“Go ahead, young feller. I hain’t got much to do just now. I calc’late it’ll be int’restin’.”
“It will,” says Mark, and he started in from the beginning and told Mr. Janes all about the Bazar, and about father being hurt, and about Skip and the things he’d done to us, and how we’d fought back. He told him we were going to Sunfield now to get the best of Skip. There wasn’t anything he left out. When he was through Hamilcar hit his big hands together and says:
“So you’re Mark Tidd, eh? Ho, hum! Know Ike Bond?”
“Uncle Ike Bond?” says I. “Well, I should say we do know him.”
“Him and my father was in the war together,” says Hamilcar. “Comes to see me. Told me about you. Mark Tidd, eh? Ho, hum! And that scalawag has been tryin’ to bust you up in business, eh? I sort of suspected him, he was so blamed homely. But the hoss she never let on, so I harnessed her and let him drive off.... Wish I’d ’a’ knowed about this before.”
“So do I,” says Mark. “Now it’s too late. Skip’ll b-b-beat us to Sunfield and make the deal and—But what’s the use? We’re beat.”
“Beat!” says Hamilcar. “You bet you hain’t beat. Not by a long shot. One hoss hain’t all Hamilcar Janes owns. He owns a faster hoss than that one, too. Just you wait a jiffy, Mark Tidd, and we’ll be after this Skip. We’ll make him skip, that’s what we’ll do. I’ll hitch up and we’ll take after him, and if he gits to Sunfield first you can take a bite out of my leg. There!”
We hurried back to the barn with him, and he hitched up a team—as fine-looking a team it was—to a two-seated rig. Then he got in the front seat and motioned us up behind.
“I’m a-goin’ to drive myself. We’ll pass that Skip in fifteen minutes.”
“We mustn’t pass him,” says Mark. “He m-m-mustn’t see us. We’ve got to get there first without his knowing we’re anywhere around.”