We always write our most secret doings in invisible ink, made of lemon juice, so that nobody can read about them. We don't need to read it ourselves, because we know all about it anyway. If we want to, by holding the writing up to a fire we can make the letters show.
"Write it with chalk," said Skinny, "and make the letters a foot high. This is something we want folks to know about."
"Uniforms wouldn't be so very much good," said Benny, "if folks couldn't see us with them on."
Skinny nodded his head; then took a piece of chalk out of his pocket, and commenced to mark on the clapboards, back of the sloping roof.
I thought at first that he was going to write the minutes of the meeting before it happened and was going to kick about it, being secretary. Instead of that, however, he made a big circle, and in the center of the circle he drew a picture of a tomahawk. Then, after looking at a watch which his folks gave him for Christmas, he put the figures 18 above the tomahawk, and 16 below.
That was our Indian sign. The circle meant our cave at Peck's Falls, that being sort of round. The figures said for us to meet on the eighteenth day of the month, at the sixteenth hour, which would be at four o'clock that very afternoon. We had half an hour in which to get to the cave.
When we saw the Sign we all gave a yell, Bill Wilson louder than anybody, and were going to start for the cave on a jump, but Skinny hissed like a snake and held up one hand for us to keep still.
"My braves," said he, after he had made up a lot of Indian words, which we couldn't understand, only they sounded fierce, "do you want to lose your scalps? You don't know what is waitin' for us on yonder hill."
We didn't, either. If we had, maybe we shouldn't have gone.
