The third of our days on the river wasn’t what you could call exciting. It started out hot and got hotter. It wasn’t so bad for Collins and me, but Mark Tidd and Jiggins fried. We kept on, though. Jiggins said he was tired of being where he couldn’t get a square meal, and, heat or no heat, he was going to get where there was food in large quantities.
We traveled the same way we did the day before—that is, Mark and Jiggins in the boat and Collins and me in the canoe. Along toward the middle of the morning we saw a farm-house back about a quarter of a mile from the river. Jiggins pointed.
“Milk,” says he. “Home-made bread. Um. Pickles. Did you hear that? Pickles. Seems like I couldn’t get along without a pickle. A long pickle. Maybe sweet, maybe sour—I don’t care.”
Mark looked excited. “Pie,” says he. “I bet they got p-p-pie. Cherry-pie! L-l-let’s stop.”
Collins looked at me and grinned, and I looked at Collins and grinned. It was funny the way both those fat folks did let their minds run to eating. Not that I would have thrown a piece of pie into the river if somebody had offered it to me, and Collins wasn’t the sort of fellow to use a glass of fresh milk to wash his face with, but it was more—what d’you call it?—incidental-like with us. With them it was about the most important thing there was. I’d like to enjoy something the way Mark Tidd enjoys eating. I’ve heard it makes you dull to eat a lot, but it didn’t work that way with Mark. He always could think better after he’d eaten a meal big enough to keep a family two days.
Of course, we went ashore. There would have been a rebellion right there if we hadn’t. We walked back through the low ground and found a lane running up to the house. It led to the barn-yard and around a low shed where the farmer kept his wagon. Where it went we went. We straggled around the corner of that shed into the yard, and then we stopped. We stopped sudden and short, and everybody said something startled, for there, coming toward us like he meant business and a good deal of it, was the biggest white bulldog I ever saw. Maybe he looked bigger than he was, but, allowing for that, he was plenty big.
I don’t know what the rest did. Right there Binney Jenks was a pretty busy kid with no time to fool with anybody. I turned and went up the fence and scrambled on top of that shed so quick it must have looked like I did it in one jump. Collins was about a tenth of a second behind me. Mark and Jiggins, being so fat, weren’t quite as quick, but they did considerable moving when you take everything into consideration. Both of them were on the fence and the dog was jumping at their feet. Mark got on the shed next, and that left nobody but Jiggins in reach. I never saw a dog put his mind to getting a man the way that bulldog did. He acted like it was necessary for him to have a chunk of Jiggins, and it looked, too, as though he was going to come pretty close to getting what he was after.
Collins and I sat still. We were sort of startled out of our wits, I guess, but not Mark. He was busy the minnit he got on the roof. By luck there was a long pole up there—about twenty feet long, I guess; Mark grabbed it and crouched at the very edge of the roof. Then Mister Dog jumped for Jiggins. Maybe you don’t think he was a surprised animal! Just as he jumped Mark poked, and he poked good and hard. The pole took the dog in the ribs, and you could hear him say, “Urgh,” or something like that. He went kerflop and head over heels.
“H-h-hurry up!” says Mark to Jiggins.
Jiggins hurried.