The Receiver

by DILLON ANDERSON

CLAUDIE,”I said. “I never have run down the zodiac on you, but you must have been born under a worry star.”We were just finishing the breakfast that Opal herself had served ns at Opal’s Texas Star Cafe in the West end of Beaumont, and I’d been noticing that Claudie was so bothered about something that it nearly took the edge off of his appetite.

“I can’t help it, Clint,” he answered. “Ever-since Jules Kabinowitz told us the law was looking for us in New Orleans I’ve been aworrying. Reckon we ought to go back and give up?”

“Give up?” I asked. “Whal for? I can’t remember doing anything in New Orleans that I’m downright ashamed of, Claudie. Another thing: we’re in pretty good company in Texas. We’ve moved in a line old Southern groove. According to what my grandma used to tell me, there were family Bibles all over Alabama and Louisiana where the records of births and dealhs were never completed. A lot of family lines ended back there with G. T.”

“What’s that mean?” Claudie wanted to know. “ That stands for ‘gone to Texas’; it also stands for ‘got in trouble,’ and Grandma used to say that it often meant both. But out here a lot of those same names are carved on statues in public parks and courthouse lawns.”

” Well,”Claudie said — and I could tell he hadn’t been following me at all — “I don’t know why the law would be looking for us if we hadn’t done nothing wrong.”

After breakfast we drove down to Anahuac, whore I got Claudie a job in the oil fields. People in 1 hat vicinity were all talking about the line murder case being tried in Liberty, so I arranged to be there every day until it was over. Nights I’d go back to Anahuac and tell Claudie all about it. Claudie said he’d always liked murder trials, and I told him this was a good one.

The fellow that was tried got ninety-nine years, and I figured he deserved every one of them. After the jury brought in the verdict, the sheriff took the prisoner away, and in a few minutes the courtroom was nearly empty. The judge stayed on the bench, though, looking wise and tired; and the clerk sat at his desk, moving papers back and forth as he studied them through his thick glasses. The bailiff stood over to one side, and I never let mv eye get far off of him since he had a big silver star on his chest and a hog leg pistol that hung all the way down to his knee. He was working on a quid of tobacco, and from time to time he’d lean over to spit into a tall brass go boon there by the water cooler; then he’d turn and look back toward the courtroom as proud and relieved as if he had cast some kind of evil spirit out of his system.

I waited to see what would happen next, and then up stepped two strange lawyers that had been hanging around the courtroom all day looking mad at each other. One of them, a spry, spare little man with bushy gray hair and a bat wing collar, got up and told the judge that he wanted to make a civil motion. I eased up to the fronl row so I could hear lietter as the judge ordered the clerk to fetch him up the civil docket.

The judge said, “All right, Counsel, proceed. Case of Schultz versus Schultz. State your motion, Mr. Childress.”

The little lawyer with the bushy hair got up and said: “Your Honor, this is a motion in which we pray for the appointmerit of a receiver. I represent Ferd Schultz, the plaintiff. You know Ferd; he’s been living north of town in the Trinity Rixer bottoms all his life.”

“I ought to know the place, Counsel,”the judge said. “I’ve had a fishing camp on the fixer below it ever since the year of the big drouth.”

“All right,”the lawyer went on, “you probably know, too. Your Honor, that Ferd and his brother Ab Schultz have been partners in the hog business all this time.”

“I suppose I do,” the judge pointed out; “that’s where I get my spareribs and backbone every year at hog-killing time, But tell me about the case. Mr, Childress.”

“Well, Judge, it’s this way,” the lawyer said. “Ferd and Ab never did get along together too well, but —”

“Mr. Childress,” the judge cut in on him, “you are taking up t he court’s time with things the court knows better than you do. I’ve seen Ferd and Ab walking back and forth to town for years with Ferd about a hundred yards ahead. Everybody knows t hey’ve hardly spoken to each ot her since they grew up — what’s the case about ?”

