"It's a gum-game," protested Reeves, agitatedly, "and I ain't goin'

to fight no ostrich nor hen-hawk."

"Then I'll take the stakes without further wear or tear," said Hiram.

"Am I right, boys?" A unanimous chorus indorsed him. "And this here is something that I reckon ye won't go to law about," the showman went on, ominously, "even if you have got a lawyer in the family.

You ketch, don't you?"

The unhappy second selectman realized his situation, sighed, and pried a slat off the crate. His nomination was more sanguine than he. The rooster hopped upon the crate, crowed, and stalked out onto the barn floor with a confidence that made Reeves perk up courage a bit.

Cap'n Kidd showed abstraction rather than zeal. He was busily engaged in squinting along his warty legs, and at last detected two or three objects that were annoying him. He picked them off leisurely. Then he ran his stiff and scratchy wing down his leg, yawned, and seemed bored.

When the other rooster ran across and pecked him viciously on his red expanse of breast, he c.o.c.ked his head sideways and looked down wonderingly on this rude a.s.sailant. Blood trickled from the wound, and Reeves giggled nervously. Cap'n Sproul muttered something and looked apprehensive, but Hiram, his eyes hard and his lips set, crouched at the side of the floor, and seemed to be waiting confidently.

Widow Pike's favorite stepped back, rapped his bill on the floor several times, and then ran at his foe once more. A second trail of blood followed his blow. This time the unknown ducked his k.n.o.bby head at the attacker. It looked like a blow with a slung-shot. But it missed, and Reeves t.i.ttered again.

"Fly up and peck his eye out, Pete!" he called, cheerily.

It is not likely that Peter understood this adjuration, notwithstanding Cap'n Sproul's gloomy convictions on that score in the past. But, apparently having tested the courage of this enemy, he changed his tactics, leaped, and flew at Cap'n Kidd with spurring feet.

Then it happened!

It happened almost before the little group of spectators could gasp.

Cap'n Kidd threw himself back on the bristling spines of his tail, both claws off the floor. Peter's spurring feet met only empty air, and he fell on the foe.

Foe's splay claws grabbed him around the neck and clutched him like a vise, shutting off his last, startled squawk. Then Cap'n Kidd darted forward that k.n.o.bby head with its ugly beak, and tore off Peter's caput with one mighty wrench.

"'Tain't fair! It's jest as I said it was! 'Tain't square!" screamed Reeves.

But Hiram strode forward, snapping authoritative fingers under Wixon's nose. "Hand me that money!" he gritted, and Wixon, his eyes on the unhappy bird writhing in Cap'n Kidd's wicked grasp, made no demur. The showman took it, even as the maddened Reeves was clutching for the packet, tucked it into his breast pocket, and drove the second selectman back with a mighty thrust of his arm. The selectman stumbled over the combatants and sat down with a shock that clicked his teeth. Cap'n Kidd fled from under, and flew to a high beam.

"He ain't a hen!" squalled Reeves.

At that moment the barn door was opened from the outside, and through this exit Cap'n Kidd flapped with hoa.r.s.e cries, whether of triumph or fright no one could say.

The lanterns' light shone on Widow Sidenia Pike, her face white from the scare "Cap'n Kidd's" rush past her head had given her, but with determination written large in her features.

She gazed long at Reeves, sitting on the floor beside the defunct rooster. She pointed an accusatory finger at it.

"Mr. Reeves," she said, "you've been lyin' to me two weeks, tryin'

to buy that rooster that I wouldn't sell no more'n I'd sell my first husband's gravestun'. And when you couldn't git it by lyin', you stole it off'm the roost to-night. And to make sure there won't be any more lies, I've followed you right here to find out the truth.

Now what does this mean?"

There was a soulful pause.

"Lie in small things, lie in big!" she snapped. "I reckon I've found ye out for a missabul thing!"

Hiram, standing back in the shadows, nudged Cap'n Sproul beside him, and wagged his head toward the open door. They went out on tiptoe.

"If he wants to lie some more, our bein' round might embarra.s.s him,"

whispered Hiram. "I never like to embarra.s.s a man when he's down--and--and her eyes was so much on Reeves and the rooster I don't believe she noticed us. And what she don't know won't hurt her none.

But"--he yawned--"I shouldn't be a mite surprised if another one of Bat Reeves's engagements was busted in this town. He don't seem to have no luck at all in marryin' farms with the wimmen throwed in."

The Cap'n didn't appear interested in Reeves's troubles. His eyes were searching the dim heavens.

"What do you call that thing you brought in the bag?" he demanded.

"Blamed if I know!" confessed Hiram, climbing upon his chariot. "And I'm pretty well up on freaks, too, as a circus man ought to be. I jest went out huntin' for suthin' to fit in with the sportin' blood as I found it in this place--and I reckon I got it! Mebbe 'twas a ca.s.sowary, mebbe 'twas a dodo--the man himself didn't know--said even the hen that hatched it didn't seem to know. 'Pologized to me for asking me two dollars for it, and I gave him five. I hope it will go back where it come from. It hurt my eyes to look at it. But it was a good bargain!" He patted his breast pocket.

"Come over to-morrow," he called to the Cap'n as he drove away. "I sha'n't have so much on my mind, and I'll be a little more sociable!

Listen to that bagpipe selection!"

Behind them they heard the whining drone of a man's pleading voice and a woman's shrill, insistent tones, a monotony of sound flowing on--and on--and on!

XI

The president of the "Smyrna Agricultural Fair and Gents' Driving a.s.sociation" had been carrying something on his mind throughout the meeting of the trustees of the society--the last meeting before the date advertised for the fair. And now, not without a bit of apprehensiveness, he let it out.

"I've invited the Honer'ble J. Percival Bickford to act as the starter and one of the judges of the races," he announced.

Trustee Silas Wallace, superintendent of horses, had put on his hat.

Now he took it off again.

"What!" he almost squalled.

"You see," explained the president, with eager conciliatoriness, "we've only got to scratch his back just a little to have him--"

"Why, 'Kittle-belly' Bickford don't know no more about hoss-trottin'

than a goose knows about the hard-sh.e.l.l Baptist doctrine," raved Wallace, his little eyes popping like marbles.

"I don't like to hear a man that's done so much for his native town called by any such names," retorted the president, ready to show temper himself, to hide his embarra.s.sment. "He's come back here and--"

Trustee Wallace now stood up and cracked his bony knuckles on the table, his weazened face puckered with angry ridges.

"I don't need to have a printed catalogue of what Jabe Bickford has done for this town. And I don't need to be told what he's done it for. He's come back from out West, where he stole more money than he knew what to do with, and--"

"I protest!" cried President Thurlow Kitchen. "When you say that the Honer'ble J. Percival Bickford has stolen--"

"Well, promoted gold-mines, then! It's only more words to say the same thing. And he's back here spendin' his loose change for daily doses of hair-oil talk fetched to him by the beggin' old suckers of this place."

"I may be a beggin' old sucker," flared the president, "but I've had enterprise enough and interest in this fair enough to get Mr.

Bickford to promise us a present of a new exhibition hall, and it's only right to extend some courtesy to him in return."

"It was all right to make him president of the lib'ry a.s.sociation when he built the lib'ry, make him a deacon when he gave the organ for the meetin'-house, give him a banquet and nineteen speeches tellin' him he was the biggest man on earth when he put the stone watering-trough in--all that was all right for them that thought it was all right. But when you let 'Kittle-belly' Bickford--"

"Don't you call him that," roared President Kitchen, thumping the table.