“Feel that box,” he says, “under the tarpaulin.”
“I feel it,” says I. “What’s in it?”
He scrouched down and got under the cover and, where nobody could see, lighted his flash.
“It’s a case of sardines,” says he. “Help me haul it out.”
I did.
“Now dump it into this trench,” says he, and we did that, and covered it with sand—right at the place where they had left off digging.
“There’s a treasure for ’em,” says he. “They’ll be digging there in the morning, and the first thing, they’ll run onto that. Sardines! Oh, Billy Patterson’s Mule! Sardines! They’ll think they’ve got the treasure till they open it! Oh, don’t I wish I could be here to see it!”
You couldn’t beat that, could you? He’d have to play a joke on somebody if he was just being blown up with dynamite.
“Say,” I says, “let’s do something that will be some good. This monkey business isn’t helping Mr. Topper or Mr. Browning.”
“Well,” says he, “you take charge. What’ll we do first?”