After all, it wasn’t so hard. Mark got up courage to come down off his stump, but he didn’t wander far away. He cut four saplings with crotches in them and trimmed them into stakes that looked like Y’s. He drove these into the soft ground so they stuck up more than a foot in the air, and then fitted long poles for the frames, and made cross-pieces like the slats of a bed. In between he filled with short limbs and leaves and things to make it soft to lie on. When it was all done it was as comfortable a bed as a fellow could want, and safe! Mark climbed on it and lay down.
“Um!” says I. “Guess I’ll make me one.”
Sammy watched us both all the time, chuckling and grinning and winking and blinking. He didn’t go about making any bed, but just gathered more dry wood for the fire and threw himself down on the grass. It wasn’t long before he was asleep, and the way he snored would have made a dinner-horn jealous. He’d begin high up and sort of slide way down low. Then he’d start out low and strangle and rumble and snort. Then he’d puff out his cheeks and blow like he was trying to blow out a lamp. He had more than a dozen different kinds of snores. It seemed like he could snore half an hour without repeating the same noise.
“Maybe Sammy don’t know much,” I says to Mark, “but he’s sure a mighty skilful snorer.”
CHAPTER XVI
Did you ever try to sleep on a rattlesnake-proof bed on a poison-ivy island? Well, if that was all there was to it it isn’t likely you’d drop right off into a doze and have pleasant dreams. But throw in for good measure that two men like Batten and Bill were out looking for you; and if you close your eyes a wink, then I’m pretty much mistaken.
Mark and I tried to sleep. I know I shut my eyes and pretended I was at home with father and mother in the next room. Somehow that didn’t do much good—I couldn’t pretend hard enough, I guess. Then I tried counting sheep jumping over a fence, but the sheep jumped so slow that I had time in between to figure what Batten would do to us if he caught us. I counted up to a thousand, and watched an imaginary wheel go round and round. But in spite of everything I could think of I was just as wide awake at the end as I was at the beginning.
Mark was perfectly still, and of course I didn’t know whether he was asleep or awake. Everything except Sammy was still, too still altogether for comfort. When things are so quiet you just have to listen. You can’t help it if it was to save your life; and I didn’t want to listen. Listening for something you don’t hear makes you shivery. I don’t know but that it was more scary than the night we sat up by the cave before we knew what Sammy was. I couldn’t help imagining a rattler was trying to climb the leg of my bed, and every snap of a twig or rustle of a leaf I turned into a man sneaking through the underbrush.
Besides, there was Sammy snoring for dear life. Just you get into a tight place like we were in and have the only person you can depend on start to snore! I tell you, you feel even lonesomer than if nobody was there at all. I was mad at Sammy, mad all the way through. It didn’t seem right that anybody should be comfortable and happy when I was so miserable. Once I made up my mind to yell at Sam, but then I thought how hard he’d been working for us, and kept still.
After a while I couldn’t stand it any longer, though, so I raised my head and whispered, cautious, “Oh, Mark, are you awake?”