for a minnit i was scared, and even mark tidd looked kind of blue around the gills, as dad says. but then i thought ole and jerry and mr. hogtoter wouldn’t let collins and jiggins take us off the scow, so i quit being frightened.
ole got up and poked his head out of the door.
“hello!” says jiggins again. “seen a couple of boys in a canoe?”
ole turned around to us and grinned, then he called to jiggins, “ay tank so.”
“how long ago?”
“ay tank one hour.”
then i heard collins say something in an undertone.
“good idea,” says jiggins. “do no harm. may do some good. i’ll ask him.” then he called up to ole: “d’you know mr. bell—hieronymous alphabet bell?”
“ay tank ay know him,” says ole.
“know where he is?” asked jiggins.
mark jumped to his feet. “don’t—” he started to say to ole.
but for once the big swede answered right off without any fooling. “he bane go to ludington.”
“when?”
“nine-ten o’clock.”
mark was banging ole on the back. “don’t tell him any m-m-more,” says he. “they’re enemies. they’re t-t-tryin’ to smouge uncle hieronymous’s mine.” then he ran right out on deck.
“g-g-go on away,” says he. “you can’t f-find out any more. you’re b-beat!”
“well, i swan!” says jiggins. “howdy, mark. hard work gettin’ out of that boat-house. had to find another boat. but here we are.”
sure enough, they did have another boat. they must have found it somewhere along the river near the boat-house.
jiggins didn’t seem to be much discouraged. “well,” says he, “we enjoyed your company. sure we did. nice boy. brains. always liked boys with brains—especially fat boys. good-by. ludington, eh? he’s in ludington. well, mark tidd, we’re off for ludington. beat, eh? not yet. not yet.” they pushed off their boat and started down-stream. “good-by,” says jiggins again. “i’ll give your regards to uncle hieronymous. good-by.”
mark didn’t wait a minnit. “g-g-got to beat ’em to ludington,” says he. “no time to waste.” he thought a minnit. “when does the t-t-train leave scottville?”
“long about nine o’clock,” says mr. hogtoter.
“how far’s scottville?”
“two mile.”
“h-h-how do we get there?”
“walk,” says mr. hogtoter. “there’s a road back there a spell.” he jerked his thumb up the bank. “but they’ll beat you. you’ll git lost or somethin’.”
“what time is it?”
“half past six.”
mark thought and pinched his cheek. “that g-gives us two hours and a half,” says he. “come on, binney. will s-s-somebody show us the road?”
“ay tank ay show you,” says ole.
“ay tank ay show you, too,” says jerry.
“come on, then,” mark says, quick. “we can’t l-lose any time.”
we said good-by to mr. hogtoter, and i told him i hoped he wouldn’t have any bad luck. he said he was expecting some every minnit, and he said, too, he was sure we were in for some.
“be careful,” says he. “not that bein’ careful is any good. if you’re goin’ to have misfortune, takin’ care don’t help a bit. never helped me. looks to me like hieronymous was in for misfortune.”
we climbed the bank with ole and jerry, and, not having either time or breath to say anything, we made off across the fields toward the road without any talk. it was maybe a quarter of a mile.
“you find scottville now, ay tank,” says ole.
“sure,” says jerry, “ay tank so, too.”
“good-by,” says mark, “and m-much obliged.”
“good-by,” says ole and jerry, and then we were off alone. once i looked back. they were still standing where we left them, laughing as hard as they could laugh. there isn’t a bit of doubt they thought mark tidd was the funniest person they ever saw.
we walked as fast as we could, and got to scottville in plenty of time. mark bought the tickets, because he had the money. we had elected him treasurer, so he had all there was. then we sat down on the depot platform to wait for the train. it was getting dusk, which turned out to be a pretty lucky thing for us. it was lucky, too, that we were sitting near a corner of the depot. in spite of mr. hogtoter we were having good luck for a while, anyhow.
just as the train whistled down the track somebody came through the depot door. it was jiggins. collins was right at his heels. they turned to look down the track in the direction away from us, and right there i gave mark tidd the hardest shove he ever got. it toppled him off the bench. i jumped over him and around the corner. right off he knew something was up, so he scrambled after me.
“collins and jiggins,” says i.
“no n-n-need to bust my neck,” says mark.
“how’d they git here?”
“walked, most likely. asked s-s-somebody how to get to ludington.”
“how do we git there now?”
mark looked at me disgusted. “on the t-train, of course.”
“but they’ll see us.”
“m-m-maybe not,” says he. “anyhow, we got to take the chance.”
the train came banging in in a few minnits. we watched jiggins and collins get aboard and took particular pains to see what car they sat in. it was the forward coach.
“come on,” says mark.
he went to the last coach and climbed on. so did i. we walked right through and stood on the back platform.
“if the conductor’ll l-l-let us stay here,” says mark, “we’ll be all right.”
the train started up. eight miles to go! that wasn’t far. even on that railroad it oughtn’t to take more than a quarter of an hour. but even a quarter of an hour on the same train with collins and jiggins was too long. jiggins was an uncertain person. you never could depend on him to stay in his seat. he might take a notion any time to come wandering around the train, and then, like as not, he’d find us.
“what’ll we do if they come onto us?” i asked him.
“dun’no’,” says he. “nothin’, i guess.”
after a while we saw the conductor coming through the car. i put my head in the door and held out our tickets. he frowned at us, and i thought he was going to make us come inside, but all he did was say to be careful. we allowed we’d do that.
i looked at my watch and saw five minnits were gone by. that was a third of the ride. the air was full of dust and grit and smoke, but through it all we could feel the coolness of lake michigan. i never had seen lake michigan or any other big lake, and i was anxious to. mark said it would look just like the ocean. anyhow, it sent a dandy soft coolness back into the country, and we were much obliged.
another five minnits went past, and then we began to see lights every little while.
“must be g-gettin’ near,” says mark.
pretty soon we could stretch our necks around the corner of the car and see lots of lights ahead, some of them up in the air. we knew these were street-lights and that we were getting into ludington. then we passed some factory buildings and began to pat ourselves on the back that we were there safe. the train slackened down until it wasn’t going very fast.
“we’re here,” says i to mark.
“i see you are,” says somebody, and i turned quick to look. it was jiggins grinning at us out of the door.
“howdy?” says he. “lucky i came back here, eh? to be sure. didn’t think i’d see you again.”
i looked at mark. he didn’t wait for another word, but just stepped down onto the lowest step of the car and jumped off into the dark. jiggins sort of jumped past me and made a grab after him, and then, not knowing anything better to do myself, i jumped off the train on the other side and struck the sand of the right of way. for a few seconds i was so busy twisting head over heels and banging and scraping myself that i didn’t have any time to think about anybody else. i landed with a bump. for a minnit i laid there without being able to make up my mind how fatally i was hurt, but i found out i could move every one of my arms and legs and that nothing was the matter with me at all. then i got up to look for mark.
i found him about fifty feet back, sitting flat on the ground, with his legs stretched out in front of him. i expect he landed that way. if he did it wasn’t any fun, and it was pretty lucky nobody happened to be resting where he struck. if there had been we’d ’a’ had to dig him out of the ground, mark would have driven him in so deep.
“good evenin’,” says i, make-believe polite.
“umph!” says he, and waggled his head.
“git up,” says i. “they’ll be comin’ in a second.”
he groaned again and got onto his feet. i took him by the arm and dragged him off the right of way into the dark. not far away we found a street and started up it, hoping it would bring us out some place we wanted to be.
“now,” says mark, “to f-f-find uncle hieronymous.”
that was more difficult than we had any idea of.
