CHAPTER V

THE CHICKEN THAT INTRUDED

They had made the mistake of pitching the tent where the morning sun had full play, and long before either Pud or Tim wanted to get up, the canvas walls were aglow, and it was only by hiding their faces under the blankets that they could keep the disturbing light from their eyes. Shortly before seven they capitulated. Harmon was already up and about. They could hear him cracking branches and crooning a song behind the tent. Outside, the grass was dew-spangled, and, in spite of the ardent sun, the air held a shivery quality that caused Tim to hesitate before accepting Pud’s challenge to go for a swim. But he did accept, and they found the river far warmer than the air. By the time they were dried and dressed, Harmon was calling them to breakfast. For some moments a particularly delectable aroma had been pervading the tent, an aroma that suggested neither coffee nor bacon, and when they reached the fire the mystery was explained. In the fry-pan lay, crisply browned, what their astounded eyes could not mistake.

‘Chicken!’ they exclaimed in delighted chorus.

Harmon showed his teeth in the broadest of grins.

‘But,’ faltered Pud, after a moment of delicious contemplation, ‘where――where’d it come from?’

Harmon chuckled. ‘Who? This here chick’n? Ain’ no tellin’ where he come from, Mister Pud. He done walk right up and wink his eye at me, an’ then he lay hisself right down in this here pan an’ fol’ his wings!’

‘Yes, he did!’ jeered Tim. ‘I suppose he plucked his own feathers off, too!’

‘Harmon,’ said Pud sternly, ‘you stole it!’

‘No, sir, I never,’ denied Harmon solemnly. ‘I jus’ pirated him!’

‘Pirated him? Gee, that’s a new name for it! Where’d you――where’d you “pirate” him?’

‘Up yonder, beside the road. He certainly was the runnin’est li’l rooster I ever seed! Yes, sir, I reckon his mother must ’a’ been a ostridge! I chase ’at li’l rascal――’

‘You had no business to do it,’ charged Pud severely. ‘Want to get us all arrested? My goodness, that’s no way to do, Harmon!’

‘How-come? Ain’ we pirates, Mister Pud? Didn’ you say we-all was goin’ sack towns? Didn’t you? How-come it’s all right to sack a town an’ ain’ all right to sack a li’l’ skinny rooster?’

Pud looked to Tim for assistance, but Tim was trying to keep his face straight, and he avoided Pud’s eyes carefully. Harmon stared in solemn perplexity from one to the other.

Pud cleared his throat. ‘Well, now, it’s like this, Harmon,’ he explained. ‘I’m leader of this――this crew, and you ain’t supposed to steal――sack anything, not even a chicken, until I tell you to. Understand?’

Harmon’s face cleared and he nodded vigorously.

‘All right. Now――’ Pud looked longingly at the contents of the fry-pan――‘Now,’ he went on in a failing voice, ‘you’d better fry some bacon. It――it wouldn’t be honest to eat that chicken, would it, Tim?’

Tim shook his head. It wasn’t a decided shake, but it was the best he could do. Harmon voiced incredulity.

‘You mean you-all don’ want no chicken?’ he ejaculated. ‘My golly! How-come you ain’ wantin’ none?’

‘Because we――because you stole it, Harmon,’ answered Pud sadly. ‘It wouldn’t be right to――’

‘Why you keep on sayin’ I stole it? Ain’ I done tell you I “pirate” it? Lawsey, how-come you talk so silly?’

‘Of course,’ observed Tim, his gaze set fixedly on the charred tip of a chicken leg, ‘you and I didn’t steal it, Pud. And it’s dead now, and it seems sort of wasteful to throw it away. Father says it’s sinful to waste things, Pud.’

‘Yeah, I know,’ assented Pud. ‘Well, maybe it wouldn’t be very wrong if we ate it, just so’s not to let it go to waste. I guess――I guess our consciences oughtn’t to trouble us if we did. Of course, it’s different with Harmon. He oughtn’t to have any because he came by it dishonestly.’

‘No,’ agreed Tim. ‘Still, if there was some left for him, it wouldn’t be any affair of ours if he ate it. It would be between him and his conscience, I guess.’

‘Yes, that’s so.’

It was a wonderful chicken. Naturally, having been such a remarkable runner, it was inclined to be stringy and even a bit tough as to its legs, but they had good appetites and they were not restrained by ordinary table etiquette; and the toughest chicken leg that ever ran must yield its meat when you take it in both hands! They gave Harmon a share, although, of course, not the choice parts, and the darky seemed to have settled affairs with his conscience very satisfactorily. At least, he gave every indication of enjoyment, and he did not, as he perhaps deserved to, choke to death on a bone!

