With this she favored me with a stealthy sidelong glance and I was thereupon proposed for membership by Rat Hyatt, who added that I seemed to be the “only outsider present from a distance that hadn’t hornswoggled the club durin’ the past hour.” Sophy’s talon-like fingers closed quickly on the two-dollar bill that I handed her as the first year’s dues, after my election and the formal adjournment of the meeting. While I was entirely out of sympathy with the turkey shoots, I was glad for several reasons to become a member. After most of the crowd had dispersed I was solemnly conducted into the church and informed that, in order to become a full-fledged member, certain things must be imparted to me to complete my initiation. I was then told that all “Turkeys” knew each other by certain grips and cabalistic words. The “grip” consisted of shaking hands with three fingers only, representing the three front toes of a turkey. The “countersign” was “Pop-Pop!” signifying rifle firing at the annual shoot. The countersign, loudly uttered, with three fingers held aloft, constituted “the grand high sign,” and I was told that I must always relieve any brother Turkey who hungered or thirsted, and made such a sign. With my promise to remember all this, the ceremony, which my instructors, Bill and Rat, considered very humorous, was ended. The Reverend Butters had been a sorrowful spectator of the proceedings of the afternoon, but his furrowed face brightened when Josh Varney gracefully presented him with one of the big dripping birds that he was carrying to his buggy. In prayer before his congregation on the following Sunday he expressed humble gratitude with the words, “Out of the iniquities of the world, O Lord, has sustenance come to the body of thy servant, and beneath a cloak of sin have Thy blessings been transmitted unto Thine anointed one.” The relations between the old preacher and Rat Hyatt had been slightly embarrassing since Rat’s conversion and sudden backsliding of the year before, and they had little to say to each other when they met. Rat was now regarded as a hopeless loss and a minute part of hell’s future fuel supply. He considered his former spiritual comforter “a busted wind bag,” so there seemed little left to say on either side.