“I don’t see what you want to do that for,” persisted Dwight. “You could sleep at home all night and then start from there as early as you wanted to. Nobody would think of stopping you, for they’d believe you were just going to the pasture.”
Tom was puzzled, just for an instant, as to how he should answer the question, and then realizing that it would never do for a boy who was about to run away from home to confess that he did not fully understand his own plans he answered, with a great show of dignity:
“Don’t you bother. I think I know what I’m about. I’ve got to sleep under Rankin’s bridge the night I run away or else the thing wouldn’t work.”
The vagueness of the plan gave it a greater charm in the eyes of Tom’s friends. If it had been a simple scheme of running away, and they had understood it in all its details, it would have seemed dull and commonplace compared to what it was when it was so essential that Tom should sleep under the bridge the night previous to his leaving home forever.
Tom Gibson thoroughly enjoyed the sensation he was causing, and was by no means disposed to leave his friends before whom he was posing as a hero. He did his best to be mysterious both in speech and action, and would have continued to throw out vague hints as to his plans all the afternoon had not one of his oppressors—his mother—called him into the house to perform some one of the many tasks which he believed was wearing his young life away.
It is quite possible, if the whole truth could be known, that Tom had not fully made up his mind to run away from his comfortable home when he first broached the subject to his friends; but they had looked upon him as such a hero from the first moment he mentioned it that he decided it was necessary for him to go.
“I’ll keep on doing what she tells me to, so that folks will see how hard I have to work,” he muttered to himself as he left the boys and went toward the house, “and then when I’m off so far that nobody knows where I am mother’ll be sorry she made me work so hard.”
As a matter of course, however, Tom’s friends met him, after he had announced his determination of leaving home, they made inquiries as to the carrying out of his plan, and this was so pleasant to the dissatisfied and abused young man that he put off taking the final step as long as possible. In fact, he delayed so long that Dwight Holden plainly said one day that he did not believe Tom had ever intended to run away, but that he had said so simply for the purpose of “making himself look big.”
From that day he set about making his preparations for departure in earnest, telling his friends that on the following Tuesday he would disappear, never to be seen in Sedgwick again, unless he should decide, many years later, to come back as a wealthy gentleman, to see how much the town had suffered by his absence.
Since he would be obliged to walk a good portion of the distance to the place where his fortune was to be made, he was forced to leave out of the bundle he was making up many of his valuables because of their size and weight. A toy engine, a glass pen and holder, two rubber balls, a large collection of marbles (agates and alleys), a folding kite frame, three odd skates, a lodestone, and two mouth harmonicas made up the list of treasures that could be carried, and these were carefully packed in an old army blanket. He had saved cookies, gingerbread, and choice pieces of pie until he had as much as he believed would suffice as food for a week, and this he intended to carry in a paper parcel in his hand.