By nine o’clock they were afloat again, and at half-past had left Bentonburg behind. The river was not so hot as it had been yesterday and voyaging was very pleasant. They chugged between wide fields that swept upward and away to tree-dotted horizons or to comfortable farm buildings, white against the blue sky. Harmon took his first lesson in steering and was visibly thrilled as the boat responded to his pressure on the little brass-bound wheel. In the first enthusiasm he almost ran them aground, and only Pud’s quick action saved the day.

Pud rummaged around until he had found a pad of paper and five stamped and addressed envelopes held together by an elastic band. These had been supplied by his mother, with the injunction to send a letter every day. Pud had meant to send one yesterday, but he had forgotten. Now he placed a sheet of the paper on the lid of a box and, bidding Tim keep an eye on the helmsman, wrote as follows:

DEAR MOTHER AND FATHER:

We camped last night about two miles this side of Farquhar’s Landing. Harmon is a fine cook. The launch is doing finely. I guess we will make Livermore to-day and camp near the bridge. The cake was fine. We are all well and enjoying ourselfs. Tim sends his respects.

Your loving son,

PUD

P.S. If we have time we might call on Aunt Sabrina like you said, but maybe we had ought to push on.

At noon they tied up alongside a tumble-down pier and ate a cold lunch. Breakfast had been hearty and sustaining, and it was decided that what cooking they did had best be done at the end of each day’s voyage. As only some three miles lay between them and Livermore, there seemed no good reason to hurry, and so they lolled in the partial shade of the landing-pier for an hour and then went into the water. The glimpse of a fish sent Tim scurrying back to the launch for his tackle. The can of worms had, unfortunately, been overturned in such a way as to release most of the contents, but enough remained to bait three lines and for nearly two hours they all sat on the edge of the pier and sought to provide for the evening meal. But the fish wouldn’t bite, and about four o’clock they cast off and went on again.

Livermore began a mile farther along with an outlying sprinkle of small farms on the left of the river. These gave place to little houses set in tiny gardens and then to more ambitious residences. They caught the yellow gleam of a hurrying trolley car and heard its strident hum as it charged at a grade and went lurching out of sight behind the maples that lined the street. Harmon watched with intense interest, trolley cars being a novelty to him. A quarter of a mile of brick mill buildings marched beside them and the big steel bridge suddenly swept into sight around a bend of the stream. The river widened appreciably hereabouts and a long, pebbly island, decked with a few forlorn trees, divided the current. Pud, at the wheel now, chose the right-hand channel, slowing down the engine to a point where it coughed incessantly, but survived the secret malady. There was so much to see now――for Livermore boasted of a population of seventeen thousand and was a manufacturing town of some importance――that the three boys almost stared the eyes out of their heads. Harmon ejaculated ‘Lawsey!’ and ‘My golly’ at quite regular intervals. One thing that became plain long before the bridge was reached was that Pud’s suggestion of camping thereabouts was not at all practical. The only place they could have pitched the tent would have been on some wharf!

‘Guess we’ll have to go on by the town,’ said Pud. ‘I didn’t know it was all built-up like this!’

‘Thought you said you’d been here,’ said Tim.

‘So I did and so I have.’

‘Gosh, then I should think――’

‘Well, it was quite a long time ago,’ explained Pud; ‘when I was about eight or nine. You see, Great-Aunt Sabrina lives over on the other side of town, and we don’t usually get around here. I guess it’s grown up a lot since I was here!’

‘Your aunt at home now?’ asked Tim, after a moment.

‘Yes, I suppose so. She don’t go about much. She’s sort of old.’ He turned hard aport to keep out of the way of a snorting tugboat that backed suddenly out from behind a pier.

‘Well,’ began Tim, after another brief silence.

But Pud interrupted, pointing to a conspicuous sign that adorned the end of a brick-red shed just ahead.

‘Say, I guess we’d ought to have some more gasoline, eh?’ he asked. ‘We didn’t have but thirty gallons when we started.’

‘Well, gosh, I guess we ain’t used any thirty gallons,’ demurred Tim. But Pud was already negotiating the landing.

