The Cross Timbers by Edward Everett Dale

that was completed we had a good set of dominoes, which we used for a year or more. The game of authors we felt was not worth the trouble.
    Our playmates changed from time to time as farms were sold or renters moved away and new farmers took their places. The Clarks, like the poor, we “had with us always” but, while theysometimes played “town ball” or some other game with us, they were far from being our favorite comrades.
    Almost from the time we moved to the Cross Timbers farm the Brileys, already mentioned, were among our closest friends. When they came to see us on Sunday and spent the day we had a great deal of fun playing marbles or ball with their boys, Walter and Oscar. Sometimes we did not play games but roamed about the farm seeking wild berries. George was a year or so older than Walter and frequently played tricks on him and Oscar, in which I might be either an accessory or a fellow victim.
    On one occasion the four of us were in the orchard eating peaches when we were joined by Bill and Ben Clark. In the nearby garden grew a couple of rows of winter onions called “shallots.” George and I had discovered that by pinching off the tip of one of these onion blades and bruising an inch of that end we could make noises faintly resembling music by blowing through the hollow tube and striking the wilted end with a finger.
    I was diligently playing one of these “onion trumpets” when George suggested that he and the other boys put on an Indian dance. They joined hands and danced about in a circle emitting a few “yippees” to accompany my so-called music. When George proposed that they all close their eyes and dance, they readily agreed. They had not noticed a big bull nettle growing nearby until both Oscar and Ben Clark at the same instant gave two wild war whoops as they broke away from the circle of dancers and began to rub their bare feet and shins!
    Oscar Briley squalled easily, which only caused us to play more pranks on him than on other boys. We were playing “town ball”one morning and I still recall the momentary shocked look on his mother’s face when I rushed into the house, apparently much excited, and exclaimed, “Mrs. Briley, Oscar got hit in the back of the head with the ball and the bawl came out of his mouth!”
    On another Sunday when the Brileys were visiting us Oscar went in the house to look through a new book of pictures. While he was gone George and Walter got a spade and we hastily dug a hole about three feet long, a foot and a half wide, and a foot deep; we filled this with water and put some dry brittle sticks across it. We then laid dry leaves across these and carefully covered them with dirt. After sweeping the surplus earth away we had a neat, slightly raised plane three feet long and about eighteen inches wide.
    The work was barely finished when Oscar, having looked at all the pictures, came out to find us engaged in a jumping contest. We had drawn a line on the ground about as far from our booby trap as we thought Oscar could jump. As he came up George, Walter, and I in turn all jumped but all fell a little short of the goal.
    â€œI can beat that a lot,” bragged Oscar and proved it by squaring away and jumping entirely over the trap which we had so carefully laid. Evidently all was lost unless Oscar could be persuaded to jump from a line farther back, which might arouse his suspicions. George was equal to the emergency. “That’s fine, Oscar,” he said blandly, “but the one who jumps exactly on that raised place on the ground does a little better than if he jumps clear over it.” Because Oscar wanted to do as well as he could he jumped again and landed in the middle of the raised ground with disastrous results.
    My brother George’s crowning act of infamy came later when we were out at the cow lot and discovered a bird’s nest high up in a fairly tall tree. Walter was urged to climb up to see