“Nope, Plunk, we got to hoof it for Sunfield. We’ve g-got to git there first. We’ve got to, Plunk.”
“All right,” says I. “I don’t see any sense in it, but here we go.”
We started off through the fields, keeping out of the road so nobody would see us. There wasn’t much to the village but the general store and the hotel and a couple of houses, so we were in the country again in a couple of minutes. We crossed a stubbled field and then started to cut through an orchard to the road. My! but that was a fine orchard! The trees were trimmed and the ground was not all grown up to grass the way most orchards are, but it was plowed and cultivated the way the government expert who lectured in Wicksville said it ought to be. And apples! You never saw such Spies as loaded half of the trees!
“Um-m-m!” says I.
“Leave ’em be,” says Mark. “Most farmers d-don’t mind if you take an apple to eat, but a lot of ’em are crusty as anything.”
So I took it out in looking, and looking at a big red apple doesn’t help the appetite much.
We were about half-way across the orchard when I felt as if a house had fallen on my shoulder. Something dropped and jerked me back off my feet. I just caught a glimpse of Mark out of the corner of my eye—and he was getting considerable of a jerk, too. Then a great big booming voice says:
“I got ye, consarn ye! Come a-sneakin’ through a man’s orchard, will ye? I’ll show ye. Stealin’ a man’s apples, eh? Oh, he! Maybe yes and maybe no. Didn’t calc’late Hamilcar Janes was a-layin’ for you behind a tree, eh? Oh, he!” He didn’t sound mad exactly, just sort of tickled with himself for being smart enough to catch us.
“Boys have been a-stealin’ and a-stealin’ my apples. Thought I wasn’t goin’ to do nothin’, too. Didn’t think Hamilcar Janes had git-up-and-git enough to catch ’em. Hasn’t, eh? Oh, he! Just look at what Hamilcar Janes has up and done. He’s catched two—a fat one and a lean one—and into the smoke-house they go. Oh, he!” He might have made a song of it if he’d been of a mind to.
We tried to talk to him, but he wouldn’t listen to a word. He just grinned and bragged about how he’d caught us, and marched us along by the collars. I tried to squirm loose, but I might as well have tried to jump over the moon like the old cow in the poem. That Hamilcar Janes came close to being the biggest man I ever saw. And his hands! Those hands of his were as big as blankets.