On my way home from Mark Tidd’s house—where I left Mark and Zadok Biggs eating away at a big dishpanful of popcorn and about a peck of apples—I walked down-town and past the store just to see that everything was all right. It was, so I passed on by and crossed over to take a look at the Five-and-Ten-Cent Store. Just as I got to the door out came that clerk of Jehoshaphat P. Skip’s. You should have seen him! Dressed up? Well, I should say he was! And there was perfumery on him. Now, honest, what do you think of a full-grown man that’ll douse himself with smelly stuff? He looked like he’d just stepped out of a picture in a magazine advertising some sort of a collar or patent necktie or something.

“How’dy do?” says he. “How’s the contest comin’ along?”

“Good,” says I. “It’s anybody’s race yet.”

“D’you figger I got any chance?”

“Well,” says I, looking him over careful, “if everybody in Wicksville was to get a look at you now I don’t see how anybody else would have a chance.”

“’Most everybody’s seen me,” says he, smirking like a sick puppy. “I went to the Methodist church this mornin’, and to the young folks’ meetin’ at the Congregational church this afternoon, and I’m goin’ to the Baptis’ church right now. I calc’lated I’d stir around consid’able so folks’d have a chance to judge me, so to speak.”

“They’ll see you, all right,” says I, “unless they’ve all got cataracts in their eyes. The way you look right now, mister, it ’u’d be pretty hard to miss you.”

“Think so?” says he, grinning again as pleased as could be.

“How’s Jehoshaphat?” says I.

“Kind of crusty,” says he. “He’s always a-pickin’ at me. I’m always glad when he goes off somewheres for a day. Then I git a minnit or so to myself. He’s a-goin’ off to-morrow,” says he.

“Where?” says I, not out of curiosity, but just to say something.

“Sunfield,” says he. “It’s a leetle town nigh to twenty-five miles over.”

“What ever’s he goin’ to Sunfield for?” says I, beginning to get interested.

“I don’t really know exact, but from things he’s said I guess he’s calc’latin’ on startin’ up another five-and-ten-cent store there. There’s a feller that wants to sell out, as near as I kin git the facts, and Mr. Skip is hankerin’ to buy.”

Well, sir, what do you think of that? It looked like we were bound to run up against this Skip man wherever we went and whatever we did. Now he was trying to buy the same stock of goods Mark Tidd had his heart set on buying.

I couldn’t see what Mark wanted of that stock, for we had all we could look after, and, anyhow, we didn’t have any thousand dollars to spend for it. It looked like a crazy notion to me, but just the minute I heard Skip was after it I felt different about it. I wanted to get there first. I was going to help Mark Tidd all I could. It didn’t matter what we did with that store when we got it, I was for getting it so Skip couldn’t. Maybe that was a mean way to feel—but Skip was the kind of man that makes you feel mean.

I got rid of Mr. Perfume-smelling Clerk as soon as I could and hurried up to Mark Tidd’s. He and Zadok were still at the popcorn. I calculate that between them they’d eaten more of it than any two folks ever ate before in one afternoon. I didn’t wait to knock, but went busting right in.

“Skip’s after it,” says I.

“After what?” says Mark.

“The Sunfield five-and-ten-cent store,” says I.

“Oh!” says Mark, and he grinned at Zadok. “D-don’t get excited, Plunk.”

“Excited,” says I. “We got to beat him, hain’t we?”

“Yes,” says Zadok, “you must beat him. You must arrive first on the scene.”

“You act like you knew Skip was goin’,” says I. I felt a little sore because they didn’t seem to think my news was important.

“We didn’t know,” says Mark, “b-but we hoped.”

“Hoped?” says I.

“Yes,” says Mark. “We was hankerin’ to have J-jehoshaphat start for Sunfield.”

“But how come he to hear of it?”

Zadok stuck out his chest and looked important. “Zadok Biggs,” says he. “It was Zadok Biggs that did it. Zadok Biggs told the man Skip about it.”

You could have knocked me over with a feather. What in the world had Zadok told Skip for? I could see it was some sort of scheme Mark Tidd and he had cooked up, but it looked funny to me. They didn’t offer to explain, though, so I says:

“Do we git an early start?”

“Yes,” says Mark. “Five o’clock.”

“But we weren’t going to start till six.”

“Didn’t know for sure Jehoshaphat was goin’ then,” says he.

“Then my finding it out did amount to somethin’?” says I.

“You bet it did, Plunk,” says he, and he got up and banged me on the back. “You can just b-b-bet it did.”

Well, I felt some better after that, and went off, leaving Mark and Zadok to talk about their old plan that they were so close-mouthed about. I shouldn’t have been put out, though, for I found out afterward that Mark hadn’t told me because it would be such a big disappointment to me if it didn’t come out right. I might have known there was a good reason. Mark Tidd was the sort of fellow who always thinks about other folks’ feelings.

