The Flight of Pony Baker | Page 2

MORNING" 144
"FRANK BAKER WAS ONE OF THOSE FELLOWS THAT EVERY
MOTHER WOULD FEEL HER BOY WAS SAFE WITH" 166
"'WHY, YOU AIN'T AFRAID, ARE YOU, PONY?'" 204

The Flight of Pony Baker

The Flight of Pony Baker
I
PONY'S MOTHER, AND WHY HE HAD A RIGHT TO RUN OFF
If there was any fellow in the Boy's Town fifty years ago who had a
good reason to run off it was Pony Baker. Pony was not his real name;
it was what the boys called him, because there were so many fellows
who had to be told apart, as Big Joe and Little Joe, and Big John and
Little John, and Big Bill and Little Bill, that they got tired of telling
boys apart that way; and after one of the boys called him Pony Baker,
so that you could know him from his cousin Frank Baker, nobody ever
called him anything else.
You would have known Pony from the other Frank Baker, anyway, if
you had seen them together, for the other Frank Baker was a tall, lank,
tow-headed boy, with a face so full of freckles that you could not have
put a pin-point between them, and large, bony hands that came a long
way out of his coat-sleeves; and the Frank Baker that I mean here was
little and dark and round, with a thick crop of black hair on his nice

head; and he had black eyes, and a smooth, swarthy face, without a
freckle on it. He was pretty well dressed in clothes that fitted him, and
his hands were small and plump. His legs were rather short, and he
walked and ran with quick, nipping steps, just like a pony; and you
would have thought of a pony when you looked at him, even if that had
not been his nickname.
[Illustration: "BEING DRESSED SO WELL WAS ONE OF THE
WORST THINGS THAT WAS DONE TO HIM BY HIS MOTHER"]
That very thing of his being dressed so well was one of the worst things
that was done to him by his mother, who was always disgracing him
before the other boys, though she may not have known it. She never
was willing to have him go barefoot, and if she could she would have
kept his shoes on him the whole summer; as it was, she did keep them
on till all the other boys had been barefoot so long that their soles were
as hard as horn; and they could walk on broken glass, or anything, and
had stumped the nails off their big toes, and had grass cuts under their
little ones, and yarn tied into them, before Pony Baker was allowed to
take his shoes off in the spring. He would have taken them off and gone
barefoot without his mother's knowing it, and many of the boys said
that he ought to do it; but then she would have found it out by the look
of his feet when he went to bed, and maybe told his father about it.
Very likely his father would not have cared so much; sometimes he
would ask Pony's mother why she did not turn the boy barefoot with
the other boys, and then she would ask Pony's father if he wanted the
child to take his death of cold; and that would hush him up, for Pony
once had a little brother that died.
Pony had nothing but sisters, after that, and this was another thing that
kept him from having a fair chance with the other fellows. His mother
wanted him to play with his sisters, and she did not care, or else she did
not know, that a girl-boy was about the meanest thing there was, and
that if you played with girls you could not help being a girl-boy. Pony
liked to play with his sisters well enough when there were no boys
around, but when there were his mother did not act as if she could not
see any difference. The girls themselves were not so bad, and they

often coaxed their mother to let him go off with the other boys, when
she would not have let him without. But even then, if it was going in
swimming, or fishing, or skating before the ice was very thick, she
would show that she thought he was too little to take care of himself,
and would make some big boy promise that he would look after Pony;
and all the time Pony would be gritting his teeth, he was so mad.
Once, when Pony stayed in swimming all day with a crowd of fellows,
she did about the worst thing she ever did; she came down to the
river-bank and stood there, and called to the boys,