e hunchback stopped his horse in the road below me, squared himself in
his saddle, and looked up with a great supercilious grin.
"Well," he said, "I'll be damn!"
"What's the trouble?" said I.
"Humph!" he snorted, "are them britches I see on your legs?"
"That's what they call them," said I.
"Well," said he, "when you git home, take 'em off, an' hand 'em over to
old Liza, an' ask her to bring your kilts down out of the garret. For
you're as innocent a little codger as ever sucked his hide full of
milk."
"What are you driving at?" I asked.
Ump shook out his long arms and folded them around the bosom of his blue
coat. "Jud told me," he said; "an' the pair of you ought to be put in a
cradle with a rock-a-by-baby. Woodford was done when that axe fell in
the river, an' he knowed it. He was ridin' out when he saw you an' Jud,
an' he said to himself, 'God's good to you, Rufus, my boy; here's a pair
of little babies a long way from their ma, an' it ought to count you
one.' Then he lit off an' offered to wrastle you, heads I win an' tails
you lose, for the cake in your pocket, an' then he chucked you under the
chin, an' you promised not to tell."
The hunchback set his two fingers against his teeth and whistled like a
hawk, a long, shrill, hissing whistle that startled the little
partridges on the sloping hillside and sent them scurrying under the
dead grass, and brought the drumming pheasant to his feathered legs.
Then he threw his chin into the air and squinted. "Quiller," he piped,
with the long echo still whining in his throat, "that whistle fooled you
an' it fooled Jud, but it wouldn't fool a Bob White with the shell on
its back. When the old bird hears it, she don't wait to see the long
shadow travellin' on the grass, but she hollers, 'Into the weeds, boys,
if you want to save your bacon.' An' you ought to see the little codgers
scatter. Let it be a lesson to you, Quiller, my laddiebuck; when you
hear that whistle, light out for the tall timber. When you're a fightin'
the devil, half the winnin' 's in the runnin'."
Then he opened his great cavernous mouth and began to bellow,
"Ho! ho! for the carrion crow,
But hark to the sqawk of the carrion hawk,"
gathered up his reins and set out after the drove in a hand gallop, all
doubled over in his blue coat.
I got El Mahdi into the road and we went swinging down the hill. I had a
light flashed into the deeps of Woodford, and I saw dimly how able an
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