Bennington's Birds

by George Allan England

 

“I DON'T know, my dear, but we're doing wrong not to have Walter come back to us, here at Idlewilde,” remarked Beatrice Bennington at breakfast, that fine morning of late September. She referred to one Walter McCaffrey, alias “Squiffy,” who,—taken to live with them last year, from the Sheltering Arms,—had nearly disrupted the place. “Such a pitiful letter as he's written me, my love!”

Bennington's Birds

Did you ever raise chickens or take a small boy to keep over the summer? Bennington did both. Read what happened to him.

By George Allan England

“Pitiful fiddlesticks!” retorted Bartholomew, with great indignation. Memories of severe outrages that he had suffered at Walter's juvenile hands still deeply rankled—especially damages Bartholomew had been obliged to pay for destruction wrought by Squiffy among the Hayton poultry. “That young fiend, that immature but incarnate demon, never shall return. Not while I'm alive! Never, you hear?”

“But just listen to this, hon,” the comely Beatrice entreated. “I'm sure it would melt a heart of stone.” And she read aloud:

“'Dear Friends:

“'I want to come back, right away. Please read this letter before you read the Charter. Every day and night I cry to come back to your dog, Sam, and you.'”

“Sam's dead,” interrupted Bartholomew; “and if Squiffy wants to see him in the Great Beyond, I might assist him!”

“You're horrid, love. Do listen:

“If you will let me come back right away, I will do everything you ask me without making a fuss. I have packed a pillow-case with my nightshirt, hairbrush, comb, magazine, book and razor, so I can skin out quick and come back to you.'”

“Razor!” Bennington ejaculated. “So the young ghoul has a razor now, eh? To cut our throats with, most likely!”

“Don't be so harsh, Barty. Isn't this just too pitiful, now?”

“'They try to teach me French, but I can't learn it. Please send me a letter telling me I can come back right away. Gee, if I can't, I don't know what I will do. When you send the letter, be sure to send me money enough for my train fare. Write and tell me I can come back as soon as you get this letter. The principal is supposed to read each letter every boy writes, but a friend of mine is going to sneak this out. I sleep between the mattresses and one blanket on top of me. I have a very bad cold. Please let me come back, right away!— With love, your affectionate—Walter.'”

“Maybe his cold will develop into pneumonia,” suggested Bartholomew hopefully.

“And do listen to the P. S.,” his wife entreated. “It's just wonderful!

“'I will get up good, every day, and not sauce you once. I will stop smoking and swearing and building fires in the garage and everything I did, if you will let me come back right away. If you will let me come back, I will sing in the choir and earn money for you, if you will let me come back right away.'”

“I GATHER that Squiffy wants to come back, right away,” judged Bennington. “Well, you write him, right away, and tell him he can't. C-a-n-'-t, can't!”

“You haven't heard his Charter, dear!

“'Charter. Things I wont do, if I can come back, and things I will do: I wont swear, smoke, sauce you, fight, pull out Sam's hair, ask for money, skin out at night, kill chickens, go with bad boys, be a bandit, sell spare tires and tools off your car. Gee, I don't like this school; the food is rotten. If I can't come back, anyhow send me a good fat chicken for Easter.'”

“I'll chicken him, if that young Beelzebub ever shows up here again!” Barty menaced. “He'd better try it, once!”

“There's some more to the Charter, love:

“'Things I will do. I will obey, cut wood, fix furnace, stop putting mice in your cook's teapot, sweep cellar, help your hired man instead of putting tacks in his bed, get my lessons, go with good boys, behave myself. I promise on my honor to do all these things if you will only let me come back, right away.'”

“The said hired man, Suoma Lynen, has a rawhide ready for him,” remarked Bennington. “And Suoma is one of the strongest Finns I've ever known. Only for the fact that Squiffy would probably burn the house, if Suoma ever licked him, I don't know but I might consider it. On the whole, however, it's thumbs down for Squiffy!”

“'I want to come back, right away,'” Beatrice continued reading. “'I realize what good, kind friends you were to me, and I want to come back and be kind to Sam and you. Please let me come back, right away. Gee, I cry for Sam and you, all the time. Dear Sam, I hope you miss me as much as I miss you. I hope the Benningtons give you three square meals a day. Dear friends, I realize how much you did for me, and I want to come back right away and repay you for being so good, by being kind to you and doing what you ask me to. I realize you have not many more years to live, and I want to be with you, those years!'”

“Not many more years to live, eh?” Bennington demanded. “He wont have many more minutes to live, if Suoma or I ever get a hand on him again!” Bennington clenched his fists and looked almost formidable. His wife sighed as she laid down the letter:

“Poor little fellow! We may have misjudged him, after all. In spite of everything, he may have been innocent.”

“Innocent!” Bartholomew glared through his shell-rimmed goggles. “That black-hearted monster!”

“I know appearances were against him, dear, but much of the evidence was only circumstantial.”

“Never mind! No human being could even look as guilty as he looked, and not be guilty. And didn't we actually find him making Selectman Ketcham's hens drunk, and playing they were pinwheels and rockets? Now that we've got a fine flock of prize Buff Orpingtons here at Idlewilde, d'you suppose I'd take any chances? There's been trouble enough this spring with chicken-thieves round here, as it is, without importing a regular chicken-murderer! Say no more about it, Beatrice; say no more!”

