Part 9

We got Bony onto his back and Bony hung around his neck and the man held Bony's legs under his arms. He climbed the fence with him that way and started off across the ploughed field and me and Swatty went after him. We didn't even think about taking our fishpoles along. We went across the field and the man stopped at his house and called his mother and she gave Bony some whiskey in hot water while the man went over to a farmer's house and got a team and a wagon. So, while he was gone Swatty said to Bony:

“Is it?”

He meant the cardinal's signet ring, and was it it.

“Yes, it's it,” Bony said, but not very loud. He was pretty much drowned yet.

So we all went back to town in the farmer's wagon; me and Bony and Swatty and the man and the farmer kid that was driving. So Swatty sat with the farmer kid and talked to him.

“That man saved Bony's life,” Swatty said. “Who is he?”

“Him? He's Lazy Joe,” the farmer kid said. “He's Lazy Joe Mulligan. He don't do nothing but fish and loaf.”

So then Swatty knew who the burglar was.

We drove up to town and Swatty told the farmer kid where to drive and pretty soon we came to Bony's house. The man, Lazy Joe Mulligan, looked pretty funny, you bet, when we drove right up to the house he had burglared. He put his hand in his pocket and when he pulled it out the ring was gone.

“Come on!” Swatty said to me.

“Where to?” I asked him.

“Down to Bony's father's to get that fifty dollars,” Swatty said. So we went.

Well, I guess we forgot to tell Bony's father about Bony being drowned and pumped out. We just told him we had the burglar up at his house and that we wanted the fifty dollars, and he rushed out and up the street and got a policeman and hurried to his house. Lazy Joe was there yet, telling Bony's mother how he had pumped Bony out, but the farmer kid was n't there, because Bony's mother had sent him down to get Bony's father. She wanted Bony's father to give Lazy Joe five dollars or something for pumping Bony out.

Then me and Swatty and Bony's father and the policeman came in and Bony's father was saying: “Officer, arrest him! He's the man that stole my property,” while Bony's mother was saying: “Edward, give him five dollars or something! He's the man that saved your son's life.”

“How is that?” asked Bony's father, and he was pretty much mixed; “I thought this was the burglar.”

“He is the burglar,” said Swatty. “He's got the cardinal's ring in his pocket right now. I seen it, and Georgie seen it, and Bony seen it.”

Then Lazy Joe didn't know what to say. Then he said:

“I'll give everything back.”

So that was how they fixed it. Bony's father saved fifty-five dollars. He saved the five dollars he ought to have given Lazy Joe for saving Bony's life and he saved the fifty dollars he ought to have given Swatty. So all me and Swatty knew next was that we were out on the street and we didn't have anything to show for catching the burglar. All we had was what Bony's father said. What he said was:

“Get out of here, you little rats! Be thankful you haven't my child's death on your shoulders!”

Well, I was going, but Swatty stood right there.

“No, sir!” he said. “I won't go. You can cheat us out of fifty dollars reward, maybe, but you've got to give back the diamond ring this burglar has that belongs to Herb and Fan. You got to give that back, because it ain't yours.”

“Have you got a ring like that?” the policeman asked Lazy Joe.

“Yes,” he said, and he took it out of one of his pockets. So Swatty took it and we skipped out. We went right over to my house, because it was dark by now, and I went to Fan and told her we had her ring for her. I didn't know what I would say when she asked me where I got it, but she didn't ask. She just went to her drawer and got out fifteen dollars and gave it to me and didn't say anything. Only when I went out of the room I heard her bed creak sudden, and I knew she had sort of thrown herself down on it, broken-hearted, like in a novel.

VII. THE HAUNTED HOUSE

Well, it looked like that vacation would be a sort of nice one--at the beginning of it, anyway--because Fan had taken mother's advice and gone over to Chicago to visit Aunt Beatrice, and Mamie Little had gone down to Betzville to be on her uncle's farm awhile, because it would do her good.

