"Don"t go down," Dorry whispered.
"That shows how much you know about law," Pee-wee shouted down. "My uncle"s got a friend who"s a lawyer. If this sign has a right here we have a right here because we"re part of the sign. You can, ask Mr. Bull who works for Brown"s Hats if we"re not. Do you see what it says on this sign? Always on top? That means us. It means us just as much as the hats. We belong here, so there."
The man said, "Haow did you get here without trespa.s.sin"?"
I said, "That isn"t the question. We"re here because we"re here. The question is has the sign got a right to be here?"
"Sure," Pee-wee yelled down, "that"s logic." He looked awful funny sitting up there and shouting down at the man. "Suppose a thing has a right to be in a place but the people that 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 advertis.e.m.e.nt 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 trespa.s.sing 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 trespa.s.sing 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 got any right down here. I"ll let you see some logic, whatever that is.
You can set up there and I"ll set down here, and you can stay till the sign rots. You"re such clever youngsters. Always on top, huh? Well, you can stay up there with Brown"s hats and see how you like it. This land down here belongs to me, by gum!"
CHAPTER x.x.xVI
THE SIEGE
He sat down on a nice big comfortable rock and took out a pipe and filled it and started smoking. He looked as if he was going to stay there for a couple of years or so.
Will Dawson said, "Now you see what we get for standing on our rights.
About ten years from now our skeletons will be found sitting on this sign."
"Always on top," Westy said.
"If we go down there we get arrested; if we stay up here we starve,"
Hunt said.
"Sure, that"s logic," I said. "I"m not so crazy about being part of an ad."
"We"ve got a right here, it"s a technicality," the kid said.
"Yes, but I"m not so stuck on technicalities," I told him. "You can"t eat them."
"Let"s drown our sorrows in song," Westy said.
So then we all started singing and this is what we worked around to: