“Now,” says Mark Tidd when we were on the train again, “I guess we kin
go to work l-l-lookin’ for George Piggins.”
“Somethin’ else is apt to happen,” says I. “You can’t never tell.”
“I guess ’most everything has h-happened,” says he. “There hain’t much
more left.” Then all of a sudden he give me a poke in the ribs and says,
“_Tod Nodder_.”
“Eh?” says I.
“Tod Nodder,” says he.
“What about him? Tod Nodder hain’t no reason for pokin’ me black and
blue.”
“Who was he always loafin’ around with?”
“Why, George Piggins!” says I.
“Never seen one without the other, did you?”
“Not that I know of.”
“Well?” says he.
“Well yourself,” says I, “and see how you like it.”
“I mean,” says he, “that if anybody in the world knows where George is,
the feller is Tod Nodder.”
“Maybe so, but what does that git _us_?”
“_If_ he knows where George is,” says Mark, “maybe we kin git
s-s-somethin’ out of him some way.”
“It’s worth t-tryin’,” says I.
“Anythin’s worth t-tryin’,” says he, “and everythin’s worth tryin’ when
you’re in the fix we’re in. For a spell we’ll leave Silas Doolittle Bugg
to run the mill. I guess he kin l-look after the manufacturin’ end with
what help we kin give, and put all our time on f-findin’ George. We know
Wiggamore’s l-lookin’ for him, and Wiggamore’s got money to look with.
He kin hire men to do his lookin’. All we got is us and what b-brains we
got.”
“Admittin’ we got any,” says I.
It was evening when we got home, but we got hold of Binney and Tallow
and told them what had happened and how we was going to get all the
freight-cars we needed; and we planned how we would meet next morning
early, and two of us would keep watch on Miss Piggins’s house and the
other two would lay for Tod Nodder. Mark and I were going after Nodder.
That left it so that if anything happened one of each couple could stay
to watch while the other went for help or to do any following that was
necessary. Mark said it would be a pretty good idea to keep an eye on
Wiggamore or any men that he had hanging around town.
That’s the way it turned out. Binney stayed to watch Miss Piggins.
Tallow went mogging after a strange man with fancy clothes that let on
he was a detective and was working for Wiggamore, and Mark and I went to
hunt up Tod Nodder.
You could ’most always tell where to find Tod. It was the place where
nobody would be like to come along and offer him a job. Tod was the kind
that always complained about not having work, and then took mighty good
care to hide somewheres where work couldn’t find him. Lazy! Whoo! Why,
he was so lazy when he fished he did it with a night line, and then he
hated to pull it in to take off the fish!
We stopped at the mill a minute, and Silas Doolittle come up to us, all
excited.
“Say,” says he, “somebody was monkeyin’ around this mill last night. I
was passin’ about nine o’clock and I seen a light. I come rushin’ right
down. It looked like the light was ’way up toward the roof. Well, I
busted right in and went rampagin’ up-stairs, and before I knowed I
rammed right into a feller on the stairs. He was comin’ down as fast as
I was goin’ up, and the way we come together would ’a’ made a railroad
accident jealous. He got the best of it, though, for he was a-comin’
down-stairs. Yes, sir. He lammed right into me and clean upset me so’s I
rolled all the way down, and doggone it if I didn’t leave about a peck
of skin on them steps. Then he trompled right over the top of me and
skedaddled. I couldn’t ketch him and I couldn’t find no harm he’d done.
But after this I calc’late I’ll sleep right here into this mill. That’s
what I’ll do, and if anybody comes fussin’ around I guess they’ll find
out they got Silas Doolittle Bugg to reckon with.”
“Mighty good idee,” says Mark. “Say, we got two freight-cars comin’ in
this m-mornin’. Git ’em loaded so’s they’ll ketch the noon freight.”
“Have to have help,” says Silas.
“Hire some of them grocery-store loafers to help,” says Mark. “Us
f-fellers has got somethin’ mighty important to look after.”
Well, Mark and I started out then to get our eyes on Tod Nodder and to
keep them on him. He wasn’t so easy to find as we thought he would be.
