“Perhaps it was a hoe, after all. You can’t shoot anybody with a hoe-handle, and there is nothing to prove that it was a gun but Jim’s word.”
“Yes, and here poor Pony has been so sick from it all, and Jim Leonard gets off without anything.”
“You are always wanting the tower to fall on the wicked,” said Pony’s father, laughing. “When it came to the worst, Jim didn’t take the melons any more than Pony did. And he seems to have wanted to back out of the whole affair at one time.”
“Oh! And do you think that excuses him?”
“No, I don’t. But I think he’s had a worse time, if that’s any comfort, than Pony has. He has suffered the fate of all liars. Sooner or later their lies outwit them and overmaster them, for whenever people believe a liar he is forced to act as if he had spoken the truth. That’s worse than having a tower fall on you, or pains in the stomach.”
Pony’s mother was silent for a moment as if she could not answer, and then she said, “Well, all I know is, I wish there was no such boy in this town as Jim Leonard.”
V
ABOUT RUNNING AWAY TO THE INDIAN RESERVATION ON A CANAL-BOAT, AND HOW THE PLAN FAILED
Now, anybody can see the kind of a boy that Jim Leonard was, pretty well; and the strange thing of it was that he could have such a boy as Pony Baker under him so. But, anyway, Pony liked Jim, as much as his mother hated him, and he believed everything Jim said in spite of all that had happened.