two men were sitting on the steps, and uncle, tilted back in a chair, was facing them. nobody seemed to be saying anything as we came up. when we were right close uncle turned and grinned at us.
“comp’ny, boys,” says he. then he poked his finger at one visitor. “jerry yack,” he says, and jerry jerked his head. uncle prodded at the other man. “ole skoog,” he says, and ole jerked his head just like jerry did. uncle clean forgot to mention our names at all. it was pretty much of a one-sided introduction, i thought.
we sat down, and nobody said a word. i could see mark tidd studying ole and jerry and sort of shaking his head over them like he couldn’t make them out. they did nothing but sit and look straight in front of them. they looked like twin brothers, both big and bulging with muscle, both with china-blue eyes and pale hair and cheeks that showed pink through the sunburn.
“are they brothers?” i whispered to uncle.
“brothers? who? them fellers? naw. they’re swedes. that’s what makes ’em look alike. all swedes look alike. didn’t you know that? why, binney, over in sweden, where they come from, each feller wears a tag with his name on it. only way to tell ’em apart. heard once of a feller losin’ his tag and wanderin’ around for days without bein’ able to find out who he was. when he did find out he found out wrong and had to be somebody else besides himself all the rest of his life. it’s worryin’ about that happenin’ that makes all swedes so melancholy.”
“oh!” says i. mark’s little eyes were opened up wide, and he was staring at uncle like all git-out. couldn’t quite make up his mind if uncle was fooling us or not.
about fifteen minutes later jerry yack hunched his shoulders and moved around uneasy-like. he opened his mouth once and shut it again. opened it and shut it another time. then he coughed. seemed it took all that work to get ready to say something.
“ay tank,” says he, “ay bane goin’.”
ole looked up and did considerable wriggling himself. after a while he got ready to speak: “ay tank,” he says, “ay bane goin’, too.”
they both looked at uncle with their blue eyes wide open like babies. uncle didn’t say anything. after quite a spell jerry got around to speak again. he asked a question of uncle.
“w’at you tank? eh? you bane goin’—yess, or you bane goin’—no?”
uncle shook his head and recited a poem that made ole and jerry look puzzled as anything:
“shall i go or shall i stay?
that i must decide to-day.”
he waggled his head at us boys. “that hain’t neither exactly nor precisely the fact,” says he; “it’s you boys got to decide. ole and jerry here come to git me to help ’em a week or so on the river. loggin’. jerkin’ logs out of the river-bed. river-bed’s covered with timber farther down. it’s timber that sunk in the old lumberin’-days, and there’s a heap of it. they got a scow with a derrick onto it. what think?”
“h-h-how do you git the logs out?” mark wanted to know.
right off his curiosity got to working.
“poke around with a pike-pole till you find a log. git a chain fast around her, start your engin’ goin’, and jerk her out with the derrick. pile ’em on shore.”
mark nodded like he understood. “how came the logs to be in the river?” he asked.
“got water-logged and sunk when rafts was runnin’ down,” says uncle hieronymous. “now, you four git together and decide if i can go. i’ll be gone maybe two weeks. dun’no’ jest where i’ll be, but somewheres on the river below. plenty of grub in the house, plenty of fish in the stream. nothin’ to hurt you. how about it, eh?”
“go, far’s i’m concerned,” i told him.
“m-m-me too,” says mark; and the rest joined in.
“won’t be afraid?” asked uncle hieronymous. “sure? don’t mind bein’ alone with marthy and mary, eh? now be sure. don’t forgit them two white cats when you’re thinkin’ it over.”
“we hain’t f-f-forgot ’em,” says mark. then he up and asked another question. “what i’m wonderin’,” he says, “is, did mr. skoog and mr. yack ask you all that themselves or did they bring it written in a l-l-l-letter?”
“they—fetched—a—letter,” he wheezed.
mark nodded. “i d-d-didn’t b’lieve they could have s-s-said it all,” he says.
