“This,” says Batten, “is getting to look kind of funny.” He was one of those middle-sized men with too much under their vests, and a sticky-looking complexion, and eyes that always seemed as if somebody’d just spilled a mite of water into them. He wasn’t handsome at any time, but now he got kind of yellow mixed with green, and his fingers began to shut and open. By all signs he was pretty average uncomfortable.
Well, just then Sammy let out an awful screech like a panther that’s been shot. It went up high and came down low and went into your ear like it was trying to bore a hole through your head. I’d been expecting it, and I knew what it was, but that didn’t make a bit of difference; I was about as scared as Batten and Willis. They got white; I could see it way where I was. The color seemed just to pop out of their faces. It seemed like I ought to have heard it make a noise like when you pull a cork out of a bottle.
“What’s that?” says Batten, and grabs a hold on Willis.
Willis he didn’t say a word, but just sagged against the door, and the fellow they called Bill ducked inside and then poked his head out and glared all around with his eyes almost laying on his cheeks. I took another crack at the bell.
Every one of them jumped into the house and slammed the door. I didn’t think it would be a good idea to do anything more just then, but to sort of let what we had done sink in. So I sat still, watching the house. All at once I heard a sound close behind me, and, being pretty excited anyhow and all on edge, I liked to have jumped up and hollered, but I didn’t, which was lucky, for it wasn’t anybody but Sammy, grinning away and plumb tickled to death with himself. He motioned with his finger for me to follow him.
“Fat boy says come,” he whispered, and then giggled. “They jump, eh? Ding goes bell; they jump. Ding goes bell; they jump some more. Sammy laugh and fat boy laugh. Then Sammy make panther screech. So. Everybody jump. I guess bad men scairt, eh?”
“They looked scared to me,” I says. “But scared is as scared does. Wait till we see.”
We all laid up among the trees a couple of fields east of Willis’s and had some sandwiches and one thing and another which I had been wanting quite a while. It was way past noon, and I hate to have meal-time go by without paying some kind of attention to it. After we ate we took it easy. Sammy went to sleep and Mark dozed. I never can do much sleeping when it’s daytime—seems like such a waste of time—so I started cutting my initials into a big elm tree. While I was whittling I got to thinking; I guess there isn’t a better way to think than to whittle. Just get your knife going good, and your head seems to go at the same time. I bet if I could whittle all the time in school I’d stand up at the head of the class. Things don’t puzzle you so. You just sit and think, lazy-like, and the first thing you know you see it just as plain. Well, I began figuring out what we were doing without intending to think about it at all, and all of a sudden we began to look pretty foolish to me. Yes, sir. Mark and I looked foolish, and Sammy was foolish, anyhow, so there we were. I reached over and kicked Mark.
“Wake up!” says I.
“What’s m-m-matter?”