There wasn’t any train that would take us from Wicksville to Sunfield, so there was nothing to do but drive. Mark brought along his father’s horse and buggy. Since Mr. Tidd got rich he kept a horse. He could have afforded half a dozen automobiles if he’d wanted to, but he didn’t have them. It wasn’t because he was stingy, for he didn’t care anything in particular about money. It was just because he was such a simple-minded, dreamy sort of man. And Mrs. Tidd was that sensible there wasn’t anybody like her. They lived in the same house and lived in the same way they had lived when they were poor. It seemed like all their money hadn’t made a cent’s worth of difference in them.

Well, Mark drove up to my house just before five o’clock, and we started out. Binney and Tallow were around to see us off, and Mark told them to keep watch and telephone to the hotel in Wilkinstown as soon as Skip started and leave a message for us. Wilkinstown was nine miles over toward Sunfield. Then we started off.

You’d never believe it, but just as we were getting into Wilkinstown the horse went lame. We got out and looked him over, but we didn’t know enough about horses to tell what the matter was, so we drove on slow and cautious to the livery barn.

The man there took a look at the horse and mentioned some kind of a thing that gets the matter with a horse’s foot and said the horse mustn’t be driven again for at least a week. Not for a week! That was a pretty kettle of fish.

“H’m!” says I to Mark. “Looks like we walk back.”

“Back!” says Mark. “If we do any walkin’ it’ll be ahead.”

“Sixteen miles to Sunfield,” says I.

Mark turned around to the liveryman. “Got a good horse to rent us?”

“Nary horse,” says the man. “Every rig I got’s engaged. Travelin’ men rented ’em last night.”

“Anybody else r-rent horses here?”

“Nobody,” says the man.

“We g-got to git to Sunfield,” says Mark. “How’ll we manage it?”

“Walk,” says the man.

“Hain’t there an automobile?” says I.

“Nary a soul in this burg owns one of them things,” says he.

“Nine miles to Wicksville—sixteen miles to Sunfield,” says I to myself.

“Come on up to the hotel,” says Mark. “Let’s see if the f-fellers have telephoned.”

They had telephoned. The hotel man gave us the message.

“Skip left at seven-thirty in an auto,” it says.

There you are! Skip had left in a machine—that could get to Sunfield three times as fast as a horse. We were in Wilkinstown without even a horse.

“I calc’late,” says I, “that here’s where Jehoshaphat gits to buy a five-and-ten-cent store.”

Mark’s little eyes were sparkling and his lips were pressed tight and his jaw was set.

“We’re a-goin’ to git to Sunfield,” says he, “and we’re a-goin’ to git there f-f-first.” My, how he stuttered it!

“Sure,” says I. “I forgot all about my new airoplane. You kin just as well use it as not.”

He didn’t say anything back, but in a minute he asked me, “Know anything about automobiles, Plunk?”

“They’re contraptions,” says I, “with four wheels—one at each corner—and they’ve got an engine in ’em, and a thing to steer ’em by. Sure I know about ’em.”

He started talkin’ to himself.

“It’s fair,” says he. “It’s fair to d-do it. He’s done things to us—and we got to win out. It won’t do any d-damage. It won’t h-hurt anybody.... It’s f-fair, and I’m goin’ to do it.”

I could see he was arguing out something or other. Some scheme he had was a little doubtful to him. Now there’s one thing about Mark Tidd, no matter how much he wants to win, or what it would mean for him to lose, he plays fair. He wouldn’t use a scheme that wasn’t honest and aboveboard, no matter how certain it was to win. That’s the kind of a fellow he was.

“Plunk,” says he, “we’ve got to stop that auto.”

“All right,” says I, “let’s tie a rope across the road.”

He knew I was joking and grinned a little.

“No,” says he, “we got to stop it so Jehoshaphat won’t know he’s been stopped on purpose.”

But before we had a chance to do anything we heard an auto coming up the road. I got up and looked. It was Skip and a fellow I didn’t know in a little runabout.

“It’s him,” says I to Mark.

Mark didn’t say anything, but his little eyes were sending off sparks and his face looked sort of set. It looked as though we’d never get a chance at the Sunfield store.

In another minute she went whizzing by. I looked at Mark and he looked at me. Somehow it didn’t seem possible he’d gone right by and left us there. But then came a surprise. The car went right along to the hotel, and then it stopped. Skip went inside for something, and Mark and I sneaked down and hid behind a shed. We heard Skip telephoning inside.

He came out in about five minutes. Just as he was getting into the car he looked down and scowled and said something under his breath.

“You’ve got a flat tire, Clancy,” says he, and then he up and expressed his opinion of flat tires in words and syllables and sentences. I gathered he didn’t think much of them.

Clancy got out and looked.