“when you going?” i asked.
“right after we eat,” says uncle, and with that he got up and commenced getting supper. in half an hour all seven of us were crowded around the little table, and i want to say if ole and jerry couldn’t talk they could eat. if all swedes eat like they did i bet the farmers in sweden have to raise whopping big crops to have enough to go around.
after supper jerry and ole got a buckboard out of the barn and hitched their horse to it. uncle threw in a canvas bag of clothes and climbed in.
“if you git to needin’ anything you kin git it up to larsen’s, i guess,” uncle said. he was going to say something else, but right in the middle of it the old horse jumped all his feet off the ground and started down the road a-kiting. uncle and ole and jerry came pretty nearly being left behind. they all keeled over in a heap, with arms and legs waggling in the air, and there wasn’t any good reason why all of them weren’t jounced out on the ground in the first fifty feet. but they weren’t. finally ole got to his feet and caught hold of the lines. he pulled and sawed and yelled, but on the old horse went until he jumped out of sight around a bend in the road. i heard mark tidd chuckle.
right in the middle of it the old horse jumped all his feet off the ground and started down the road a-kiting
“b-b-bet those swedes never started anywhere as quick as that b-b-before,” he says.
i looked at him sharp. he had his sling-shot in his hand.
“did you shoot the horse?” i asked, sort of provoked, because it didn’t look like a polite thing to do.
he nodded yes.
“what for?” i asked.
he pointed up the road toward larsen’s, and there, coming along as fast as they could walk, were collins and the fat man we saw in billy’s wagon that afternoon. “th-th-that’s why,” says mark.
“what have they got to do with it?”
“i got a sort of f-f-feelin’ i don’t want those f-f-fellows to see your uncle hieronymous. dun’no’ jest why, but that’s the way i f-f-feel.”
“well,” says i, “they won’t see him for a couple of weeks now.”
“not if you f-f-fellers don’t blab where he is,” says mark.
“you needn’t worry,” i says, sharp-like. “guess we can keep our mouths shut if there’s any need.”
“may be no need,” says he, “but k-k-keep ’em shut, anyhow.”
we watched the fat man and mr. collins. they were headed for our house, all right. i don’t know why, but right there i began to feel that maybe mark tidd had stumbled onto something that wasn’t just exactly the way it ought to be. it was hard to believe it, though, for mr. collins was such a pleasant, jolly sort of a man, and the fat man looked so good-natured he wouldn’t brush a fly off his bald spot for fear of hurting its feelings. but things did look peculiar. that letter and telegram and the way mr. collins seemed to want to meet uncle hieronymous made it look as if they were in the woods for something more than a fishing-trip.
mr. collins called to us when he was quite a ways off. “hello, fellows!” says he. “had any luck to-day?”
we shook our heads. in a minnit they were in the clearing and in another were standing right by us.
“my friend, mr. jiggins, boys,” says mr. collins, and then he went over all our names careful. “he’s come up to fish, but i don’t believe there’s room enough for him in the stream. do you?”
“well,” says mark, “him and me would f-f-fill it perty full.”
it was the first time i ever heard mark tidd joke about his own fatness, and it surprised me considerable. but he had a reason, most likely. he usually had a reason for what he did.
“been having visitors?” asked mr. collins.
“visitors?” says mark, and looked as dull as a sheep. you wouldn’t have thought, to look at him then, that he knew enough to spell fish without putting a “g” in it.
“oh, i just saw somebody drive away.”
“yes,” says mark. “went p-p-perty fast, too.”
“did seem to be in a hurry,” says mr. jiggins.
mark winked at me, and it was a minnit before i understood what he wanted. then i knew it must be something about uncle, and there was only one thing about him right then, which was that he was gone away. i guessed mark wanted me to tell it.
“it was my uncle hieronymous,” i says, and mark nodded his head, satisfied.
“going to town?” asked mr. jiggins.
“dun’no’,” says mark. “he d-d-didn’t say.”