With great dignity Bartholomew arose from the breakfast-table, and made ready for his weekly business-trip to Boston.

“That Satan's limb!” he growled, as he walked to the depot. “Innocent, indeed! Why, men have been hanged on half the evidence against that ghoul. I'd like to see him coming back!”

ON the eight-forty-seven to Boston he met Ed Parvin in the smoker, and they fell to talking about chickens, as suburbanites will do betimes, if not restrained. Parvin had a loss to report.

“Somebody got into my best pen, last night,” said he, “and copped more than a dozen of my big Plymouth Rocks.”

“Maybe you left your henhouse door open, and they went home,” suggested Barty.

“Stop your kidding! I never carried a crateful of prize poultry to Brockton Fair, anyhow, like you did last year, and let 'em jolt out of the car—smash the crate and have to chase chickens in heavy traffic on Main Street!”

“Perhaps not,” Bartholomew retorted caustically. “But I caught some o' my chickens; and from all reports you don't have much luck catching the kind you chase!”

“I was robbed; that's what,” Parvin retorted. “Chicken-thieves have been mighty active all over this county, the past month, and some of 'em got to me, that's all.”

“Well, they'd better not get to me! Next to a skunk, a chicken-thief is the meanest varmint alive. And I'd just as soon shoot one as a skunk, any day.”

“Same here. If we could shoot one or two, we could maybe collect that Poultry Breeders' Association reward of one hundred dollars a head for thieves. But the trouble is to get near enough to 'em to shoot. They seem like a well-organized gang. Travel in high-powered cars, with gunnysacks and chicken-crates, gather in the birds and make their get-away, P. D. Q. With broilers at forty cents a pound, and old birds bringing up to one dollar and fifty cents apiece, there's corking money in it, for them.”

“It's not all velvet, though,” cut in Russell Farnum, from across the aisle. “Up to old lady McIntyre's, the other night, they dropped a pocketbook in the henhouse. There was four hundred and twenty-seven dollars in it, cold cash. As it's a cinch they'll never come back, the old lady sold nineteen birds for four hundred and twenty-seven dollars, or at the rate of twenty-three dollars apiece. Not too bad, what?”

“Serves the thieves right!” growled Bartholomew. “And if we had any kind of a sheriff in this county, he'd put a stop to such depredations. But with a figurehead like old Hell-roaring Jake Purrington—all talk and no action—what can you expect? He couldn't even catch a cold! I opposed his election last time, and he knows why. I guess my article in the Hayton Gazette was an eyeful for him!”

“I guess so, too,” Farnum agreed. “By all accounts he's sore as a scalded pup, at you. And after the run-in he had with the editor of the Gazette for printing it, the editor's sore at you too. If either of em ever get anything on you, Bennington—good-night!”

“That hick editor and that tin-star rube ever get anything on me?” demanded Bartholomew. “Say, you make me laugh!”

BARTHOLOMEW, however, did not laugh that night when he was awakened, about midnight, by a nudge in the ribs from Beatrice's plump elbow.

“Barty! There's somebody in our chicken-run!”

“What?” And he sat up in bed. “Chicken-thieves? Say, where's my revolver?”

“Be careful, Barty! Remember, there's capital punishment in this State, for murder. And your insurance-premium isn't paid. Go slow!”

“Go slow, nothing! There's a reward of one hundred dollars apiece for chicken-thieves, and I might as well clean up—beside saving my birds and teaching the thieves a good lesson. A chicken-thief's the meanest varmint alive, and I'd just as soon shoot a skunk as shoot one! Go slow? I guess not!”

He hustled out of bed with no visible intention whatever of going slow. Not that his courage was that of a lion; but the outrage of a foray on blooded birds will nerve even the most pacific of men to action. Besides, the robber might after all be only a fox or a “wood-pussy;” and if so, was not here a miraculous occasion to prove his valor to a wife who often had denied he had any?

Faint sounds of disturbance from the region of the chicken-run sped Barty's efforts. He sketchily hauled on such of his clothes as he could find without making a light, donning them over his pajamas, which bunched up mightily in the process; crammed his sockless feet into mismated shoes that he left unlaced; rummaged his revolver from a bureau drawer. Then, unheeding Beatrice's now half-hysterical plea that a husband was worth more to her than a few chickens, or even revenge on hen-thieves, he hastily groped downstairs.

He reached the back door after having—in the dark—fallen over only two rocking-chairs and Junior's express-wagon. Noiselessly opening that door, he listened, peered out into a chilly and drizzling obscurity. So great was his excitement that he quite forgot his revolver had never been loaded since the time of its purchase. His heart beat high—very high, indeed. His neck craned from his coat-collar like a turtle's from its shell.

What to do now? Bartholomew's courage seemed oozing a bit. A man may be bold as D'Artagnan in an upstairs bedroom, only to find his heroism slipping at a cold midnight back-door.

“Gosh, but it's ch-ch-chilly!” he remarked, chattering a little. He felt a draft down his neck and two on his bare ankles. His correspondence-course on “Development of Personal Bravery” had nothing whatever to say about chicken-pirates—presumably armed. Bartholomew wondered what he ought to do—charge the enemy, or, too proud to fight, feign to ignore them.