“Your Honor,” Mr. Childress said, “I was just coming to that. As long as Ferd and Ab were both single, things went along passably, But now Ab has gone and gotten married.”

“You don’t say,” the judge allowed and leaned forward in his big black chair. “Married who?”

“That turkey woman that used to live by herself a little way up the river from the hog ranch; woman by the name of Gossett, who came to Liberty County from somewhere up in North Texas, You may not know of her.”

The judge said he did not recollect that he did, and the lawyer went on: “Now here’s what’s happened. Since Ab married the turkey woman he wants to start raising turkeys on the hog ranch. Matter of fact, he’s already gone and bought some with money that belongs to the partnership. Ferd will have no truck with turkeys on the place, but he finds that he now owns a half interest in some. Hut that’s not all. Ender the Community Law of Texas, Ab’s wife is a partner with Ab in the profits of the business. Since Ab and Ferd are partners, that sort of makes Ab’s wife a partner with Ferd as well as with Ab. Now Ferd doesn’t want any part of her or the turkeys.”

“Where are Ferd and Ab?” the judge asked. “Bring them in the courtroom. Maybe we can straighten this thing out.”

At this, the other lawyer — a much younger man with a heavy frown built into his face — got up and said, “Your Honor, I represent Ab Schultz. Ab wouldn’t come and neither would Ferd. It would be dangerous for them both to be in the courtroom at one time. That’s the one point where Mr. Childress agrees with me.”

“Well, Mr. Willard, what is your reply to Mr. Childress’s prayer for the appointment of a receivert” the judge wanted to know from Ab’s lawyer.

“It’s this. Your Honor,”Mr. Willard stated. “It is true that Ferd and Ab are partners. Ferd wants to raise hogs, and that’s fine with Ab. Now Ab wants to raise turkeys, and he wants turkeys as much as Ferd wants hogs. Ab says, why can’t they both raise hogs and turkeys? That’s where they’re stuck.”

The judge said he didn’t see any way out of the mess except the appointment of a receiver for the partnership, as prox ided in the Act of 1887, and unless he heard a good reason slated by Ab’s lawyer, he was ready to grant Mr. Childress’s prayer for relief. Mr. Willard stood there in front of the judge stammering and fidgeting and shuffling papers for a few minute’s; then the judge banged hisgaxel and said: “Motion granted.”

2

MR. WILLARD sat down and Mr. Childress got up. “Your Honor,”he said, “just one more thing: the receiver’s job is going to be a little ticklish, I’m afraid.”

“Any suggestions as to a receiver by either counsel?” the judge asked, but neither lawyer spoke. Finally Mr. Willard got to his feet, frowned, and said he didn’t believe there was a man in Liberty County that would try it. It got very quiet in the courtroom; then 1 spoke up and said, “Judge, if vou are looking for a receixer, I’ll take the job.

They all three turned and looked at me the way an old maid aunt of mine used to look at the vounger members of the household. The bailifl looked too, and I looked right back at him.

The judge said. “Order in the court,”and I spoke up again and said, “ I want to be the receiver.”

The judge said, “Stand up when you address the court. What are your qualifications?”

I stood up and said, “My name is Clint Hightower, and I know a lot about hogs and turkeys.

I know something about people, too. Is that, enough ?”

It wasn’t, but after I’d answered a lot more questions the judge said it seemed like a good appointment : he wrote it in an order that said I was to run the business and report to him. “If you last until I hold court again here this fall, you can report to me in person; until then, just file your reports with the clerk here,” the judge told me. I looked at the clerk, and he looked at me — very serious looks.

I figured since Mr. Childress was Ferd Schultz’s lawyer and they had asked for the receiver, I ought to be able to get along with him and Ferd sort of automatically. Hell, I was the answer to the prayer in their motion. So I want over to Ab’s lawyer, Mr, Willard, and said in a low voice, “I always sort of liked turkeys myself.'

“That’s good,”Mr. Willard said; “of all the parties to this lawsuit, the turkeys might be the easiest to get along with. Those Schultzes are both meaner than river-bottom hogs.”

“I’ll go up tomorrow to take over,”I said, “What I want you to do, Mr. Willard, is write Ab a nice letter and tell him I love turkeys and he should work with me.”

“lie can’t read,” Mr. Willard said.

“How about his wife”’ I asked. I was really boiling over wit h ideas.

“Matter of fact,’ he said, “she can read —and write too.”Then he wrote the letter, addressed to Mr. and Mrs. Ab Schultz, and gave it to me.

After Mr. Willard left, the courtroom, I went over to Mr. Childress and told him how glad 1 was he had won himself a receiver. I added: “You could beat the bushes from one end of Texas to the other and you’d never find a better receiver, when it comes to getting along with hogs.”

When I got back to our room at Anahuac about sundown, Claudie was sitting on the bed reading a tomato can. First thing, he wanted to know about the jury’s verdict in the murder case, and when 1 told him, he said he thought ninety-nine years was too long.

“Claudie,”I said, “I’ve got some real news. We’ve got us a new job. You can quit the oil company first thing in the morning.”

“What’s that.’” he asked. It was going a little too fast for him.

“Yes,”I answered, “you are an assistant receiver, Claudie. We take over tomorrow.”

“ How’ you get the job?” he wanted to know.

“‘The judge at Liberty appointed me receiver, and I am appointing you assistant receiver right now.”

3

NEXT morning early I and Claudie drove up to Liberty and started for the Schultz place. The road was fine for a. little way; then it got worse and worse until the ear got stuck in the mud just before we made the last turn that led into the worst stretch of all, down in the river bottom. From there we went on foot, following a boggy lane cut through big water oaks that had Spanish moss hanging all over them like dirty whiskers.

Wo hadn’t gone far beyond the turn when we were met by a pack of big brown and black hounddogs that, came at us barking and snarling and showing their teeth. They looked lean and hungry and mad. Il wasn’t until Claudie picked up an old wagon endgate from the side of ihe road and hailed one of the dogs into the ditch that they all went away and left us alone. Then we came to the house. We could tell it was Ab’s from the sign on the mailbox. Ferd Schultz lived about a quarter of a mile beyond Ab, they’d told us in Liberty.

Ab Schultzs house was half ol a dogrun house. You could see where it had been cut in two, leaving only one side and half of the breezeway that had once run down the middle. Later we found that Ford’s house was the other half. The yard was full of turkeys— a big old bronze gobbler with fiery red wattles strutting around ihe place; several hens feeding in the grass; and twenty or thirty poults that peep-peeped and darted around after crickets and grasshoppers in the Jimson weeds.

I told Claudie to let me handle the talking; then I went up and knocked on the door and yelled “Hello.”The woman that came around the corner of the house didn’t look at all like the turkey woman I had in my mind, but when I told her we were looking for Mr. and Mrs. Ab Schultz, she said in a nice, mannerly voice, “I am Mrs. Ab Schultz.”I handed her ihe letter Mr. Willard had written about me and turkeys.

In spite of thi1 mud on the boots she wore, she had a sweet, clean look about her. She was not a little woman, but I noticed as she read (be letter that her wrists were small, and so were her hands. From the little wrinkles around her eyes, her irongray hair, and the blue pattern of veins on her hands, I judged her to be around forty-five or fifty.

She handed me back the letter and said, “Thank you, Mr. Hightower, that’s a nice letter. You haven’t introduced the other gentleman.”

“Excuse me, ma’am,”I said. “’That’s my assistant, Claudie Hughes. He is my hog specialist. 1 am a turkey man myself.”

She looked up at Claudie and said, “How do you do, Mr. Hughes.” Claudie fidgeted, looked clown at the ground, scratched the back of his neck, and said, “ Howdy do, ma’am.” Mrs. Schultz’s parlor-type manners were too much for him, and they were about to get me a little off balance myself.

She asked us if we were thirsty, and we were, though I hadn’t noticed it before. She drew a nice cool bucket of water from the well beside the house, and we drank our fill from a clean gourd dipper. ‘Then she told us Ab had gone to the hogpen down in the pasture and showed us where the trail to the pasture began. “’The pen is not over three quarters of a mile, -lust follow the blazes on the tree’s,” she told us.

“Before we go, ma’am,”I said, “I want to be sure your husband will believe me when I toll him how much I love turkeys. It’s in Mr. Willard’s Idler, but Mr. Willard says your husband can’t read.”

“’Thai is true, gentlemen,” she answered. “He is not able to read. But Ab is a good man, and if you tell him the truth, 1 am sure he will believe you.”

“He is a lover of turkeys, too, ain’t he, ma’am?”

I asked. I figured it was as good a time as any to spar for on opening. She nodded and smiled and said, “He always told me he was, and I am sure he is a truthful man.”

“Thank you, ma’am,” I told her; “we’re going to get along fine, since 1 m so fond of them too.”

She gave me a funny look, and said, Mr. Hightower, it seems to me that you are going out of your way to impress me with your sentiments about turkeys.* Have you had this weakness long?”

“All my life, lady,” I answered. I was coasting,

I felt. “Some people like children, some like chickens, others like dogs and cats, but me, I like turkevs. Don’t you?”

She put a long, even look on me and said, “Mr. Hightower, they are an abomination to me; 1 wouldn’t care il 1 never saw another turkey in all my life.”

This rocked me some. All I could think to say was, “You’ve sure got a passel of them around ma’am. She noddl’d and said that was true. Then she went ahead to say that she had had to deal with turkeys ever since she inherited the turkey ranch up the river and gave up her job in the Dallas library to go run it. She sold the ranch, she said, turkeys and all and she sold it cheap

— before she married Ab; but when he brought her home with him after the wedding, she found she had the place all littered up with another set ol turkeys. Worse than all the other turkeys though, she went on, was old ( larenee, the gobbler. ( larence was familiar; he was impudent, and he was nosy. His bill was in everything about the place

— the churn, the lard, the meat in the smokehouse, and the victuals on the table if anyone left the kitchen door unlatched. He had never learned to keep his place. “See what I mean.'” she asked. “Look at Clarence now.” The old gobbler was standing there on one foot beside Claudie taking in everything that had been going on.

All during the courting days, she said, Ab had fold her how much he liked turkeys around a place, and she wanted him to be happy. “I love Ab, she finished, “and that s the only reason 1 am willing to tolerate these terrible turkeys in the yard. That goes particularly for old Clarence there.

“Mrs. Schultz,” I said, “did it over strike you that that was only courtin’ talk on Ab’s part t He may be putting up with these turkeys just because he thinks you like them.”

“I hardly think so,” she said. “Ab is a very genuine person, lie wouldn’t deceive me, I am sure.”

I and Claudie thanked her and took off down the muddy trail. I told him to go along ahead and watch out for the blazes, since I wanted to walk along behind and think, without anything to take my mind off of my job.

We walked a long time before we came to a clearing in the woods ahead, and there we saw our man. Before he saw us, we watched him as he rode an old rusty-gray saddle mule back and forth along a barbed-wire fence that led from an empty pigpen down toward a muddy slough. He had a Long Tom single-barrel shotgun thrown across the saddle in front of him.

“I’ll do the talking here too, Claudie,” I said as we walked up to the man.

“Mr. Schultz?” I said.

“That’s me,” he answered as he swung down off the mule, bringing the gun along with him. lie was a stocky-built man of fifty or so with a square face and suspicious eyes. His boots were muddy, and his jumper and overalls were faded and dirty. He looked us over and said—not in a very kind way, either — “What do you waant?”

“My name is Clint Hightower, and this is my assistant, Claudie Hughes,” I said.

