one o’clock in the morning is a creepy time, even if the moon is shining, and it’s a good sight more creepy when you know something has happened. i hurried up to walk beside mark because it was lonesome behind. he was heading straight for his house.
“is it gone?” i asked. “are you sure?”
“the padlock’s pried off, and the turbine ain’t in the shed.”
“how’d you come to find out about it at this time of night?”
“they waked me up. i ran to the window just in time to see ’em drive off l-l-licketty split. then i went down, and the turbine was gone.”
“and then you came after me.” i was kind of tickled to think he did that. it showed he depended on me like and thought i’d stick by him and help out. “did you see who it was?”
“no.”
“which way did they drive?”
he jerked his thumb down the street. “no tellin’ which way they went. prob’ly turned the corner; i don’t know which way.”
he went around through his yard to the workshop, and, sure enough, the padlocks had been pried off and mr. tidd’s engine was gone. i didn’t quite realize it till then, and i tell you it struck me all in a heap. there was mr. tidd off in detroit, seeing about his patent and confident of getting rich, and here we were, left to look after the engine, and we’d let it get away from us.
“maybe he can get his patent anyhow,” i said; but there wasn’t much comfort in that, for mark explained that it couldn’t be done. his father had to have a model that would work, or no patent would be given to him. he was sure that henry c. batten was at the bottom of it all, and so was i.
“what they’re goin’ to do,” he said, “is to take dad’s turbine and make drawin’s from it. they’ll git another model made and smouge the patent before we kin b-begin to put a new one together.”
“they won’t dare take it to the depot and send it on the train,” i told him.
“not from here. maybe they’ll drive to some town near by and p-put it in a box and send it that way.”
“maybe,” i says; but somehow i didn’t think so. neither did mark, i guess.
“let’s see if we kin follow the wagon tracks,” he said, and got a lantern out of the shop.
it wouldn’t be so hard to do at that time of the night, because there weren’t any other wagons driving around, and the wheels of this one would be the last wherever it went. besides, it had rained a little earlier in the night, and the dust in the roads was pasty.
we followed the tracks down the alley a couple of blocks; then they turned, and mark muttered that he thought so.
“thought what?” i said.
“that they’d turn this way—toward the river.”
“why?”
“because,” he said, “that’s where the willis farm is.”
he told me as we walked along what he’d reasoned out. from the minute the turbine had been taken he began thinking and thinking the way he always does and putting two and two together. at last he got it into his head that he knew where the men were taking his father’s engine. first, there was henry c. batten driving on the road toward the willis farm; second, willis was the father to the engineer who had sneaked batten in to see if the turbine worked; third, old mr. willis acted more skittish than ordinary when we came around, and, says mark, that showed he had a guilty conscience; and last, and what mark called the clincher of the whole thing, was that room in the farmhouse all fixed up with drawing-tools and tables just waiting for somebody to come in and set to work. i thought it over, and it looked to me as though he’d argued it out pretty straight.
“i guess,” i says, “the place to look for the engine is out at willis’s.”
we followed the wagon tracks quite a ways farther just to make sure, and then turned back for home. it was beginning to get kind of pink in the east when i scrambled up to my room again and rolled into bed. i’d promised mark to meet him early in the morning to see what we’d do.
i went over to his house right after breakfast, and he was at the gate waiting for me. “careful what you say,” he told me. “mother don’t know, and there ain’t no use frightenin’ her yet.”
“all right,” i says; “now what’s your scheme.”
“we can’t do nothin’ till we know where the turbine is and who t-t-took it. we think we know, but we got to make sure.”
“let’s git at it, then,” i says. “what’ll we do—walk? it’s five miles.”
“i don’t want binney and plunk along—there’d be too many of us, and we might get caught, so we can’t git binney’s horse.”
all of a sudden an idea hit me. the river ran right by the willis house, and i owned a kind of a boat, flat-bottomed, but not very heavy. it was one of the kind that sort of skims over the top of the water without setting down into it much, and it was easy to row.
“what’s the matter with my boat?” i says.
“say, that’s the very thing.”
“and i got two pairs of oars,” i told him, and most laughed out loud. marcus aurelius fortunatus tidd never cared much about exerting himself to speak of, and the idea of rowing a boat five or six miles wasn’t one he cottoned to worth a cent. he was sorry about the other pair of oars, and he showed it; but he didn’t say anything, and i knew he’d row the best he knew how when he got in the boat. if he had to work he’d work, and there wouldn’t be any soldiering. if he could get somebody else, by some scheme or other, to do his work for him he’d be tickled to death, but just to come out and loaf like some fellows do—well, he wouldn’t do it.
i kept my old boat above the dam tied up to a stake back of my uncle’s sawmill, and in ten minutes we had pushed her out into the river and were pulling up-stream, taking it easy so as not to tire ourselves all out at the start. it took us half an hour to get to brigg’s island. above that the current got swifter, and we were quite a spell getting to the little island across from our cave. we went up the outside branch because the water was so shallow on our side, but we could see a little smoke going up from the place where the cave was, so we knew sammy was home again. it’s lucky he was.
we rowed a little farther and then pushed in to the bank to rest a bit.
