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:

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.

We got Bony into a dry corner of the hall and let him sit on the floor and Swatty tried to feel Bony's leg to see if it was broken or what, and while he was doing that there came a big crash and the rain stopped coming in at the front door. It was the porch roof. It had blown down the rest of the way, shutting up the door and shutting us in. But we didn't know then that we were shut in. We were just frightened by the noise. We thought maybe the house had been struck by lightning.

Well, after that it was darker in the house than ever. We didn't get the light from the lightning through the door any more, and we only got it through the cracks between the boards at the windows. We just stood there, me and Swatty, and Bony on the floor, and listened to the storm and the water swashing against the house and to the old house creaking and grating, and Bony moaned over his ankle and cried because of everything. I was just plain scared. I just stood and got more and more scared. I tried to listen whether the creaking and grating was the house or ghosts, and I listened so hard my ears seemed to reach out. I didn't dare to breathe. Pretty soon I was too scared for any use. I said, “Swatty!”

“What?” he answered back.

“I'm scared,” I said.

Well, then Bony began to beller loud.

“Aw, shut up!” Swatty told him. “I'm scared, too, ain't I? Feel my wrist,” he says to me, “it's all goose flesh, ain't it? That's how scared I am, but it don't do any good to beller about it.”

So we just stayed there. Bony held on to Swatty's ankle with one hand and I sort of edged over so I was close to Swatty, and we just waited, because that was all there was to do. So after a while the storm let up. It rained a little yet, but the thunder and lightning stopped. The wind blew some, but not so much. It was pretty dark in the house. We knew it must be getting toward night.

“I guess we can go now,” Swatty said, and I was glad of it. We boosted Bony up so he could hobble on one leg between us and we went to the front door. Well, we couldn't get out!

And that wasn't the worst of it; every other way out was boarded up! We went all around the first floor and tried all the windows and the back door and they were all boarded up. We were fastened tight into the Haunted House.

It was pretty bad going into the dark rooms, one after another, not knowing whether something would jump out at you, and I guess me and Bony wouldn't have done it if Swatty hadn't made us. But there wasn't any way out, and that wasn't the worst. There wasn't even a little piece of board to pry the boards off the windows. There, wasn't a loose brick or anything. Nothing but dust, and maybe a couple of pieces of paper.

“What'll we do?” I asked, awfully scared. “Garsh! I don't know!” Swatty said. “We got to get out somehow. We'll starve to death here if we don't. We got to get something to pry off a board from a window.”

Well, there wasn't anything to pry one off with. Not down where we were. So Swatty said, all of a sudden:

“Come on! I'm going to see if there's anything we can get upstairs.”

“Aw, no, Swatty!” I begged. “Don't go up there! I don't want to go up!”

“Well, you don't have to, do you?” he said. “I didn't ask you to. I said I was going.”

So he went alone, and I stayed down with Bony. We were all alone in the dark down there and Swatty went up the stairs. He went up a step at a time and then stopped and listened, and then he went up another step and listened. Pretty soon he got to the top of the stairs and then we heard him going from one room to smother and feeling with his foot for a board or something that would do to pry our way out. Then we didn't hear him for a minute, I guess.

Pretty soon he came to the head of the stairs. He leaned over the balusters.

“Hey! George! Come on up,” he said in a whisper. “There ain't nothing up here. I want to go up in the attic.”

Bony wouldn't go. Swatty had to come down and talk to him like a Dutch uncle and tell him what he thought of him, and then he blubbered while we were helping him up the stairs. He said it was all right for us to go up because if anything—he didn't say a ghost, because he was afraid to, but that was what he meant—jumped out at us we could run, but he couldn't because his ankle was sprained. But we got him up all right.

We got him up and I stayed with him at the head of the stairs, and Swatty went and opened the attic stair door. He opened it, and then he stood there a second. Even where I was I could hear it. It was like a groan—like a long, sick sort of groan—and it was from up there in the attic. I turned so stiff and cold I couldn't open or shut my lips. I couldn't breathe. I was like ice, numb and cold all over except my hair pulled upward all over my head. A ghost could have come and put its cold hand on me and I couldn't have moved.

