fault.

It seemed to Frank that it was awful to have a father that was British; but when they got to Dave's house, and his father asked them how they had spent the afternoon, he did not seem to be so very bad. He asked them whether they had got caught in the storm, and if that was what made their clothes wet, and when they told him what had happened, he sat down on the wood-pile and laughed till he shook all over.

Then Frank and Jake thought they had better be going home, but Dave's mother would not let them start without something to eat; and she cut them each a slice of bread the whole width and length of the loaf, and spread the slices with b.u.t.ter, and then apple-b.u.t.ter, and then brown sugar. The boys thought they were not hungry, but when they began to eat they found out that they were, and before they knew it they had eaten the slices all up. Dave's mother said they must come and see Dave again some time, and she acted real clever; she was an American, anyway.

They got their horses and started home. It was almost sundown now, and they heard the turtle-doves cooing in the woods, and the bob-whites whistling from the stubble, and there were so many squirrels among the trees in the woods-pastures, and on the fences, that Frank could hardly get Jake along; and if it had not been for Jake's horse, that ran whenever Frank whipped up his pony, they would not have got home till dark. They smelt ham frying in some of the houses they pa.s.sed, and that made them awfully hungry; one place there was coffee, too.

When they reached Frank's house he found that his mother had kept supper hot for him, and she came out and said Jake must come in with him, if his family would not be uneasy about him; and Jake said he did not believe they would. He tied his horse to the outside of the cow-house, and he came in, and Frank's mother gave them as much baked chicken as they could hold, with hot bread to sop in the gravy; and she had kept some coffee hot for Frank, so that they made another good meal. They told her what a bully time they had had, and how they had fallen into the dam; but she did not seem to think it was funny; she said it was a good thing they were not all drowned, and she believed they had taken their deaths of cold, anyway.

Frank was afraid she was going to make him go up stairs and change his clothes, when he heard the boys begin to sound their call of "Ee-o-wee" at the front door, and he and Jake s.n.a.t.c.hed their hats and ran out. There was a lot of boys at the gate; Hen Billard was there, and Archy Hawkins and Jim Leonard; there were some little fellows, and Frank's cousin Pony was there; he said his mother had said he might stay till his father came for him.

Hen Billard had his thumb tied up from firing too big a load out of his bra.s.s pistol. The pistol burst, and the barrel was all curled back like a dandelion stem in water; he had it in his pocket to show. Archy Hawkins's face was full of little blue specks from pouring powder on a coal and getting it flashed up into his face when he was blowing the coal; some of his eye-winkers were singed off. Jim Leonard had a rag round his hand, and he said a whole pack of shooting-crackers had gone off in it before he could throw them away, and burned the skin off; the fellows dared him to let them see it, but he would not; and then they mocked him. They all said there had never been such a Fourth of July in the Boy's Town before; and Frank and Jake let them brag as much as they wanted to, and when the fellows got tired, and asked them what they had done at Pawpaw Bottom, and they said, "Oh, nothing much; just helped Dave Black haul rails," they set up a jeer that you could hear a mile.

Then Jake said, as if he just happened to think of it, "And fought b.u.mblebees."

And Frank put in, "And took a shower-bath in the thunder-storm."

And Jake said, "And eat mulberries."

And Frank put in again, "And built a raft."

And Jake said, "And Dave got pulled into the mill-dam."

And Frank wound up, "And Jake and I got swept overboard."

By that time the fellows began to feel pretty small, and they crowded round and wanted to hear every word about it. Then Jake and Frank tantalized them, and said of course it was no Fourth at all, it was only just fun, till the fellows could not stand it any longer, and then Frank jumped up from where he was sitting on his front steps, and holloed out, "I'll show you how Dave looked when his pole pulled him in," and he acted it all out about Dave's pole pulling him into the water.

Jake waited till he was done, and then he jumped up and said, "I'll show you how Frank and me looked when we got swept overboard," and he acted it out about the limb of the tree sc.r.a.ping them off the raft while they were laughing at Dave and not noticing.