“we want to land a little this side of willis’s,” mark decided, “and s-s-sneak up same as we did the other day along the fence.”
“’tain’t likely they’d hurt us.”
“i dunno. never can tell when men are doin’ things like this. but i wasn’t figgerin’ on gittin’ hurt, only on bein’ seen. if they found somebody was s-s-spyin’ on ’em they’d up and s-s-scoot. specially if batten was to see me. i ain’t easy to forgit.” mark grinned when he said that. he was right, though; batten might not remember me if he did see me prowling around, and he might think i was just a kid playing some game or hunting or something; but if he caught sight of mark, why, he’d know who it was in a minute and why he was there.
when we were rested up we got into my boat again and up the river we went. we rowed and rowed and rowed. “thank goodness,” i said, “it won’t be such hard pullin’ comin’ back. we kin float down with the current.”
in about another hour we came to the island in the bend of the river, a quarter of a mile below willis’s. here the river ran through a big marsh that stretched, all green with tall water-grasses and cat-tails, on either side, and there wasn’t a good place to land. we didn’t want to have to wallow through the marsh, because we knew we’d get in mire up to our knees and maybe higher, and because it looked just like the kind of a place where rattlesnakes would be fussing around. in general, i’m not afraid of rattlesnakes, but i don’t like to go plunging through a place like that and maybe stepping right on one before he has a chance to rattle at you.
back among the reeds and grasses we could see lots of muskrat houses, and we stowed that fact away to remember, because you can make pretty good money trapping rats and selling their skins; and i thought it would be a fine place for wild duck in the early spring.
we turned back a little to where the shore was more solid and found a place where a rail fence ran right down to the water. we made for that and tied the boat. it wasn’t much of a trick to clamber along the rails to shore, though mark made them bend so i thought it wouldn’t be very surprising if they broke. that fence wasn’t built to hold fat boys, but to keep in cows.
there was a bank maybe ten feet high to climb before we got to the road. we looked up and down pretty careful before we got up in sight; but nobody was coming, so we ducked cross to the north side where there were a lot of hazel bushes growing along the roadside, and some blackberry bushes, as we discovered by the prickers when we pushed our way through them.
we were pretty cautious, keeping back in the bushes and ready to lie down out of sight if anybody came along, but nobody did, and so we got to the old orchard that was next to willis’s house. it was a pretty big orchard, but it hadn’t been looked after very well, and the grass was high. the limbs of the trees came close to the ground, and, take it altogether, it made a pretty good place to sneak through if you didn’t want anybody to see you coming.
it was easy enough to get up to the rail fence that went down that side of willis’s yard to the barn; and it was safe enough, for the fence corners were full of bushes and big weeds where we could have stayed as long as we wanted to without anybody seeing us. we didn’t come to hide in a fence corner, though.
“well,” i says, “we’re here.”
“we’re on the wrong side of the house. what i want to do is get a p-p-peek into that room where the drawin’ things were.”
“we kin go around.”
“we got to,” says he.
“hold on!” i says. “there ain’t no need for both of us to go trampin’ all over the place. one kin see as good as two, and if i am seen it won’t be so bad as if you were. you stay here, and i’ll go crawlin’ around and see if i can’t get a shot at that window. i bet i can get there all right.”
he thought a minute, sort of hesitating, because mark wasn’t the kind of a fellow to let somebody run a risk he ought to run; but he saw it was the best scheme to let me go, so he nodded. “maybe i’ll find somethin’ to do here,” he says. “be careful.”
i went crouching along to the road, intending to go past the house under cover of the hedge that ran across in front of it. i was halfway across, i expect, before i thought of the dog. now, i’ve found out that it is pretty easy to get around without a man seeing you; but it’s quite another thing to be so still a dog can’t hear you, and i never found anybody who could stop a good watch-dog from smelling him. but, dog or no dog, i had to look into that room, for, if mark had guessed right, there’s where his father’s turbine would be, and nowhere else. the drawing-man would want it there to take his measurements from and to see how it went together.
i ducked past the gate as quick as i could, though there wasn’t really any need, for there were so many evergreen trees growing around in the yard that you couldn’t see the gate from the house, anyway. i’ve seen a lot of farmhouses with six or seven evergreens growing in their front yards for ornaments, but i never saw anybody who seemed to like them so well as mr. willis. there were more than a dozen of them, set in rows, and all trimmed and pruned into funny shapes like balls and cones and one thing and another. i was glad he did like them; it came in mighty handy for me.
there was a field of corn on the side of the house i was heading for, and it wasn’t very far up, not far enough to hide in; but there were quite a few clumps of bushes along the fence, like there always are on farms where the men that run them are shiftless. i got behind one of these and took a good look at everything to see how the land lay and to make up my mind just what to do so as to get a look through that window.
