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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СКАЧАТЬ belongs; but Dave would duck and dodge so that they could hardly get their hands on it. All at once they heard him call out from around the corner of the barn, where he had gone to steal up on them, when it was their turn to be settlers: “Aw, now, Jake Milrace, that ain’t fair! I’m an Indian, now. You let go my hair.”

      “Who’s touchin’ your old hair?” Jake shouted back, from the inside of the barn. “You must be crazy. Hurry up, if you’re ever goin’ to attack us. I want to get out in the rain, myself, awhile.”

      Frank was outside, pretending to be at work in the field, and waiting for the Indians to creep on him, and when Jake shouted for Dave to hurry, he looked over his shoulder and saw a white figure, naked like his own, flit round the left-hand corner of the barn. Then he had to stoop over, so that Dave could tomahawk him easily, and he did not see anything more, but Jake yelled from the barn: “Oh, you got that fellow with you, have you? Then he’s got to be settler next time. Come on, now. Oh, do hurry up!”

      Frank raised his head to see the other boy, but there was only Dave Black, coming round the right-hand corner of the barn.

      “You’re crazy yourself, Jake. There ain’t nobody here but me and Frank.”

      “There is, too!” Jake retorted. “Or there was, half a second ago.”

      But Dave was busy stealing on Frank, who was bending over, pretending to hoe, and after he had tomahawked Frank, he gave the scalp-halloo, and Jake came running out of the barn, and had to be chased round it twice, so that he could fall breathless on his own threshold, and be scalped in full sight of his family. Then Dave pretended to be a war-party of Wyandots, and he gathered up sticks, and pretended to set the barn on fire. By this time Frank and Jake had come to life, and were Wyandots, too, and they all joined hands and danced in front of the barn.

      “There! There he is again!” shouted Jake. “Who’s crazy now, I should like to know?”

      “Where? Where?” yelled both the other boys.

      “There! Right in the barn door. Or he was, quarter of a second ago,” said Jake, and they all dropped one another’s hands, and rushed into the barn and began to search it.

      They could not find anybody, and Dave Black said: “Well, he’s the quickest feller! Must ’a’ got up into the mow, and jumped out of the window, and broke for the woods while we was lookin’ down here. But if I get my hands onto him, oncet!”

      They all talked and shouted and quarrelled and laughed at once; but they had to give the other fellow up; he had got away for that time, and they ran out into the rain again to let it wash off the dust and chaff, which they had got all over them in their search. The rain felt so good and cool that they stood still and took it without playing any more, and talked quietly. Dave decided that the fellow who had given them the slip was a new boy whose folks had come into the neighborhood since school had let out in the spring, so that he had not got acquainted yet; but Dave allowed that he would teach him a few tricks as good as his own when he got at him.

      The storm left a solid bank of clouds in the east for a while after it was all blue in the western half of the sky, and a rainbow came out against the clouds. It looked so firm and thick that Dave said you could cut it with a scythe. It seemed to come solidly down to the ground in the woods in front of the hay-mow window, and the boys said it would be easy to get the crock of gold at the end of it if they were only in the woods. “I’ll bet that feller’s helpin’ himself,” said Dave, and they began to wonder how many dollars a crock of gold was worth, anyhow; they decided about a million. Then they wondered how much of a crock full of gold a boy could get into his pockets; and they all laughed when Jake said he reckoned it would depend upon the size of the crock. “I don’t believe that fellow could carry much of it away if he hain’t got more on than he had in front of the barn.” That put Frank in mind of the puzzle about the three men that found a treasure in the road when they were travelling together: the blind man saw it, and the man without arms picked it up, and the naked man put it in his pocket. It was the first time Dave had heard the puzzle, and he asked, “Well, what’s the answer?” But before Frank could tell him, Jake started up and pointed to the end of the rainbow, where it seemed to go into the ground against the woods.

      “Oh! look! look!” he panted out, and they all looked, but no one could see anything except Jake. It made him mad. “Why, you must be blind!” he shouted, and he kept pointing. “Don’t you see him? There, there! Oh, now, the rainbow’s going out, and you can’t see him any more. He’s gone into the woods again. Well, I don’t know what your eyes are good for, anyway.”

      He tried to tell them what he had seen; he could only make out that it must be the same boy, but now he had his clothes on: white linen pantaloons and roundabout, like what you had on May day, or the Fourth if you were going to the Sunday-school picnic. Dave wanted him to tell what he looked like, but Jake could not say anything except that he was very smiling-looking, and seemed as if he would like to be with him; Jake said he was just going to hollo for him to come over when the rainbow began to go out; and then the fellow slipped back into the woods; it was more like melting into the woods.

       “Very Smiling-Looking”

      “And how far off do you think you could see a boy smile?” Dave asked, scornfully.

      “How far off can you say a rainbow is?” Jake retorted.

      “I can say how far off that piece of woods is,” said Dave, with a laugh. He got to his feet, and began to pull at the other boys, to make them get up. “Come along, if you’re ever goin’ to the swimmin’-hole.”

      The sun was bright and hot, and the boys left the barn, and took across the field to the creek. The storm must have been very heavy, for the creek was rushing along bank-full, and there was no sign left of Dave’s swimming-hole. But they had had such a glorious shower-bath that they did not want to go in swimming, anyway, and they stood and watched the yellow water pouring over the edge of a mill-dam that was there, till Dave happened to think of building a raft and going out on the dam. Jake said, “First rate!” and they all rushed up to a place where there were some boards on the bank; and they got pieces of old rope at the mill, and tied the boards together, till they had a good raft, big enough to hold them, and then they pushed it into the water and got on it. They said they were on the Ohio River, and going from Cincinnati to Louisville. Dave had a long pole to push with, like the boatmen on the keel-boats in the early times, and Jake had a board to steer with; Frank had another board to paddle with, on the other side of the raft from Dave; and so they set on their journey.

      The dam was a wide, smooth sheet of water, with trees growing round the edge, and some of them hanging so low over it that they almost touched it. The boys made trips back and forth across the dam, and to and from the edge of the fall, till they got tired of it, and they were wanting something to happen, when Dave stuck his pole deep into the muddy bottom, and set his shoulder hard against the top of the pole, with a “Here she goes, boys, over the Falls of the Ohio!” and he ran along the edge of the raft from one end to the other.

      Frank and Dave had both straightened up to watch him. At the stern of the raft Dave tried to pull up his pole for another good push, but it stuck fast in the mud at the bottom of the dam, and before Dave knew what he was about, the raft shot from under his feet, and he went overboard with his pole in his hand, as if he were taking a flying leap with it. The next minute he dropped into the water heels first, and went down out of sight. He came up blowing water from his mouth, and holloing and laughing, and took after the raft, where the other fellows were jumping up and down, and bending back and forth, and screaming and yelling at the way he looked СКАЧАТЬ