“Didn’t she? Well, you had better believe she did, and she raised Cain, but I fixed things.”
“How?” asked his companions, deeply interested.
“I told her I seen Kate, our hired girl, coming out of the room on tip-toe, just after dark. Then mother went for Kate, and she cried and said she wouldn’t do a thing like that to save her from starving. It didn’t do no good, for mother bounced her.”
No thought of the burning injustice done an honest servant entered the thought of any one of the three boys. They chuckled and laughed, and agreed that the trick was one of the brightest of the kind they had ever known. Could the other two have done as well, the party would have been on their Westward jaunt at that moment.
“I’ve sometimes thought,” said Tom Wagstaff, “that the old folks must have a ’spicion of what’s going on, for they watch me so close that I haven’t had a chance to steal a dollar, and you know it will never do to start without plenty of money; but I’ve a plan that’ll fetch ’em,” he added, with a meaning shake of his head.
“What is it?”
“I’ll tell you in a minute; you see I’ve got everything down fine, and I’ve made some changes in our plans.”
His companions listened closely.
“You know that when we got through reading that splendid book, ‘Roaring Ralph, the Cyclone of the Rockies,’ we made up our minds that we must have two revolvers and a Winchester repeating rifle apiece before we started?”
The others nodded, to signify that they remembered the understanding.