faltering faint-heart all over from
head to heel with withering scorn, and demanded: "Ain't you got
sportin' blood enough to know the difference between a high-station
game-cock and that old bow-legged Mormon down there scratchin' your
garden-seeds?"

"Well," replied the Cap'n, rather surlily, "I ain't to blame for what
I don't know about, and I don't know about hens, and I don't want
to know. But I do know that he's more'n twice as big as your rooster,
and he's had exercise enough in my garden this spring to be more'n
twice as strong. All is, don't lay it to me not warnin' you, if you
lose your thousand-dollar hen!"

"Don't you wear your voice out tryin' to tell me about my business
in the hen-fightin' line," snapped the showman, fondly "huggling"
P.T. more closely under his arm. "This is where size don't count.
It's skill. There won't be enough to call it a scrap."

They made a detour through the Sproul orchard to avoid possible
observation by Louada Murilla, the Cap'n's wife, and by so doing
showed themselves plainly to any one who might be looking that way
from the widow's premises. This was a part of the showman's plan.
He hoped to attract Reeves's attention. He did. They saw him peering
under his palm from the shed door, evidently suspecting that this
combination of his two chief foes meant something sinister. He came
out of the shed and walked down toward the fence when he saw them
headed for the garden.

"Watchin' out for evidence in a law case, probably," growled Cap'n
Sproul, the fear of onshore artfulness ever with him. "He'd ruther
law it any time than have a fair fight, man to man, and that's the
kind of a critter I hate."

"The widder's lookin' out of the kitchen winder," Hiram announced,
"and I'm encouraged to think that mebbe he'll want to shine a little
as her protector, and will come over into the garden to save her hen.
Then will be your time. He'll be trespassin', and I'll be your witness.
Go ahead and baste the stuffin' out of him."

He squatted down at the edge of the garden-patch, holding the
impatient P.T. between his hands.

"Usually in a reg'lar match I scruffle his feathers and blow in his
eye, Cap'n, but I won't have to do it this time. It's too easy a
proposition. I'm jest tellin' you about it so that if you ever git
interested in fightin' hens after this, you'll be thankful to me for
a pointer or two."

"I won't begin to take lessons yet a while," the Cap'n grunted. "It
ain't in