We drove along at a pretty good clip for two or three miles and no ideas
occurred to us. We knew we had to do something before we got to
Litchfield, but when it came to doing it we didn’t seem to be any good.
It seemed to us to be just as hard to get a look at Kinderhook’s churn
in his buggy as it was to get a look at it in his room at the hotel.
“We’ll just have to wait for somethin’ to turn up,” says I.
“Things don’t never turn up unless you _make_ ’em,” says Catty.
“Then our beans is spilled,” says I.
“It’s four miles to Litchfield yet,” says Catty. “With a nice smooth
road,” says I. “Kinderhook ain’t goin’ to git out of that buggy to pick
flowers just so’s we can look at his old churn.”
“But he’s got to git out, just the same.”
“If he did he’d carry his churn along with him in his pants pocket,”
says I.
Just then we came to a bridge across a sort of boy’s size river, about
fifteen or twenty feet wide. Somebody had been working around it,
because you could see new braces in the foundation, or whatever they
call it, and some new planks. Over in the bushes at the side was some
boards, and onto one of the boards was some kind of a sign. Catty took a
look and then he pulled up our horse and jumped out. In a second he came
back, looking as tickled as if he had eaten the cook’s best pumpkin pie,
and he says: “I guess we kin manage. Git out quick and take a look,”
says he. So I did, and there was a sign: “Bridge closed. Under repair.”
“Well,” says I, “what about it?”
“You drive the hoss up beyond and hustle back while I fix this up,” says
he.
“Fix what up?” says I.
“You hustle along and you’ll see when you git back,” says he. And I
hustled. I drove the horse along a piece, past the first farmhouse, and
pulled him over to the side of the road in a clump of bushes. Then I ran
back as tight as I could go. While I had been gone Catty had got out
those boards and fixed them up across the bridge so as to block the way,
and the sign was sticking right out in anybody’s face that came along.
“There,” says he.
“That ’ll stop him,” says I, “but it won’t show us the churn.”
“Huh!” says he. “Wait and see.”
“Goin’ to stay here?”
“Got to meet Kinderhook,” says he. “Won’t he know us?”
“Not him. He hain’t the kind of man that takes notice of kids, and he
won’t be expectin’ anybody he ever see ’way out here. No, he won’t know
us for a cent.”
“All right,” says I. “If you kin take a chance, why, so kin I.”
And just then Kinderhook came a-driving around a bend in the road. He
drove right up to the bridge and stopped and scowled. “What’s this?”
says he, sharplike. “Bridge,” says Catty, like he didn’t have much
sense.
“I see it’s a bridge. What’s it blocked off for?”
“You kin read what the sign says if you want to,” says Catty. “It was
put there for folks to read. Don’t cost nothin’ extry, neither. No, sir,
you can read that there sign without spendin’ a cent.”
“Knock that barrier down. I’m going across,” says Kinderhook.
“You hain’t,” says Catty.
“Who’ll stop me, I’d like to know? That bridge looks safe, and I’m in a
hurry. Knock down those boards.”
“Can’t be did,” says Catty.
“I’ll get out and knock them down myself.”
“If you do I’ll holler,” says Catty, “and I kin holler so’s to be heard.
They’ll hear me at the house, too.”
“What house?”
“That house,” says Catty, pointing.
“What of it?” says Kinderhook, kind of undecided.
“You’d find out quick,” says Catty.
Then Kinderhook changed his manner a lot and got real friendly. “I’m in
a big hurry to get to Litchfield,” says he. “Is there a way around?”
“By goin’ back to town and drivin’ five miles north.”
“But I can’t do that. Now you look here, Sonny, I’ll give you a quarter
if you’ll let down that barrier and let me cross.”
“Can’t be done,” says Catty.
“I’ll make it a half.”
“Nothin’ doin’.”
“I’ll make it a dollar.”
“You couldn’t git to cross this bridge for _ten_ dollars,” says Catty,
“not unless the man in that house says you kin.”
“What’s he got to do with it?”
“If he was to say you could cross, then I wouldn’t stop you,” says
Catty.
“Run down and ask him, then.”
“My job’s to stay right here.”
“You go,” says Kinderhook to me.
“My job’s stayin’ here, too,” says I. “There hain’t but one way to do,”
says Catty, “and that’s for you to go yourself. ’Tain’t a quarter of a
mile.”
Well, Kinderhook he grumbled and said a lot of words and sentences and
things, but he got down off the seat and went across the bridge and
started down the road—and he never paid any attention at all to the
package that had the churn in it. He just left that standing in the back
of the buggy. He hadn’t got more than a hundred yards before Catty was
back there.
“You keep your eye on him,” says he, “while I stick my nose into the
churn.”
“Be careful,” says I, “that you don’t git it churned into butter. You
wouldn’t look handsome with a pad of butter in the middle of your face.”
“You’d be improved if you had a pad of butter inside of your head
instead of what you got,” says be, with a grin, and began trying to find
a way to look at the churn without disturbing the package so it would be
noticed. The package was a kind of a big box made out of some sort of
cardboard—one of those things they ship packages of breakfast food or
something in, and it was just tied up with a rope. In about two seconds
Catty turned up a corner of the top and looked inside, and then he said
something under his breath that sounded like he didn’t have enough
breath left to speak louder.