A MUFFLED cackle, and the glimpse of two vague shadows hastening toward the side road, steeled his resolution. Hot determination surged—and Bennington rushed forward, shouting in a shrill, thin pipe:

“Hey, you! Bring back those birds!”

The only result of this was a faintly derisive laugh, the growl of a motorcar as somebody stepped on the gas of an engine that had been left quietly running, a clash of gears. Bennington vaguely caught the suggestion of a car departing at considerable speed.

“Here, you—” But the miscreants totally declined to “here.” And sudden silence closed on the drizzly, chill air.

Then rage filled Bartholomew Bennington's heart, inside his thirty-four-inch chest. Any householder, despoiled, will understand. Also, it's a good bit easier to feel rage when the foe runs away than when he stands to fight. Bartholomew ran from the house, shuffling a bit by reason of the unlaced and mismated shoes on the bare feet. He hastened in his assorted garments over his bunched-up pajamas, to the garage; and—stopping not even to investigate the extent of his loss—got busy with pursuit.

It was the work of a mere moment to jam the pistol into his pocket, fumble the garage-key from his clothes, slide back the door and throw on an old overcoat that hung near it, then jump into his car and fling the self-starter into action. As the engine barked and caught, Bennington felt a pang of regret that Suoma Lynen, the hired man, just happened to be absent. With the unemotional but heavy-fisted Suoma at his side, he would have had more stomach for a chicken-bandit chase. But Suoma or no Suoma, he was determined to run the miscreants down, recover his property—his prize Buff Orpingtons—and take vengeance dire.

For once in his very much married, his tame-rabbity, tea-and-toasty life, he felt the surgings of completely outraged manhood—“saw red,” as the popular novelists say, knew he would do or die in the attempt.

As he switched on his lights and swung his car down the driveway, he heard the voice of Beatrice imploringly at the bedroom window:

“Barty, Barty! Be careful! Oh, what are you going to do? Don't kill 'em, Barty! I'd almost rather lose ail our chickens than have you a murderer, or have you get killed. Remember you're a husband and father, Barty, and—”

Her appeals faded out as Bartholomew hurled his car forward. Only a grim laugh echoed back to the distraught Beatrice. What was prudence now? Despoiled, ravished of his precious birds, Bennington's jaw set hard on vengeance—also the one-hundred-dollar reward for each and every chicken-thief brought to justice.

Savagely he crammed his unlaced shoe on the accelerator. His car surged mightily forward, leaped away into the cold and drizzly night.

The chase was on!

VERY far ahead, down the long straight State highway to the village, Bartholomew's eyes saw red, indeed—the red of a fleeing tail-light. He had, in his haste, omitted to put on his horn-rimmed spectacles; but being far-sighted, he could still do very well without them. Now he “took after” the bandit car at high and rising speed.

The highway spun in and in at him, a white ribbon here or there gleaming with little puddles. Forty, forty-five, fifty, the speedometer-needle registered. In his saner moments Bennington rarely ventured to drive over twenty-five; but now! Only one thought possessed him: to overtake the poultry-banditti. Just what he intended to do after that, did not concretely occur to him. Rage and a sense of justice, he felt, would find a way.

For a moment he exulted as, obviously, his car crawled up on the fugitives. But these low-browed persons must have discovered pursuit, for now their own car began to burn the road at a tremendous rate. Bartholomew found himself no longer gaining. As the bandits whirled through sleeping Hayton, they were plainly shaking him. He cramped the accelerator down hard, and—a scant half-mile behind the fleeing poultry-pirates—roared like a vengeful tornado down the long, elm-arched street.

Now the village lay far behind; and now the fugitive gleam of red suddenly vanished, as the road forked to Porterville on the right and Maplewood on the left. Bennington's brakes squealed. He slowed at the fork. Which way now? Sherlock Holmes methods of the simplest showed him, in his headlight glare, fresh tire-tracks to the right. Again his car surged onward. Once more it leaped away, away, in pitiless pursuit. Vengeful at the wheel, Bennington crouched, staring with wide eyes, poison at his heart.

WERE mot more urgent matters to be told, we might make Bartholomew's heroic ride, like Paul Revere's, last for several pages. But printing costs money, and so let us condense it to a mere synopsis. The bare facts—you can take them and pad them as fully as your imagination demands—will come to this: Bennington chased the chicken-pirates three-quarters of an hour and nearly thirty-six miles. His pursuit led through Porterville, Gordonton and Arline. Betimes he lost the trail; then, like a bloodhound of doom, picked it up again. Now he fell far behind, then surged close; and all the time he was chattering with an acute and growing chill from unprotected neck and ankles. If he had possessed any safety-pins he would have stopped long enough to pin up his collar and the bottom of his trousers; but safety-pins he had none. He mentally vowed that always thereafter he would carry safety-pins as standard equipment of the car.

Very, very chilled grew Bartholomew. For a rainy late September night in Massachusetts, around twelve to one a.m., can be and often is cold indeed.

