“Everywhere. All around us. They’re a r-r-raidin’ party gittin’ ready to bust out on the town and scalp everybody and carry off the wimmin and children. We got to creep up on ’em and f-f-find out their plans and warn Wicksville.”
“I don’t understand no Injun language,” says I.
“I do,” says he. “I learned ’most all the Injun languages when I was a captive among them some time back.”
“Um!” says I. “I forgot about that. Come to think of it, I was one of them captives, too. I kin speak Choctaw and Hog Latin and a lot of them languages myself.”
“Good!” says he. “Now cautious if you want to keep any hair g-g-growin’ on your head.”
We did pretty good. In ten minutes we was lying not a hundred foot from Tod Nodder, and he hadn’t the least idea in the world that anybody was within a mile of him. At that distance we could whisper without any danger, so Mark leans over and says to me:
“Biggest war p-p-party I ever see,” says he. “They mean b-business. Look at that war-paint.”
Tod was some smeared up, but most folks would have called it dirt. I didn’t care, though. If Mark Tidd wanted it to be war-paint, why, war-paint it was. We just laid there and watched and calc’lated how we could save Wicksville from all those savages who weren’t there, and we told each other what doggone brave and noble things we was going to do till I got so I thought I was quite a fellow and Mark was all swelled up like a toad that’s eaten too many flies.
All at once Mark grabbed my arm and says, “Look!”
I looked. Right past Tod Nodder, and about a hunderd feet away from him, a man’s head was coming up slow over the top of a bush. We couldn’t see him well enough to make out who he was, but we could see that he was watching Tod mighty interested. He watched a few minutes and then pulled down his head. Then we could see the bush move a little like he was settling down comfortable behind it. But we couldn’t be sure. Maybe he was crawling off.