“‘If I fix it up with the man that owned the hog and with the sheriff, will you try to find him?’
“‘You go fix it first,’ says she. ‘But I hain’t the least notion where to look. Maybe he’s up and skedaddled for Africa or Chiny or one of them places. He was always talkin’ about goin’ to see them Chinee folks. Seems like he was a heap int’rested into ’em.’
“Well, Wiggamore and his friend looked at each other and waggled their heads, and got up to go. ‘If you hear from George,’ says Wiggamore, ‘you let me know. We want to buy that piece of land and we’ll pay well for it.’
“‘Hain’t no well on it,’ says she. ‘We jest use it for the hogs.’
“Then Wiggamore and the man got out as fast as they could, lookin’ like somebody had just stole their dinner from under their noses. They stopped at the gate and used up a lot of language sayin’ disagreeable things about George and Miss Piggins, and alludin’ to folks that stole hogs and interfered with business.
“‘You got to find George,’ says Wiggamore. ‘That is your job from this minute. Keep after him and find him. You know as well as I do that we’ve got to have that land. The engineers say it is the only place where we can put up our power-house. All the rest of this project falls down if we can’t get that meadow.’
“Then they went back to the hotel and went up to their rooms, and here we be.”
“F-fine,” says Mark. “You done a good job. I should ’a’ found out about this before. Zadok found it out p-pretty quick.”
“Zadok?” says I.
“To be sure. It’s what he was talkin’ about. It’s the answer to his riddle. Power-house and what a feller’s got to have he can’t git along without.” He stopped a minute, and then says: “Fellers, the most important thing in the world for us r-right now is George Piggins. Yes, sir, we got to find him, and find him b-before Wiggamore does.”