The chase ended suddenly as it had begun. Even more so. For in a long stretch of road through dense woods, darker than the prospects of a grasshopper in a chicken-yard, Barty's straining eyes all at once beheld the mocking tail-light gleaming close.

He jammed in clutch and brake just in the nick of time to dodge hitting the bandit-car as it lolled half in the ditch and half across the road, with a blown rear tire.

His brakes shrilled; his car slewed perilously, slid, came to rest. Out of his pocket, with a trembling hand, he snatched the pistol.

“Hands up!” he shouted, scrambling from his car. His mouth felt dry and queer; his pulses were hammering, but still he held his nerve. “Stick 'em up, and be quick about it!”

No answer. Not even the stab of flame, the bark of a bandit gun. A complete and totally disconcerting silence greeted him. Where the fowl-buccaneers had vanished, who could tell? But it was a safe bet they had made tracks into the woods without stopping to try conclusions with their pursuer. No doubt they imagined at least a posse with rifles was after them. Didn't Shakespeare say something about conscience making cowards of even poultry-privateers? Or was it Tennyson? Never mind; anyhow, it's true.

A moment the staring Bartholomew stood all alone in the roadway, dark save for the headlights of the two cars. A moment silence reigned. But only for a moment. Because almost at once a cluck and cackle of birds recalled him to the fact of why he was there at all.

“My chickens!”

The words burst from Bennington with an extreme joyance.

“My birds! My Buff Orpingtons!”

Thank heaven, those at least remained. Bennington might be chilled to the marrow and might have risked life and limb by that wild ride, by possible fusillades; but his fowls were safe! The outlaws in their panic had abandoned all. Even though Bennington could not arrest the miscreants, here at least was partial victory.

He ran to the bandit car, dimly perceived in it a crate filled with poultry, lifted that crate out, and with it staggered back to his own machine.

Two minutes later he had swung about, and at a smart clip was headed for home. In his brain was the registration-number of the bird-brigands' car, and in his pocket lay the car's switch-key.

“Now they wont put on a spare tire and make their get-away—that's a cinch!” vengefully exulted Bartholomew. “And tomorrow the Law will have 'em—and I'll have my reward. I guess bird-burglars will monkey with me—I don't think!”

JOYFULLY cogitating, Bennington stepped on the gas for Idlewilde. Not the least beatific of his reflections was realization that this exploit would thrill his Beatrice and cause her greatly to respect him. Yes, how could it help raising his stock once more to par, with the good wife? That stock had long been on the decline; but now, now—ah!

Though not unduly athirst for praise, Bartholomew shared every married man's instinct occasionally to play the rôle of hero in his wife's eyes. He perceived with devastating clarity, which sorely galled him, that for years Beatrice had sized him up as a Number-Thirteen-collar man, that she had his number, and that this number was way down in the small fractions.

Well, now, for once here was the opportunity to pung and chow and be mah jongg all at one fell swoop. Bartholomew shoved his car along through Arline and toward Gordonville at a round pace. Already he was mentally living the scene, when he should arrive home in the darkness before dawn, haggard, spent, but triumphant.

“Oh, Barty, darling! Are you all right? Did they wound you, my hero?”

“Never touched me, my love! Half a dozen of them—big, husky ruffians in an immense car—attacked me. All gunmen. Chicken-corsairs, desperate characters! Desperate hand-to-hand conflict. They emptied their revolvers at me, but I drove them all off. Yes, I admit it was nip and tuck for a while. But in the end I downed them. They ran—carrying two desperately wounded fowl-freebooters. They wont rob any more hen-pens for a while. And yes, I recovered all our birds. Hero? Not at all, my love—only a husband, father and chicken-raiser defending his home. Only a man!”

Oh, it was sublime, delicious!

FROM this ecstatic revery, through which now and then the crated birds clucked contentedly as if glad to be homeward bound again, Bartholomew was presently aroused by sight of a small and trudging figure in the road, a figure that his speeding headlights rapidly brought into proximity.

The figure turned, with coat-collar up and cap down, very plainly cold and wet. It began what is expressively known as “thumb-pointing,” to indicate that a lift would be acceptable. Bennington slowed his car. He objected to thumb-pointers; but on a lonely road like this, at about one-thirty in the morning—and also because he saw the thumb-pointer was a mere youth—he felt disposed to make an exception.

“Jump in, and make it snappy!” he commanded as the car lagged almost to a halt. He swung the door wide. The youth, really only a boy, jumped in and slammed the door. Then as the machine gathered speed again, he began:

“Hello, sport! Gee, but it's a frost, aint it, hikin' this time o' night? You aint got much of a boat, but gee, anythin's better 'n nothin', and I aint p'ticular. Give us a match, will you? I'm dyin' for a smoke. I got the tacks, but no matches. What you got in back, there? Chickens? What are you, anyhow, a chicken-thief? How far is it to Hayton? That's where I'm goin'. Why'n't you give us a match? Gee, but you're slow!”

MEMORIES of other monologues quite in this vein swiftly recurred to Bartholomew. Absolutely thus, last year, did Walter McCaffrey, alias Squiffy, use to hold forth. A pang of uneasiness, like a thin and flying blade, pierced Barty's consciousness.