Mr. Schultz said, “What do you want?”

“Mr. Schultz,” I said, “your lawyer, Mr. Willard, sent you a letter. I showed it to Mrs. Schultz.

It says that I am the receiver appointed by the judge, but I’m very partial to the turkey side of the lawsuit. You see, I’m a great lover of turkeys myself.”

“Turkeys, huh? I’m glad to know that,’he said.

“I thought you’d be,” I told him; then I and Claudie both moved up closer to where Mr. Schultz was standing.

“How the hell did you get here?” he asked us, and he almost seemed to be out of sorts with us.

“We followed the trail Mrs. Schultz showed us,” I explained.

“You must have took the wrong fork,” he said.

“ I ‘m Ferd Schult z, I’m the hog side of the lawsuit.’

4

I WAS easier to look at Claudie than it was to look at Mr. Schultz, so I looked at Claudie. He looked awful — worse, I figured, than he would look again until some time after he died. Then 1 turned to Mr. Schultz and said, “Mr. Schultz, you’ve got a mighty fine lawyer in Mr. Childress. He had the judge eating out of his hand.”

Ferd Schultz did nol say anything. He just stood there looking at us until I began to feel about the way Claudie looked. The air got so tight and • heavy all around us that it almost seemed like a nice break when Ferd Schultz finally said, “When are you bastards gonna get out of here?”

Claudie turned to leave, but I said, “Hold it. Claudie; we have not finished our business with Mr. Schultz yet.” Then Mr. Schultz said, “Oh yes, by God, you have.”

I couldn’t see how anything I could do was going to make things any W’orsc, so I said, “It’s not exactly my fault that we took the wrong fork, Mr. Schultz. My assistant, here, led the way and he must have geed somewhere back there when he should have hawed.”

Ferd looked up at Claudio; then he looked back at me and said, “(lei out before I use this gun.”

“ Mr. Schultz,” I said, and I knew it was my last slab at staying, “I’m the receiver appointed by the court. I may not be a very good one, but I’m the only one there is. I’ve got to know one more thing before we go. Where are the hogs?”

The color started seeping up in Ferd’s face until he was as red as a seed catalogue tomato around the eyes. He tightened his grip on the gun and said, “Ab’s got most of them locked up.”

“Where at ?” I asked him.

“He fixed up an old pen over behind his house,” Ferd said, and I saw the muscles around his jaw tighten up as he went on: “Sometime last night he drove all the hogs lie could find over there and penned them up. I’ve rid this fence here by the old pen all day to stop any strays that head Ab’s way.”

“Where do the hogs belong?” I asked as fast as I could, to keep his mind off of the turkeys.

“Right in this here partnership pen,” Ferd answered. “That’s where we’ve alius kept the hogs.”

“How far away from here is Ab’s new pen?" I asked.

“Not over a quarter of a mile, I reckon,” he said.

“No distance for a real hog caller, Mr. Schultz,”

I told him. “The assistant receiver here in charge of hogs is a bass singer from the part of Alabama where they learn to sing by calling hogs.”

“Iiut I told you All’s got the hogs penned up,” Ferd Schultz pointed out. He was still mad, but I could see that. I was taking a luck in his dander.

“No trick at all for a real hog caller,” I said. “If that pen’s in no better shape than the partnership pen here, Claudie can call ‘em right out of it. They’ll break out for a good enough hog caller.” Then I turned 1o Claudie and said, “Claudie, kindly call them hogs back where they belong.”

Claudie looked like a new man. After balling us up the wav he had when he took the wrong fork of the trail, he was ready to call those hogs through a barbed-wire fence if he had to. lie unbuttoned his collar, hitched up his britches, look a deep breath, and started with the slow, soli “soo soosoo,” like a river steamboat in the fog a long way off. It wasn’t loud, blit it was enough to take a hog’s mind off of other things and set him wondering whether the call was meant for him. Knowing hogs as well as I did and having called a fair amount of them myself, I imagined I could see them stir and rustle about in the early restlessness of being called by an expert.

