“He looked in at your window.” Johnny chuckled.
“He couldn’t,” Curlie laughed out loud. “It’s twenty feet from the ground.”
“Then you didn’t see him?”
“Of course not. There was no one.”
“There was,” Johnny’s tone was serious.
Curlie Carson leaped to his feet. “What! How—”
“Hung a rope ladder to the great brass cannon above,” Johnny said quietly. “He climbed down after a while. And after that, quite soon, he saw something that caused him to do a back somersault off the end of his ladder. Wonder he didn’t break his neck.”
“But he didn’t?” said Curlie, pacing nervously back and forth.
“No,” said Johnny. “Apparently these natives are like cats—always land on their feet.”
He was surprised at the evident agitation caused in Curlie’s mind by this disclosure. “What’s he cooking up in that dark little laboratory of his?” Johnny asked himself. He recalled the mysterious packages Curlie’s burros had packed up the mountain.