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 mocking him that they did not notice how his push had sent the raft swiftly in under the trees by the shore, and the first thing they knew, one of the low branches caught them, and scraped them both off the raft into the water, almost on top of Dave. Then it was Dave’s turn to laugh, and he began: “What’s the matter, boys? Want to help find the other end of that pole?”

      Jake was not under the water any longer than Dave had been, but Frank did not come up so soon. They looked among the brush by the shore, to see if he was hiding there and fooling them, but they could not find him. “He’s stuck in some snag at the bottom,” said Dave; “we got to dive for him”; but just then Frank came up, and swam feebly for the shore. He crawled out of the water, and after he got his breath, he said, “I got caught, down there, in the top of an old tree.”

      “Didn’t I tell you so?” Dave shouted into Jake’s ear.

      “Why, Jake was there till I got loose,” said Frank, looking stupidly at him.

      “No, I wasn’t,” said Jake. “I was up long ago, and I was just goin’ to dive for you; so was Dave.”

      “Then it was that other fellow,” said Frank. “I thought it didn’t look overmuch like Jake, anyway.”

      “Oh, pshaw!” Dave jeered. “How could you tell, in that muddy water?”

      “I don’t know,” Frank answered. “It was all light round him. Looked like he had a piece of the rainbow on him, or foxfire.”

      “I reckon if I find him,” said Dave, “I’ll take his piece of rainbow off’n him pretty quick. That’s the fourth time that feller’s fooled us to-day. Where d’you s’pose he came up? Oh, I know! He got out on the other side under them trees, while we was huntin’ for Frank, and not noticin’. How’d he look, anyway?”

      “I don’t know; I just saw him half a second. Kind of smiling, and like he wanted to play.”

      “Well, I know him,” said Dave. “It’s the new boy, and the next time I see him—Oh, hello! 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 shore, 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 butter, and then apple-butter, 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 passed, 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 snatched 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 brass 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 bumblebees.”

      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 СКАЧАТЬ