When Fan went she went in a closed carriage as far as the depot, because she was so pale and peaked she didn't want anybody to see her and have Herb hear of it. She sent him his ring back, I guess, before she went.

I thought it was pretty mean that Fan had to be mostly sick like that, while Herb was as well as ever and having a good time with Miss Carter, as far as I knew, but it wasn't any of my business. Mother said she guessed Fan would get over it, because she was young yet and, goodness knew! there wasn't so much difference between one man and another, but that if people like Bony's mother didn't stop coming over and talking about it she would go mad. And I guess that was so because Bony's mother is some talker. I 've heard her talk.

I heard her talk about Fan one day, and it made me sick. And then she talked about Bony, and it made me sicker.

I was sitting on the edge of our porch waiting for Swatty and Bony. I was tying a piece of salt pork on the bottom of my foot to keep from getting the “lockjaw, because I had stepped on a rusty nail, and I thought maybe I had better scrape some of the sand out of the nail hole before I put the pork on, so it would heal quicker, and I was scraping it out with my barlow knife. That's how I happened to be sitting on the edge of the porch; but Bony's mother and my mother were at the other end of the porch. So then Bony's mother said:

“No, I have never used a switch on my son. I have never struck him with my hand, nor has his father. We don't believe in it. We use moral suasion.” That means they jaw Bony. They corner him up somewhere and jaw him until he blubbers, the way the teachers jaw the girls when they get too big to paddle, and then Bony's mother blubbers and makes Bony kiss her and say that now he will be a better and truer boy and keep the Ten Commandments and not smoke com silk any more. Or whatever it is.

So my mother didn't say anything because when she thinks I need it she wales me good. Anyway, I'd rather be waled ten times a day than be moral-suasioned like Bony, and so would Swatty, and so would all the kids, and so would Bony. But my mother didn't say anything because Bony's mother was a caller and you don't fight with callers until after they've got you so perfectly exasperated you just have to speak your mind.

So Bony's mother said:

“Yes, indeed!” and she said it the way women say things when they 're being stylish. “Yes, indeed! the rod implants fear in the child, and we should rule by love. My child shall never know fear. The normal child never knows fear.”

Well, that's when I almost laughed out loud. Such a smarty, sitting there and letting on she knew anything about boys! Say, I guess she never was a boy! “Normal boys never know fear!” She must have thought she was in heaven, talking about kid angels and not about boys!

Boys are always afraid of something. Even Swatty used to be afraid of that old witch, Mrs. Groogs. We other boys used to go across the street from where she lived and holler:

“Old Mother Groogsy, oh! Lost her needle and couldn't sew! Old Mother Groogsy, oh! Lost her nee-dul and could-dent sew! Old Mu-uth-er Gur-roog-sy, oh! Lu-ost her nee-eedul and ku-uld-dent sew!”

And then we'd throw clods at her shanty until she came out with a stick or broom--mostly it was the cane she used to walk with--and then we'd all throw clods at her at once and run. It made her pretty mad. But Swatty made her maddest. He knew a German rhyme he could say pretty fast, and he'd say it and she would get so mad she would shake all over.

Well, one day when we were all sort of teasing her like that, and Swatty was with us, she came out with a sword. It was a horse soldier's sword, a saber, and it was so big she could hardly lift it, but she could with both hands, and she came right at us across the street, swinging it around her head. If it had hit us it would have killed us, but we ran. So after that whenever she came out she would have the sword, but we weren't afraid of her when we were together. It was when one of us alone had to go anywhere near her shanty. We wouldn't do it. We'd go 'round.

Well, she was one of the things we were afraid of, but the new street got her away from there. The new street went right through where her shanty was, so they tore the shanty down, and after that we weren't afraid of her any more, because she was gone.

So this day--it was Saturday--I was sitting on the porch fixing my foot when Swatty came over, like he said he would. Bony was with him, but he waited in the alley because he knew his mother was at my house. I got around the corner of the house without my mother seeing I was limping much, so she didn't call me back, and when we got to the alley Bony was there all right, with a shovel he had borrowed out of their coal bin while his mother wasn't home. It was to go ahead and make another room in our cave with. I could walk pretty good, but I had to walk on the toe end of one of my feet to keep the heel off the ground because the nail hole was in the palm of my foot. We got to our cave all right.

