Jud listened: “Eatin' beech-mast,”—he said, and he slipped off his pony, tied him quietly to the limb of a sweet-gum tree, and cocking his long gun, slipped into the wood.
Five minutes later he heard the sound still farther off. “They're walkin',” muttered Jud—“I mus' head 'em off.” Then he pushed on rapidly into the forest.
Archie B. let him go—then, making a short circuit, slipped like an Indian through the wood, and came up to the pony hitched on the road side.
Quietly removing the saddle and blanket, he took two tough prickly burrs of the sweet-gum and placed one on each side of the pony's spine, where the saddle would rest. Then he put the blanket and saddle back, taking care to place them on very gently and tighten the girth but lightly.
He shook all over with suppressed mirth as he went farther into the wood, and lay down on the mossy bank behind a clay-root to watch the performance.
It was a quarter of an hour before Jud, thoroughly tired and disgusted, gave up the useless search and came back.
Untying the pony, he threw the bridle rein over its head and vaulted lightly into the saddle.
Archie B. grabbed the clay-root and stuffed his wool hat into his mouth just in time.
“It was worth a dollar,” he told Ozzie B. that night, after they had retired to their trundle bed. “The pony squatted fust mighty nigh to the groun'—then he riz a-buckin'. I seed Jud's coat-tail a-turnin' summersets through the air, the saddle and blanket a-followin'. I heard him when he hit the swamp hole on the side of the road kersplash!—an' the pony skeered speechless went off tearin' to-ards home. Then I hollered out: 'Go it ole, fly-ketcher—you're as good for tad-poles as you is for bird-eggs'—an' I lit out through the wood.”
Ozzie B. burst out crying: “Oh, Archie B., do you reckin the po' man got hurt?”