Mark looked at Tallow and Plunk and me and shook his head. “You’re the fellers that d-d-don’t b’lieve in luck,” says he. “Now I g-g-guess you won’t make fun of my carryin’ a horseshoe.” And he pulled one out of his pocket. “Found this jest as we was gittin’ on the train,” he says to the man, “and l-look what it’s done!”
“I’ll never travel again without a horseshoe,” he says. “Let’s get out of here—we’re the last ones.”
“Got to git my hat,” says Mark.
That was just like him. When he did a thing he did it thorough. If there’d been any danger and he ought to have got out he would have gone. He never took chances he didn’t have to; but there wasn’t any danger, so he wouldn’t go until he took along everything that belonged to him. It took us twenty minutes to locate our stuff. The man helped us, laughing all the time. He seemed to think he was having a lot of fun. I sort of liked him, too. He was jolly and good-natured and pretty good-looking.
When we got outside I said to Mark, so the man couldn’t hear, “Nice feller, ain’t he?”
“Too g-good-natured,” says he.
“You’re mad ’cause he made fun of you.”
“’Tain’t that. He’s one of these f-f-fellers that make a business of bein’ p-pleasant. Maybe he’s all right, b-but if I was goin’ to have much to do with him I’d k-keep my eye on him.”
“Huh!” says I; but after a while you’ll see Mark wasn’t so far wrong, after all. I never saw such a boy for seeing into folks. He could almost always guess what kind of a person anybody was.
We stood around a minute, getting our breath and sort of calming down. Then we watched the trainmen digging baggage and valuables out of the car and finding owners to fit them. That wasn’t very interesting, so we went and sat down on the bank beside the track and commenced to wonder how long we would have to stay there.