Boys -- Conduct of life -- Juvenile fiction; Tramps -- Juvenile fiction
In a couple of minutes along come Kinderhook, looking like he was mad
enough to bite himself in the back of the neck if he could reach it, and
he began kicking down our barricade and using a lot of language and
mentioning us. If I remember right he was going to do a number of things
to us if ever he laid hands on us, which we hoped he wouldn’t. But he
didn’t wait to look around—jest jumped in his buggy and off he went.
We didn’t wait long, but put off after him and got into our own rig and
followed along just far enough behind so he wouldn’t notice. In a half
an hour we got into Litchfield, which is a pretty big town—almost a
city—with lots of stores. We followed after Kinderhook till he came to a
big hardware-store, and there he stopped and hitched. We stopped and
hitched, too, and saw him go inside.
“Guess we’ll have to separate,” says Catty. “He’s goin’ in after a
churn, I’ll bet. Soon’s he comes out you go in and git a churn jest like
his’n. I’ll follow him and make chalk-marks on the sidewalk so you kin
follow me.”
“All right,” says I, “but what ’ll I buy the churn with?”
“Money,” says he, and he give me a ten-dollar bill. “I got this a couple
of days ago jest in case somethin’ happened that we’d need it.”
In twenty minutes Kinderhook came out, lugging a big bundle, and I went
into the store pretty quick. There was a man there, and I asked for the
churn department. It was up-stairs, and I walked. When I got there I
says to the clerk, “There was a big, rich-lookin’ feller in here and he
bought a churn.”
“Yes,” says he; “anything the matter with it?”
“No,” says I. “I calc’late it was a good churn. I calc’late it was so
good I want one jest like it. Got one?”
“You bet,” says he, and he set one out. “This jest like his?” says I.
“I-dentical,” says he.
“How much?” says I.
“Nine seventy-five,” says he, and I paid for it and had it wrapped up
and lugged it out.
Right in front of the store chalk-marks with an arrow-head at one end
pointed down the street, and I followed where they pointed. They went
around a few corners, but I didn’t have any trouble to follow them, and
after a while I saw Catty kind of hanging around the front of a
paint-shop.
“Hello!” says he. “Got the churn?”
“No,” says I. “This package is full of song-sparrers and I’m goin’ to
make a pie of them.”
“What kind of a churn is it?” says he.
“It’s a Criterion,” says I, calling it by its catalogue name.
“He got the best there was, didn’t he?”
“The best hain’t none too good for Kinderhook. Where is he?”
“In that paint-shop.”
“What for?”
“Havin’ a white stripe painted down the side of his pants so’s he kin
join the band,” says Catty. “How do I know what for? That’s what I’m
here to find out.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account