Then as Claudie went on, the higher notes started to roll out—the “whoo, whoo oo oo pig, whoo pig,” in full tones like a brass bugle that cuts through the muggy air and cleans out all other noises. Claudio’s voice urged, it persuaded, it begged, and it demanded the hogs to come on.

Faster and louder and stronger it got until I knew no hog eon Id hold out any longer.

After that Claudie tapered off. He held the last call — a long, sweet, mellow one—until it was hardly like a call at all; it was more like a song of thanks lor listening. When he was through, Claudie sat down on a cypress stump, limp as a dishrag. His eyes were glassy and dry and his nose was bleeding, i turned to Ferd and said, “Mr. Schultz, there is a man that can call hogs.”

Then they came; must have been fifty or sixty hogs, counting the runts in the litters and all. Ferd opened the gap that led to the partnership pen, and after thev all went in Claudie helped him dose it. Ferd got back on his horse, and though he still had hold of his gun, I knew be wasn’t fixing any more to use it. For the first time that dav he looked to me like a man that could smile. He glanced up at the sun and said it was about time lor some chuck; wouldn’t we like 1o come to his house and eat with him? He lived all alone, and he didn’t have much, he went on, but he wanted us to have politick with him. We took him right up.

When we got to Ford’s house, he went down to a little bavou close by to run a trot lino and brought back several nice big catfish, the biggest, about ihe size of one of Claudie’s feet. Then he gave us some warm corn whiskey and a bucket of cool water to wash it down with. That made Ferd’s fried catfish, beans, and turnips taste a whole lot better; and when we’d eaten all he’d cooked up, he found us an apple apiece. Claudie was still so hungry that he ate the core and all.

Afterwards, we sat on a bench in the shady part of the yard and talked with Ferd. In a little while I picked my time and said, “Mr. Sehtillz, I believe we’ve got the hog part of this lawsuit in pretty good shape. All we’ve got left is the turkey part.”

“It’s that woman Ab married,” Ferd said, and the color rose up in bis face again. “If it wasn’t for her, Ab wouldn’t hav e gone and bought t hem damn turkeys.”

“You mean he don’t like them?” I asked.

“Hell, no, Ferd said as he lit a cigarette he’d made. “Flint old gobbler, Clarence, is about to run him crazy. He d get shut of ‘em all if he wasn’t trying to please that woman he married.”

Claudie started to say something, but I cut him off with a sharp look and thought hard fora minute or two while everything was quiet except for the raspy song of a locust close by. Then I leaned over to Ferd Schultz and said, looking him right in the eve, “ Where do Ab’s turkeys roost, Ferd?”

His face brightened up all over. I doubt if Elisha put any nicer look on them ravens that fed him than Ferd put on us. He stood up and stomped his eigarette out on the ground; then he said, “Let me get you fellers another little drink,” and went into the house.

While he was gone I turned to Claudie and said, “That whole passel oi turkeys ought to bring forty or fifty dollars on the market in Beaumoot.

“How’s that gonna do us any good.”he wanted to know. “They ain’t ourn.”

“Leave that to the receiver,”I told him.

When Ferd came back with the jug, the three of us took good stiff swigs of the corn; and after we d all had a second one, I was feeling right brotherly toward Ferd, so I set about to explain some of the law I’d learned when I got appointed receiver.

“Ferd,”I said, “I heard Mr. Childress tell the judge the turkeys Ab bought belonged to the partnership. The judge agreed.”

“No, by God, they—” Ferd started.

“Wait a minute,’ I cut in, “let me finish. You are a partner, too. If a partner can buy turkeys, a partner can sell them -or he can give them away.” Then 1 quit talking so as to let that last part sink in.

“I was hoping you’d steal them turkeys from the roost,” he said.