As soon as they got the boys to yelling, Jake and Frank both showed how they fought the b.u.mblebees, and how the dogs got stung, and ran round trying to rub the bees off against the ground, and your legs, and everything, till the boys fell down and rolled over, it made them laugh so. Jake and Frank showed how they ran out into the rain from the barn, and stood in it, and told how good and cool it felt; and they told about sitting up in the mulberry-tree, and how twenty boys could not have made the least hole in the berries. They told about the quails and the squirrels; and they showed how Frank had to keep whipping up his pony, and how Jake's horse kept wheeling and running away; and some of the fellows said they were going with them the next Fourth.

Hen Billard tried to turn it off, and said: "Pshaw! You can have that kind of a Fourth any day in the country. Who's going up to the court-house yard to see the fireworks?"

He and Archy Hawkins and the big boys ran off, whooping, and the little fellows felt awfully, because their mothers had said they must not go.

Just then, Pony Baker's father came for him, and he said he guessed they could see the fireworks from Frank's front steps; and Jake stayed with Frank, and Frank's father came out, and his aunt and mother leaned out of the window, and watched, while the Roman candles shot up, and the rockets climbed among the stars.

They were all so much taken up in watching that they did not notice one of the neighbor women who had come over from her house and joined them, till Mrs. Baker happened to see her, and called out: "Why, Mrs. Fogle, where did you spring from? Do come in here with Manda and me. I didn't see you, in your black dress."

"No, I'm going right back," said Mrs. Fogle. "I just come over a minute to see the fireworks--for Wilford; you can't see them from my side."

"Oh," said Mrs. Baker, softly. "Well, I'm real glad you came. You ought to have heard the boys, here, telling about the kind of Fourth they had at Pawpaw Bottom. I don't know when I've laughed so much."

"Well, I reckon it's just as well I wasn't here. I couldn't have helped in the laughing much. It seems pretty hard my Wilford couldn't been having a good time with the rest to-day. He was always such a Fourth-of-July boy."

"But he's happy where he is, Mrs. Fogle," said Mrs. Baker, gently.

"Well, I know he'd give anything to been here with the boys to-day--I don't care where he is. And he's been here, _too_; I just know he has; I've felt him, all day long, teasing at me to let him go off with your Frank and Jake, here; he just fairly loved to be with them, and he never done any harm. Oh, my, my! I don't see how I used to deny him."

She put up her ap.r.o.n to her face, and ran sobbing across the street again to her own house; they heard the door close after her in the dark.

"I declare," said Mrs. Baker, "I've got half a mind to go over to her."

"Better not," said Pony Baker's father.

"Well, I reckon you're right, Henry," Mrs. Baker a.s.sented.

They did not talk gayly any more; when the last rocket had climbed the sky, Jake Milrace rose and said in a whisper he must be going.

After he was gone, Frank told, as if he had just thought of it, about the boy that had fooled them so, at Pawpaw Bottom; and he was surprised at the way his mother and his Uncle Henry questioned him up about it.

"Well, now," she said, "I'm glad poor Mrs. Fogle wasn't here, or--" She stopped, and her brother-in-law rose, with the hand of his sleepy little son in his own.

"I think Pony had better say good-night now, while he can. Frank, you've had a remarkable Fourth. Good-night, all. I wish I had spent the day at Pawpaw Bottom myself."

Before they slept that night, Pony's mother said: "Well, I'd just as soon you'd kept that story to yourself till morning, Henry. I shall keep thinking about it, and not sleep a wink. How in the world do you account for it?"

"I don't account for it," said Pony's father.

"Now, that won't do! What do you think?"

"Well, if it was _one_ boy that saw the fourth boy it might be a simple case of lying."

"Frank Baker never told a lie in his life. He couldn't."

"Perhaps Jake could, or Dave. But as they all three saw the boy at different times, why, it's--"

"What?"

"It's another thing."

"Now, you can't get out of it that way, Henry. Do you believe that the child longed so to be back here that--"

"Ah, who knows? There's something very strange about all that. But we can't find our way out, except by the short-cut of supposing that nothing of the kind happened."

"You can't suppose that, though, if all three of the boys say it did."

"I can suppose that they think it happened, or made each other think so."

Pony's mother drew a long sigh. "Well, I know what _I_ shall always think," she said.