“Wouldn’t shoot him if we had,” says Jiggins. “Certainly not. No fault of his. Doing his duty. Good dog. Like to own him. Our fault, eh? We came in his yard. Who asked us? Nobody did. Well?”
Come to think of it, we didn’t have much right to complain about that dog. He was doing what his master told him to do, and he was making a good job of it.
“We’ve got to do something,” says Collins, with sweat trickling down his nose. “We can’t stay here all day.”
“L-l-looks like we couldn’t do anything else,” says Mark. And Jiggins grinned.
“There must be some way of coaxin’ doggie to let us down,” I says.
“Oh,” says Collins, “he’ll let us down, all right. The trouble is, what will he do when we’ve got down?”
Mark sat down and pulled his hat over his eyes. He had his cheek between his thumb and finger and was pinching it so it looked white.
“Thinkin’,” says I to Collins. “He’ll git us down. You see.”
Collins just grinned sort of sickly. He didn’t seem to have any great confidence in Mark, but then he didn’t know Mark as well as I did.
After a few minnits Mark got up and walked to the edge of the shed away from the dog. He stood there measuring with his eye how far it was to a sort of lean-to against the side of the barn. I went over and looked, too. It must have been twelve or fifteen feet—too far to jump, by considerable.