“Oh! Oh—!” came that long moan from up in the attic. Bony stood up, and his ankle gave way and he fell down the stairs—all the way to the bottom.

He stayed there, just calling out, “Swatty, Swatty!” over and over.

It was dark there now, dead dark. All at once I screamed. Something had touched me on the arm.

“Aw, shut up!” Swatty said, because it was Swatty that had touched me. “Shut up and don't be a baby! I've got to go up there, and you've got to go up with me.”

“Why?”

“Because I don't want to go up there alone,” he said. “That's why if you want to know.”

“What do you want to go up for, anyway?”

“Well, you won't go up alone, will you? And Bony won't go up alone, will he? Somebody's got to go up and see if there's anything up there we can pry our way out with. Come on! That noise ain't nothin' but the wind, or maybe an owl, or something else.” So I had to go. I made Swatty go first, and he went up the attic stairs real slow, and I didn't crowd him any, you bet! At the top of the stairs he stopped short. So I stopped short.

“What's the matter?” I whispered. Swatty stood still.

“There's something up here or somebody—something alive,” he whispered back in terror.

And there was! Between the moans I could hear it breathe, a long breath, like “Ah-ah!” So the next thing I knew I was down two flights of stairs at the front door, trying to scratch my way through the porch roof with my finger nails, and Bony was hanging onto my legs, and we were both scared stiff. I guess it wasn't so long after we heard something breathe in the attic, about a second after, maybe. And I couldn't scratch my way out. So I began to yell: “Swatty! Oh, Swatty! Come here; why don't you come here? Oh, Swatty, come!” And Bony yelled too. We both did. I guess we both cried, we were so scared and frightened and afraid. Shut in a haunted house like that and something moaning and breathing in the attic! Anybody would be scared. Anybody but Swatty.

Afterward, the next time we got together after Bony's ankle was well and after the manager of the Poor Farm had given us each a watch and chain for what we did, Swatty said he wasn't scared when he heard the groaner breathe, because he had heard his folks's cow when it had the colic, and that was the way the cow groaned and breathed when it had it. Anyway, when I ran away from him and left him alone he stood and listened, and then he went up the last step and listened again. It was black up there. So he said, “Who's there?” and waited and the groaning kept on. So he walked right over toward where the groaning kept coming from. He walked slowly, pushing one foot ahead of him and holding out both hands, because the floor might not be all there, and all at once his foot hit something hard and cold. He was barefoot, like all of us.

It might have been a snake. It might have been anything, for all Swatty knew, but he bent down and felt it with his hand. I wouldn't have done it for a million dollars, and Bony wouldn't have done it for ten million dollars! No, sir! So at first Swatty thought it was an old scythe blade somebody had left there, and he was mighty glad anyway, because it would do to pry the boards off a window and let us out, but when he tried to pick it up it was held onto.

Well, I guess I might as well say it right out. It was a sword, and it was Mrs. Groogs's sword, and it was old Mrs. Groogs that was holding onto the other end of the sword and lying there and groaning and breathing! It was her son's sword, and he had been killed in the war Grant and Lincoln and Swatty's father had been in, and when she ran away from the Poor Farm and they couldn't find out where she had gone, that was all she took and that was where she went to die—there in the attic of the Haunted House. She went there because she was kind of crazy and thought the mother of a son that had died for his country oughtn't to die in the Poor House. But she didn't die in it, either, because the Woman's Relief Corps rented a room for her and the city gave her Outside Support again.

So if it hadn't been for us Mrs. Groogs would have starved to death in the Haunted House, and if it hadn't been for her and her sword maybe we would have starved to death in it. So I guess it was all right.

So that time none of us got licked when we got home. Swatty didn't because his father was a G.A.R. and Mrs. Groogs was a G.A.R.-ess, and I didn't because my folks were glad I hadn't been struck by lightning, and Bony didn't because his folks were moral suasion. They jawed him.