Maybe that was because there was a man in town trying to hire folks to
do some work on the railroad. Tod would hide away from such a man harder
than he would hide from a tribe of scalping Indians. He wasn’t at any of
the usual loafing-places, and at the livery-stable where he ’most
generally slept they said they hadn’t seen him since daylight. They said
he started off somewheres about four o’clock in the morning. Now when a
man like Tod Nodder goes somewheres at four o’clock in the morning there
are lots of things he _might_ go to do, but there hain’t but one thing
he’s very likely to go for, and that’s fish.
After we had rummaged all around and couldn’t come across him Mark says,
“Well, the s-s-skeezicks must’a’ gone f-f-fishin’.”
“Where?” says I.
“Tod’s one of these p-pickerel fishermen,” says Mark. “Seems like
pickerel and him is mighty fond of each other. So,” says he, “I
calc’late we better make for the bayou.”
The bayou was a kind of elbow of the Looking-glass River that flows into
the main river just below town. When the railroad came along they built
right across that elbow, shutting it off into a kind of a lake shaped
like a letter U, and the banks was mostly swampy and all overgrown with
underbrush. Seems like the pickerel was fond of hanging around in there,
and folks who knew how to fish was always hauling regular whoppers out
of there. There was places where the banks were high and where you could
take a long pole and fish right from the shore. We sort of figured Tod
would pick out one of those places if he was there, on account of its
being less work than to row out a boat.
Mark was always thinking ahead a little, so what does he do but go past
his house and stop for a lunch. He wasn’t going to be caught out in the
country somewheres without anything to eat, not if he knew himself. Then
we started off for the bayou, which wasn’t far. We started in at the
railroad on one end and just skirted the shore, keeping our eyes open
every inch of the way, and, sure enough, along about half-way around we
saw a bamboo fish-pole sticking out.
“Injuns,” says Mark Tidd.
“Where?” says I.
“Everywhere. All around us. They’re a r-r-raidin’ party gittin’ ready to
bust out on the town and scalp everybody and carry off the wimmin and
children. We got to creep up on ’em and f-f-find out their plans and
warn Wicksville.”
“I don’t understand no Injun language,” says I.
“I do,” says he. “I learned ’most all the Injun languages when I was a
captive among them some time back.”
“Um!” says I. “I forgot about that. Come to think of it, I was one of
them captives, too. I kin speak Choctaw and Hog Latin and a lot of them
languages myself.”
“Good!” says he. “Now cautious if you want to keep any hair g-g-growin’
on your head.”
We did pretty good. In ten minutes we was lying not a hundred foot from
Tod Nodder, and he hadn’t the least idea in the world that anybody was
within a mile of him. At that distance we could whisper without any
danger, so Mark leans over and says to me:
“Biggest war p-p-party I ever see,” says he. “They mean b-business. Look
at that war-paint.”
Tod was some smeared up, but most folks would have called it dirt. I
didn’t care, though. If Mark Tidd wanted it to be war-paint, why,
war-paint it was. We just laid there and watched and calc’lated how we
could save Wicksville from all those savages who weren’t there, and we
told each other what doggone brave and noble things we was going to do
till I got so I thought I was quite a fellow and Mark was all swelled up
like a toad that’s eaten too many flies.
All at once Mark grabbed my arm and says, “_Look!_”
I looked. Right past Tod Nodder, and about a hunderd feet away from him,
a man’s head was coming up slow over the top of a bush. We couldn’t see
him well enough to make out who he was, but we could see that he was
watching Tod mighty interested. He watched a few minutes and then pulled
down his head. Then we could see the bush move a little like he was
settling down comfortable behind it. But we couldn’t be sure. Maybe he
was crawling off.
“Now what d’you make of that?” I says.
“I don’t make n-nothin’ of it. It’s mysterious,” says Mark.
“S’pose he’s there yet, or did he sneak off?”
“Don’t know, but we ought to f-f-find out. How be you on climbin’,
Plunk?”
“When folks wants to teach a monkey to climb,” says I, “they fetch it to
me.”
“All right,” says he.
“Then suppose you slide b-back there and shin up that big h-hemlock.
Keep out of sight on the other side of the trunk. If you kin git ’way up
near the top you ought to be able to see down on top of that f-feller if
he’s still there.”
