“Now what?” I asked him. He was always seeing things to laugh at none of the rest of us saw, and sometimes it made me a little mad.
“They’re goin’ to be d-d-disappointed again,” says he. “Jiggins is headin’ for Uncle Hieronymous.”
It was funny. There the fat man was hurrying off to uncle’s cabin so he could get there and buy his mineral rights before we could come to warn him. And when he got there uncle would be somewhere else. It didn’t look as if the firm of Jiggins & Collins was having very much good luck.
“Let ’em go,” says I. “It may do them good, and they can’t do any harm.”
“They might get track of your uncle,” says Tallow.
“I dun’no’ how,” says I. “Nobody knows where he is but us fellows. If they knew what he was gone for it wouldn’t be very easy to find him.”
“Just the s-s-same,” says Mark, “we got to f-find him, and we mustn’t lose any t-t-time about it.”
“How’ll we do it?” I asked.
“I dun’no’ now,” says he, “but I’ll think it out. Let’s s-s-start for home.”
We rowed the boat to shore and fastened it; then we started for Uncle Hieronymous’s cabin. I own up I felt sort of shaky about going back there just then, for there wasn’t a doubt Jiggins and Collins were there, but Mark said there wasn’t any danger, so along we went. I guess Tallow and Plunk figured the same way I did, and that was to think no fat boy in Michigan could show he had more nerve than I did.