When Mark Tidd starts talking about duty you might as well lay down and roll over. You couldn’t change his mind with a ton of giant powder.
“Duty?” says I. “How?”
“Well,” says he, “as citizens. Maybe these f-fellers are plannin’ somethin’ that ought to be stopped, and there hain’t anybody to stop it but us, b-because nobody else suspects ’em.”
“All right,” says I. “I expect I can run as fast as any of you.”
“Besides,” says Mark, “the man the Man With the Black Gloves is g-goin’ to meet is named Jethro.”
“What’s that got to do with it?” I says.
“Heaps,” says Mark, and then shut up like a clam. That’s the way with him. Sometimes he gets it into his head to be mysterious and to keep his notions shut up under his hat. Well, when he does you might as well forget them, for he’s as close-mouthed as a bulldog with a tramp’s pants in his teeth.
“Come on, then,” says I, “let’s get it over.”
It was a half-hour’s walk to the bridge, but before we got within a quarter of a mile of it Mark halted us.
“We can’t go bangin’ up t-t-there with a brass b-band,” says he. “There wouldn’t be any meetin’. We got to come the Indian.”