I went off quiet. I’ll bet I was so quiet Mark wouldn’t have known I
left if he hadn’t been watching me—like Uncas used to do. It wasn’t much
of a job to climb that tree, and pretty soon I was ’way up where I could
look down on all that part of the country. At first I had to kind of
search around with my eyes before I got my bearings. Then I made out
Mark Tidd, and started looking for the man. Sure enough, there he was
laying on his stomach and taking things as comfortable as he could. He
was settled there for the day, by the way things looked, and he was
watching Tod Nodder.
I stayed where I was because it was a good place to be. I felt kind of
high up and splendid, looking down onto the world. It give me a sort of
fine kind of a feeling that I liked.
All the time I kept looking around that patch of underbrush and little
trees to see if any other parties of Indians was coming along for
reinforcements. I could see plain from where I was, because I was so
high up I could look right down over the tops of bushes and everything.
Well, pretty soon I saw something that sort of interested me. It was
quite a ways behind the man, and I couldn’t make out what it was, but
there was a look about it that didn’t fit, somehow. You know what I
mean. Whatever it was looked as if it didn’t _belong_ where it was. I
kept watching it, and sometimes I thought it moved and sometimes I knew
it didn’t move. I couldn’t make up my mind which.
I couldn’t tell what the shape of it was, nor anything, but it looked
suspicious, so I kept right on watching it—and after a long time it
moved. Yes, sir, it moved plain from behind the bush that hid it and
toward the man. It was some kind of a human being, and he was up to
something. It took me some time to get it into my head what he was up
to, and then it dawned on me. He was watching the man that was spying on
Tod Nodder.
Now that was confusing as all-git-out. Here was a mysterious man spying
on Tod and a heap more mysterious person sneaking around to keep his eye
on the spy. I drew a long breath and looked farther back into the
underbrush, because you can’t tell what might happen. There might have
been somebody spying on that second spy, and another watching the third,
and so on. Why, there might have been a string of spies, each watching
the one in front of him, that stretched ’way around the earth!
I knew Mark Tidd would be a lot interested in this thing, so after I had
watched long enough to make sure those two were the only spies in sight,
I shinned down again careful and crept up to Mark. I did it so stealthy
that he didn’t know I was coming until I reached out and touched him,
and then he was that startled you wouldn’t believe.
“How’s that?” says I. “I’ll bet there hain’t an Injun could ’a’ stole up
any quieter.”
He didn’t say a thing for a minute, and then he tried to let on he
hadn’t been startled a bit.
“See him?” says he.
“Yes,” says I, “and that hain’t all. He’s there watchin’ Tod, and behind
him is somebody else watchin’ _him_.”
“Eh?” says Mark. “What’s that?”
“Sure as shootin’,” says I. “Somebody’s spyin’ on the man that’s spyin’
on Tod.”
“What d’you make of it?” says he.
“Nothin’,” says I, “but it does look to me like we was landed plumb in
the middle of somethin’ mighty mysterious.”
He sat quiet for a while, thinking and pinching his fat cheek and
jerking at his ear, but _he_ couldn’t make anything of it.
“It l-looks to me like the man that’s watchin’ Tod m-might be workin’
for Wiggamore. Maybe they’ve had b-brains enough to think Tod might lead
’em to George Piggins. But whoever in the world would be watchin’ the
spy is beyond me a mile. There hain’t no sense to it.”
“There’s somethin’ to it,” says I. “Nobody’s layin’ off there behind a
bush, bein’ et up by mosquitoes and havin’ ants crawl down his spine,
jest for fun. No, sirree; you can bet he’s got a reason.”
“Sure he’s got a reason,” says Mark, “and we got to f-find out what his
reason is; but I don’t see at this minute jest how we are goin’ about
it.”
“The only thing,” says I, “is to stick around here and keep our eyes on
Tod, and then to follow him wherever he goes. And see if these other
fellers follow him, too.”
“That’s right,” says Mark. “We’ll l-lay low and do just that. With all
them spies traipsin’ around the woods, it’s goin’ to be mighty hard to
follow Tod without gettin’ seen by some of ’em, but we kin do it.”
“You bet we kin,” says I. “Sich frontiersmen as you and me could come
mighty clost to crawlin’ into one of them feller’s pockets without their
knowin’ it. Anyhow, _I_ could. If you was to git into a man’s pocket,
the chances is he’d sense a leetle extry weight about him somewheres.”
“Huh!” says Mark. And then in a couple of minutes, “Let’s eat some
l-lunch.”