only just pretended. We used to hop out of the woods and go charging
down on hog-drivers and women in carts taking garden stuff to market, but
we never hived any of them. Tom Sawyer called the hogs "ingots," and he
called the turnips and stuff "julery," and we would go to the cave and
powwow over what we had done, and how many people we had killed and
marked. But I couldn't see no profit in it. One time Tom sent a boy to
run about town with a blazing stick, which he called a slogan (which was
the sign for the Gang to get together), and then he said he had got
secret news by his spies that next day a whole parcel of Spanish
merchants and rich A-rabs was going to camp in Cave Hollow with two
hundred elephants, and six hundred camels, and over a thousand "sumter"
mules, all loaded down with di'monds, and they didn't have only a guard
of four hundred soldiers, and so we would lay in ambuscade, as he called
it, and kill the lot and scoop the things. He said we must slick up our
swords and guns, and get ready. He never could go after even a
turnip-cart but he must have the swords and guns all scoured up for it,
though they was only lath and broomsticks, and you might scour at them
till you rotted, and then they warn't worth a mouthful of ashes more than
what they was before. I didn't believe we could lick such a crowd of
Spaniards and A-rabs, but I wanted to see the camels and elephants, so I
was on hand next day, Saturday, in the ambuscade; and when we got the
word we rushed out of the woods and down the hill. But there warn't no
Spaniards and A-rabs, and there warn't no camels nor no elephants. It
warn't anything but a Sunday-school picnic, and only a primer-class at
that. We busted it up, and chased the children up the hollow; but we
never got anything but some doughnuts and jam, though Ben Rogers got a
rag doll, and Jo Harper got a hymn-book and a tract; and then the teacher
charged in, and made us drop everything and cut. I didn't see no
di'monds, and I told Tom Sawyer so. He said there was loads of them
there, anyway; and he said there was A-rabs there, too, and elephants and