we waited until we thought everybody in the house would be eating dinner, and then we rowed up the shore and turned into the willis’s cut. nobody saw us, but we didn’t breathe easy till we were under the high bank and sheltered from the house. of course, we weren’t safe even then, for if anybody had looked down there and seen a strange boat tied alongside the scow of mr. willis’s he naturally would wonder about it and want to know who came in it and where they were. sammy fixed that part of it up pretty well by shoving the boat out a dozen feet and then throwing a big armful of brush over the bow of it. he ran the rope through the grass and left the end where we could get at it in a hurry and haul the boat in. i went up as far as i dared on the steps, and everything looked safe to me. unless you were suspicious and looking for something you wouldn’t have noticed the boat at all.
“tallow,” says mark, who had been sitting on the bottom step pinching his cheek, “folks that’re scairt are easier to f-f-fool than folks that ain’t.”
“i guess so,” says i.
“they’re worryin’ about themselves, and wonderin’ if anything’s goin’ to hurt ’em, and when a feller gits to fussin’ about himself he ain’t got much t-t-t-time to think about anything else.”
my, how he spluttered!
“that’s right,” i says, remembering well how i’d felt that night at the cave keeping watch all alone and wondering what had made the footprint in the sand with the toes off to one side. “scare a man good and you got him.”
“what scares a man most—somethin’ he kin see or somethin’ he can’t?”
i saw what he was driving at right off. “why, somethin’ he can’t see and can’t understand. the more mysterious it is the more scairt he’ll git.”
he nodded. “then,” says he, “the thing for us to do is scare batten and the rest of them stiff.”
i knew by the looks of him that he had a scheme; you could always tell by the winking of his eyes and the way he wiggled his left thumb sort of excited-like.
“go ahead,” says i; “let’s have it.”
“we started it the other day with the dinner-bell. i bet old willis is shiverin’ about that yet. we kin give ’em some more of it. then, maybe, sammy kin help us. remember his showin’ us how a p-p-panther screamed?”
i should say i did remember. i never heard such a blood-curdling noise in all my life. i was sitting right by sammy at the cave when he made it, and it was broad daylight, but the little hairs on the back of my neck rose straight up, and i was nervous all the rest of the day. i should say i did remember it.
“we’ll use that, and then they’ll be discoverin’ the disappearance of the d-d-dog. if other things has happened that’ll bother ’em some. maybe, too, we kin fix it so they’ll see sammy’s footprint. oh, i guess we kin s-s-scare ’em, all right.”
i began to think so, too.
“let’s commence,” i says.
“you go around into the orchard and whang at the bell. sammy and i’ll stay on the east side and see what we kin do. when i give the whistle make for the boat.”
i made for the orchard and crouched down in a fence corner where i could get a good sight at the bell. i’d filled my pockets chock full of the best stones i could find, nice round fellows about the size of marbles, and there were new rubbers on my sling-shot. i hadn’t taken any chances. when i was all settled i got to my knees and let her fly. the first time i missed, but the second time the old bell went glang. i scrouged down out of sight and waited. in a minute old mr. willis stuck his head out of the door, his eyes bulging, and looked all over. he stood there quite awhile, sort of undecided. then he turned his back, and at that i shot again. glang went the bell, and he jumped a foot. when he landed he was turned all the way around.
“hey! mr. batten! mr. batten!” he yelled.
batten came running to the door to know what was the matter. willis was excited and talked loud, so i could hear every word he said. he started in by telling how the bell rang the other day with nobody to ring it, and how the dog had yelped, and how something had slammed the door when he went in. “it ain’t nat’ral,” he squeaked. “i dunno what’s doin’ it, but it ain’t the hand of man. no, siree! and here she’s just rung twice right under my nose.”
“just rung twice right under my nose”
“bosh!” says batten. “you’re nervous and dreaming.”
“didn’t you hear that there bell ring?”
“i was in the front of the house working; i didn’t notice anything.”
they were facing each other and not looking toward the bell at all, so i let her have another one. glang she went, and i thought willis was going to fall off the steps. “there!” he yelled, shaking his skinny hand in batten’s face. “there, maybe you heard that, eh? maybe i was dreaming then. now, tell me what made that. who rung it? no human bein’ rung it, i say. something’s gone wrong with this place, it has! it’s ghosts, that’s what it is; and i’m a-goin’ to pack and git for town.”