Our cave was a good one, it was the best one I ever saw anybody make. It was in the clay bank at the side of Squaw Creek up where there are no more Irish shanties or geese and where the creek bed is gravelly instead of sandy. We found the place one day when we were explorers, exploring the creek to its headwaters, only we stopped when we got to this place and turned pirates and began digging the cave. We didn't do much that day, but the next chance we got Swatty had us go up and dig again. We dug a little every time we went up until the hole was big enough for us all to get in, and then Swatty said we'd keep right on digging until it was big enough to live in.

That was what we thought of right at first, but we forgot it. We had had enough cave digging, I guess. Swatty said: “Aw, garsh! come on and make a good cave!” but we didn't want to. We wanted to smoke com silk and talk and be comfortable. So Swatty went outside and climbed up the bank; but pretty soon he came sliding down the bank. He made the silence sign and motioned us to come with him. He looked good and scared. So we all climbed up the bank and looked.

The grass and weeds came right to the edge of the bank and from the edge they stretched away over a big field. All around the field were trees, edging it in, but that wasn't what Swatty wanted us to see.

Away over in one corner of the field the Graveyard Gang was playing One Old Cat.

So that was where we were. The old Squaw Creek had turned and twisted until it went right into the part of the edge of town where the Graveyard Gang kids lived, and we had dug our cave right in a place where we had never dared to go. Gee, I was scared!

We were always scared of the Graveyard Gang. They had to come down to our school, and there were a lot of them and mostly bigger than we were and we generally fought after school, but it was only sometimes that they could catch us and mailer us, because we could throw clods at them and then skip into our yards where we lived, and they couldn't come after us. But what they always tried to do was to get some of us cornered off and chase us out toward the cemetery way. If they got us out there they could surround us and mailer the life out of us. And they would.

So me and Bony saw that our cave was a pretty good thing. If the Graveyard Gang got us cornered off and we had to run out their way they would think they had us, but we would just run and slide down to our cave and then we could fight them until they had enough or we had killed them all. So every day that we went to the cave we took up stones, and we dug and dug. It was a dandy cave. It was big enough to stand up in, and we made a stove out of old iron and made a hole up through the ceiling for the smoke to go out, and we had some potatoes and things so we could stand a long siege. We worked at it nearly all vacation. Swatty showed us how to make a door, and we made it and we painted the outside with wet clay so the door would look like the side of the bank but it didn't. It did some, but not much.

Well, when school began again we began having clod fights with the Graveyard Gang again and some of them were pretty tough fights. Once, Swatty said, when me and Bony wasn't with him some of the Graveyard kids cornered him off and chased him all the way out to their part of town, but he dodged and went behind some bushes and got to the cave and hid there until night, and they never found him. So we knew the cave was a good thing to have. So this day I'm telling about we went right up the creek to our cave and the minute we got there Swatty stopped short.

“Somebody has been here!” he said.

The door of the cave was busted in and was off one of its hinges. Our stove was all kicked over and the table we had made was busted down and everything we had was all kicked around. We guessed the Graveyard Gang had found us out, so Swatty and me and Bony went to work and fixed up the door and mended the stove. We didn't know when they would come back.

They came back quick enough. The first we heard was them talking at the top of the bank, and then all of them slid down. I guess they wanted to stop when they got to the cave mouth, but Swatty was in the door of the cave and he had his pockets full of our throwing stones, and he leaned out and let them have them. They yelled and slid right on down to the creek.

Bony began to cry.

