“They figured on it pretty strongly,” says Mr. Brown.
And that’s how we landed the county printing. It was all by Mark Tidd’s using his brains. All he needed was a hint, and he reasoned the thing right out, and it was so like he reasoned it. It made Mark pretty famous with politicians before it was all done, for after the convention, when Whittaker got the nomination, the story leaked out, and everybody laughed at Brown and Wiggins, and when folks found out Mark hadn’t really heard a thing, but just jumped at conclusions and made a bluff, they laughed harder than ever.
That was all right, but what really counted was that we got a dandy piece of business that paid well and gave the paper a lot of reputation and standing around the county. It got us a lot of subscribers, too, because there are folks that have to read about the county proceedings.
Mr. Wiggins took us to dinner and made a lot of us, and didn’t hold a grudge at all. After that we caught the train and went home, feeling like we had done a pretty good day’s work.
CHAPTER XIII
The first thing we did when we got home was to hunt up Plunk and Tallow to find out if anything had been heard of Rock, but he was still just as missing as ever—and even more so.
“Well,” says Mark, “we got to f-find him, and find him quick. We need him in our business and he needs us in hisn.”
“You hain’t goin’ to give him up to Jethro like you said—honest, are you?”
“You b-b-bet I am,” says Mark, and there was an end to that.
“To-morrow mornin’,” says he, “you f-f-fellows be at my house at five o’clock, and we’ll git after him. I got an idee,” says he.