I have to tell you from hearsay what happened to Mark Tidd and Sammy
while I was being chased. I’ve heard it all so many times I can see
it, and if I’m not careful to remember I almost get to believing I
was there and taking part in the things that happened.
When I left Mark and Sammy to go around and shoot pebbles at the
bell they crept up to the fence on the east side of the house and,
Mark says, waited for an opportunity to come along. They heard me
whang the bell a couple of times, and then the racket that started
when Batten and Bill began chasing me.
“Sammy,” says Mark, “run quick and see what’s the matter.”
Sam ducked around in front and then came running back, all excited.
“Men chase Tallow!” he said. “He run! They run! Not catch him, I
guess.”
They could see old man Willis out behind the house dancing up and
down and capering around, but not offering to join in the chase
after me. He was pretty nearly over to the opposite fence. The house
was all alone.
“Opportunity,” says Mark to himself. “He said it would come.” Then
he turned to Sammy. “Over the fence,” he whispered. “Git through
that winder and git the engine that’s in there. Understand? It’s
heavy, but you g-g-got to carry it down to the boat. Quick!”
Sammy jumped over the fence and ran to the house, with Mark
following as fast as he could. It didn’t take any kind of a whack to
knock the screen out of the window; and Sammy crawled in, grinning
and happy as though he was playing some sort of a game, which I
suppose he thought he was.
The engine stood right in the middle of the floor, and he stooped to
lift it. First he couldn’t get a good hold, but he tipped up one end
and got his fingers under, and then got a grip some way with the
other hand, and lifted.
Mark says he never saw anything like it in his life. Sammy had a
thin kind of a shirt on, and it drew tight across his back and arms
so Mark could see the muscles come up in big bunches and knots and
rolls. Sammy lifted so hard the muscles seemed like they were going
to snap. He bent his knees and got his legs and back into it, and up
came the engine from the floor. It seemed like an hour to Mark, but
most probably it wasn’t a whole minute. Sammy staggered to the
window and rested the turbine on the sill. There was just room for
him to squeeze by and jump outside while Mark steadied it for him.
“Hurry!” panted Mark. “Hurry!”
Sammy tipped the engine so it slid down into his arms, while Mark
grabbed one side so it wouldn’t topple over. It was a whopping heavy
thing, and Sammy grunted when he got the full weight of it; but he
braced himself firmly, using all his strength, and there he was.
“Down to the boat!” stuttered Mark. “Quick!”
Sammy couldn’t go very fast with all that turbine to carry, and Mark
wasn’t much good to help. He was so fat he couldn’t get close enough
without getting in the way, so he just trotted alongside and held
her steady. Sammy panted and puffed and grunted and staggered, but
they got along smooth for maybe fifty feet. They were just going to
turn in among the evergreen trees, where they would be safe as far
as old Willis was concerned, when what should the old man do but
come poking around the back of the house!
[Illustration: SAMMY GRUNTED WHEN HE GOT THE FULL WEIGHT OF IT]
His eyes lighted on them right off, and he let a holler out of him
that ’most split their ears, and stood there shaking his fist and
dancing up and down like he was on the end of a rubber. Mark wasn’t
worried much about him because he knew he wouldn’t dare do anything,
but he _was_ worried about the racket, for it was sure to bring
Batten and Bill down onto him. He couldn’t do a thing, though, but
urged Sammy to hurry, which Sammy did the best he could. It was
mighty slow going and seemed a lot slower than it was.
Old Willis followed as close behind as he dared, yelling all the
time at the top of his voice; but they got to the top of the bank,
and in a couple of minutes they were in the boat and all right. But
Mark looked down the road and saw Batten and Bill coming pell-mell,
looking as though they meant business. This time neither of the men
that had been chasing me bothered about yelling. There was more
important business now than catching a kid that had been playing a
joke on them, so they saved their breath and put all their attention
to getting where they wanted to be as soon as they could.
