PART THREE
One day Mr. Allen said, "The people in Warrensburg were good to Boone when he was little. They recognized his talent and decided they should help him. When he was nine years old the townspeople got some money together and sent Boone off to study music at the St. Louis School for the Blind. The people in charge of the school were impressed by the way Boone could sit down at the piano and repeat exactly what other students played. He received a lot of music instruction that first year. The director of the school said, 'He's a genius', and started taking Boone home to perform for his guests. The second year, though, a new director came in who took Boone out of the music department and set him to weaving brooms. Boone didn't like that, so he started running away and hanging out on the streets of St. Louis, playing his harmonica for food. By his third year of school Boone became so unhappy that he ran away several times and finally got himself expelled."

"Then what happened?" I asked.

"Well, he bummed around St. Louis for awhile, too embarrassed to go home. He continued to play his harmonica on the street and he listened to the piano players in the Franklin Avenue and Morgan Street bars. Then he got homesick. He met a train conductor who let him ride back to Warrensburg for free. He always said he owed a lot to that conductor. The people back home forgave him for getting expelled, and he was happy for a while. Then he got kidnapped."

"Kidnapped?"

"Yes."

Mr. Allen let the way to the stove in the corner and added more coal to the fire. I sat down in a wooden chair and put my thin-soled slippers against the grate. I dug a notebook and a pencil out of my purse and started taking notes while Mr. Allen relaxed in another chair and once more took up the story.

"One day a white gambler by the name of Mark Cromwell passed through Warrensburg and heard Boone play at a fair. He kidnapped Boone and took him off across the state, making him play in saloons for money, which Cromwell used to stake his games. One night, right here in Columbia, Cromwell lost all his money in a game of chance to a man named Sam Reiter, and he ended up gambling off Boone, as well. Reiter took Boone home and locked him in an attic for three days. Finally he let Boone out for a breath of fresh air. Cromwell had been hanging around in the bushes and he managed to steal Boone back. He dressed Boone like a girl and fled town. Boone's stepfather, who had been searching for the boy, finally caught up with Cromwell and managed to rescue Boone and take him home."

On another day Mr. Allen told me how Boone got his big break.