“What's your name?” he demanded sharply. “Where from, and where bound?”

“Gee, but you're nosey, aint you?” the lad retorted. “Besides bein' slow. I dunno as it's any o' your damn biz who I am, nor nothin'. Who're you? Mostly rum-runners an' chicken-thieves is out, this time o' night. Gee, you make me think of a guy I use to know at Hayton. A shrimp, he was, but his wife was the goods. Some pippin, I'll tell the world! He cruelized me, but she stuck up for me, she did. Gee, but he was the prize boob, an' then some! It's a shame to let 'em live, like that guy! An' gee—say, what you stoppin' for?”

Bennington jammed the car to a swift halt, and switched on the little dash-light. Only too horribly he recognized the carroty hair, freckles and flap-ears, the abhorred physiognomy, of Squiffy. Even that dim light revealed the demon-features with terrifying clarity.

“You—you!” gasped Bartholomew. “You young fiend!”

A moment the boy squinted wise, hard eyes at Bennington, then unlimbered:

“Hey, c'mon, now! Cut out the rough stuff, see? Gee, who's a fiend? Cut it out! I may be a fiend, but I aint no rum-runner or chicken-thief—not just now. Give us a match, you tightwad, can't you? I know you! You're that Bennington boob! Gee, what a rig you're in! You look like somepin the cat brought in. Say, start up this punk bus an' let's be gettin' along to Idlewilde, see? How's your wife? She's O. K., fine an' dandy. How'n hell did she ever come to marry you? A peach! I don't like the Shelterin' Arms, see? I wrote your wife about it, an' after that, gee, I thought I wouldn't wait for no answer, so I just run away. I had my things in a pillow-case, but I got shootin' craps with some 'boes at a shanty, an' they gypped me out of 'em. But I burned up the shanty on 'em, anyhow. That's somepin!”

“Squiffy!” the outraged Bartholomew managed to stammer. “If you know what's good for you, you'll get out of this car while you're still alive!”

“Gee, is that so? Who's goin' to hurt me? You couldn't hurt a bug! Drive on! Why'n't you drive along home? If you can't, lemme at the wheel—I'll make the old bus go some! Say, you aint got nothin' to eat, have you?- There's them chickens! Gimme a chicken, an' I'll roast it. I like to make fires, but gee, you gotta gimme a match. That'd be swell, roastin' a chicken in the road! You can have part, if I leave any. Where'd you pinch 'em? C'mon, get busy! Do somepin, can't you? Gimme a match or a chicken or a smoke, or shoot this punk old bus for home, or do somepin! Gee, what a dummy! I always thought you was nuts, an' now I know it, an'—”

“You get out o' this car!” The command burst all in one maddened gush from Bartholomew's outraged soul. Talk about seeing red! Bennington was beholding a whole tropical sunset over an erupting volcano. “You demon, you arch-fiend! Get out o' here, before I throw you out!”

“Gee, you wouldn't throw nothin', only bull,” retorted Squiffy with utmost aplomb, leaning back in an attitude of greater ease. “Keep your shirt on—if you got one on, now, which you don't look like you had. Rum-runnin' and chicken-stealin' without a shirt on—some guy! Say, you're a false alarm, you are. All you talk is static, an' you got your ant-tennies crossed with the bug-house. Who's scared o' you?”

BARTHOLOMEW'S sole answer was to lay violent hands upon Squiffy and attempt to hurl him from the car.

It is not, however, easy to exert one's full strength—such as that may be—while seated in a motorcar. And Squiffy proved far tougher than any hard-boiled owl. Not only was he swift with left-hooks and uppercuts, but in clinging he had vines and lobsters completely outclassed.

Before Bartholomew could fling him to the roadside ditch, pinwheel-fashion, Bartholomew's overcoat-collar was extensively ripped, one sleeve torn almost completely off, right eye puffy and lip cut. Squiffy sat in the ditch, covered with mud but otherwise practically undamaged, and addressed Bennington with a complete fluency of imprecation that might make good reading, but that no censor would ever O. K.

Little mindful of these linguistic garnishments, just so that Squiffy remained outside the car, Bennington immediately drove on.

“That young demon!” he growled. “Just let him show his face in Hayton, if he thinks best! I'll have Sheriff Purrington arrest him on sight. And I'll get the Sheltering Arms on the long-distance and have 'em round him up in double-quick time. I'll show him, the monster!”

TWICE victorious over powers of evil in one night, merrily albeit shiveringly and hampered by his rent raiment and his personal injuries, Bartholomew drove homeward once more. Homeward, yes, but not for very long. Because after he had spun through Gordonton and had come within about a mile of Porterville on an easy upgrade, the engine coughed, sputtered, back-fired and died.

“Hello!” said Bennington. “What now?”

What now, very swiftly developed.

