“You can’t crawl out under the house. There isn’t any opening. The logs go down to the ground all the way around.”
“I knew it,” he says. “What you s’pose the sh-sh-shovels are for?”
I got the hatchet, and we decided it was best to pull up a board in the kitchen, where they were wider. The kitchen floor was rough lumber, and some boards were eight inches wide, with cracks between.
“It’ll make a n-noise,” says Mark, “and they’ll suspect we’re up to somethin’.” He thought a minnit, pulling hard on his cheek. Then he got down the dish-pan and handed it to Plunk and gave Tallow a couple of milk-pans.
“When we b-begin work,” says he, “you make a racket. Keep at it steady.” All of a sudden he looked disgusted and kind of sorry for himself. He shook his head and slapped his leg. “There,” says he, “I almost forgot the window. Hang a quilt over it, Binney, so’s they can’t see in.”
I did that, and then we went to work on the floor, but first I told Mark I had a better noise-maker than a tin pan. I got it out of my satchel. It was a tin can with a string through it. There was a piece of resin, too, and when you put the can against a window and pulled the string it let out a racket that would scare a crow. Tallow took that and started in. Plunk pounded on the pans. All of us war-whooped.
It was hard work getting up the board, and we made a lot of noise at it, but I don’t believe Jiggins and Collins ever noticed anything besides the squealing squawk of the tin can and the banging on the pans and the hollering. It must have surprised them some, and I bet they wondered what we were up to. At last we got two boards up. That gave us plenty of space to crawl through.
Mark signaled to Tallow and Plunk to let up their racket. My, but it sounded quiet when they stopped! You never know how quiet stillness is until a big noise stops all of a sudden. Collins began to yell outside.
“Hey!” says he, “what you kids doing? Think this is the Fourth of July?”
“We were j-j-just trying to keep from f-fallin’ asleep,” says Mark.