at own that thing don't own the
place. If you're on the thing----"

"You ain't got no right there," the man shouted up.

"Lift the ladder up," Westy said.

"Sure, that's strategy," Pee-wee said.

So we hauled the ladder up out of the man's reach.

"Do you admit that somebody can own a place that has a thing on it that
belongs to somebody else that has something on it----"

"Shut up," I said. Then I said to the man, "It says on this sign that
we're on top. You see it? That means us. This kid is right; we're part
of this sign, just as if we were painted here."

"Put that ladder down," the man shouted.

"Does it belong to you?" Westy said.

"It's on my land," the man hollered at us.

I said, "Well, we just took it off your land."

"If you want to take the sign away go ahead and do it," Westy said.

"We should worry," I called down.

"We can stand on the law, can't we?" the kid piped up.

"We can sit on the sign, that's better," I said.

The man said, "Are you going to put that ladder down here?"

"No, we're not," Westy said.

"We're part of this sign and we're going to stay here," the kid said.
"If anybody paid you money for letting the sign be here, that includes
us. We're an advertisement of Brown's Hats, that's what we are. We're on
top. It says so. If a thing belongs to a thing, it belongs to that thing
and not the land that thing is on, doesn't it? If you rent out a place
to put a thing then the thing that's on that thing isn't trespassing on
the land that was rented out for the thing underneath it, is it?"

"It's as clear as mud," I said. "We've got as much right here as a man's
hat has got on top of his head even if his head is in the wrong place."

"That's logic," the kid shouted.

"It's as true as a false alarm," Westy said.

"Truer," Warde put in.

"A sign is something that's got something on it," our young hero
shouted. "Let's hear you deny that."

"And it doesn't make any difference what's on it," Dorry said. "An ad's
an ad, isn't it?"

"Most always," I said. "It says here we're on top, so there's the proof.
We're here because we're here. You can do that by long division."

"We're secure," the kid said.

"As long as we don't fall over backwards," I told him.

"Anyway, we're not trespassing now," Hunt put in.

"Posilutely not," I said.

The man said, "All right, if you've got a right there, stay there. Only
don't come down on my land. If you've got a right on top, you haven't