“Then what happened?” asked Harry, eagerly.
“Now, if Dickums will cut a few more slices of bread I’ll proceed with the narrative. I’m as hungry as a bear!”
“Well,” Chub proceeded, as he buttered another slice of bread and helped himself to the stewed apricots, “I got my feet through under the bottom of the tent and squirmed out until I just had my head inside. I wasn’t going to leave that there, but just then the two Gipsies began shouting and quarreling with each other, and I was pretty certain that they didn’t know I was around. So I stayed still a moment and listened. I couldn’t understand more than one word in three, for they used the funniest language I ever heard, but I didn’t have any trouble making out that one chap wanted money and the other didn’t want to give it to him. I thought every minute they were going to fight, but they didn’t; just romped around and called each other things in Gipsy language—and sometimes in English—and raised all sorts of a rumpus. I thought you could have heard them a quarter of a mile away, and I wondered why the other folks didn’t come over to see what was up. But I suppose they’re used to it. Presently I got my head outside, too, but in such a position that I could see in under the canvas and hear everything.
“Pretty soon they calmed down, and I heard one of them saying something about a dollar, and the other fellow saying ‘Two dollars! Two dollars!’ over and over. And finally one of them hove in sight, and I ducked quick. I heard him fussing around back of the bale of hay, and thought he was getting some of the canned things for supper. I lifted the canvas a little way and saw that he wasn’t looking toward me at all. He was leaning over the bale and pulling a piece of brown paper out between the layers of hay. When he had it out he opened it, and I felt like kicking myself. For there were bills and silver and coppers wrapped up in it, and I knew it was the money I’d been looking for. But I kept still and watched. He took a two-dollar bill out of the bunch, did the rest up, and put it back where it had been before, shoving his hand ’way into the hay. Then he went off, and I heard them squabbling again, only they weren’t so peevish now.
“Then, thinks I, it’s my time. So I squirmed back until I had my head and shoulders in the tent again. By stretching I could reach the bale, and in the shake of a lamb’s tail I had that little bundle of money in my pocket. Then I thought it would be a good scheme to have a look at the chaps so I could tell them again. That’s where I made my mistake, for, just as I got my head around the corner, one of the fellows got up off the box he’d been sitting on and looked my way. I saw him all right, and the other fellow too, but he saw me, which wasn’t down on the program. I saw his eyes get big and his hand shoot out toward me, pointing, and I heard him break into song, but I didn’t wait any longer. I sneaked. I got tangled up in backing out, and lost some time that way, but I got out before they reached me, and was up and running like the dickens for the woods.
“Well, you never heard such a row as there was! I hadn’t got half-way to cover when the whole place was in an uproar and everybody in that camp was coming after me. The fellows in the tent came, too; one through the back and the other by way of the door. It was a merry chase, fellows! I made for the deep woods and then circled around toward the road, thinking I could outrun any of them if I had a good track. But I was off my reckoning. I reached the road all right and had a few yards’ start, when the chap who had seen me broke out of the woods and came after me like a house afire. And he can run, that Gipsy! If we had him at college we’d win the sprints easily! I put on every ounce of steam I had, but he kept gaining on me, and I saw that it was no use. Then I made a dive for the woods again, thinking I might manage to give him the slip. But instead of that I gave myself the slip. I tumbled over a root or something, and before I could get my feet again he had me.”
“Oh, Chub!” gasped Harry. “Did he hurt you?”
“Cut his head off,” said Dick. “Look for yourself, Harry.”
“No, he didn’t hurt me, that is, not to mean it. He pretty nearly broke my back when he landed on me, but that was unintentional, I suppose. By the time I’d got up, about six more of the Indians were on the scene, all talking and jabbering away like mad. No one seemed to know what the trouble was, and the chap who had me couldn’t get them to keep still long enough to let him tell them. I never heard such a lot of noise in my life. Sounded like a meeting of the Football Rules Committee. Well, they held on to me and shouted and yelled, and I got my breath back and tried to put on a front.
“‘What do you mean by chasing me like this?’ said I. ‘Let me go immediately’—or words to that effect. ‘What you do in my tent?’ asks the pasty-faced gentleman who had caught me. ‘What tent?’ says I, looking as innocent as anything. Then they all broke out again, and pointed, and began to lug me back to their old camp. I went unwillingly, but I went; that is, I went part way. Because, just as we were getting back to it, along comes a cloud of dust with an automobile in it. So I began to yell like anything: ‘Help! Murder! Fire! Thieves!’ And, being a human sort of an automobile, it stopped quick to see what was up. When the dust had blown away I looked up to find Joe Whiting grinning down at me in surprise.