“Out o' gas, huh?” demanded Squiffy, sliding off the spare tire where with simian agility he had climbed and clung. “Gee, what a boob!” He came around close to Bennington, and stood there mockingly in the dim aura of light that reflected through the drizzle, from the headlights. “A guy that don't know enough not to run out o' gas—”

“Squiffy,” articulated Bartholomew in a hard, tense voice, albeit a bit thickly by reason of his cut lip, “I am armed. I've got a revolver. Any ordinary man in my place would shoot you in your tracks and throw your carcass to the crows. But no, I'll spare you—on one condition. The next town is Porterville, about one mile ahead. Go there, rouse up the watchman at the only garage there—you can't miss it—and bring me five of gas. I'll not only spare your life, but I'll give you a dollar, and I wont send you back to the Sheltering Arms. I'll put you on a train for the Far West, Squiffy, and you can ride one dollar's worth in that direction. Get me?”

“Gee, sure I get you!” And Squiffy looked almost human. “You may not be such a punk guy, at that. Only a boob. Slip me the jack for the gas, sport, an' I'll get it. I'll wake the guy up if I have to set the place on fire to do it—but I got no match. Give us a match an' the jack! Slip me!”

“No matches, Squiffy! Only the money!”

But alas, Bartholomew failed utterly to discover any. There was no jack to be slipped. A thrice-over search of all his pockets revealed not above seventeen cents in chicken-feed. Realization of this horrendous catastrophe gave Bartholomew pause.

“Squiffy, I'm all out of change.”

“You are, huh? Gee, but you're a swell guy, aint you? Can't even raise the price of a fill o' gas! Some Rockyfeller!”

“Have you got any money, Squiffy?”

“Gee, I got forty-two cents.”

“That makes fifty-nine, between us. That's more than enough for two of gas, to get home on. Ill pay you your dollar, then. Run along, now, that's a good boy!”

“Gee! Nix on that! If you think I'm gonna slip you my kale, you got another think comin'!”

“I don't ask you to give it to me, Squiffy. Just lend it to me!”

“Nothin' stirrin'! I had to work too hard shootin' craps, for this here coin, to be lendin' it to a boob like you!”

“Squiffy, hand over that forty-two cents!”

“Ah, go to hell!”

BARTHOOOMEW made a quick exit from the car and essayed to seize the muddy and recalcitrant one; but without glasses, he misjudged distances. Also, he slipped in the mud, and took several minor damages. Squiffy faded into Stygian gloom, whence issued injurious remarks.

Baffled, Bennington pondered. His situation had now become painful in the very extreme, the more so as he realized his Beatrice would be worrying her head off at this long delay. He could picture her walking the floor, imagining him wounded, dying, maybe dead; and at the end doubtless calling up Hell-roaring Jake Purrington to get a posse out and scour the countryside for him. If Bennington were to save his face at all, every moment was now heavily freighted with necessities for quick action.

But what was to be done? How was he to get gas? Only one possibility remained. Even as travelers across the steppes of Russia fling supernumerary infants to the wolves, for a getaway, so now Bennington understood he would have to sacrifice a few of his precious, prize Buff Orpingtons.

It took him not long to open the crate, in the darkness and extract four fine but vociferous birds, tie their legs with a cord rummaged from a side-pocket of the car, and start hiking toward Porterville. But all at once, as he bore his loud burden down the tenebrous road, doubts and fears assailed him. He had forgotten to take his switch-key. Moreover, in his absence this immature and vengeful demon of a Squiffy—even though he didn't run off with the car, altogether—might with the car's tools break up no end of the car's anatomy, or liberate all the remaining hens, wring their necks or otherwise indulge his childish fantasies. No, never must Squiffy be left alone there!

Bartholomew returned. Squiffy was already vastly at ease in the front seat, apparently master of nearly all he surveyed.

“Hello there, Squiffy?”

“Gee, whadju want now, you big stiff?”

“Come along with me to the garage, and I'll give you my seventeen cents.”

“Gee, you're a high-payin' guy, aint you? I guess you're scared to walk there in the dark, alone. That's what. Well, I aint goin', anyhow. Walk a mile an' back for seventeen cents? I guess nix!”

“I'll give you my pocketknife, too.”

“Gee, are you on the level? You aint tryin' to gyp me, nor nothin'?”

“On the level, Squiffy.”

“Chuck in your watch an' cuff-buttons,” bargained the hard-boiled one, “an' you're on.”

“Sorry, but I haven't got my watch here, and I haven't any cuff-buttons, either.”

“That's right. How could a guy without no shirt have cuff-buttons? Gee, some guy! Well, whadju got?”

“I've got a fountain-pen in my vest-pocket, and a ring.”

“Di'mond?”

“No, but it's a very good seal-ring,” replied the distressed Bartholomew. Better sacrifice anything than risk leaving that diabolical one with the car.

“Slip me!”

“No! Ill give you the ring, pen and money when we get back here with the gas.”

“Noth-in' do-in'! I know you. Shell out!”

Bartholomew essayed to argue. As well address the Sphinx. At last Bartholomew had to lay down the poultry, and shell out into Squiffy's predatory palm. Only then—after Bennington had to his great relief got hold of the switch-key—would Squiffy accompany him.

All the interminable dark way to Perterville, Squiffy continued with great freedom of adjectives to express his opinions of Bennington.

Meek under this verbal torrent, for only meekness could now avail, Bartholomew submitted. Rain, somewhat increasing, dribbled down his back. The hens, which Squiffy positively refused to help carry, grew ever more weighty. A piercing chill transfixed Bartholomew. He shivered, chattered, but grimly endured. To become a hero, must one not tread long paths of pain?

