Democratic Sentinel, Volume 7, Number 42, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 November 1883 — THE BAD BOY. [ARTICLE]

THE BAD BOY.

“Well, how is my little angel without wings, to-day?” asked the grocery man of the bad boy, as he came in with red paint sticking to his ears, and blue paint around his eyes and nose, which looked as though a feeble attempt had been made to wash it off, while a rooster feather stuck through his hat, and a bead moccasin was on one foot and a lubber shoe on the other. “Oh, lam all bushoo. Bnshoo, that is Indian. lam on the war-path, and lam no angel this week. This is my week off. It beats all, don’t it, how different a fellow feels at different times, for the last two weeks I have been so good that it made me fairly ache, and since that Buffalo Bill show was here, with the Indians, and buffaloes, and cow-boys, and steers, I am all broke up. We have had the worst time over to our house that ever was. You see, all of us boys in the neighborhood wanted to have a Buffalo Bill show, and pa gave us permission to use the back yard, and lie-said he would come out and help us. You know that Boston girl that was visiting at our house, with the glasses on? Well, she went home the next day. She says this climate is too wild for her. You see, we boys all fixed as Indians, and we laid for some one to come out of the house, to scalp, the way they do in the show. We heard a rustle of female garments, and we all hid, and when the Boston girl came out to pick some pansies in ma’s flower-bed, we captured her. You never see a girl so astonished as she was. We yelled ‘yip-yip’ and I took hold of one of her hands and my chum took hold of the other, and her bangs raised right up, and her glasses fell off and she said ‘Oh, yon howwid things.” We took her to our lair in the hen house and tied her to a tin rain water conductor that came down by the comer of the bam, and then we danced a war dance around her, and yelled ‘ki-yi,’ until she perspired. I took my tomahawk and lifted her hair and hung it on the chicken roost, and then I made a speech to her in Indian. I said, ‘The pale faced maiden from the rising sun is in the hands of the Apaches, and they yearn for gore. Her brothers and fathers and uncles, the Indian agents, have robbed the children of the forest of their army blankets and canned lobster, and the red man must be avenged. But we will not harm the prefty white maiden except to burn her to the stake. What has she to say? Will she give' the red men taffy, or will she burn ?’ Just then pa came out with a cistern pole, and he rescued the white maiden, and said we musn’t be so rough. Then the girl said she would give us all the taffy we wanted, and she went in and she and ma watched us from the back window. Pa he watched us rob a coach and he said it was first rate. The man that collects the ashes from the alley, with a horse and wagon, he had just loaded up, and got on the wagon, when two of my Indians took the horse by the bits, and four of us mounted the wagon and robbed the driver of a clay pipe and a pocket comb, and a knife, but he saved his ashes by promising never to reveal the names of the robbers. Pa just laughed, when we gave the ash man back his knife and things, and said he hadn’t had so much fun in a long time. Then we were going to lasso a wild Texas steer, and ride it, the way they did in the show, and pa said that was where he came in handy. He said he could throw a lasso just like a cowboy. We got my chum’s pa’s cow out of the barn, and drove hpr up the alley, and pa stood there with a clothes line, with a big noose in the end, and he headed off the cow and threw the lasso. Well, you’d a dicle to see pa 3weep things out of the alley with his pants. The cow was sort of scared when we drove her up the alley, cause I guess she thought it was time she was milked, and when pa stepped out from behind the barrel and throwed the rope around her neck, I guess she thought it was all day with her, for she turned and galloped, and kicked up and bellered, and pa did not know enough to let go of the rope. First pa followed the cow down the alley sitting down, and about a bushel of ashes got up hia trowsers legs, and the tomato cans, and old oyster cans flew around like a cyclone was blowing. Us Injins climbed up on the fence to get out of the way, and that scared the cow more, and she snatched pa alonsr too quick. I yelled to pa to let go of the rope, and just as the cow drawed him under a wagon he let go, and the cow took the clothes line home. Pa get up and shook the ashes out of his trowsers legs and picked up a piece of board and started back. You never saw a tribe of Indians get scared so quick as we did. As I went in the hen coop and got under a barrel I heard pa say ‘That busts up the Buffalo Bill business. No more wild Western steer lassoing for your Uncle Ike.’ Well, no one was to blame but pa. He thinks he can do everything, and when he tries and gets tangled, lie lays it to me. We went <sut on the street with our tomahawks, when pa went in to brush himself, and disbanded, and went on to our reservation, and peace reigns, and the Boston girl lias gone home with an idea that we are all heathen out West. “1 should think your pa would learn, after a while, that he was too old to fool around as he did when he was a boy,” said the grocery man, as he got away from the boy for fear he would be scalped. “That’s what I told him when he wanted to try my bicycle,” said the boy, as he broke out laughing. “He saw me riding the bicycle, and he said he could do it as well as I could, if he could ouce get on, but he couldn’t spring upon it quite as spry as he used to, and wanted me and my chum to hold it while he got on. I told him he would get hurt, Jrat he said there couldn’t any boy tell him anything about riding, and so we got the bicycle up against a shade tree, and he put his feet on the treadles and told us to turn her loose. Well, honest, I shut my eyes ’cause I didn’t want to see pa tied up in a knot. But he did. He pushed with one foot, and the bicycle turned sideways then he pushed with the other foot, and it began to wiggle, and then he pushed with both feet, and pulled on the handles, and the front wheel struck an iron fence, and as pa went on top of the fence the hind wheel seemed to

rear up and kick bun, and pa hung t* the fence and the bicycle hung to him, and they both went down on the sidewalk, the big wheel on pa’s stomach, one handle up his trouser’s leg, the other handle down his coat-collar, and the other wheel rolling around back and forth over his fingers, and he yelling to us to take it off. I never saw two people tangled up the way pa and the bicycle was, and we had to take jt apart, and take pa’s coat off and roll up his pants to get him out. And when he got up and shook himself to see if he was all there, and looked at it as thongh he didn’t know it was loaded, and looked at me and then at my chum in a sort of a nervous way, and looked around and scringed as thongh he expected the bicyciewas going to sneak up behind him and kick him again, he wanted me to go and get the ax to break the bicycle up with, and when I laughed he was going to take me by the neck and maul the bicycle, but I reasoned him out of it. I wasn’t to blame for liis trying to gallop over an iron picket fence with a bicycle, ’cause I told him he better keep off of it. I think if men would take advice from boys oftener they wouldn’t be so apt to get their suspenders caught on an iron picket fence and have to be picked up in a basket. But there is no use of us boys telling a grown person anything, and by keeping still and letting them break their bones, we save getting kicked. It would do some men good te be boys all their lives, then they wouldn’t have to imitate. Hello, there goes the police patrol wagon, and I am going to see how it rides on the back step, ” and the boy went out and jumped on the hind end of the wagon, and then picked himself up out of the mud and felt of his head where the policeman’s club dropped on it. — Peck's Sun.