it came to mischief, and Whitey
taught him the ancient game of tick-tack. In case you don't know it,
I'll tell you how it's done.

To make a tick-tack get a long string, the longer the better; meaning
the longer the safer. Then get a small fish-hook, and tie it to the end
of your string, and tie a little stone about eight inches below your
fish-hook. Select a dark night and the window of the person whose nerves
you wish to disturb. Then sneak up, and fasten the fish-hook to one of
the cross pieces of the window. Then go to the end of your line, and
hide behind a wagon or a post. Pull your string, and "tick-tack" goes
the stone on the window.

Wong Lee took it all in good part. He had been a boy once, himself,
away off in China. And though Wong Lee never had played tick-tack, he
probably had played other, Chinese boy games that Injun and Whitey would
have been glad to know about, and Wong Lee was of such a disposition
that he probably would have told them all about it, had he and the boys
come to an understanding in the matter.

Instead of that, when that irritating little sound got on his Chinese
nerves, Wong Lee would chase out in answer to the tick-tack, with his
pigtail standing straight out in the wind, and pursue the boys from
cover to cover. But he was game, and though he must have known who his
tormentors were, he never reported them to Mr. Sherwood or to Bill
Jordan.

And so, with one thing and another, the winter finally merged into
spring, the soft rains melting away the snow, and giving the brown earth
its chance to turn to tender green. And the swollen river was dotted
with cakes of ice, among which the wild ducks dropped on their way South
where, it was to be hoped, Slim had recovered from his miseries. And, as
everybody knows, spring is a time that stirs boys and young men to
unrest.

Perhaps you have noticed that when a fellow is just swelling up with a
desire to do something big in the world, some trifling little thing
comes along and knocks his ambition to splinters. When he is burning to
kill a bear, he has to go on an errand for his mother--or something like
that. Well, here was Whitey, with this spring feeling inciting him to
great deeds, instead of making him lazy, as it does some people, and he
went to the bunk house, followed by Sitting Bull. And there was Bill
Jordan, with a letter in his hand, and something on his mind that he was
dying to tell, but would rather die than not take his time