Thus at last, after several eternities, they reached the Porterville garage.

IF you have ever aroused a garage-man at something after two ſ of a cold September morn, and tried to swap four hens for a couple of gallons of gas, you can form some idea of the task that now—despite all chilliness—made Bartholomew sweat.

“Say! What the hell? Out o' gas, huh? An' no coin? Say! Hens? What the Hades would I want of hens?” The garage-man was burly, low-browed, unshaven. “Where d'you get 'em? Your own hens, huh? Got 'em back from chicken-thieves? Huh! That's a good one! An' besides, I don't want no hens. What the hell would I do with hens? Worth one-fifty apiece, huh? Six dollars' worth o' hens for two o' gas? Say! It looks all wrong! I don't want to get in dutch, takin' no stolen proppety. Huh? Lend you the gas, then? Nix on that! This here's a cash biz. An' besides, you got a nerve to be wakin' me up—an'—huh? What the devil do I care what you say your name is, or where you live? An—”

“He's all right, this guy is,” interposed Squiffy. “I know him. I'll identify him for you. I lived to his place in Hayton, a spell, an' I'm goin' back there now for a vacation, all spring an' summer. Mebbe longer, if I like it. Gee, but it's cold. Get a move on with the gas, sport!”

The garage-man set black hands on hips, grew silent, then burst into a kind of noise that was probably meant for laughter.

“Some kid!” he ejaculated. “Smart kid—that's the kind for me. For your sake, kid, I'll take a chancet, this time. Steve Brodie did. But if them chickens is stolen, I'll kick myself I didn't nab you two an' get the hundred reward on chicken-thieves.”

“See here!” Bartholomew angrily interrupted, “I tell you my name's—”

“Forget it, an' shoot us the poultry. Dump 'em down there in that box. Think I wanna stand here chewin' the rag all night? Y'aint got a quart or two of hooch, have you?”

“I should say not! What d'you think I am, anyhow? A rum-runner?”

“You might be almost any old thing, the way you're bunged up. Say, you must of been mixin' it some, by the look o' your clothes an' map.”

“I got these injuries,” said Bartholomew with dignity, “rescuing my poultry from thieves.”

“All right, all right, I should worry! Slip us the birds!”

Bartholomew slipped him the birds. A quarter-hour from then, soaked and shivering, he drove homeward once more.

“Gee,” murmured Squiffy at his side, with Bennington's property in his pockets, “is they really a reward of a hundred for chicken-thieves, round here? Huh! Well, say, we put that deal acrost all right, didn't we, old top?”

Then he relapsed into a contemplative silence. With Squiffy, silence was so unusual that Bartholomew felt misgivings. What demoniac plan might not even now be hatching in that thrice-demoniac brain?

BENNINGTON had not long to ponder this troublous question, for other woes than speculative ones very presently awaited him. Hardly had he driven into Hayton, beyond which lay the Idlewilde and the Beatrice he so longed once more to behold, when he observed a dim but familiar figure standing plumb in the middle of Main Street.

This figure, bulking large in a raincoat. and rubber boots, held up a forbidding hand. Bennington slowed to an anxious halt.

“Good morning, Mr. Purrington,” he tried to be casual, though at recognition of the sheriff certain misgivings assailed him.

Hell-roaring Jake by no means reciprocated the greeting.

“What you got in that car?” he demanded, point-blank, coming out of the headlight glare to the driving side.

“Property of my own. What's the idea, holding me up?”

“What's your idee, holdin' other people up?” the sheriff retorted with acerbity. “I got a tip 'bout you, Bennin'ton, from the garridge-feller back to Porterville. You got some birds in there, have ye?”

“Sure I have! My own, too. What d'you think I am?” demanded Bartholomew with rising anger. There are limits, and he had about reached his. “A roost-robber?”

“A man as'll write a piece like what you done about me, might be 'most anythin'. Lemme look!”

“Look away, and be hanged!”

“Now, now, none o' your lip!” Jake warned. Cold was his eye, and hostile. “When it comes to hangin', you're a danged sight more li'ble to get it, 'an what I am!”

“But I tell you, hen-thieves robbed me last night—this morning, that is. About midnight. I chased 'em. Got my birds back again, and—”

“Here, now, that wont go, Bennin'ton! The garridge-feller woke me up, on the telefoam, an' told me you give him that steer. I called your house, an' asked your wife if they was any o' your birds gone, an—”

“You mean to say you had the nerve to disturb my wife?”

“I'll disturb more'n that, afore I get through with you!”

“But I tell you my best birds are gone! I've got 'em right here!”

“Well, they aint, an' you aint! Your wife was up, an' 'tarnal worried too, I'll tell ye, on account o' your goin's-on. Aint you ashamed, with a wife like that, to be up to these here low-down games? She sent the hired gal out to look at the hen-pen. They was tracks round there, so mebbe chicken-thieves was nigh your place, but they aint one danged bird o' yours missin'.”

“Not missing?” gulped Bartholomew, his brain a-reel.

“Nary one! An' what kind o' birds you claim was stole off o' you?”