the house was about a hundred feet away, and between me and it was a fairly large maple tree. back at my right, a little nearer the fence than the house, was the icehouse where we got caught the day before. from where i was i could see the dinner-bell that had helped us out. back of that a little was the woodshed, and way at the far corner of the lot was the barn and the corn-crib. there was smoke coming out of the kitchen chimney, but nobody was out in the yard or anywhere in sight.
i figured it out that the thing for me to do would be to run across the yard as fast as i could, look in the window and dash back again over the fence. if i was quick enough nobody’d see me, and it wouldn’t give the dog a chance to smell me either. so i threw my leg over the top rail and let myself down inside. then i sprinted toward the big tree which was between me and the window i wanted to look into. i wasn’t more than halfway to the tree before i heard the front door open, and somebody came out on the porch. i couldn’t see them yet, but i daren’t take any chances of their coming around into the side yard where i was. i just jumped for the tree and grabbed the lower limb. it didn’t take me a second to swing myself up among the branches, and the leaves were so thick that i knew i was safe if that dog didn’t come nosing around.
i felt in my pocket for my sling-shot, thinking maybe if the dog did come i could fix it so he wouldn’t want to stay where i was very bad. by luck the sling-shot was there and a couple of dozen good pebbles. i tell you i was pretty thankful.
it was lucky i went up the tree, for i heard steps coming toward my end of the front porch, and then there stood henry c. batten in his shirt-sleeves, smoking a big cigar.
he stepped down off the porch and whistled. i didn’t like that whistle a bit, because it meant i’d have the dog sniffing around that part of the place, and i’d much rather he’d stay where he was. but he came galloping up from the barn, and henry c. batten stood there and patted his head and scratched his back. then he picked up a stick and threw it right my way for the dog to fetch. over he came, licketty split, but i guess he was so busy with his game that he didn’t notice me. the man kept him running back and forth quite a while till he got tired of it; then he and the dog began to stroll around the yard. they walked all around until they came to my tree, and then what did henry c. batten do but sit right down on the grass in the shade and light another cigar, as if he was going to stay there the rest of the afternoon.
i would have given my jack-knife to have been anywhere else but right there. the leaves were good and thick, and the chances were against batten seeing me, but, all the same, he might see me, or the dog might smell me, and then where would i be?
i kept pretty still, you can bet, and held my breath so that wouldn’t make any sound. it was all right for a little while, but just you sit all doubled up in the crotch of a tree without moving even a finger and see how long you like it. i got a cramp in my leg, and my back ached, and my arms got tired. i never was so uncomfortable in my life. the cramp in my leg kept getting worse and worse, and there isn’t anything i know of that hurts so much as a good big cramp just above the knee. i thought i’d have to holler right out. finally i couldn’t stand it any more. i had to straighten out that leg and get rid of the cramp—that was all there was to it, i had to. so i did. it made a little rustle in the leaves, and my heart came up in my mouth so i could have bit it. henry c. batten looked up, but, thank goodness, he couldn’t see me. the dog looked up, too, and began to walk around the tree and sniff. it was just what i had been afraid of all the time. then he began to bark.
“what’s up there, old fellow?” henry c. batten says. “is it a bird?”
the dog kept on barking. batten got up and looked around for a stick. when he found one he stepped off a piece and threw it up into the tree, and out flew a big bird with a lot of fuss and flutter. i never was so much obliged to a bird in my life.
“there he goes,” says batten to the dog; and then he walked off toward the house again. but the dog kept on hanging around my tree. batten turned and whistled to him, and after a couple of times he went along, but even then he kept looking back and growling. it’s a wonder batten didn’t suspect something.
i watched them turn out into the road and walk down past the orchard.
“well,” i said to myself, “it’s now or never.” so i dropped down out of the tree and ran to the house. i could see in the window by getting on tiptoe, and i didn’t lose a second doing it. there was the room, drawing-tables and tools and all, and right in the middle of the floor was what i came to discover—there stood the tidd turbine!
i didn’t wait a jiffy more than necessary, and anybody that had tried to race me back to the fence would have had to go pretty fast to come in even second. i don’t know how i got over—half fell and half jumped, i guess—but, anyhow, i got over, and there i was safe and sound, but shaking all over as if i had a chill.
it took me maybe twenty minutes to get back to where mark tidd was waiting. he was sitting with his back against the fence and an old piece of paper spread on his knee, drawing something.
“well,” i says, “here i am—and it’s there.”
he seemed pleased like to think he’d been right in all his surmises, and nodded.
“what you doin’?” i asked.
“makin’ a map,” says he. “i’ve been prowlin’ around, and here’s the lay of the land. it’ll be a handy thing when we come to p-p-plannin’ how to git the engine away.”
“which,” says i, “don’t look like sich an easy job as some i’ve heard of.”
he stuffed his map in his pocket, and when we saw henry c. batten and the dog come back from their walk we hustled down to our boat and rowed home. it was late in the afternoon when we got there and i was most starved—i’d hate to have had to feed mark—for we hadn’t had anything since breakfast.
that night mark drew out his map all in ink, showing everything, and you’ll find it here if you’re interested in the lay of the land around the willis farm.
