Adventures of Col. Daniel Boone | Page 7

But I warn't comfortable long,
because I happened to think of something. I knowed mighty well that a
drownded man don't float on his back, but on his face. So I knowed,

then, that this warn't pap, but a woman dressed up in a man's clothes.
So I was uncomfortable again. I judged the old man would turn up
again by and by, though I wished he wouldn't.
We played robber now and then about a month, and then I resigned. All
the boys did. We hadn't robbed nobody, hadn't killed any people, but
only just pretended. We used to hop out of the woods and go charging
down on hog-drivers and women in carts taking garden stuff to market,
but we never hived any of them. Tom Sawyer called the hogs "ingots,"
and he called the turnips and stuff "julery," and we would go to the
cave and powwow over what we had done, and how many people we
had killed and marked. But I couldn't see no profit in it. One time Tom
sent a boy to run about town with a blazing stick, which he called a
slogan (which was the sign for the Gang to get together), and then he
said he had got secret news by his spies that next day a whole parcel of
Spanish merchants and rich A-rabs was going to camp in Cave Hollow
with two hundred elephants, and six hundred camels, and over a
thousand "sumter" mules, all loaded down with di'monds, and they
didn't have only a guard of four hundred soldiers, and so we would lay
in ambuscade, as he called it, and kill the lot and scoop the things. He
said we must slick up our swords and guns, and get ready. He never
could go after even a turnip- cart but he must have the swords and guns
all scoured up for it, though they was only lath and broomsticks, and
you might scour at them till you rotted, and then they warn't worth a
mouthful of ashes more than what they was before. I didn't believe we
could lick such a crowd of Spaniards and A-rabs, but I wanted to see
the camels and elephants, so I was on hand next day, Saturday, in the
ambuscade; and when we got the word we rushed out of the woods and
down the hill. But there warn't no Spaniards and A-rabs, and there
warn't no camels nor no elephants. It warn't anything but a
Sunday-school picnic, and only a primer-class at that. We busted it up,
and chased the children up the hollow; but we never got anything but
some doughnuts and jam, though Ben Rogers got a rag doll, and Jo
Harper got a hymn-book and a tract; and then the teacher charged in,
and made us drop everything and cut. I didn't see no di'monds, and I
told Tom Sawyer so. He said there was loads of them there, anyway;
and he said there was A-rabs there, too, and elephants and things. I said,

why couldn't we see them, then? He said if I warn't so ignorant, but had
read a book called Don Quixote, I would know without asking. He said
it was all done by enchantment. He said there was hundreds of soldiers
there, and elephants and treasure, and so on, but we had enemies which
he called magicians; and they had turned the whole thing into an infant
Sunday-school, just out of spite. I said, all right; then the thing for us to
do was to go for the magicians. Tom Sawyer said I was a numskull.
"Why," said he, "a magician could call up a lot of genies, and they
would hash you up like nothing before you could say Jack Robinson.
They are as tall as a tree and as big around as a church."
"Well," I says, "s'pose we got some genies to help US--can't we lick the
other crowd then?"
"How you going to get them?"
"I don't know. How do THEY get them?"
"Why, they rub an old tin lamp or an iron ring, and then the genies
come tearing in, with the thunder and lightning a-ripping around and
the smoke a-rolling, and everything they're told to do they up and do it.
They don't think nothing of pulling a shot-tower up by the roots, and
belting a Sunday-school superintendent over the head with it--or any
other man."
"Who makes them tear around so?"
"Why, whoever rubs the lamp or the ring. They belong to whoever rubs
the lamp or the ring, and they've got to do whatever he says. If he tells
them to build a palace forty miles long out of di'monds, and fill it full
of chewing-gum, or whatever you want, and fetch an emperor's
daughter from