The third of our days on the river wasn’t what you could call exciting. It started out hot and got hotter. It wasn’t so bad for Collins and me, but Mark Tidd and Jiggins fried. We kept on, though. Jiggins said he was tired of being where he couldn’t get a square meal, and, heat or no heat, he was going to get where there was food in large quantities.

We traveled the same way we did the day before—that is, Mark and Jiggins in the boat and Collins and me in the canoe. Along toward the middle of the morning we saw a farm-house back about a quarter of a mile from the river. Jiggins pointed.

“Milk,” says he. “Home-made bread. Um. Pickles. Did you hear that? Pickles. Seems like I couldn’t get along without a pickle. A long pickle. Maybe sweet, maybe sour—I don’t care.”

Mark looked excited. “Pie,” says he. “I bet they got p-p-pie. Cherry-pie! L-l-let’s stop.”

Collins looked at me and grinned, and I looked at Collins and grinned. It was funny the way both those fat folks did let their minds run to eating. Not that I would have thrown a piece of pie into the river if somebody had offered it to me, and Collins wasn’t the sort of fellow to use a glass of fresh milk to wash his face with, but it was more—what d’you call it?—incidental-like with us. With them it was about the most important thing there was. I’d like to enjoy something the way Mark Tidd enjoys eating. I’ve heard it makes you dull to eat a lot, but it didn’t work that way with Mark. He always could think better after he’d eaten a meal big enough to keep a family two days.

Of course, we went ashore. There would have been a rebellion right there if we hadn’t. We walked back through the low ground and found a lane running up to the house. It led to the barn-yard and around a low shed where the farmer kept his wagon. Where it went we went. We straggled around the corner of that shed into the yard, and then we stopped. We stopped sudden and short, and everybody said something startled, for there, coming toward us like he meant business and a good deal of it, was the biggest white bulldog I ever saw. Maybe he looked bigger than he was, but, allowing for that, he was plenty big.

I don’t know what the rest did. Right there Binney Jenks was a pretty busy kid with no time to fool with anybody. I turned and went up the fence and scrambled on top of that shed so quick it must have looked like I did it in one jump. Collins was about a tenth of a second behind me. Mark and Jiggins, being so fat, weren’t quite as quick, but they did considerable moving when you take everything into consideration. Both of them were on the fence and the dog was jumping at their feet. Mark got on the shed next, and that left nobody but Jiggins in reach. I never saw a dog put his mind to getting a man the way that bulldog did. He acted like it was necessary for him to have a chunk of Jiggins, and it looked, too, as though he was going to come pretty close to getting what he was after.

Collins and I sat still. We were sort of startled out of our wits, I guess, but not Mark. He was busy the minnit he got on the roof. By luck there was a long pole up there—about twenty feet long, I guess; Mark grabbed it and crouched at the very edge of the roof. Then Mister Dog jumped for Jiggins. Maybe you don’t think he was a surprised animal! Just as he jumped Mark poked, and he poked good and hard. The pole took the dog in the ribs, and you could hear him say, “Urgh,” or something like that. He went kerflop and head over heels.

“H-h-hurry up!” says Mark to Jiggins.

Jiggins hurried.

The dog wasn’t through, though. He took two more licks at Jiggins before the fat man could clamber onto the shed, and then sat down and scowled at us. If he couldn’t get us he was going to see we didn’t get away.

It was sort of funny. I looked over at Mark and says, “How d’you like the pie?”

He grinned. “Guess they p-put p-p-pepper in it by mistake,” says he.

“Doesn’t look as if anybody was home,” says Collins, who had been looking at the house.

We all looked then, and, sure enough, the house was all closed up. Most likely everybody had gone to town and left the dog to look after things. They picked the right one to leave, all right. There wasn’t anybody who could have done better.

Well, there we were, four of us on a roof, with the sun beating down like sixty, with nothing to drink and nothing to eat, and no chance that we could see of getting down before the folks who lived there got home. That’s what comes of thinking about your stomach all the time. If appetites hadn’t been invented we never would have met that dog, and he was an acquaintance I would have been perfectly willing not to have known.

Ten minnits before that Jiggins and Collins were our enemies. If ever you have one you want to make an ally of, I recommend a bulldog and the hot top of a shed. We were partners in a second. We might be enemies again after we got down, but while we were there we were one tight combination. All we thought was bulldog, and what to say to him to persuade him we weren’t meant for food. He was stubborn, though. It didn’t matter what we said or how kindly we spoke to him or argued with him, he wouldn’t change his mind. If we couldn’t be inside him he had it figgered out we were in the next best place, and he’d keep us there. He was unreasonable about it.

“Let’s holler,” I says.

“N-no use,” says Mark. “Nobody to hear you. There hain’t another house in sight.”

“Wish we had a gun,” says Collins, with one eye on the bulldog.

“Wouldn’t shoot him if we had,” says Jiggins. “Certainly not. No fault of his. Doing his duty. Good dog. Like to own him. Our fault, eh? We came in his yard. Who asked us? Nobody did. Well?”

Come to think of it, we didn’t have much right to complain about that dog. He was doing what his master told him to do, and he was making a good job of it.

“We’ve got to do something,” says Collins, with sweat trickling down his nose. “We can’t stay here all day.”

“L-l-looks like we couldn’t do anything else,” says Mark. And Jiggins grinned.

“There must be some way of coaxin’ doggie to let us down,” I says.

“Oh,” says Collins, “he’ll let us down, all right. The trouble is, what will he do when we’ve got down?”

Mark sat down and pulled his hat over his eyes. He had his cheek between his thumb and finger and was pinching it so it looked white.

“Thinkin’,” says I to Collins. “He’ll git us down. You see.”

Collins just grinned sort of sickly. He didn’t seem to have any great confidence in Mark, but then he didn’t know Mark as well as I did.

After a few minnits Mark got up and walked to the edge of the shed away from the dog. He stood there measuring with his eye how far it was to a sort of lean-to against the side of the barn. I went over and looked, too. It must have been twelve or fifteen feet—too far to jump, by considerable.

“Great if we had a bridge,” says I.

“There’s m-m-more ways of crossin’ a river than on a b-b-bridge,” says he.

“Yes,” I told him, “you can wade. But the wadin’ hain’t very healthy right here.”

“Hum!” says he, and turned around to where he laid the pole he had used to poke the dog with. “H-how’d that do?” he asked me.

“Nobody could walk across it or even crawl across, and if you were to hang by your hands and go over that way the dog ’u’d get your legs............