“So far as I can see,” he says, “you never ran onto many brains anywhere.”
“There,” says I, “goes the first box. About seven minutes and we’re going to be answering questions there isn’t any healthy answer to.”
No gang of men ever moved boxes as fast as that crew did. And then one of them stripped the tarpaulin off the top of the heap and let in the sunlight on us. We crouched close to the wall of boxes and put off being discovered as long as we could. The number of cases between us and trouble was getting mighty small.
“Nary scheme,” says he, “but it’ll come. It’s got to come.”
“Just get the first end of it and give me a hold of it,” says I. “The way I feel I could pull a scheme right out of anybody tail first. That’s how bad I need one.”
Then a man took a box off the top of the inner row, and another one took another box and another took another box.
“You’ve got about six seconds now,” says I.
“One second will be enough—if I get it,” says he.
“Why,” says I, “whatever it is that’s going to happen to us.”
He shrugged his shoulders, and then his eyes got bright all of a sudden and he reached over and poked me.
“It’s time,” says I, and then a man’s arm reached over and took a box from right in front of us.
“Push,” says Catty, and he got his shoulder against the cases on the opposite side of the pile from the man. I didn’t stop to ask why, because there are times when there’s nothing to do but what you’re told—and to be mighty rapid about it. I shoved, and over went the boxes.
I jumped over and was set to make a dash for the water and swim for it, when Catty grabbed me. “Don’t run,” says he, “walk slow and act as if you had a right to be here.”
“Keep alongside of me,” says he. “This is where we pull the lion’s whiskers.”
I don’t remember where we walked. My mind was on something else. You can bet it was. So I just tagged Catty and we walked around aimless like—or that’s the way it seemed to me—for about seven hours. I began to feel for long whiskers on my chin, because it seemed as if I’d been inside that barb wire long enough to be at least seventy years old. Another night like the last one and Methuselah wouldn’t have a year on me.
Then, all of a sudden, a man came bearing down on us, and he looked awful belligerent.