“Um!” says Bill, dubious-like. “Let’s skirmish around some, Batten. If I ain’t mistaken that engine is hid close to here.”
They started looking for it, and, seeing they didn’t act like they were going to damage me any, I hung around to see what they’d find. They went poking down holes and looking under brush-heaps and in the middle of clumps of bushes, but not a hide or hair of the turbine did they run onto. They searched and searched and searched, careful, as if they were looking for a nickel in a pile of sand. They started near the cave, and worked away in circles, and there wasn’t an inch they didn’t hunt over.
All at once I heard Mark holler, and when I looked up there he stood, with Uncle Ike Bond right beside him. Batten and Bill looked, too, and they didn’t wait to chat with Uncle Ike; they legged it down to the boat as fast as they could hike and shoved off. I couldn’t resist scooting a couple of pebbles after them, but they were in such a hurry I didn’t hit either time. I turned and yelled to Uncle Ike.
“You didn’t come any too soon,” I said.
Uncle Ike was mad clean through and came plunging down to the cave a lot more rapid than an old gentleman ought to move. “The scalawags!” says he. “The scamps—the—what-d’ye-call-’ems! Pickin’ on a passel of boys like you! I’d like to lay my buggy-whip acrost their shoulders, I would. Maybe they wouldn’t dance! Maybe! They seen me, though, and they won’t be back—not them. Not where old Uncle Bond can git holt of ’em. They’re gone for good.”
“Looks that way,” says Mark.
“Peddler give me your knife,” Uncle Ike says. “He didn’t find me till about fifteen minutes ago. I knowed there wa’n’t no foolin’ about it, so I come a-peltin’. Smart thing, sendin’ that knife; mighty smart. In all the years I’ve drove a bus I hain’t seen nothin’ smarter. Your pa, Tallow, and Mr. Whiteley is comin’ behind. Couldn’t keep up with me, not them.”
“We’re awful glad you’re here,” Mark says. And Uncle Ike jerked his head like he was glad, too, and pretty proud of himself.
“Your father’s home,” says he to Mark. “Got home this mornin’ and found you gone and the engine gone. It most set him crazy. Never see a man so flustered. Didn’t know what to do, not him, so what does he up and go at? Why, he grabs that there Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire and goes to readin’ it to see if it won’t tell him how to act. Says he to me, ‘Mr. Bond, it’s in this here book if I can find it. Everythin’s in this book.’ And your mother, she jest walked up and down and couldn’t say a word, she was that scairt. What ever possessed you to go prowlin’ off without sayin’ a word?”
“We didn’t have no time to tell anybody. And we didn’t want ma to know the turbine was stole,” says Mark.