We sat on the hotel steps until Uncle Ike Bond’s bus rattled up to carry folks to the late train. The stranger squeezed through the door and sat down in a corner, looking as if he wasn’t pleased with things in general. Uncle Ike winked at Mark.
“How’d you make out?” he whispered.
Mark went up close and told him all about it, and Uncle Ike like to have fallen off the seat laughing.
“What’d I tell you?” he chuckled to nobody in particular. “Ain’t he a slick one? Ain’t he? Slicker’n greased pole I call him, eh?”
Then he gathered up the lines, but stooped over again to whisper, “If ever this thing gits where you need help from Uncle Ike Bond just up and say so in his hearin’, and we’ll see what a eddication got on top of a bus is good for.”
I didn’t see what good he could ever do anybody, but that just shows how you can be mistaken in folks.
CHAPTER V
Right up till snow was on the ground the Ku Klux Klan used to meet in the cave. We would go up there Saturday mornings, all coming by different roads, and when we met there would be passwords and signals and grips and all sorts of secret things. After a while we got so many signs that a fellow had to be pretty careful what he was up to so as not to be telling the other members he was in deadly peril, or that a secret meeting was called at once, or something else, because almost everything we did had a meaning. For instance, if I was to reach around and scratch my back when Mark or Plunk or Binney were looking, that meant that I had to speak to them right away about something important; and if one of us shoved both hands in his pockets at once that meant to look out because enemies were watching. All our signals were simple things like that that wouldn’t be noticed. Mark got most of them up, and I guess there were more than a hundred things to be remembered.
We used to sit in the cave and wish there were some real wrongs being done that we could right, or that we had some kind of a powerful enemy, or that there was a mean, miserable whelp that we could visit at night with our white sheets on and tie him to a tree and frighten him into being a good citizen; but there weren’t any, and we had to take it out in making believe. But that was almost as much fun.
We had one sign that was never to be used except when we were desperate and needed help and succor, and that was to untie your necktie and tie it up again. But the best one of all was the jack-knife sign, and it was a dandy, because there were so many ways of using it. If one of us met the other and said “Lemme take your jack-knife,” that was one way; or if you sent a note by somebody else with the word jack-knife in it, or anything like that. But the best way was the one to be used if you were a captive, or if enemies were surrounding the cave and you wanted to have your comrades rally around you. Nobody would ever suspect it. All you had to do was to meet somebody, a farmer or a man fishing or any one, and give him your knife and tell him please to give it to any one of the society. As soon as that one got the knife he had to collect the others and make for the cave as fast as he could. It worked bully. Lots of times I’ve sent my little brother over to Mark’s with my knife, and dozens of times Mark or Binney or Plunk have sent their knives to me. Once Binney sent his by his father, who was going past my house. I don’t believe the real, original Ku-Kluxers had a better sign than that.