“ghosts!” snorts batten. “bosh!” but he didn’t look easy in his mind, and was watching the bell uncomfortable-like. “there ain’t no such thing,” he says.
“no sich thing! why, my father he—”
he’d got batten looking at him instead of the bell, so i banged it again. this time batten jumped most as high as willis.
“bill!” he yelled; “come here, bill!”
a big young fellow in his shirt-sleeves, with a pencil in his hand, came to the door. i judged he was the drawing-man that was taking off the design of the engine. they palavered quite a spell, and i didn’t get a chance to shoot; besides, i didn’t want it to get too common. even a ghost that hangs around too much will get to be a habit; folks will get used to it, and it won’t scare them any more. i let them talk.
“where’s the dog?” says batten, all of a sudden, and commenced to whistle and call. of course the dog didn’t come, and you could see that worried them.
“he never goes off,” said willis, and he tried whistling; but the dog was a long ways away, and the rope that tied him to his tree was good and stout.
“this,” says batten, “is getting to look kind of funny.” he was one of those middle-sized men with too much under their vests, and a sticky-looking complexion, and eyes that always seemed as if somebody’d just spilled a mite of water into them. he wasn’t handsome at any time, but now he got kind of yellow mixed with green, and his fingers began to shut and open. by all signs he was pretty average uncomfortable.
well, just then sammy let out an awful screech like a panther that’s been shot. it went up high and came down low and went into your ear like it was trying to bore a hole through your head. i’d been expecting it, and i knew what it was, but that didn’t make a bit of difference; i was about as scared as batten and willis. they got white; i could see it way where i was. the color seemed just to pop out of their faces. it seemed like i ought to have heard it make a noise like when you pull a cork out of a bottle.
“what’s that?” says batten, and grabs a hold on willis.
willis he didn’t say a word, but just sagged against the door, and the fellow they called bill ducked inside and then poked his head out and glared all around with his eyes almost laying on his cheeks. i took another crack at the bell.
every one of them jumped into the house and slammed the door. i didn’t think it would be a good idea to do anything more just then, but to sort of let what we had done sink in. so i sat still, watching the house. all at once i heard a sound close behind me, and, being pretty excited anyhow and all on edge, i liked to have jumped up and hollered, but i didn’t, which was lucky, for it wasn’t anybody but sammy, grinning away and plumb tickled to death with himself. he motioned with his finger for me to follow him.
“fat boy says come,” he whispered, and then giggled. “they jump, eh? ding goes bell; they jump. ding goes bell; they jump some more. sammy laugh and fat boy laugh. then sammy make panther screech. so. everybody jump. i guess bad men scairt, eh?”
“they looked scared to me,” i says. “but scared is as scared does. wait till we see.”
we all laid up among the trees a couple of fields east of willis’s and had some sandwiches and one thing and another which i had been wanting quite a while. it was way past noon, and i hate to have meal-time go by without paying some kind of attention to it. after we ate we took it easy. sammy went to sleep and mark dozed. i never can do much sleeping when it’s daytime—seems like such a waste of time—so i started cutting my initials into a big elm tree. while i was whittling i got to thinking; i guess there isn’t a better way to think than to whittle. just get your knife going good, and your head seems to go at the same time. i bet if i could whittle all the time in school i’d stand up at the head of the class. things don’t puzzle you so. you just sit and think, lazy-like, and the first thing you know you see it just as plain. well, i began figuring out what we were doing without intending to think about it at all, and all of a sudden we began to look pretty foolish to me. yes, sir. mark and i looked foolish, and sammy was foolish, anyhow, so there we were. i reached over and kicked mark.
“wake up!” says i.
“what’s m-m-matter?”
“i been thinkin’.”
“that ain’t no reason for wakin’ me up.”
“this is a silly thing we’re a-doin’,” i says.
that made him sit up sudden, for if there was anything he hated it was to look silly, or to do anything foolish and get caught at it. i don’t know what he wouldn’t have done to keep folks from laughing at him, or from getting into a scrape that made him look ridiculous.
