Had Cora thought about it at the time, she would have realized that her little brother was home early from school.
Taking one more fond glance at the old home, Jimmie turned and strode out of the door and made for the nearby woods half a mile away. It was with hurried steps too that he fled from his home, for deep in his young and perhaps rather foolish heart Jimmie feared that a posse might be organized to overtake him. Then if he were caught dire consequences might result.
When at last he entered the woods he had little thought of what to do or where to go. He just walked along glancing back occasionally when at last he made up his mind to head for Lake Erie and there board a tramp steamer bound for a foreign port.
Finally he reached the “Old Woman’s Creek” which flowed through the woods.
This proved to be the place for his first stopover; darkness was falling and he was afraid to go further alone into the night. This spot, too, was a favorite of Skinny’s and his. Here he knew a hundred different places to hide away without fear of detection.
Darkness fell quickly and quietly upon the wooded lands and the fear in the youngster’s heart swelled. Out on the surface of the river the splashings of leaping fish were to be heard. Near the banks came the ever-present calling of the frogs, that eerie cry that comes to the solitary traveler usually at this hour of the night.
Jimmie hurried on along the river’s banks to a vacant red barn. He hurried inside the rickety old frame structure and searched in the dark for a suitable place to sleep.
After several minutes of silent and cautious searching, Jimmie stumbled onto a manger half filled with hay. But sleep for the young boy was entirely out of the question at the present. For just outside the barn flowed “Old Woman’s Creek.” Jimmie shuddered at the very thought of the name. And, as if that wasn’t enough, the bull-frogs continued their strange and weird calling in the night, adding still more fears to his whirling brain. It seemed to the young boy that they were saying over and over again:
“You’re a goner! You’re a goner! You’re a goner!”
Try as he might, Jimmie just could not go to sleep. His childish imagination led him to believe that a posse of men were just outside the door waiting for him to come out so that they could pounce upon him. For with a screech owl high on the sagging roof hooting dreadfully and then the dead silence that followed along with the beat of bats’ wings, it is little wonder that the boy ever went to sleep.