“Get out? How'll we get out?” he wanted to know. “If your friend
Foley fixed this up, you may be sure he did not expect you to get out
to-night. And I've got to get out. I've got two important cases, and I
must get out.”
“Oh, we'll get out, Doc,” said Jake. And he lit another match.
He looked at the door and tried it, butting into it with his shoulder.
But we had fixed it dandy. It didn't give at all. It was like butting a
rock. He tried it awhile, and then he said, but not so gay: “Well, we'll
have to dig out.”
“Then, Jake, let us dig,” said the doctor. And they dug. I dug too, but
mostly I only pretended to dig. It was dark in there and you couldn't
see, and clay isn't anything to dig with your fingers. Jake and the
doctor had pocket knives, but you know how much you can dig with a
pocket knife. But they had the right idea. They didn't try to dig
through the tunnel, like me and Swatty thought they would. They dug
around the door.
Well, when Swatty and Bony had locked us in they went and sat on the
bank across the creek to see what would happen. Nothing happened. Then
Swatty got to thinking. He didn't worry about Jake, because Jake was a
hired man and nobody ever knew when he would get home; but he knew my
aunt would want to know where I was. That made him think of Mrs. Miller,
and she would want to know where the doctor was. He was mighty worried.
We had thought that maybe we could keep the doctor in the cave a couple
of weeks until everything was all right, but he knew right away that me
and Jake and the doctor couldn't live on the food I had put in the cave,
and he knew my aunt would start out to find where I was, and Mrs. Miller
to find out where Doctor Miller was. He was mighty worried, and he
didn't know what to do. So he didn't do anything.
It turned out like he thought it would. My aunt was mad when I did not
come home to dinner, and madder when I didn't come home to supper, but
when I didn't come home at all she was worried almost crazy and she
got my father to go hunt for me. He hunted awhile, and then he got some
other men to hunt for me, because he had to go home.
They hunted all night. Along toward morning the hunters who were hunting
for me ran into the hunters who were hunting for Doctor Miller. They had
Swatty with them, because Mrs. Miller had said Swatty had come to the
house and the doctor had gone away with him. They were trying to make
Swatty tell where the doctor went, but he wouldn't. He just let on like
he was crying and said he didn't know.
Well, the hunters who were hunting for Doctor Miller had just started
out, because Mrs. Miller hadn't got worried until toward morning,
because she thought he was attending to his business. But toward morning
my father and Bony's father came to his house, and it was at their
houses Mrs. Miller thought Doctor Miller was. So she was frightened and
got some men to hunt him.
I guess I went to sleep about ten or eleven o'clock that night while
Jake find Doctor Miller were still digging. I woke up all of a sudden
and there I was in the cave, and the door open and men coming in and
Doctor Miller brushing off his hands. Him and Jake had almost dug a way
out, but the hunters had got Swatty to tell where we were. So about the
first thing I heard was a man saying:
“Where's that Swatty? Don't let him get away!”
But he had got. We didn't see him for about a week. He went over into
Illinois and got a job with a farmer.
Well, all the way home Jake kept talking about Tom Foley and what he
would do to him, and when the hunters heard it they laughed like sixty
and said it was the best joke they ever heard. They said they would have
to hand it to Foley--he was a dandy. So I guess they told Foley so. I
guess he listened to them and didn't let on, only said he didn't do
it, and of course they didn't believe him, because he had been elected
foreman of Fearless Hose No. 2, like Jake had said he would be. So Foley
got sort of proud of it and let them think. So me and Bony and Swatty
never got anything, except Swatty got licked for being away for a week,
and that was all right; it was worth it for the fun we had.
But the worst of it was that all of it wasn't any use. We had gone to
all the work for nothing. We had caved up the wrong doctor. We ought
to have caved up Doctor Wilmeyer and Doctor Brown. Because while we had
Doctor Miller caved up, and thought we had everything fine and dandy,
it was Doctor Wilmeyer and Doctor Brown who were the ones all the time.
When we got home from the cave with the hunters there was a new baby at
our house and one at Bony's house, and they had brought them. And that
wasn't the worst--they were both girls. So we had done worse than
nothing, because if we had left Doctor Miller alone he might, anyway,
have brought boys.