Audubon County journal. (Exira, Iowa) 1884-1993, 1909-01-07
T ] Fl 6 BOY WHO
RAN AWAY
a Story That Turned Out
the Other Way.

L
that, but he didn't care for home any
more
Anyhow, he figured it that his folks,
namely his father and mother, were
, handing it out to him pretty hard
They declined TO permit him to play
with the gang. They interfered with
him in lots of ways.
Consequently, after giving the mat
ter due and proper thought the boy
decided that there was but one thing
for him to do and that was to run
away.
Away from home. he felt he would
be able to indulge in his natural pro-
pensities without let or hindrance
Now, his most natural propensity,
as it seemed to him, was for the
robblng of trains-far western trains.
The boy had a profound feeling that
he was modelled, cut out, fashioned,
devised and intended by nature to be
| the greatest robber of trains that ever
crawled over the tender of an engine
and put the engineer and fireman I'M
der sawed off shotgun filled with
| slugs
He felt, too, that his folks would be
liable to thwart such an ambition on
his part were he to mention it to
them.
He figured, therefore, that in view
OF these considerations the only prop
er thing for him to do was to get his
! few things together and beat it. He
had read many pieces of tiction-all
OF the fiction, however, as he under.
| stood, founded upon fact-which re-
| lated how famous train robbers had
started off upon their distinguished
careers by running away from home
| just as he meant to do, and HON some
| thing always turned up pretty soon TO
| put them in way of achieving
mastery OF their chosen profession
| And so the boy, working very Sc
cretly and deliberately, gathered to-s
| gether all his little possessions andA
wrapped them UP in a big silk muf-
tler belonging to his father. There;
wasn't much TO be packed in the NUT
| Her, but still he didn't elect to leaves
his few little possessions behind, since
he was very certain that he would not
return TO his boyhood home for many, |
many years, if ever.
| 1t was a beautiful moonlit night
when he decided to make the Jump /
He went to bed, or pretended to go to-
bed, and waited for his parents and
| grown-up brothers and sisters to turn
in. Then with his little bundle slung
over his shoulder at the end of a stout
stick he softly stole down the stairs,
opened the front door noiselessly, tip
toed out after closing the door, and,
reaching the front gate, turned to gaze,
as he felt, upon the home of his youth
for the last, last time
He made directly for the freight
depot at the other end OF the town,
his idea being that, as he had often
read in connection with other runaway
heroes, he might be able to catch an
outgoing freight train AS there
wasn't any outgoing freight train that
night, daylight found him still hang
ing around the freight yard
BY this time he was pretty hungry,
and he thought of the usual ham and
eggs and hot mullins and things that
nee been accustomed to eat for break
fast. Somehow in the clear, sunny
light of morning it looked heap more
difficult to get start as a train rob-
Der than it had seemed while he was
planning the great expedition. He
stood and watched the freight hands
making themselves some coffee on
little stove in a signaling shack, and
h11y, hoo
and he thought of the nice clean table
cloth and
However, just minute. Just one
minute
Here is the spot swhere it is Gus
tomary to get in swift climactic ac-
ton.
1t is the usual thing to narrate how
the hungry would be runaway boy who
4 hankered to be train robber fiz-
zled out in his desire as he thought
about the home grub, and how he be-
gan to whimper around the freight
yard, and how two or three kindly
grlzzled freight yard hands asked him
what was chewin on him, and how
they finally got his story out of him,
~
him to beat it for home and paw and
NAV just as fast as he could go, and
how he, of course, hated to go home,
because he didn't know how he was
going to square things for having re-
NAMED out all nighs, but how, event
ually, he became so dad blasted hun.
cry that he had to just nachully aban-
don all thought of becoming a train
robber, and how he SUNK into the al
ley back of his home after dark, and
how he got nailed by his dad as he
tried to nudge through the kitchen
door, and how his dad got out the old
trunk strap and whaled him good and
plenty, and how that eternally killed
his ambition to become train robber,
land
Well and all like hathaway, a lot
of it, always and infallibly just like
that.
But it didn't break that way at