I couldn’t tell what the shape of it was, nor anything, but it looked suspicious, so I kept right on watching it—and after a long time it moved. Yes, sir, it moved plain from behind the bush that hid it and toward the man. It was some kind of a human being, and he was up to something. It took me some time to get it into my head what he was up to, and then it dawned on me. He was watching the man that was spying on Tod Nodder.
Now that was confusing as all-git-out. Here was a mysterious man spying on Tod and a heap more mysterious person sneaking around to keep his eye on the spy. I drew a long breath and looked farther back into the underbrush, because you can’t tell what might happen. There might have been somebody spying on that second spy, and another watching the third, and so on. Why, there might have been a string of spies, each watching the one in front of him, that stretched ’way around the earth!
I knew Mark Tidd would be a lot interested in this thing, so after I had watched long enough to make sure those two were the only spies in sight, I shinned down again careful and crept up to Mark. I did it so stealthy that he didn’t know I was coming until I reached out and touched him, and then he was that startled you wouldn’t believe.
“How’s that?” says I. “I’ll bet there hain’t an Injun could ’a’ stole up any quieter.”
He didn’t say a thing for a minute, and then he tried to let on he hadn’t been startled a bit.
“See him?” says he.
“Yes,” says I, “and that hain’t all. He’s there watchin’ Tod, and behind him is somebody else watchin’ him.”
“Eh?” says Mark. “What’s that?”
“Sure as shootin’,” says I. “Somebody’s spyin’ on the man that’s spyin’ on Tod.”
“What d’you make of it?” says he.