“Flat tire,” says he. “Three flat tires, mister. It’s a regular epidemic,” says he.

“Well,” says Skip, “you might as well git at fixin’ ’em. We can’t spend all day on the road.”

At that he turned around and went into the hotel again, and didn’t come out till Clancy had the tires all fixed up and ready to go. But Clancy didn’t hurry any. First he took off his coat and then he wiped his face, for the dust had been flying, and then he lifted the hood of the car and peeked inside. There wasn’t any reason for it in particular, I guess, but automobile men seem to like to look at their engines whenever they get a chance.

“I wonder,” says he to himself, “if I can git some oil in this metropolis.”

He started out to find if he could, and left the car standing.

“There’s your chance,” stuttered Mark.

“Good-by,” says I, waving my hand. “Tell the folks I went agin the enemy as brave as a lion.”

Then I went for the car. It was no trick at all to reach inside for a wire that would put the ignition out of business. I unscrewed it at both ends. Unscrewing one end would have stopped the machine, but there would have been a wire dangling, and any idiot would know that was what the matter was. But I took the wire clean out. It would take a pretty good repair-man to trace the trouble, especially when there wasn’t any way for a wire to get out of the car, and when the car had been running along as nicely as possible.

I stuck the wire in my pocket and slid back where Mark was.

“I guess,” says I, “that Mr. Skip’ll stay put for a while, anyhow.”

“C-come on, then,” says he. “We’ll light out for Sunfield.”

“Sixteen miles,” says I.

“We’ll git to ride part of it, anyhow,” says he.

“But,” says I, “I want to stay and watch Jehoshaphat when that car won’t start. I want to see that man Clancy crank. It’ll be a reg’lar three-ring circus with a menagerie tent and a side-show.”

He sort of hesitated a minute, for Mark enjoyed a joke as well as anybody else, but he shook his head and says:

“Nope, Plunk, we got to hoof it for Sunfield. We’ve g-got to git there first. We’ve got to, Plunk.”

“All right,” says I. “I don’t see any sense in it, but here we go.”

We started off through the fields, keeping out of the road so nobody would see us. There wasn’t much to the village but the general store and the hotel and a couple of houses, so we were in the country again in a couple of minutes. We crossed a stubbled field and then started to cut through an orchard to the road. My! but that was a fine orchard! The trees were trimmed and the ground was not all grown up to grass the way most orchards are, but it was plowed and cultivated the way the government expert who lectured in Wicksville said it ought to be. And apples! You never saw such Spies as loaded half of the trees!

“Um-m-m!” says I.

“Leave ’em be,” says Mark. “Most farmers d-don’t mind if you take an apple to eat, but a lot of ’em are crusty as anything.”

So I took it out in looking, and looking at a big red apple doesn’t help the appetite much.

We were about half-way across the orchard when I felt as if a house had fallen on my shoulder. Something dropped and jerked me back off my feet. I just caught a glimpse of Mark out of the corner of my eye—and he was getting considerable of a jerk, too. Then a great big booming voice says:

“I got ye, consarn ye! Come a-sneakin’ through a man’s orchard, will ye? I’ll show ye. Stealin’ a man’s apples, eh? Oh, he! Maybe yes and maybe no. Didn’t calc’late Hamilcar Janes was a-layin’ for you behind a tree, eh? Oh, he!” He didn’t sound mad exactly, just sort of tickled with himself for being smart enough to catch us.

“Boys have been a-stealin’ and a-stealin’ my apples. Thought I wasn’t goin’ to do nothin’, too. Didn’t think Hamilcar Janes had git-up-and-git enough to catch ’em. Hasn’t, eh? Oh, he! Just look at what Hamilcar Janes has up and done. He’s catched two—a fat one and a lean one—and into the smoke-house they go. Oh, he!” He might have made a song of it if he’d been of a mind to.

We tried to talk to him, but he wouldn’t listen to a word. He just grinned and bragged about how he’d caught us, and marched us along by the collars. I tried to squirm loose, but I might as well have tried to jump over the moon like the old cow in the poem. That Hamilcar Janes came close to being the biggest man I ever saw. And his hands! Those hands of his were as big as blankets.

“Into the smoke-house you go,” says he. “I’ll show ye. Won’t I show ye? Well, I should guess!”

And he did that very thing. He dragged us along and kicked open the door to his smoke-house and pushed us in. Then he shut the door and we could hear him barring it.

“There,” says he. “Try that a spell. Apples, eh? Oh, he!” Then we heard him walking off.

I didn’t feel much like talking, and neither did Mark, but I couldn’t help saying:

“Jehoshaphat’ll have to be delayed consid’able if he don’t git to Sunfield ahead of us.”

Mark nodded doleful-like. “Seems like luck was d-dead against us,” says he. “But,” he says, “Skip hain’t got there yet—and it’s early in the mornin’.”