“You b-bet Sammy’s a help,” Mark told him, and patted him on the back. “We never’d git anywheres without you, would we, Tallow?”
“I should say not,” I says, just as solemn as I could; and maybe you think Sammy wasn’t tickled. Why, he most wiggled out of his skin!
“I’m goin’ to sneak over and see if anything happens,” says I. “I kin hide among the evergreens and watch. It ought to be worth seein’.”
“Don’t go takin’ no r-r-risks.” Mark like to have strangled over the last word. “Keep your ears open, and if I whistle the whistle, come a-runnin’.”
I went around in front and wriggled through the hedge. Nobody was in sight around the house, so I squirmed up, dodging from tree to tree until I was only about twenty feet away from the steps. There I crouched down among the prickles of a fat evergreen and waited. I could see the steps as plain as could be, but you’d have had to hunt for me careful to have found me, even if you knew I was hiding around.
Well, it wasn’t more than ten minutes before Bill came out rubbing his hand like he’d been writing or drawing and the muscles were tired. He sat down on the top step and pulled a cigar out of his vest. I could see the red-and-gold band around it. He bit off the end and struck a match. I was interested to see how he snapped the match away, and made up my mind to try it myself. He shot it just like I’d shoot a marble, and it went straight. It fell right on Willis’s flower-bed. Now, when you snap a thing that way you always watch to see if you hit what you shot at, or, anyhow, to see where you do hit, and Bill saw the match strike right alongside of Sammy’s footprint. I saw him lean forward quick and stretch his neck. He grabbed a hold on the post and pulled himself up, and then walked over to the bed. He leaned over, knelt down, and I could hear him grunt with surprise.
“Well,” says he to himself, “well.”
In a minute he got up and went into the house. Before long he came back with Batten, and both of them looked at the footprint.
“What is it?” says Bill.
Batten looked kind of funny and shook his head.