Well, there were about twelve of the Graveyard Gang down there in the creek. They got together and talked about how they would get us and then they began throwing stones. I tried to help Swatty stone them, but the door was too narrow, and he told me to stay inside and hand him stones to throw. He threw as fast as he could and sometimes he hit a Graveyard kid and sometimes he missed, but one kid can't hardly throw against twelve, and pretty soon a stone hit Swatty on the forehead just on his eyebrow. He put up his hand to feel the place and another hit him on the crazy bone, and he came inside and lay down on the floor of the cave and hugged his elbow and rocked himself and groaned. I guess it hurt him pretty bad. Bony just stood and bellered: “Oh, I want to go home! I want to go home!”

I went to the door and began to throw stones, but I was so mad I couldn't aim straight. Swatty sat up and rocked himself and hugged his elbow.

“Shut the door!” he howled at me. “Come in and shut the door! Shut the door!”

So I did. I wasn't much afraid of being hit, but I knew the door shut right away, so I shut it. The minute it was shut the stones hit against it like hail. The Graveyard Gang cheered, but it didn't do them any good; the little throwing stones couldn't break the door and they couldn't throw big ones up that far.

In a little while Swatty was just rubbing his elbow and he got up and helped me brace the door shut with the shovel and things. His forehead was swelled up like an egg, but he didn't mind that.

“There!” he said. “This shows it was a good thing we have a cave,” and I guessed he was right. He went over and made Bony stop blubbering. He made him stop by telling him to hurry and build a fire in the stove because maybe we might have to stay there a week or even longer, and we'd have to cook potatoes to live on or else starve to death. So Bony forgot to cry and started to make a fire.

Between the boards of our door we could see out through the crack and we could see that the Graveyard Gang didn't know what to do next to get us. Once in a while they threw a stone or two but that didn't hurt us. And then they did the thing that chased us out.

I guess it was about five o'clock by then. We thought it was later because it was getting dark, but we couldn't see that there was a big storm coming up. It was coming up back of us and was hiding the sun. All at once there was thunder, and then the stove began to smoke out into the cave. Then the whole cave began to fill with smoke.

I coughed, and me and Bony thought the wind was blowing the smoke down the chimney, but Swatty went to the stove and kicked the top off and began scattering the wood and coals over the floor to put out the fire. Some of the Graveyard Gang had put something over the top of our chimney so that the smoke would come into the cave and smoke us out.

Well, that was all right. We kicked the fire out and that ought to have stopped the smoke but it didn't. The smoke came in worse than ever, and then Swatty knew what was the matter. The Graveyard Gang was filling our chimney with burning grass or straw or something and then stopping the top of the chimney so the smoke would come down into the cave.

The smoke got so thick we couldn't see and we couldn't breathe. Swatty looked out of the door cracks and there were eight or nine of the Graveyard Gang down there in the creek laying for us, but what could we do? We couldn't stay in the cave and be suffocated to death, could we? So what we had to do we had to do mighty quick.

Swatty threw open the cave door. He had picked up a stick and he sort of waved it over his head. Bony was blubbering again and I couldn't see very well for the smoke in my eyes, and neither could Swatty, I guess, but Swatty waved the stick and shouted:

“Come on, now!” he shouted. “We've got 'em surrounded! Charge 'em! We've got 'em now!”

Well, the Graveyard kids looked up at the top of the other bank and Swatty started to slide down the bank right at them, and me and Bony we started to slide down, and the Graveyard kids turned and ran up the creek. I guess they were scared that Swatty had seen a lot more of our kids coming. Anyway, they ran about half a block and then they saw there was just Swatty and Bony and me and that we were climbing up the other bank to get away, and they came for us.

We didn't have much of a start. We didn't know exactly where we were. We ran where the running was easiest, and pretty soon we came to a fence and climbed over and we were in a road. We turned and ran up the road, and the first of the Graveyard kids was piling over the fence already so we just let out our legs and ran! Even Bony stopped crying. He just turned white and scared-looking and ran. He ran so fast he ran in front of us and we could hardly keep up with him.

The whole Graveyard Gang was after us now, shouting and running and pretty soon we knew where we were--we were on the Four Mile Road because off in the distance we could see the big red building of the Poor Farm. We knew that building pretty well because it is one of the places we kept away from because they keep the crazy folks there. You never know when a crazy man will cut you open with a knife or something.

