The Flight of Pony Baker / A Boy's Town Story

it seemed to him that they were mostly things that his mother had put his father u

use, crying and limping (the pain seemed to go down his leg, and lame him), Pony's mother made his father take Pony's pistol right away from him, and not let him have it till after New Year's; and what made it worse was that Pony had faithfully kept his promise to her that h

kill himself. Pony told her that he would not kill himself, and tried to laugh her out of the notion, but it was no use, and he never had a gun till he wa

wed to bring it home, though he was taken to choose it before it could walk very well, and he went every day afterwards to see how it was getting along, and to watch out that it did not get changed with the other little dogs. The first night after he got it to his own house, the dog whined so with homesickness that it kept everybody awake till Pony w

it was for a good thing a fellow did not always like to tell. If his father did not think it was a good thing he would not let Pony have it, and then Pony

e boys picked up along the river shore and called smoke-wood, or he would let him smoke grapevine or the pods of the catalpa, which were just like cigars, but he was mean

circus came along, he nearly always took Pony in, but then he was apt to take the girls, too, and he did not like to have Pony go off with a crowd of boys, which was the only

tay up the whole night. When he went to the city, as the boys called the large town twenty miles away from the Boy's Town, he might get

would not take any notice of their boys; but if Pony's father came along, he would very likely say, "Well, Pony!" or something like that, and then all the fellows would hollo, "Well, Pony! Well, Pony!" and make fun of his father, when he got past, and wal

l any more. The reason was because the teacher had put Pony back from third reader to the second and made him go into a class of little fellows not more than seven years old. It happened one morning, after a day when Pony had read very badly in the afternoon, and though he had explained that he had read badly because

te, and tied them with his slate-pencil string, and twitched his hat down off the peg, and strutted proudly out of the room, so that not only the boys but the teacher, too, could see that he was leaving school. The teacher looked on and pretended to smile, but Pony did not smile; he kept his

have told his father about it when he came to dinner, though, for as soon as they sat down at the table his father began to ask what the trouble was.

expect to stay in the second

; but he said he did not care, and he was not going to h

shame to put Pony back and mortify him before the other boys, and she knew that it must just have happened th

d did not say anything more; but Pony could see what she thought, and he a

more trial; and I advise you to take your books back again this afternoon, an

nd threw himself on the lounge, with his face down, and cried. He said he was sick, and his head ached, and he could not go to school; his father said

nt door to go up town, and Pony screamed out

said, "Pony, Pony!" while his sisters all stood round frightene

him that she might have made his father let him stay out of school, if she had tried, and he was not going to have any of her pretending. He made his face very cold and hard as

g that he could, and all that was expected of anybody in such a case. A boy always came back when he had left school in that w

ut at recess they all crowded round him and began to praise him up, and everything, and to tell him that they would run off, too, if their fathers sent them back; and so he began to be gl

y said that they would be waiting round the corner for him as soon as they had their suppers, and one of them would walk along with him to the end of the first street and then another would be waiting there to go with him to the end of the next, and so on till they reached the corporation line. Very likely his father would have the constable waiting

o know by sight, and when they saw him they would croak out: "Here comes Hawkins! Here comes Hawkins! Look out!" and jump off the bank into the water and then come up among the green slime, where nobody but Old Hawkins could see

ll along about midnight, for the constable will be in bed by that time, and you won't have any trouble. You must have somebody to wake you up, and some of the fellows ought to be outside, to do it. You listen to your grandfather! You ought to tie a string around your big toe, and let the string hang out of the window, the way you do Fourth

ust hop to the window, and all at once he struck his heel against a root in the sidewalk, a

Hawkins was too good-natured; and he got up and brushed himself, and sa

and Old Hawkins said: "Come alo

away, like that, and partly because he had to ask his mother before he went in swimming. A few of th

y would have to hold a council, but if they did adopt him, it would be the best thing, because then he would soon turn into an Indian himself, and forget how to speak English; and if ever the Indians had to give up their prisoners, and he was brought back, and his father and mother came to pick him out, they might know him by some mark or other, but he would not know them, and they would have to

about Jim Leonard, and what kind of boy he was, and the scrape that he once got Pony and the other boys into, and a hair-breadth escape he had hi