“Have to have help,” says Silas.
“Hire some of them grocery-store loafers to help,” says Mark. “Us f-fellers has got somethin’ mighty important to look after.”
Well, Mark and I started out then to get our eyes on Tod Nodder and to keep them on him. He wasn’t so easy to find as we thought he would be. Maybe that was because there was a man in town trying to hire folks to do some work on the railroad. Tod would hide away from such a man harder than he would hide from a tribe of scalping Indians. He wasn’t at any of the usual loafing-places, and at the livery-stable where he ’most generally slept they said they hadn’t seen him since daylight. They said he started off somewheres about four o’clock in the morning. Now when a man like Tod Nodder goes somewheres at four o’clock in the morning there are lots of things he might go to do, but there hain’t but one thing he’s very likely to go for, and that’s fish.
After we had rummaged all around and couldn’t come across him Mark says, “Well, the s-s-skeezicks must’a’ gone f-f-fishin’.”
“Where?” says I.
“Tod’s one of these p-pickerel fishermen,” says Mark. “Seems like pickerel and him is mighty fond of each other. So,” says he, “I calc’late we better make for the bayou.”
The bayou was a kind of elbow of the Looking-glass River that flows into the main river just below town. When the railroad came along they built right across that elbow, shutting it off into a kind of a lake shaped like a letter U, and the banks was mostly swampy and all overgrown with underbrush. Seems like the pickerel was fond of hanging around in there, and folks who knew how to fish was always hauling regular whoppers out of there. There was places where the banks were high and where you could take a long pole and fish right from the shore. We sort of figured Tod would pick out one of those places if he was there, on account of its being less work than to row out a boat.
Mark was always thinking ahead a little, so what does he do but go past his house and stop for a lunch. He wasn’t going to be caught out in the country somewheres without anything to eat, not if he knew himself. Then we started off for the bayou, which wasn’t far. We started in at the railroad on one end and just skirted the shore, keeping our eyes open every inch of the way, and, sure enough, along about half-way around we saw a bamboo fish-pole sticking out.
“Injuns,” says Mark Tidd.
“Where?” says I.