“Ferd,” I stated, shaming him with a straight look, “you would nol want me to do that. It wouldn’t be right to steal them turkeys, but if one of the partners told me to take them, it might be some time tonight before I and Claudie could get bv there to pick them off of the roost. You see, our car is stuck out on the Liberty road, and we’ve got to get some help to get it out.

“You’ve got help,”he told us and he got up from the bench. “I’ll hitch up a team ol mules, and we ll go pull it out.

“We’re in no hurry, Ferd, I said. I think we might even have time for another swig of that corn.

I and Claudie haven’t got any more work to do until after dark. But you haven’t told me yet where them turkeys roost.'

“Jn Ab’s barn,” he answered. “It’s a good hundred yards from the house.”

“That’s a nice, safe distance, Ferd,”I said.

Laic that afternoon when we left Ferd Schultz’s house with him in the wagon the sun was slanting through the trees at a little cooler angle, or at least it seemed cooler on top of the rest of Ferd s jug of corn. We were not drunk, but we were not exactly sober either, and I kept noticing that the Spanish moss on the trees looked cleaner and prettier than it had that morning. When we passed Ab s house on the way to gef our car unstuck, I put a close look on the place to size up the location ot the barn, since I didn’t remember seeing it at all that morning. Ferd told us you couldn’t see it from where we were, but it was easy to reach from the road, if you turned off at a place where there was an ok! endgate propped against the fence.

“That must he the endgate I used on them dogs this morning,” Claudio said; then I realized there was a big gap in my program. Those dogs wore tough enough in broad open daylight; they could be fierce at night.

“What are we going to do about the dogs?" I asked out loud.

Ferd handed me a brown paper sack and said, “Feed ‘em. Here’s some bones and scraps that ought to do. I brought ‘em along for Ab’s dogs so they wouldn’t make you no trouble.”

There wasn’t any moon that night, and by the time we’d got our car unstuck, it was pitch-dark. As Ferd Schullz drove off down the road in his wagon, I told Claudie I had our legal rights straightened out; all we had to do was exercise them.

“Claudie” I stated, “we will take these turkeys strictly under the civil law. The case of Schultz against Schultz is about over.”

We waited until the night got good and quiet, except for the tree frogs and hoot owls; then we drove down the road and turned in toward Ab’s barn through a gap in the fence by the old endgate. The dogs met us and I fed them Ferd s scraps before they’d barked much. When Claudie pulled up beside the barn, we could just see the shape of Ab’s house through the trees. All the lights were out.

Once we found the lurkeys, roosting in a lean-to by the side of the barn, it didn’t take us long to get them in the car. A turkey that is half asleep in the dark is no match for a man with his wits about him in a roost, but they did let out some fairly noisy peeping as we piled them into the back of the car.

I was holding the turkeys down with both hands in the car and Claudie was bringing the last two from the roost when a lantern showed up at the back of Ab’s house and made for us fast.

“Claudie,” I said, “let’s get out of here. Here comes Ab Schultz.”

“I didn’t think—” Claudio started to say, but I cut him off, since it is never very good what Claudio thinks, even when he is right. “Come on,”1 said, and he piled in the car with the last two turkeys under his arm.

The lantern was right on us when we started, but we got away, with Claudie and the two turkoys in the front seat, and me and the rest in the back. I heard a man and a woman yell as wo headed up the wood’s road toward the gap. We’d have made it if Claudie s turkeys in the front seat hadn’t tried to get out of t he car on Claudio’s side.

I saw wings and tails and feet all around Claudios head for a minute; then we hit a big oak with an awful jolt. How we held on to all the turkeys in the tumble that followed, I don’t know, but we did, and Claudie was backing away to pull on out when the lantern caught up with us. I was ready to hear Ab — as ready as I’d ever be — when the voice came from behind the lantern. But it was Mrs. Schultz, speaking in her nice sweet easy voice. “Gentlemen,”she said, “you almost got away without old Clarence. Come on, Ab, give Clarence to the gentlemen.”