He sighed and smoked reflectively.  Then his face hardened.

“There’s grown to be more to it lately than the hen end.  Have you heard that sence Bat Reeves got let down by she that was Widder Snell”—­he nodded toward the house—­“he has been sort of caught on the bounce, as ye might say, by the Widder Pike?  Well, bein’ her close neighbor, I know it’s so.  And, furdermore, the widder’s told my wife, bein’ so tickled over ketchin’ him that she couldn’t hold it to herself.  Now, for the last week, every time that old red-gilled dirt-walloper has led them hens into my garden, I’ve caught Bat Reeves peekin’ around the corner of the widder’s house watchin’ ’em.  If there’s any such thing as a man bein’ able to talk human language to a rooster, and put sin and Satan into him, Reeves is doin’ it.  But what’s the good of my goin’ and lickin’ him?  It’ll mean law.  That’s what he’s lookin’ for—­and him with that old gandershanked lawyer for a brother!  See what they done to you!”

Hiram’s eyes grew hard, and he muttered irefully.  For cuffing Batson Reeves off the Widow Snell’s door-step he had paid a fat fine, assessed for the benefit of the assaulted, along with liberal costs allowed to Squire Alcander Reeves.

“They can’t get any of my money that way,” pursued the Cap’n.  “I’d pay suthin’ for the privilege of drawin’ and quarterin’ him, but a plain lickin’ ain’t much object.  A lickin’ does him good.”

“And it’s so much ready money for that skunk,” added the showman.  He cocked his head to one side to avoid his cigar smoke, and stared down on P.T. pecking the last scraps of raw liver from the saucer.

“I understand you to say, do I,” resumed Hiram, “that he is shooing them hens—­or, at least, condonin’ their comin’ down into your garden ev’ry day?”

“I run full half a mile jest before I came acrost to see you, chasin’ ’em out,” said the Cap’n, gloomily, “and I’ll bet they was back in there before I got to the first bars on my way over here.”

P.T., feeling the stimulus of the liver, crooked his neck and crowed spiritedly.  Then he scratched the side of his head with one toe, shook himself, and squatted down contentedly in the sun.

“In the show business,” said Hiram, “when I found a feller with a game that I could play better ‘n him, I was always willin’ to play his game.”  He stuck up his hand with the fingers spread like a fan, and began to check items.  “A gun won’t do, because it’s a widder’s hens; a fight won’t do, because it’s Bat Reeves; law won’t do, because he’s got old heron-legged Alcander right in his family.  Now this thing is gittin’ onto your sperits, and I can see it!”

“It is heiferin’ me bad,” admitted the Cap’n.  “It ain’t so much the hens—­though Gawd knows I hate a hen bad enough—­but it’s Bat Reeves standin’ up there grinnin’ and watchin’ me play tag-you’re-it with Old Scuff-and-kick and them female friends of his.  For a man that’s dreamed of garden-truck jest as he wants it, and never had veg’tables enough in twenty years of sloshin’ round the world on shipboard, it’s about the most cussed, aggravatin’ thing I ever got against.  And there I am!  Swear and chase—­and northin’ comin’ of it!”