ike a dare than anything else, for when Jim Leonard
said he knew a watermelon patch that the owner had no use for, the other
boys dared him to tell where it was. He wagged his head, and said that he
knew, and then they dared him to tell whose patch it was; and all at once
he said it was Bunty Williams's, and dared them to come and get the melons
with him. None of the boys in the Boy's Town would take a dare, and so
they set off with Jim Leonard, one sunny Saturday morning in September.

Some of the boys had their arms round one another's necks, talking as loud
as they could into one another's faces, and some whooping and holloing,
and playing Indian, and some throwing stones and scaring cats. They had
nearly as many dogs as there were boys, and there were pretty nearly all
the boys in the neighborhood. There seemed to be thirty or forty of them,
they talked so loud and ran round so, but perhaps there were only ten or
eleven. Hen Billard was along, and so were Piccolo Wright and Archie
Hawkins, and then a great lot of little fellows.

Pony Baker was not quite a little fellow in age; and there was something
about him that always made the big boys let him go with their crowd. But
now, when they passed Pony's gate and his mother saw them, and because it
was such a warm morning and she thought they might be going down to the
river and called out to him, "You mustn't go in swimming, Pony, dear;
you'll get the ague," they began to mock Pony as soon as they got by, and
to hollo, "No, Pony, dear! You mustn't get the ague. Keep out of the water
if you don't want your teeth to rattle, Pony, dear!"

This made Pony so mad that he began to cry and try to fight them, and they
all formed in a ring round him and danced and whooped till he broke
through and started home. Then they ran after him and coaxed him not to do
it, and said that they were just in fun. After that they used Pony
first-rate, and he kept on with them.

Jim Leonard was at the head, walking along and holloing to the fellows to
hurry up. They had to wade the river, and he was showing off how he could
hop, skip, and jump through, when he stepped on a slippery stone and sat
down in the water and made the fellows laugh. But they acted first-rate
with him when they got across; they helped him to take off his trousers
and wring them out, and they wrung them so hard that they tore them a
little, but they were a little torn already; and they wrung them so dry
that he said th