ther and yelled, and threw
himself on his back and kicked and yelled; while Bud towered over him
and yelled expostulations and reprimands and cajolery that did not
cajole.

Cash turned over with a groan, his two palms pressed against his
splitting head, and hoarsely commanded the two to shut up that infernal
noise. He was a sick man. He was a very sick man, and he had stood the
limit.

"Shut up?" Bud shouted above the din of Lovin Child. "Ain't I trying to
shut him up, for gosh sake? What d'yuh want me to do?--let him throw
all the tobacco you got into the fire? Here, you young imp, quit that,
before I spank you! Quick, now--we've had about enough outa you! You
lay down there, Cash, and quit your croaking. You'll croak right, if you
don't keep covered up. Hey, Boy! My jumpin' yellow-jackets, you'd drown
a Klakon till you couldn't hear it ten feet! Cash, you old fool, you
shut up, I tell yuh, or I'll come over there and shut you up! I'll tell
the world--Boy! Good glory! shut up-p!"

Cash was a sick man, but he had not lost all his resourcefulness. He
had stopped Lovin Child once, and thereby he had learned a little of
the infantile mind. He had a coyote skin on the foot of his bed, and
he raised himself up and reached for it as one reaches for a fire
extinguisher. Like a fire extinguisher he aimed it, straight in the
middle of the uproar.

Lovin Child, thumping head and heels regularly on the floor and
punctuating the thumps with screeches, was extinguished--suddenly,
completely silenced by the muffling fur that fell from the sky, so far
as he knew. The skin covered him completely. Not a sound came from under
it. The stillness was so absolute that Bud was scared, and so was Cash,
a little. It was as though Lovin Child, of a demon one instant, was in
the next instant snuffed out of existence.

"What yuh done?" Bud ejaculated, rolling wild eyes at Cash. "You--"

The coyote skin rattled a little. A fluff of yellow, a spark of blue,
and "Pik-k?" chirped Lovin Child from under the edge, and ducked back
again out of sight.

Bud sat down weakly on a box and shook his head slowly from one side to
the other. "You've got me going south," he made solemn confession to the
wobbling skin--or to what it concealed. "I throw up my hands, I'll tell
the world fair." He got up and went over and sat down on his bunk,
and rested his hands on his knees, and considered the problem of Lovin
Child.

"Here I've got wood to cut and water