“Why, my—my Buff Orpingtons, of course, and—”

“Orpin'tons, eh?” Hell-roaring Jake jerked open the rear door of the car, extracted poultry, bore it squawking and flapping to the headlights. “Well then,” and his voice rose maliciously triumphant, “how in tarnation you come to have Rhode Island Reds here?”

Bartholomew made a sort of clicking noise, but for a second found no word.

“Well, what ye got to say for y'rself?”

“Listen, Purrington! I—it can't be—there's a mistake, somewhere, and—I tell you—”

“Well, mebbe it can't be, but it is!” snarled the sheriff, his jaw like granite, mouth a slit of malice. “An' what's more, this here bird, here, is banded, an'—let's see, now—”

He squinted with ugly keen eyes as he held up the protesting fowl's metal-encircled leg. “An' it says J. T. P. on this here band, too! This bird's from Jabez Pratt's farm, or I miss my guess! Come on, now, Bennin'ton! No man can look as damn guilty as what you do, an' not be guilty! Give us the facts, now! Where'd you get that black eye an' cut lip? An' your clo'es all tore an' muddy? An' most of all, where'd you get them birds?”

“Listen to reason! This evidence is all circumstantial, and—”

“Mebbe, but it's got you where I want ye, all right. Say! I swanny, but a chicken-thief's the meanest varmint alive. I'd just as soon shoot one as shoot a skunk! Come on, now, give us the facts!”

EVEN as Bennington gasped and choked, unable to formulate any coherent answer, Squiffy unlimbered for action:

“Gee, Off'cer! Say, is they really a reward of a hundred bucks out for chicken-thieves? Is, eh? Well, if I help you land one, do I get a split of it? Sure I do, don't I? Well, gee, I'll spill you the right dope. This here guy, I was with him when he pulled the trick. I was hikin', an' he picked me up, an' after that he drove to that there farm you're tellin' about, an' he copped this crate o' birds. He tried to make me help him, but I wouldn't, an' he was goin' to lick me an' I defended myself, an' that's how he got hurt. Gee, he aint much of a scrapper! He pinched them birds, all right. That's on the level, see? An' do I get part o' the reward? 'Cause if I do, gee, I'm goin' West, to Bill Hart, an' shoot Injuns. Do I get it?”

“I'll see that you get it, all right, sonny,” Hell-roaring Jake promised, with intensest joy. “An' I'll see that this here chicken- thief gets all that's comin' to him, too!”

“It's all a damned lie!” protested the outraged Bartholomew. “I tell you I was waked up by hearing somebody at my chicken-run, and—”

“Say, he's a smooth guy!” interrupted Squiffy. “But he's an awful bad actor. He's got a smoke-wagon, Off'cer. Look out, or he might plug you!”

“Is that true, Bennin'ton? Are you armed? If you are, that's highway robb'ry with a dangerous weepon, an' carries up to twenty-five years!”

“But I tell you—”

“Frisk him, Off'cer, an' see if he aint got a gat!”

“I—I—”

Jake parleyed no more, but seized Bartholomew Bennington and in a brace of shakes had the revolver out of his pocket.

“Ah-ha!” he gloated. “Now you be up against it! I see where you wont be writin' no more pieces ag'inst me for quite a spell! You wont be writin' nothin'!”

“But Purrington, just listen! I tell you—”

“An' he was goin' to shoot me, for tryin' to stop him from stealin' them birds, too!” shrilled Squiffy. “An' he tried to rob me of all my money. Gee! Forty-two cents he tried to cop off'm me. Said he'd shoot me an' throw my carcass to the crows. Let him deny that, now, if he can!”

“It's a damn lie! I only said any ordinary man would shoot him and throw his carcass to the crows! I promised to spare him, if he'd—”

“Ah-ha! So you did try to make this poor harmless boy be your accomplice in crime, did ye? An' try to highway-rob him an' threaten him with a dangerous weepon?”

“Sure he did!” vociferated Squiffy. “An' gee, when do I get the hundred?”

Hell-roaring Jake fair laughed with bliss as he exclaimed:

“Bartholomew Bennin'ton, I hereby artest you for highway robbery, assault an' threats with a dangerous weepon, an' chicken-stealin'! Now will you submit peaceful an' come along to the lock-up, or have I got to put the nippers on ye?”

Even the worm, they say, will turn. Why not, then, Bartholomew Bennington? He saw red, all right; a whole abattoirful of red—the reddest kind of red. And seeing, he turned. Turned, very much so, to strike down his oppressors. But alas, Purrington struck first. So the turning ended in considerable disorder.

MARK TWAIN once wrote a story where he got his hero into such a jam that no possible way existed ever to get him out of it. So Mark quit cold, right there. I'd like to do the same.

It would take quite too long to give all the details. All you need to know is that truth is mighty and will prevail. So Bartholomew eventually got out of it—after a while. But he never dared rightly to figure up all the costs.

His only real consolation was that Squiffy didn't get the hundred, but was presently haled back to the Sheltering Arms—the Slaughtering Arms, Bennington wished they were. And after a month or so, everything was all ironed out, excepting Bartholomew's libel-suit against the editor of the Gazette.

But even today I advise you not to ask Bartholomew why he no longer keeps chickens. It mightn't be quite healthy for you.