raning their necks out to see, too. "But
he _was_ doing it, Frank. If I could ketch that feller!"

"Somebody you know? Let's get him to come along," said Jake and Frank, one
after the other.

"I couldn't tell," said Dave. "He slipped into the woods when he heard me
holler. If it's anybody I know, he'll come out again. Don't seem to notice
him; that's the best way."

For a while, though, they stopped to look, now and then; but no more
flashes came from the corn-field, and the boys went on cramming themselves
with berries; they all said they had got to stop, but they went on till
Dave said: "I don't believe it's going to do us any good to go in swimming
if we eat too many of these mulberries. I reckon we better quit, now."

The others said they reckoned so, too, and they all got down from the
tree, and started for the swimming-hole. They had to go through a piece of
woods to get to it, and in the shadow of the trees they did not notice
that a storm was coming up till they heard it thunder. By that time they
were on the edge of the woods, and there came a flash of lightning and a
loud thunder-clap, and the rain began to fall in big drops. The boys saw a
barn in the field they had reached, and they ran for it; and they had just
got into it when the rain came down with all its might. Suddenly Jake
said: "I'll tell you what! Let's take off our clothes and have a
shower-bath!" And in less than a minute they had their clothes off, and
were out in the full pour, dancing up and down, and yelling like Indians.
That made them think of playing Indians, and they pretended the barn was a
settler's cabin, and they were stealing up on it through the tall shocks
of wheat. They captured it easily, and they said if the lightning would
only strike it and set it on fire so it would seem as if the Indians had
done it, it would be great; but the storm was going round, and they had to
be satisfied with being settlers, turn about, and getting scalped.

It was easy to scalp Frank, because he wore his hair long, as the town
boys liked to do in those days, but Jake lived with his sister, and he had
to do as she said. She said a boy had no business with long hair; and she
had lately cropped his close to his skull. Dave's father cut his hair
round the edges of a bowl, which he had put on Dave's head for a pattern;
the other boys could get a pretty good grip of it, if they caught it on
top, where the scalp-lock belongs; but Dave would duck and dodg