Sammy started down the steps, and like to have broken his neck, but
he managed to keep his feet and make the boat. It is a pretty hard
thing to get a heavy machine down easy, and Sammy wasn’t used to
handling heavy things very much. When he went to lower the turbine
it slipped out of his hands and went whang onto the bottom of the
boat. They didn’t have time to see if any damage was done, though
they did hear a board split, but just dug in their oars and started
out through the cut. Mark had time and presence of mind to grab one
oar out of Willis’s boat so they couldn’t make very good time
chasing them, and off they went.
They weren’t more than half-way out of the cut before Batten and
Bill were at the foot of the steps bellowing and threatening. Mark
said it made him grin to see how mad they were, and how helpless.
And right then Mark and Sammy heard me a-yelling to the top of my
voice and saw me come plunging into the marsh like I was a regular
frog. Batten and Bill tried that, too, but right where they were was
a bad hole, and it was so mushy and wet they sank in to their hips
and had to go back. I had better luck, like I told you. Then Batten
ran off up the steps, and we didn’t see him for quite a while, but
it turned out he’d gone after another oar.
Sammy had the oars, of course, and he rowed like all get out. We
went pretty fast, and the current helped us, but we hadn’t got more
than what you might call a healthy lead before the nose of Willis’s
boat came poking out of the cut, and in another minute it was
skimming down-stream as fast as Bill could shove it.
When we were almost to the island I felt my feet getting wet, and
when I got to investigating I found that there was an inch of water
in the boat. When Sammy dropped the turbine it had knocked a hole in
her bottom, and she was filling as quickly as a boat could be
reasonably expected to, and there we were in a pretty bad pickle.
Mark saw it the same time I did.
“Boat’s s-s-sinkin’, Sammy!” he stuttered. “What we goin’ to do?”
Sammy kept right on rowing as fast as he could, and said never a
word. “Looks like he’s tryin’ to think,” says Mark, and I guess
thinking was more hard work for Sammy than carrying the turbine. But
he did it all right—got an idea, and it tickled him so he grinned
the widest grin I ever saw on his face.
“We row fast—hide—Sammy know place. Hide boat, hide engine, hide you
and me, eh? Good thing. Bad man can’t find us. Sammy knows.”
I said to myself that it would be mighty lucky for us if Sammy did
know, but there wasn’t a thing we could do but wait to find out.
The other boat wasn’t gaining any; but if our boat should sink, why,
there would be an end of the whole thing. And she was getting fuller
and fuller every minute. It seemed like an hour before we rounded
the head of the island and were out of sight of the men who were
chasing us; and then Sammy rowed faster than ever more than half the
way to the other end, when, all of a sudden, he turned toward shore
and rowed through a mess of weeds and little willows into a sort of
bayou, all surrounded by swampy ground, but with a couple of big
willows with droopy branches growing right at the edge of the water.
Sammy made for one of these and pushed the boat right through the
leaves. Mark and I almost hollered, we was so relieved, for back
under that tree was plenty of room for the boat, and the growing
things were so dense all around that no one could see them from the
shore or from the bayou if they found their way in.
“F-f-fine,” says Mark; and he patted Sammy on the shoulder.
That tickled Sammy, and he grinned again as wide as before.
But being pleased with the place didn’t keep the water from coming
through the bottom of the boat, and she was settling and settling.
Sammy jumped out up to his knees and grabbed hold of the bow. It
wasn’t any job at all to haul her up on the mud so she couldn’t sink
any farther, and that part of it was all right. We noticed that
Sammy didn’t take any more time about it than was necessary, and
scrambled into the boat about as quick as he could. He sat down on
the seat and grinned again. “Snakes,” he said, “lots of snakes—big.
Go k-r-r-r-r-r.” He imitated a rattler as if he’d gone to a rattler
school and learned their language.
Mark pulled his feet up and kept them on the seat; partly on account
of the water slopping around in the boat, and partly because it made
him feel easier in his mind, he said. He never did have any use for
snakes—particularly rattlers. For that matter, neither did I.