“what’s silly about it?”
“the hull thing,” says i, “from a to izzard.”
he puckered up his face and his eyes got squinty, like they always do when he’s mad. “if you want to back out,” he snaps, “go ahead.”
“i don’t look like backin’ out, do i?”
“what’s the matter, then?”
“oh,” says i, “the hull idee of it. ain’t it sort of reedic’lous for you and me, a couple of kids, and sammy, a half-witted injun, comin’ up here to git the best of three growed men, and one of ’em from pittsburg? why,” says i, “them men forgit more from breakfast till dinner than all of us know put together.”
“maybe so,” says he.
“they were smart enough to git your pa’s engine, and i bet they’re smart enough to keep it, leastways so far as us kids is concerned. seems to me we went at it wrong. hadn’t there ought to be some way of gittin’ back that engine without smougin’ it this way? i bet there is. what we should ’a’ done was to go to some man in wicksville we could trust and find out what to do.”
he didn’t say anything, but looked like he’d lost his last friend. anybody could see i was right, and he couldn’t do anything else but admit it, but admitting wasn’t one of the things marcus aurelius fortunatus tidd hankered to do oftener than was necessary.
“and,” says i, “so far’s scarin’ ’em goes, what good’ll it do? maybe we kin keep old willis hoppin’, and maybe we kin make batten and the other feller a little nervous, but with them it ain’t goin’ to last. they’re city men, and eddicated men, and when they git to thinkin’ it over they’re goin’ to be more mad than scairt, and they’ll be lookin’ to see who’s puttin’ up a job on ’em. ghosts is all right for old codgers like willis, but you got to trot out a perty lively sperret to keep henry c. batten a-guessin’ long.”
while i was talking mark was cocking his ear up the road, and i stopped to listen. faint-like we could hear a rattling, and a tinny sort of sound, with a whistle going high over it all, a whistle that was whistling “marching through georgia” with bird warbles and jumps and trills and things all scattered through. it kept coming closer and closer and louder and louder. we crept out and looked up the road. it was a horse and wagon, a big wooden wagon, painted the kind of red that railroads paint their box-cars; and it looked pretty much like a little box-car for a horse to draw. there wasn’t anything funny about it, for that kind of wagons came through wicksville half a dozen times a year. it was a tin peddler who traded dishpans and stuff like that for old rags and rubber and what-not. sometimes they’d have a big bundle of buggy whips besides the tinware.
the driver was lopping back on his seat, with his nose pointed straight up, whistling away like he was paid for it by the hour. you couldn’t see much of his face but the under side of his chin, which isn’t rightly face at all, i suppose. when he got opposite us i began whistling “marching through georgia,” too, as loud as i could. he brought his head down slow and sat up, never missing a note. then he jerked on the lines to stop the horse and looked down at us, his face all puckered up with his whistling, and went right on until he got to the end of the verse. he was an oldish fellow, with one of those long, thin faces, sort of caved in at the cheeks, that usually go with lean six-footers. his skin was wrinkled and brown, and his eyes, which had a lot of wrinkles running every which way from them, were brown, too. his hair wasn’t red, and it wasn’t yellow, and it wasn’t any other color i ever heard of. he quit whistling, as i said, when he got to the end of the verse; but he didn’t speak right off, only looked at us and felt of his nose, wiggling it a little with his fingers like he wanted to make sure it was on right and wasn’t likely to go flying off unexpected. then he spoke with a voice that was little and squeaky and raspy.
“my name,” says he, “is zadok biggs. i venture to say you never heard that name before—zadok. no? it is rare, very rare. it was given to me in a spirit of prophesy, of prophesy by my father, a remarkable man. zadok, my friends, is from the hebrew, and signifies just. you see! just biggs is my name, then—and it fits. nobody can deny that it fits. just by name and just by nature. to that i may add just by habit and just in dealings. i have a judicial mind, my friends and who knows, had not commerce lured me from my books, but i might have risen to greatness in the law—even to the bench of the supreme court in washington? who can say?”
none of us could, so we kept still about it.
he kept right on. “ah, you look pleasant, and you listen well. i will dismount—climb down is the commoner expression—and rest with you.”
he got down clumsily and when he stood on the ground we saw that he wasn’t five feet high, but almost three feet wide. you looked at his face, and felt sure it belonged to a man six foot six long by a foot wide and skinny; then you looked at the rest of him and—well, he didn’t match. he’d got hold of the wrong head somewhere.
his horse edged over and began eating grass.
