In a couple of minutes along come Kinderhook, looking like he was mad enough to bite himself in the back of the neck if he could reach it, and he began kicking down our barricade and using a lot of language and mentioning us. If I remember right he was going to do a number of things to us if ever he laid hands on us, which we hoped he wouldn’t. But he didn’t wait to look around—jest jumped in his buggy and off he went.
We didn’t wait long, but put off after him and got into our own rig and followed along just far enough behind so he wouldn’t notice. In a half an hour we got into Litchfield, which is a pretty big town—almost a city—with lots of stores. We followed after Kinderhook till he came to a big hardware-store, and there he stopped and hitched. We stopped and hitched, too, and saw him go inside.
“Guess we’ll have to separate,” says Catty. “He’s goin’ in after a churn, I’ll bet. Soon’s he comes out you go in and git a churn jest like his’n. I’ll follow him and make chalk-marks on the sidewalk so you kin follow me.”
“All right,” says I, “but what ’ll I buy the churn with?”
“Money,” says he, and he give me a ten-dollar bill. “I got this a couple of days ago jest in case somethin’ happened that we’d need it.”
In twenty minutes Kinderhook came out, lugging a big bundle, and I went into the store pretty quick. There was a man there, and I asked for the churn department. It was up-stairs, and I walked. When I got there I says to the clerk, “There was a big, rich-lookin’ feller in here and he bought a churn.”
“Yes,” says he; “anything the matter with it?”
“No,” says I. “I calc’late it was a good churn. I calc’late it was so good I want one jest like it. Got one?”
“You bet,” says he, and he set one out. “This jest like his?” says I.
“I-dentical,” says he.