It was this that put Jim Leonard in mind of Pony’s running off again. All the way home he kept talking to Pony about it, and Pony said he was going to do it yet, some time, but when Jim Leonard wanted him to tell the time, he would only say, “You’ll see,” and wag his head.
Then Jim Leonard mocked him and dared him to tell, and asked him if he would take a dare. After that he made up with him, and said if Pony would run off he would run off, too; and that the way for them to do would be to take the boards of that shanty in the woods and build a raft. They could do it easily, because the boards were just leaned up against the ridge-pole, and they could tie them together with pawpaw switches, they were so tough, and then some night carry the raft to the river, after the water got high in the fall, and float down on it to the city.
“Why, does the river go past the city?” Pony asked.
“Of course it does,” said Jim Leonard, and he laughed at Pony. “It runs into the Ohio there. Where’s your geography?”
Pony was ashamed to say that he did not suppose that geography had anything to do with the river at the Boy’s Town, for it was not down on the map, like Behring Straits and the Isthmus of Suez. But he saw that Jim Leonard really knew something. He did not see the sense of carrying the raft two miles through the woods when you could get plenty of drift-wood on the river shore to make a raft of. But he did not like to say it for fear Jim Leonard would think he was afraid to be in the woods after dark, and after that he came under him more than ever. Most of the fellows just made fun of Jim Leonard, because they said he was a brag, but Pony began to believe everything he said when he found out that he knew where the river went to; Pony had never even thought.
Jim was always talking about their plan of running off together, now; and he said they must fix everything so that it would not fail this time. If they could only get to the city once, they could go for cabin-boys on a steamboat that was bound for New Orleans; and down the Mississippi they could easily hide on some ship that was starting for the Spanish Main, and then they would be all right. Jim knew about the Spanish Main from a book of pirate stories that he had. He had a great many books and he was always reading them. One was about Indians, and one was about pirates, and one was about dreams and signs, and one was full of curious stories, and one told about magic and how to do jugglers’ tricks; the other was a fortune-telling book. Jim Leonard had a paper from the city, with long stories in, and he had read a novel once; he could not tell the boys exactly what a novel was, but that was what it said on the back.
After Pony and he became such friends he told him everything that was in his books, and once, when Pony went to his house, he showed him the books. Pony was a little afraid of Jim Leonard’s mother; she was a widow woman, and took in washing; she lived in a little wood-colored house down by the river-bank, and she smoked a pipe. She was a very good mother to Jim, and let him do whatever he pleased—go in swimming as much as he wanted to, stay out of school, or anything. He had to catch drift-wood for her to burn when the river was high; once she came down to the river herself and caught drift-wood with a long pole that had a nail in the end of it to catch on with.
By the time school took up Pony and Jim Leonard were such great friends that they asked the teacher if they might sit together, and they both had the same desk. When Pony’s mother heard that, it seemed as if she were going to do something about it. She said to his father:
“I don’t like Pony’s going with Jim Leonard so much. He’s had nobody else with him for two weeks, and now he’s sitting with him in school.”
Pony’s father said, “I don’t believe Jim Leonard will hurt Pony. What makes you like him, Pony?”