"Gollies!" exulted Maurice. Then uncertainty in his tones, "A feller 'ud have to be a mighty good shot to do that though, Bill."
"Oh shucks! What's the use of thinkin' 'bout that now? We've gotta catch them robbers first, ain't we?"
"Yep, that's so. But how?"
Billy wriggled free of the golden-rod. "Come on over an' help me move my menagerie an' we'll plan out a way."
They climbed the fence and crossed the road to the lane-gate.
"Now, then," said Billy, "you scoot through the trees to the root-house, while I go up to the kitchen an' sneak some doughnuts. Don't let Ma catch a glimpse of you er she'll come lookin' fer me an' set me to churnin' er somethin' right under her eyes. An' see here," he warned, as Maurice made for the trees, "don't you get to foolin' with the snakes er owls, an' you best keep out of ol' Ringdo's reach, 'cause he's a bad ol' swamp coon in some ways. You jest lay close till I come back."
Whistling soundlessly, Billy went up the path to the house. He peered carefully in through the screened door. The room was empty and so was the pantry beyond. Billy entered, tiptoed softly across to the pantry and filled his pockets with doughnuts from the big crock in the cupboard. Then he tip-toed softly out again.
As he rounded the kitchen, preparatory to a leap across the open space between it and the big wood-pile, Mrs. Wilson's voice came to him, high-pitched and freighted with anger.
"You black, thievin' passel of impudence, you!" she was saying. "If I had a stick long enough to reach you, you'd never dirty any more of my new-washed clothes."
On the top-most branch of a tall, dead pine, close beside the wood-pile, sat the tame crow, Croaker, his head cocked demurely on one side, as he listened to the woman's righteous abuse. Croaker could no more help filling his claws with chips and dirt and wobbling the full length of a line filled with snowy, newly-washed clothes than he could help upsetting the pan of water in the chicken-pen, when he saw the opportunity. He hated anything white with all his sinful little heart and he hated the game rooster in the same way. He was always in trouble with Ma Wilson, always in trouble with the rooster. Only when safe in the highest branch of the pine was he secure, and in a position to talk back to his persecutors.