"But it's my pop's ladder, and it's our swing board, out of our walnut tree swing."
"I say, let's run!" Poetry half yelled and half hissed up to me, and for some reason, knowing I couldn't get the board off the chimney, and guessing what might happen if I got caught, it seemed like Poetry's idea was as good as any, and so I turned and started to scoot my way down the board ladder on the roof to the ladder Poetry would be holding for me, and then—well, I don't know how it happened, but my boot slipped before I could get my feet on pop's ladder, and I felt all of me slipping toward the edge of the roof—slipping, slipping, slipping, and I knew I wouldn't be able to stop myself. In a jiffy, I'd be going slippety-sizzle over the edge of the eaves and land with a wham at Poetry's feet. I might even land on him and hurt him; and even while I was sliding, I heard a sickening sound in the schoolhouse somewhere, like a stove was falling down, or a chair was falling over or something, and then my feet were over the edge, and I was grasping and grasping with my bare hands at the slippery roof, and they couldn't find anything to hold onto, and then I heard another sound that was even more sickening than the one I'd heard in the schoolhouse and it was a ripping and tearing sound, and then felt a long sharp pain on me somewhere and I knew my trousers had caught on a nail or something....
R-r-r-r-r-r-ip!... R-r-r-r-r-r-ip! Tear-r-r-r-r-! And I knew that when I would hit the ground in a few half jiffies, there would be a big hole in my trousers which I'd have to explain to Mom when I got home, as well as a lot of other things to both Mom and Pop.
The next thing I knew I was off the edge and falling and the very next thing I learned awful quick, was I had landed ker-wham-thud in a snow drift at the foot of the ladder.
10
Even while I was falling and scared and feeling the long sharp pain running up and down my hip where I'd probably been scratched by a nail, I was wondering what would happen next—what Mr. Black would do, and what would happen when I got home, and also I was wondering how bad I would be hurt when I fell—and then I lit ker-fluffety-sizzle in that big snowdrift....
And there I was, Bill Collins, the one member of the Sugar Creek Gang who had made up his mind he wasn't going to have anything to do with smoking a teacher out of his schoolhouse, the one who was going to be what is called a gentleman, now lying upside down in a scrambled-up heap, with one of my trouser legs ripped maybe half way down, and myself all covered with snow and with my mind all tangled up and everything.
The fall didn't hurt much though, on account of the snowdrift being pretty deep, but we had to do something and do it quick.