“Wee-wee,” says he, “come here and look.” I went and looked, and I ’most
lost my breath, too, because there wasn’t a dog-gone thing in that
package but the big water-pitcher out of the hotel.
“What kind of a churn is that?” says I. “That,” says Catty, “is a kind
of a churn I never seen in any catalogue.”
“What’s the idee?” says I.
“Hanged if I know,” says he, “unless he jest stuck that in to make the
package feel like it had somethin’ in it if anybody lifted it.” He stood
there a second, thinking, and then he banged the buggy with his fist. “I
got it,” says he. “Kinderhook didn’t have no churn a-tall. Not no kind
of a churn whatever. And he’s got to have one. He’s got to give his
demonstration. See? And so now he’s got to git him a model to do the
demonstratin’ with. I guess we got Mr. Kinderhook’s goose close to
cooked.”
“Maybe,” says I. “You can’t never tell. This looks like some kind of a
scheme to me.”
“Here he comes,” says Catty. “I calc’late it would be healthier if we
wasn’t here when he come, too.”
“B’lieve you’re right,” says I, and we slid off into the bushes and hid.
In a couple of minutes along come Kinderhook, looking like he was mad
enough to bite himself in the back of the neck if he could reach it, and
he began kicking down our barricade and using a lot of language and
mentioning us. If I remember right he was going to do a number of things
to us if ever he laid hands on us, which we hoped he wouldn’t. But he
didn’t wait to look around—jest jumped in his buggy and off he went.
We didn’t wait long, but put off after him and got into our own rig and
followed along just far enough behind so he wouldn’t notice. In a half
an hour we got into Litchfield, which is a pretty big town—almost a
city—with lots of stores. We followed after Kinderhook till he came to a
big hardware-store, and there he stopped and hitched. We stopped and
hitched, too, and saw him go inside.
“Guess we’ll have to separate,” says Catty. “He’s goin’ in after a
churn, I’ll bet. Soon’s he comes out you go in and git a churn jest like
his’n. I’ll follow him and make chalk-marks on the sidewalk so you kin
follow me.”
“All right,” says I, “but what ’ll I buy the churn with?”
“Money,” says he, and he give me a ten-dollar bill. “I got this a couple
of days ago jest in case somethin’ happened that we’d need it.”
In twenty minutes Kinderhook came out, lugging a big bundle, and I went
into the store pretty quick. There was a man there, and I asked for the
churn department. It was up-stairs, and I walked. When I got there I
says to the clerk, “There was a big, rich-lookin’ feller in here and he
bought a churn.”
“Yes,” says he; “anything the matter with it?”
“No,” says I. “I calc’late it was a good churn. I calc’late it was so
good I want one jest like it. Got one?”
“You bet,” says he, and he set one out. “This jest like his?” says I.
“I-dentical,” says he.
“How much?” says I.
“Nine seventy-five,” says he, and I paid for it and had it wrapped up
and lugged it out.
Right in front of the store chalk-marks with an arrow-head at one end
pointed down the street, and I followed where they pointed. They went
around a few corners, but I didn’t have any trouble to follow them, and
after a while I saw Catty kind of hanging around the front of a
paint-shop.
“Hello!” says he. “Got the churn?”
“No,” says I. “This package is full of song-sparrers and I’m goin’ to
make a pie of them.”
“What kind of a churn is it?” says he.
“It’s a Criterion,” says I, calling it by its catalogue name.
“He got the best there was, didn’t he?”
“The best hain’t none too good for Kinderhook. Where is he?”
“In that paint-shop.”
“What for?”
“Havin’ a white stripe painted down the side of his pants so’s he kin
join the band,” says Catty. “How do I know what for? That’s what I’m
here to find out.”
Well, we hung around till Kinderhook came out, and he didn’t have his
churn. He’d left it inside. We didn’t have any interest in him after
that, but we did in the churn, so in about five minutes we went into the
shop, and Catty says, “How long will it be before Mr. Kinderhook’s churn
is done?”
“I told _him_ it would be an hour, anyhow, if Kinderhook’s his name.
Say, who is he, anyhow? Hain’t crazy, is he?”
“Not special. Why?”
“Havin’ a churn painted all red, white, and blue stripes runnin’ round
and round like a barber-pole. Does he think it ’ll churn better that
way?”
“Shouldn’t be s’prised,” says Catty.
“Yes, and he had all the markin’s took off it, too. The name and
everythin’.”
“Of course,” says Catty, and then he said much obliged and we went out.
“Well,” says Catty, “he’s got his model churn now.”
“Havin’ it fixed up so there won’t be anythin’ to identify it by,” says
I.
“That’s the idee. With red, white, and blue stripes around it it won’t
look like any other churn that was ever made—and it ’ll work fine at the
demonstration. It ’ll make butter quick, because the Criterion is a
dandy churn.”
“Now what?” says I.
“Now we git home and sit down to wait for him to demonstrate,” says
Catty.