Freckles. Stratton-Porter Gene
Nearest equivalent to C-a-t-h-a-r-t-e-s A-t-r-a-t-a.'”
“How the divil am I ever to learn them corkin' big words by mesel'?”
“'—the Pharaoh's Chickens of European species. Sometimes stray north as far as Virginia and Kentucky——'”
“And sometimes farther,” interpolated Freckles, “'cos I got them right here in Indiana so like these pictures I can just see me big chicken bobbing up to get his ears boxed. Hey?”
“'Light-blue eggs'——”
“Golly! I got to be seeing them!”
“'—big as a common turkey's, but shaped like a hen's, heavily splotched with chocolate——'”
“Caramels, I suppose. And——”
“'—in hollow logs or stumps.'”
“Oh, hagginy! Wasn't I barking up the wrong tree, though? Ought to been looking close the ground all this time. Now it's all to do over, and I suspect the sooner I start the sooner I'll be likely to find them.”
Freckles put away his book, dampened the smudge-fire, without which the mosquitoes made the swamp almost unbearable, took his cudgel and lunch, and went to the line. He sat on a log, ate at dinner-time and drank his last drop of water. The heat of June was growing intense. Even on the west of the swamp, where one had full benefit of the breeze from the upland, it was beginning to be unpleasant in the middle of the day.
He brushed the crumbs from his knees and sat resting awhile and watching the sky to see if his big chicken were hanging up there. But he came to the earth abruptly, for there were steps coming down the trail that were neither McLean's nor Duncan's—and there never had been others. Freckles' heart leaped hotly. He ran a quick hand over his belt to feel if his revolver and hatchet were there, caught up his cudgel and laid it across his knees—then sat quietly, waiting. Was it Black Jack, or someone even worse? Forced to do something to brace his nerves, he puckered his stiffening lips and began whistling a tune he had led in his clear tenor every year of his life at the Home Christmas exercises.
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