“That might hurt their boots,” laughed Mark, “but it wouldn’t do us any good. I haven’t heard any feasible suggestion yet. You know possession is nine points, and they’ve got that.”
It was Mark who finally hit upon a plan that seemed possible. It was a wild and woolly plan, too, and it took Texas with a rush.
“They stole it from us,” said Mark. “I don’t see what better we can do than steal it back again.”
“You don’t mean——” gasped Dewey—“b’gee——”
“Yes, I do,” laughed Mark. “And I mean this very night, too. I mean that we turn burglars and get our money out of there.”
And Mr. Jeremiah Powers let out a whoop just then that made the windows rattle over in that selfsame hotel. Jeremiah Powers hadn’t been quite so excited since the time he rode out and tried to hold up the cadet battalion. When the others assented to the plan and vowed their aid, he nearly had a fit.
After that the Seven did almost nothing but glance at their watches during the fast-waning Sunday afternoon. There was no parade to pass the time. It seemed an age between the sunset gun and supper; and as for tattoo, all the Parson’s much-vaunted geologic periods, times, ages and eras, Silurian, Devonian, Carboniferous, Treassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous, were not to be compared with it in length. When they did finally get into bed they waited another age for taps to sound, and another for the tac to inspect, and another till the sentry called half-past ten, and another for eleven, and another for half-past that, and then twelve, and they couldn’t stand it any longer.
No matter if it was a rather early hour for burglars to begin operations, they could not wait any longer. Not a man of them had gone to sleep (except Indian), such was their impatience. They got up, all of them, and began to dress hastily, putting on some old clothes a drum orderly had smuggled in. And a few minutes later that momentous expedition crossed the sentry post unseen and sat down in old Fort Clinton.
Nobody means to say for a moment that there was one of them who was not badly scared just then. None of them was used to playing burglar and they could not but see that it was a very serious and dangerous business at best. Old hands at it often get into serious scrapes, so what shall we say of greenhorns? The only one of them who had ever “done a job” was Texas, who had once gotten Mark out of a bad scrape that way.
They discussed the programme they were to follow. They knew where the room was and that it could be reached by climbing the piazza pillars to the roof above. Texas had climbed those pillars once before, and he had a rope to help Mark and the rest up this time. After that they were to enter that room, and Texas, the desperate cowboy, was to hold young Chandler up till the deed was done. That was all, very simple. But, oh, how they shivered!