“there,” said mr. zadok biggs, “is a lesson for you, my friends. take it to heart. learn from dumb creatures, learn from nature, learn from man, learn from books, learn everywhere and anywhere. the lesson my horse teaches at this moment is: neglect no opportunity. you observe he eats. he might well have stood in the sand without eating, but, behold! the opportunity to eat presents itself, and without hesitation he avails himself of it. bear this in mind—never overlook opportunity.”
“we’re around here lookin’ for opportunities, but there don’t any seem to show up,” i says. and mark scowled at me to keep still.
“don’t be discouraged. i don’t know what kind of an opportunity you want, but, whatever it may be, it will come. it always does. everything has got an opportunity tied to its tail like a tin can, and if you keep on listening you’ll hear it jangling.”
i could see that idea pleased mark, and he began to look more cheerful.
“what did you say your names were?” asked mr. biggs. “not wilkins, i hope, nor sauer, nor yet perkins. i can’t abide those names, so give me warning if any of them are yours and i’ll be going on. i can’t have anything to do with a man if he has one of those names.”
“mine’s martin,” i told him, “and that’s marcus aurelius fortunatus tidd, and that over there is sammy—just sammy.”
“very good, very good, indeed, especially our friend here to the right. his parents have displayed marked aptitude for naming children. his name is an achievement, a mark of genius. i should like to grasp the hand of the parent who gave you that name.”
“it was my father,” says mark. “he got it out of the decline and f-f-fall of the roman empire.”
“excellent! you have made me your friend for life. bear it in mind. i, zadok biggs, am your friend for life. your name did it; i shall treasure it in my memory. it stands at the top of the list—the very top.”
he talked on and on, telling us about his travels and adventures, asking us a question once in a while; and altogether i thought he was a pretty good sort of a man, and better company i never met. at last he says: “you were speaking of opportunity. may i inquire—ask is the more common word—what opportunity you are looking for. i do not desire to pry. zadok biggs is the least inquisitive of men, but perhaps i can aid—help—you with my advice.”
“we are lookin’,” says mark, and i was mighty surprised at him, “for an opportunity to git back a t-t-turbine.”
“oh,” says zadok biggs, looking kind of blank and bewildered, “a turbine, eh? of course, a turbine—engine is the more usual expression, i believe. who, if i may ask, has the turbine?”
mark told him the whole thing, and he nodded his head and muttered and scowled as he listened. when mark was done zadok biggs sat still a long time. finally he said, “there are no two ways about it, the opportunity would come, but, i pause to ask, will it come soon enough, or if it comes will you be able to take full advantage of it. on these points i must admit, in spite of your name, that i do not know. it seems dubious—doubtful is the more customary expression—very dubious.” he stopped again and pulled two stalks of grass which he chewed and chewed like he was getting some sort of help from them. pretty soon he says, “if i were you, in your circumstances and surroundings, i would go back to wicksville, a fine town, and tell the story to a man i could trust. it would be the safer way, the surer way. mind i do not say your schemes are impossible—nothing is impossible to a boy named marcus aurelius fortunatus tidd, nothing, but it would be safer.”
mark frowned and looked at the ground. after a while he raised his eyes and sighed. “if,” says he, “the opportunity ain’t showed up in an hour i’ll go b-b-back.”
zadok biggs scrambled to his feet and clambered up on his wagon. “i’m journeying—driving is the more usual word—to wicksville. i shall arrive to-morrow, for i stop to-night on the way. bear in mind that i am your friend—your friend for life. if i can be of assistance—do anything for you—let me know. i shall be easy to find.”
with that he drove off down the road, whistling “marching through georgia” to the top of his voice, or to the top of his whistle, and we watched him till his wagon turned the bend.
“well,” says mark, “he seemed to agree with you.”
“yes,” i says. “he’s a man of good sense.”
“b-b-but i got an hour yet,” mark says, getting in the last word.
