w."

"Oh, ho!" says I, meaning not much of anything.

Being kept awake some by their racket that night, I got to thinking how
we could give that gang of grafters the double cross. There wasn't any
use making a back-alley dash for it, as we didn't know the lay of the
land and they were between us and New York. But most of the fancy
thinking I've ever done has been along that line--how to get back to
Broadway. Along toward morning I throws five aces at a flip--turns up an
idee that had been at the bottom of the deck. "It's a winner!" says I,
and goes to sleep happy.

After breakfast I digs through my steamer trunk and hauls out a
four-ounce can of aluminum paint that the intelligent Mr. 'Ankins had
mistook for shavin' soap and put in before we left home. Then I picks
out a couple of suits of that tin armor in the hall, a medium-sized one,
and a short-legged, forty-fat outfit, and I gets busy with my brush.

"What's up?" says the Boss, seeing me slinging on the aluminum paint.

"Been readin' a piece on 'How to Beautify the House' in the 'Ladies'
Home Companion,'" says I. "Got any burnt-orange ribbon about you?"

It was a three-hour job, but when I was through I'd renovated up that
cast-off toggery so that it looked as good as if it had been just picked
from the bargain counter. Then I waited for things to turn up. The
brigands opened the ball as soon as it was dark. They'd rigged up a
battering-ram and allowed they meant to smash in our front door. The
Boss laughed.

"That gate looks as if it had stood a lot of that kind of boy's play,
and I guess it's good for a lot more," says he. "Now, if they were not
hopelessly medieval they would try a stick of dynamite."

We could have poured hot water down on them, or dropped a few bricks,
but we didn't. We just let them skin their knuckles and strain their
backs on the battering-ram. About moonrise I sprung my scheme.

"What do you say to throwing a scare into that bunch of back numbers?"
says I.

"How?" says the Boss.

I led him down to the court, where I'd laid out the plated tinware to
dry.

"Think you can fit yourself into some of that boiler plate?" says I.

That hit the Boss in the short ribs. We tackled the job off-hand, me
strappin' a section on him, and he clampin' another on me. It was like
dressing for a masquerade in the dark, neither of us ever having worn
steel boots or Harveyized vests before. Some of the joints didn't seem
to fit any too close, and