“Yes,” says Zadok, “you must beat him. You must arrive first on the scene.”
“You act like you knew Skip was goin’,” says I. I felt a little sore because they didn’t seem to think my news was important.
“We didn’t know,” says Mark, “b-but we hoped.”
“Hoped?” says I.
“Yes,” says Mark. “We was hankerin’ to have J-jehoshaphat start for Sunfield.”
“But how come he to hear of it?”
Zadok stuck out his chest and looked important. “Zadok Biggs,” says he. “It was Zadok Biggs that did it. Zadok Biggs told the man Skip about it.”
You could have knocked me over with a feather. What in the world had Zadok told Skip for? I could see it was some sort of scheme Mark Tidd and he had cooked up, but it looked funny to me. They didn’t offer to explain, though, so I says:
“Do we git an early start?”
“Yes,” says Mark. “Five o’clock.”