“Yes.”
“He and his friend got up early,” says the man. “They left a call for seven, but they were down here at six. Had breakfast and went out.”
Now, that was a nice thing to start the day with, wasn’t it? We thought we had the advantage of them. It was all plain as pie to us how we could stick to their heels till they found Uncle Hieronymous and then bust in on them and knock their scheme a-kiting. Now the shoe was pinching the other foot, and it pinched hard.
We turned away without so much as saying thank you to the man. Somehow there didn’t seem to be much to thank him for. It would have been too much like saying much obliged to a cow that hooked you. Out on the porch we flopped down in a couple of chairs and looked at each other.
“Looks like we was done for,” I says.
Mark Tidd never will admit he’s beaten. It made him mad to hear me say so.
“I’ll sh-sh-show you if we’re b-b-beat,” he says, stuttering so bad he almost choked. “We hain’t beat, and we hain’t goin’ to be b-b-beat.”
“All right,” says I, “that suits me fine. How do we manage it?”
“Sittin’ here won’t do it,” says he, and got onto his feet. “Come on.”
There wasn’t a thing to do but try to find uncle ourselves. If we got to him before Jiggins & Co. all right. If they found him first the bacon was burned, and there we were. Nice, wasn’t it? It made me sick to think of all the work we’d done and all the trouble we’d taken, and then to have the whole thing depend on luck at the end. We were discouraged, but we didn’t let up. We said we’d keep up the battle till the cows came home, and we did.