‘You, Harmon, you get up here and fend off,’ he ordered. ‘Keep her like that, Tim.’ He went to the engine, anxiously watching the pier bear down upon them, and finally pushed the clutch forward. There was a fine churning under the stern, and Harmon’s bare feet set themselves against the stringpiece and the _Jolly Rodger_, formerly the _Kismet_, sidled up to her berth. If the gasoline station had been on the other side of the river, the launch’s name would have been the _Vengance_, of course.

Investigation with a stick showed the gasoline tank to be still rather more than three quarters full, but since, by this time, the proprietor of the station was peering inquiringly down at them, Pud decided to purchase just the same.

‘_Jolly Rodger_, eh?’ said the man as he handed the nozzle of the hose down to them. ‘What are you, pirates?’

Pud laughed evasively, but Harmon assented proudly. ‘Yes, sir, we sure is! We’s bloody pirates, Mister!’

‘You look it!’ laughed the man. ‘Well, better not let the police see you, that’s all I’ve got to say! How much do you want?’

Pud was very glad that he had yielded to Tim that morning and consented to the removal of the skull-and-cross-bones at the stern! Suppose the police did see them and begin to ask questions! Suppose the man who had owned that chicken had sent word about its disappearance! He was mightily relieved when the gasoline was in and paid for, the cap screwed back on the tank, and the launch was again shoving her nose toward the bridge. His desire now was to leave Livermore behind and once more reach the open spaces. The others seemed not to share his uneasiness. They were craning their heads to see the bridge. Pud, back at the wheel, didn’t have much time for sight-seeing, for the river held much traffic and he was kept busy. When they were directly under the bridge, which seemed an immeasurable height above them, but was probably no more than thirty feet, a trolley car rumbled across and Harmon’s upturned face went two shades lighter. And when, at the same moment, from close by a mill whistle proclaimed five o’clock with a sudden and deafening shriek, poor Harmon nearly turned white!

‘_My golly!_’ he yelled. ‘_What’s ’at?_’

Beyond the bridge and the press of river traffic, Tim returned to a former subject of conversation. ‘Say, Pud, why don’t you go and see your aunt? I should think you’d want to.’

‘Huh? Oh, gee, she――she’s awful sort of stern, Tim. I would go and see her only she lives quite a ways back.’

‘I guess she’d be pretty hurt if she found out you’d been here and didn’t call on her,’ said Tim.

‘Well――’

‘And I guess she’d be likely to ask you to supper, wouldn’t she? I and Harmon wouldn’t mind if you went, Pud.’

‘Yes, she’d ask me to supper, of course, but――’

‘I guess you’d have a better supper than you would if you had what we have, eh? Preserves, probably, and cake.’

‘Yes, she feeds a fellow great,’ acknowledged Pud, a trifle wistfully. ‘But I wouldn’t go and have supper with her and leave you and Harmon――Say!’ Pud was struck by a thought that had occurred to his chum long since. ‘Say, why don’t we all go?’

‘Oh, well, maybe she wouldn’t like it if I and Harmon were to butt in,’ replied Tim doubtfully. ‘She doesn’t know us.’

‘Well, gee, you’re my friends, ain’t you? Sure she’ll like it. And――and I’d like it a sight better than going alone,’ added Pud. ‘I wouldn’t wonder if she gave us cocoanut cake, Tim. She makes corking cocoanut cake! Gee, you just ought to taste it!’

‘We-ell, if you think it’ll be all right――’

‘Of course it will! Gee, Aunt Sabrina’s a――a little stern, and she sort of scares you if you don’t know her, but she don’t believe in turning folks away hungry; especially if they’re relatives――or relatives’ friends. We’ll find a good place to leave the launch and get a street car that’ll take us out Moorehouse Avenue. It’s only four or five blocks from the car line. Say, how about shoving in over there?’

Pud indicated an unoccupied berth between two short piers across the river. A warehouse loomed beyond it, its windows shuttered. Tim looked and approved and Pud turned the launch’s nose across the stream. When they reached the place, it didn’t look so inviting, for it was half out of water, exposing an evil-smelling slope of black mud. But it seemed a safe spot in which to leave the launch and their belongings, since, as Tim pointed out, the only way to reach it was to climb over a fence that gave onto a narrow alley. So they made the boat fast, stowed everything into the lockers that would go there, covered the engine with a piece of tarpaulin, and shinned up a spile to the rickety wharf above. After that they climbed the fence, followed the alley to its junction with a cobbled street, and set forth in search of Aunt Sabrina.