It turned out like he thought it would. My aunt was mad when I did not come home to dinner, and madder when I didn't come home to supper, but when I didn't come home at all she was worried almost crazy and she got my father to go hunt for me. He hunted awhile, and then he got some other men to hunt for me, because he had to go home.
They hunted all night. Along toward morning the hunters who were hunting for me ran into the hunters who were hunting for Doctor Miller. They had Swatty with them, because Mrs. Miller had said Swatty had come to the house and the doctor had gone away with him. They were trying to make Swatty tell where the doctor went, but he wouldn't. He just let on like he was crying and said he didn't know.
Well, the hunters who were hunting for Doctor Miller had just started out, because Mrs. Miller hadn't got worried until toward morning, because she thought he was attending to his business. But toward morning my father and Bony's father came to his house, and it was at their houses Mrs. Miller thought Doctor Miller was. So she was frightened and got some men to hunt him.
I guess I went to sleep about ten or eleven o'clock that night while Jake find Doctor Miller were still digging. I woke up all of a sudden and there I was in the cave, and the door open and men coming in and Doctor Miller brushing off his hands. Him and Jake had almost dug a way out, but the hunters had got Swatty to tell where we were. So about the first thing I heard was a man saying:
“Where's that Swatty? Don't let him get away!”
But he had got. We didn't see him for about a week. He went over into Illinois and got a job with a farmer.
Well, all the way home Jake kept talking about Tom Foley and what he would do to him, and when the hunters heard it they laughed like sixty and said it was the best joke they ever heard. They said they would have to hand it to Foley—he was a dandy. So I guess they told Foley so. I guess he listened to them and didn't let on, only said he didn't do it, and of course they didn't believe him, because he had been elected foreman of Fearless Hose No. 2, like Jake had said he would be. So Foley got sort of proud of it and let them think. So me and Bony and Swatty never got anything, except Swatty got licked for being away for a week, and that was all right; it was worth it for the fun we had.
But the worst of it was that all of it wasn't any use. We had gone to all the work for nothing. We had caved up the wrong doctor. We ought to have caved up Doctor Wilmeyer and Doctor Brown. Because while we had Doctor Miller caved up, and thought we had everything fine and dandy, it was Doctor Wilmeyer and Doctor Brown who were the ones all the time. When we got home from the cave with the hunters there was a new baby at our house and one at Bony's house, and they had brought them. And that wasn't the worst—they were both girls. So we had done worse than nothing, because if we had left Doctor Miller alone he might, anyway, have brought boys.