Well, you can believe Mark and I pretty near jumped out of our skins. What if Hamilcar showed us to Skip and Skip knew us, which he would, and put two and two together? He’d smell a rat right off—and then the fat would splash over into the fire. We held our breath and waited.
“No,” says Skip, “I hain’t any desire to see ’em.”
“They’re bad ones,” says Hamilcar, but his voice didn’t sound like he thought we were so very bad. “You never see a pair of worse ones.”
“Haven’t time,” says Skip. “Let’s fix up about the horse, because I’m in a hurry to get to Sunfield. I’ve got a big business deal on there.”
Then they passed on by and we couldn’t hear them any more, but in about ten minutes we heard carriage-wheels, and so we judged the horse hadn’t shown any signs of disliking Skip. He’d got his carriage and was off for Sunfield while we were here, shut up in a smoke-house, with nothing but our legs even if we could get out.
But right away Hamilcar Janes came to the door and says, ferocious-like:
“Hello in there!”
“Mr. Janes,” says Mark, “we want to t-talk to you.”
“I’ll bet you do,” says he, and I could hear him chuckle. He came closer and unbarred the door and opened it.
“Come out,” says he, in a voice that would have frightened the stripes off a tiger.