“be gone long?”
“won’t be b-b-back to-night,” mark stuttered.
mr. collins looked at mr. jiggins, and mr. jiggins looked at mr. collins.
“we thought we’d drop in and call on him,” says collins.
“too bad he’s gone,” i says. “come again.”
“we’ll do that,” says jiggins; but he looked pretty disappointed, and i noticed him eying the road back to larsen’s. so did mark. his little eyes twinkled kind of mean.
“quite a walk d-d-down here, ain’t it?” he asked, with his face solemn. “dun’no’s i’d care to walk it for n-n-nothin’.”
“dun’no’s i would, either,” said the fat man, pretty short. “let’s start back,” he says to collins.
“when uncle gets back i’ll tell him you were here,” i promised, and they said thank you.
“l-l-let’s git something to eat,” says mark, and the way he stuttered to get it out was a caution. i’ve noticed he stutters worse when he’s hungry than when he isn’t. “i’ll cook,” says he, “if you fellers will wash the dishes.”
there’s no denying mark was a good cook. he ought to be, for there never was anybody who thought more about eating than he did. he was always hanging around the kitchen watching his mother, and i’ll bet there never was a girl who could make better baking-powder biscuits than he did that night. there were some raspberries uncle hieronymous had found time to pick, and lots of ordinary stuff like fried potatoes and ham.
“t-t-to-morrow,” says mark, “i’ll make a pie.” he stood looking out of the window, thinking a minute. then he turned sudden-like, and frowned so his forehead got all ridgy. “careless,” says he. “here we are, surrounded by hostiles, and the c-c-c-canoe right there under their eyes. n-n-never would be there in the mornin’. hain’t you f-f-f-fellers read any books? don’t you know folks fixed like we are always hide their canoe? well, you b-b-better git right at it.”
“it’s all paint,” says plunk smalley.
“p-p-p-paint!” mark says, disgusted as could be. “what’s p-paint against losin’ our boat? where’d we be if we lost it, i’d like to know? hundreds of m-m-miles from civilization. our only hope of gittin’ back alive is that b-boat.”
off we went in a hurry, i can tell you. it seemed real. that was a way mark had: he could make the games you played with him seem like you were doing the things in earnest. we took that canoe, paint and all, and hid it down the path that ran through the underbrush. we piled limbs of bushes all around it, hid the paddles near, and then went back to the house.
“that was a narrow escape,” mark says. “wish we had it provisioned, but it don’t look possible. we can p-p-put blankets and things in it, anyhow.”
we did. we put blankets and matches and cooking-things near the canoe just as if we expected we might have to run to it for our lives any second. that didn’t satisfy mark. he made us fix up a pack full of canned things and potatoes and flour and salt so we could grab it and be off without waiting even to think. and all the time we thought it was just a game. we thought he was playing, while mark never said a word, but just let us go on thinking so. he wasn’t playing, though. he was looking ahead and getting ready if an emergency came up. afterward he told me he wasn’t sure we would ever need the boat, but there was just a chance, and if that chance happened we’d need it bad and quick. so he got it ready. that’s why folks always have found it so hard to beat mark tidd. he’d sit and figure and figure and guess what might happen, and when he’d guessed every possible thing that could manage to come about he’d get ready for every one of them.
by the time the canoe was all ready it was almost dark. it was the first we’d thought about spending the night all alone in the cabin, way off miles from anybody, and i’ll admit i began to feel pretty funny. i noticed everybody else was getting quiet and not saying much and looking every once in a while into the woods. it was chilly and still.
“l-l-let’s go to bed,” mark says, after a while.
“shall—shall we have a guard?” tallow says, hesitating-like.
“no need,” mark says.
i began to think i would like to have somebody big—somebody big and so strong that knew so much about the woods. if some one like that had been there to sleep alongside of us not one of us would have worried a mite. but he wasn’t, so we had to do without.
we put out the lights and locked the door, and after quite a while we all went to sleep.