It wasn’t very comfortable, but it was safe. Batten and Bill, most
likely, would keep on chasing us down the river, at least for quite
a piece. It wouldn’t occur to them that we had put in to the island
until they got past the lower end of it themselves, and our boat was
nowhere in sight. They might come back to look after that, but there
didn’t seem very much danger of getting found, and more so when you
think about the bad name the snakes and poison ivy had given the
island.
In about five minutes we heard the sloshing of oars in the river
outside, and Batten’s boat went splashing past hot-foot—if a boat
can go hot-foot, seeing it hasn’t any feet, and if it had they’d be
in cool water. Sammy chuckled and pointed and showed his big white
teeth in the middle of a grin.
“Good place to hide, eh? Bad men go past quick, so. Sammy fool ’em;
nobody find Sammy when Sammy hide—no.”
“I hope not,” Mark told him; “but they ain’t begun to miss us yet.
Wait till they git around the h-h-head of the island. They’ll be
comin’ back to l-l-look for us then.”
“They can’t find. Sammy knows. Good place to hide.”
For more than an hour we sat in the boat, with muddy water standing
a couple of inches deep in it. Mark didn’t feel much like talking,
and Sammy didn’t think of anything to say, and I was scared as all
get out. When it was beginning to get dusk we heard the other boat
coming slow from up-stream, not down-stream, the way it should have
come. It was just moving, and the men were talking. We could hear
their voices, but what they said we couldn’t make out because it
came to us all in a muddle.
They stopped outside the bayou, and we understood Batten when he
said: “Looks like there was some sort of a bay in there. See how the
weeds and things turn in. Let’s poke in there; maybe it’s big enough
to hide a boat.”
Sammy looked at Mark, and he grinned again and winked. He was trying
to make Mark feel safe; but it didn’t work. Mark didn’t feel safe,
and I didn’t, either, especially when I saw their boat come poking
through the high weeds not thirty feet away.
Batten stood up and looked all around. “They ain’t there,” he said,
growling-like. “Where they got to I’d give a dollar to know. Here we
rowed all around this confounded island, and not a sight of them.
Even if I lost the turbine I’d like to get my hands on that fat kid
a minute. He’s too smart, he is.”
Mark was pretty pleased at that; but, all the same, he didn’t hanker
to let Batten get hold of him. Compliments are all right, but that
kind of a compliment is one you don’t get up and bow and say “Thank
you” for.
Batten and Bill sat there and rested and grumbled quite a spell, and
then, because it was getting dark, they pulled out for home.
“Might’s well give up,” said Bill. “We can’t find ’em to-night.”
“And we’re going to disappear before morning ourselves,” said
Batten. “We’ll keep an eye out for them till the last minute,
though.”
When they were gone Mark drew a long breath and took time to think
about the predicament we were in. It wasn’t pretty to think about.
There we were, five miles from home by road and I don’t know how
many by river, with a heavy engine and a smashed boat, and the only
land near enough to do any good full of rattlers and poison ivy. How
were we ever going to get to the mainland; and if we did, what could
we do with Tidd’s turbine? Mark never denied that we was up a stump.
Anybody would have been.
The only way out of it he could see was to fix the boat and go on
down the river that way, but he hadn’t anything to fix it with. He
didn’t even know how badly smashed it was. We could haul it out on
shore, of course, and find that out, but a shore like that island
made Mark prefer to sit in the boat and figure out some other
scheme. Even though it was my boat that was smashed, I felt the same
way about it.
“Sammy hungry—Sammy very hungry.”
Through the dusk we could see him rubbing his stomach and looking
bothered.
“So am I,” says Mark, “but I guess I’m goin’ to stay that way. We
can’t eat the b-b-boat.”
“Maybe catch fish. Got bait, got line, eh? Fish in river.”
“That’s all right, but how you goin’ to git there to fish for ’em?”
