Mark just looked at him. Then he says, sarcastic-like: “Naw; ’course not. They know we’re afraid of the d-d-dark, don’t they? What’s the use of keepin’ g-g-guard?”
The third time he went to the window he stayed quite a while.
“What is it?” I asked.
He motioned with his hand for me to keep quiet; then in a few minnits he came back and sat down without a word.
“What was going on?” Plunk wanted to know.
“I guess the f-f-fat chief has turned in. The thin one is k-keeping watch.” You see, it had to be a game all the time. What was actually going on wasn’t enough for Mark. If we really were besieged by white savages in the middle of Africa with a big jewel in our hands that we’d stolen, he would have up and played we were in a cabin up near the source of the Père Marquette River, watched by a couple of men who wanted to keep us from warning Uncle Hieronymous. I never could see the sense to a lot of his games, but, after all, we had a lot of fun. Not as much as he did, though.
“It’s dark,” says Mark. Then he grinned at us and looked at his spear. “’Most time to git after those m-m-mosquitoes,” says he.
He picked up the spear and looked careful at the way the knife was fastened onto the end of it; then he felt of the edge of the knife to be sure it was sharp. All this time he never said a word, though he knew we were so interested we could hardly keep from rolling off our chairs onto the floor.
“Wonder if I c-c-could git up into the attic?” he says.
In the dining-room ceiling was a square place to get up into the loft, but there wasn’t any way to reach it.