We didn't have time to think of that scare then, we were so scared of what would happen to us if the Graveyard kids caught us. I guess we didn't think of the Poor Farm crazy folks at all.

So pretty soon Bony began to drop back, and we caught up with him. It was thundering and lightning hard now and the wind was blowing the way it does just before a big storm--big whoofs that throw up the dust in thick waves and make the trees bend low down and shake the leaves out of them--and Bony was crying again. Swatty shouted at him, but we couldn't hear what he was saying, the wind and the thunder and trees made so much noise. I looked back and saw that the Graveyard kids were right after us and then--Bony fell down!

He didn't fall flat. He fell half and took half a step and then turned and fell sideways, and when he tried to get up he couldn't. I ran a little bit before I stopped, but Swatty stopped short and when I looked back he was trying to drag Bony up again. There was an awful flash of lightning, one of the kind you can't see for a minute after, and then a bang like a thousand cannon, only keener, and a big tree at the side of the road just split in two and one half fell across the road. I guess maybe I cried a little, but I didn't stop to do it; I ran back to Swatty and Bony and grabbed hold of Bony's other arm and helped Swatty drag him.

I don't know what happened to the Graveyard Gang. I guess they got scared of the storm and went home but we didn't think of that then, All we thought of was to get Bony away in a hurry. It was awful! The lightning and thunder were just glare, glare, glare! and bang, bang, bang! and no rest in between, and the wind was bending the trees almost down to the ground and holding them there stiff, not swaying. I was just bellering and yanking Bony by the arm and saying, “Oh, come on, Bony! Oh, come on, Bony!” over and over. Swatty was shouting at me all the time, but I couldn't tell what he was saying, but he pulled more at his arm of Bony than I pulled at mine, and then I saw he was taking him off the road, because there was a house right where we were and he wanted to get him to the house.

Just when we got Bony onto the porch of the house it began to rain. It didn't rain down, it rained straight across, like the lines on writing paper, and it didn't rain a little--it rained all the rain there ever was or will be, I guess. The rain came into that porch like water shot out of a fire hose nozzle, just swish-swash against the front of the house and then up to your ankles on the rotten floor of the porch. And then, when there was a white flash of lightning I saw where we were. We were on the porch of the Haunted House!

All the kids knew about the Haunted House. The way I knew about it was because we used to go out the Four Mile Road nutting and then we used to see it. Anybody would know it was a haunted house just by looking at it. The glass in the windows was all gone and boards, any old boards, were nailed across the windows, and the doors were either nailed up or broken in and hanging crooked on one hinge. The paint was all off and the chimneys had toppled over and the bricks and mortar were all scattered down the roof and some on the porch roof. The shingles were all curled up and there were bare patches where they had blown off.

It was a big house, two stories and a half, and there was a porch all across the front, but at one corner the porch post had rotted down so that the porch roof sagged almost to the floor there, and the rest of the roof was all skewish. The floor of the porch where we were was all dry-rotted and some of the boards were gone, and the grass and weeds grew up through the floor everywhere. The yard was all weeds, as high as a man, and tangled blackberry bushes, and at night, so Swatty and all the kids said, something white used to come to the windows and stand there, and you could hear moans. It was a haunted house all right. All the boys knew that and all the boys kept away from it. And there we were, right on the porch and the rain just drowning us.

“Come on, we got to get him inside,” Swatty said, and he took hold of Bony again.

I didn't want to. It was bad enough to be on the porch of a haunted house or anywhere near it, but the thunder and lightning and rain and wind and everything made all things kind of different than on other days. It wasn't like real; it was like dreams. It was like the end of the world, when you don't think what you do but just do it; and so I took hold of Bony and helped.

We got Bony to the front door and into the hall of the house. In there it was so black we couldn't see except when the lightning flashed, and then we couldn't see much. The rain was blowing in at the door and running down the hall. The old house shook and trembled. A brick or something rolled down the roof and thumped on the porch roof.