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!
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.”
