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Page 21
He awoke at an undesirable hour, convinced that another farmer was
getting up. The world was a mournful gray. At the end of the corncrib
a head was peering in. Kenny turned his searchlight on it and had a
moment of doubt. The man was facially endowed for anything but virtue.
He was likely getting in--not up.
"Hum!" said Kenny suspiciously. "Are you coming in, my good friend, or
are you going out?"
"I'm comin' into my own corncrib, damn you!" shouted the farmer with
unexpected malevolence, "and you're going out!"
Kenny, resistant, knew instantly that he was not. He sat up.
"The acoustics, Silas," he said with cold disapproval, "are excellent.
Therefore--"
It was impossible to finish. The farmer, finding the name offensively
rustic, roared into the corncrib that Kenny was a hobo without future
hope of heaven. He and the corncrib, it seemed, knew the genus well.
Indeed, he looked in the corncrib for hope-lorn hoboes with the same
regularity that he looked in the hay for eggs.
He added some infuriated statistics about early rising.
"Come out of that!" he yelled.
Thoroughly out of patience Kenny flung the basket of corncobs at the
farmer's head. An instant sputter of cobby profanity and the sound of
a backward scramble gave him grim delight.
"When I leave any bed at this hour," he called with terrible composure,
"it will be because I haven't a fist to explain a gentleman's habits.
It's of no earthly interest to me if fool farmers are getting up all
over the dawn. So are the roosters. Let 'em!"
But the basket of cobs had been persuasive. Kenny saw beyond in the
dimness cobs and an empty basket. The farmer was gone. He lay down
again in deep disgust, merely reaching a pleasant stage of drowsiness
when the sound of voices near the corncrib roused him again.
This time he sat up with a jerk.
"Silas," he thundered, "is that you again?"
It was. It was moreover a Silas arrogant and cautious who peered in
through the bars and stated profanely that he had a marshal with him, a
marshal with a badge.
Kenny considered the new complication with a startled frown. It either
spelled retreat in a harrowing dawn with the marshal and Silas at his
heels or a temporary sojourn in a village jail. And Kenny detested any
form of humiliation or discomfort.
"Silas," he said wearily, "this is a rotten corncrib. It's sprained
and spavined and Lord knows what. It's full of bugs and ants and
spiders and dust and pass� corncobs and it's architecturally incorrect,
but if you and the marshal will hike off somewhere else and brag about
his badge, I'll buy it. I've got to sleep."
Speechless, Silas stared through the slats and continued to stare until
his stupefied face became a source of irritation. Kenny lost his
temper. He raised his voice.
"You petrified lout! I said I'd buy it."
The marshal, whose bravery seemed less in evidence than his badge,
summoned Silas to a point of safety. They conferred in a murmur.
Kenny viciously killed a spider and strained his ears in vain to hear
the purport of the consultation.
After an interval of heated debate Silas returned and with an air of
scepticism demanded twenty-five dollars. When Kenny, who never
questioned the price of anything, argued the point from motives of pure
antagonism, he called the marshal. The marshal was conservative. He
dallied with the need of coming. Kenny took advantage of a dispute
among the enemy to count out the bills in concessional disgust and
shove them through the slats. Silas, turning, brushed them with his
nose and leaped back in terror. Then his hand shot upwards in an
avaricious clutch. The amazed pair counted the bills and departed,
ever after confusing Kenny's identity with that of a famous lunatic
addicted to escapes.
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