before he realized what their plan
was, Johnnie Green and his friend Red had slipped one noose around his
head and another around his body. And after turning their captive right
side up they staked him out upon the sand so that he could not move.

"There!" Johnnie Green cried when they had Timothy Turtle where they
wanted him. "That's the way the Redskins do with their enemies."

And his friend the red-haired boy danced something that might have been
an Indian war dance.

Anyhow, neither old Mr. Crow nor Timothy Turtle had ever seen anything
like it.

XVI

JOHNNIE GREEN'S INITIALS

Timothy Turtle found himself in a very uncomfortable position, staked
out as he was on the bank of Black Creek, with one rope about his body
and another about his neck.

And even then Johnnie Green was not satisfied. Though his friend Red
insisted that their captive could do them no harm (saying, "How can he
bite when he can't move his head?") Johnnie Green replied that he would
"fix him" so there couldn't possibly be any accident. And taking the old
grain-sack he had brought back with him, he wrapped it carefully around
Timothy's head, till he looked for all the world as if he had the
earache.

"There!" Johnnie Green said, when he had finished. "He'll have to bite
through that bag before he bites us; and I guess he'll find he has a
pretty big mouthful."

Then he pulled out his jackknife and felt its sharp edge with his thumb.

"Lemme do it for you!" Red begged him, holding out his hand for the
knife.

But Johnnie Green had no such idea.

"No!" he said firmly. "I've got to cut my initials myself."

"He might get loose and grab you," the red-haired boy remarked
hopefully.

But Johnnie Green told him that he would risk that.

"Which way are you going to cut them?" Red asked him.

"What do you mean?" Johnnie inquired.

"Are you going to make 'em read when he's going or coming?" Red
explained.

"I hadn't thought of that," Johnnie Green replied. "But I guess _going_
would be better. Then if he stands up you can read 'em just the same,
without any trouble."

So Johnnie kneeled down beside Timothy Turtle. It took him some time to
decide just where he would carve his initials on Timothy's shell. And he
had about decided that the best place to put his mark on Mr. Turtle's
back would be exactly in the middle of it, when he cried all at once,
"Look, Red! Look!"

"Whassamatter?" the red-haired boy wanted to know.

"T