"I'll promise you won't be prosecuted if you will tell us what happened
that night."
He looked us over suspiciously, but apparently reassured, he said:
"Well, that's fair enough, especially since I didn't have nothin' to do
with the croakin', although I know pretty much how it happened.
"The boss there come over to the plant--the International plant, you
know--about two weeks ago and had me bring that plane out there over
here. We always got along together, the boss and me. Wasn't pals or
anything like that, but we understood each other. I'd seen, for a
couple of months, that the boss had somethin' on his mind. I knew it
wasn't any jane, because they never worried him none. He worried them
a lot, but somehow he just took 'em as they come. He talked with me
some--he claimed I was the best mechanician he had over there,--and I
figured it out at last that what he was worryin' about was money. He
spent a lot, an' was free an' easy, an' it worried him to figure that
he was goin' to go bu'st pretty soon. The first day I was here, he
brought a woman out, a swell looker--I didn't find out till afterwards
that it was Felderson's wife--an' he kinda kidded her along about
helpin' him over the rough spots by lendin' him a little of her dough.
I sort of figured out he was goin' to run off with the woman, 'cause
the next morning he come out and said we could take a month's lay-off
if we wanted to, as he was goin' on his honeymoon. I thought he was
goin' to take me along, but when he said that, I made up my mind to
beat it back to the plant to keep from goin' bugs watchin' them other
guys callin' theirselves mechanics, tinkerin' around them other busses
when they didn't know their job. It's a darn wonder more of these fool
dudes out here ain't been killed.
"Somethin' must 'a' slipped up, because he come out late that afternoon
cussin' like the devil. He had one whale of a temper when he got
started, the boss did. He took me with him in the buss and we cruised
around the country for a while. Every time he spotted a straight
stretch of road without too many trees, he'd come down and look it
over. Finally we found that straight stretch of road out by the golf
links at the country-club, an' that must 'a' suited him 'cause that was
the only place we come to after that. He mounted that machine gun in
there on the plane, an' it was then I decided he was a-goin' to slip
somepin over on somebody. He didn't take me with him after that, but
two or three times when he come into the field he'd swoop down on that
there square target he made and put over in the corner and I'd hear the
ratti-tat-tat of that machine gun a-goin'. I ast him what was he goin'
to do with it an' he said: 'We're a-goin' out one of these nights and
kill a skunk.'
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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