“Sammy dunno. Maybe swim, eh? Maybe git out on island. Maybe git ’em
somehow. Sammy very hungry.”
“And cold, too, I expect. I know I am. Ugh-h-h!”
“Go ’shore and make fire. Sammy fix so men can’t see. Sammy will.
Then catch fish, eh?”
“S-s-snakes,” said Mark.
“Poison ivy,” says I.
“Got to go, anyhow. Maybe snake bite, maybe not; can’t tell. Can’t
fix till we get on shore, eh? Got to fix boat.” Sammy seemed to
think that when you had to do a thing the only way was to do it; and
if rattlers and poison ivy got in the way, why, that was all there
was to it—you just had to take what came. It made me feel sort of
ashamed of myself to have a half-witted Indian setting a good
example like that, and I noticed Mark was looking pretty sheepish.
“Sammy carry boys, eh? Mark pretty heavy, maybe, but Sammy can
carry. Tallow he light.”
“Sammy’ll do nothin’ of the kind,” says Mark. “I can walk, I guess,
if you can.”
“Me, too,” says I; but I wished I wasn’t so proud.
“All right. We go now, eh? Go quick and maybe dodge snake.” He
grinned like it was a good joke. Maybe dodging rattlers is funny,
but I never did anything I felt less like laughing at in my life;
and there was the poison ivy, too.
Sammy stepped out of the boat and wallowed toward shore.
“Me n-next,” says Mark. “If a snake hits at me he can’t m-m-miss.”
“Not if he ain’t blind,” I says, as I followed after.
The way Mark went puffing and plunging like a hippopotamus the
rattlers, if there were any around there, must have thought their
last day was come. I bet they skedaddled.
Once we got on firm land we never said a word, but made off for the
middle of the island, where the big butternut trees were, because we
knew we were less likely to run into snakes or poison ivy there.
When we got among the trees and stopped, panting for breath, I says:
“I dunno whether I brushed agin any poison ivy, but there didn’t no
snakes bite me. I heard one, though.”
“I heard two,” Mark spluttered; “and I heard somethin’ a-rustlin’
off through the grass. I guess there’s more’n a million around
here.”
Sammy had carried up a little ax and a bundle of other things which
he dumped on the ground in front of us.
“Now make fire,” says he. “Get warm. Get dry. Trees all round so
nobody see. Can’t see smoke in dark, eh? Down here good place.” He
pointed to a little hollow with brush growing all around it and
trees along the ridge.
Mark and I didn’t feel like moving around much. I had heard a
rattler won’t bother you if you don’t bother him, and nobody has any
idea that poison ivy will sneak up and nip you while you’re standing
quiet. Sammy didn’t seem to be worried, though, for he hustled
around gathering dry wood. But before he started out I noticed he
got him a good big club.
We were tired, but we didn’t sit down. We could have sat down, but
we didn’t want to; we might have sat on a snake. Now, if a rattler
is going to bite you I can’t see what difference it makes whether he
does it when you’re on your feet or lying on your back, but I s’pose
it’s natural to feel safer on your feet.
Pretty soon Sammy had the fire made, not a very big one, and went
off to see if it showed. He walked around it in all directions and
came back satisfied. He was the most careless fellow of snakes I
ever heard of.
“Now get fish,” he said, and took his lines and hooks and bait; and
off he smashed across the island, leaving Mark and me alone. Maybe
you won’t believe it, but Mark didn’t seem like much company. There
was enough of him, goodness knows, but it didn’t seem to be the
right kind. He told me afterward he felt the same way about me. He
sat on top of a stump close to the fire, with his feet pulled up out
of danger and a club in his hand. I was on another stump and if my
club was smaller than his it wasn’t my fault. I got the biggest one
I could find.
“Well,” says he (it was the first good chance we’d had to talk since
I came sprawling into the boat) “where’d you come from all of a
s-s-sudden?”
“Batten and Bill found out I wasn’t a ghost,” says I.
“Purty lucky they did,” says he.
“You wouldn’t ’a’ thought so if they’d been chasin’ _you_,” I told
him; and he wouldn’t, neither.
“It was opportunity,” he says. “I’ve heard tell of lots of
opportunities, but I never seen one that come in so h-h-handy.” It
took him half a minute to get out the last word.
“Zadok Biggs said somethin’ like that. I met him a piece down the
road, or I’d never have got back.”
“I wouldn’t ’a’ come rampin’ through that marsh like you did for a
farm,” says he.
“You’d ’a’ sunk in so deep it would ’a’ taken two teams of horses to
drag you out,” says I. “How’d you manage to git the engine out of
the house?”
Then he told me all about it like I’ve told you at the beginning of
this chapter, and that was the first I knew about just what had
happened.
It wasn’t comfortable perching on stumps with our feet hauled up,
but we were a lot easier in our minds that way, especially as we
kept hearing things fussing around in the grass.
“There goes one rattlin’ off there,” I says; and I pulled my feet up
farther and gripped my club.
“I h-h-hear him,” Mark said, kind of strangled-like. I could see him
squirming around trying to get more of him up higher on the stump.
We kept hearing rattlers, or thinking we heard them, which was just
as bad; and every time one whirred we wished our stumps were
full-grown trees and we were sitting on the top branches. The fire
was close, but not close enough, and we kept getting hungrier and
hungrier. It was good and dark by that time, and the woods looked
plenty spooky. Take it altogether, and we weren’t having a very good
time of it. Even if we did have the engine we weren’t what you could
call happy about it, and you can’t blame us.
Sammy was gone maybe an hour, but when he came back it was worth the
waiting, for he had a good bass and six or seven bullheads. The bass
was just luck, but the bullheads were easy to get. You can catch
them by the dozen all along the river when it gets dark.
Sammy got out his knife, and so did Mark and I. Between us we
cleaned those fish in no time and had them sizzling and smelling
over the fire. There wasn’t a thing to eat with them, only a little
salt and pepper; but when we were through there wasn’t anything left
but bones, and some of _them_ were gnawed pretty bad. When a fellow
gets so hungry he’ll gnaw fishbones he must be pretty close to
starvation.
I was beginning to get considerably sleepy, and Mark’s head nodded
once or twice, but with the snakes around I couldn’t quite see my
way clear to lying down on the ground. I tried to imagine I could go
to sleep sitting on the stump, but I couldn’t make myself believe I
could do it.
“I’m sleepy,” I said to Mark.
“Me, too,” says he.
“Goin’ to lay down on the ground?”
“Well, I g-g-guess not. I’m goin’ to make a snake-proof bed.”
“G’wan,” says I, for I didn’t see how he was going to manage it.
After all, it wasn’t so hard. Mark got up courage to come down off
his stump, but he didn’t wander far away. He cut four saplings with
crotches in them and trimmed them into stakes that looked like Y’s.
He drove these into the soft ground so they stuck up more than a
foot in the air, and then fitted long poles for the frames, and made
cross-pieces like the slats of a bed. In between he filled with
short limbs and leaves and things to make it soft to lie on. When it
was all done it was as comfortable a bed as a fellow could want, and
safe! Mark climbed on it and lay down.
“Um!” says I. “Guess I’ll make me one.”
Sammy watched us both all the time, chuckling and grinning and
winking and blinking. He didn’t go about making any bed, but just
gathered more dry wood for the fire and threw himself down on the
grass. It wasn’t long before he was asleep, and the way he snored
would have made a dinner-horn jealous. He’d begin high up and sort
of slide way down low. Then he’d start out low and strangle and
rumble and snort. Then he’d puff out his cheeks and blow like he was
trying to blow out a lamp. He had more than a dozen different kinds
of snores. It seemed like he could snore half an hour without
repeating the same noise.
“Maybe Sammy don’t know much,” I says to Mark, “but he’s sure a
mighty skilful snorer.”