“Jest come over to tell you the town marshal just come to our house and ordered us to git out of town within forty-eight hours. Says as how he’ll put us in the calaboose for vagrants if we don’t move on.”
“What you goin’ to do?” says I, too surprised and hit all of a heap to even say I was sorry.
“I dunno what I’m goin’ to do,” says Catty, with his jaw shoved out and his eyes kind of hard and mad, “but I kin tell you what I hain’t goin’ to do. I hain’t goin’ to move an inch.”
“Bully for you,” says I, and in another second he had turned around and run off into the dark. I dunno to this day what made him come and tell me about it, because he didn’t ask for any help or anything. But I got a sneaking suspicion it was jest because he was sort of lonesome and kind of wanted to make sure he really did have a friend in the world.
CHAPTER VII
I could hardly wait for breakfast to be over in the morning so that I could hunt up Catty Atkins and find out just exactly what had happened. I told Dad about it, but he didn’t say much.
“Catty said he wasn’t going to leave town, did he?” Dad asked.
“Yes,” I says.
“Well,” says Dad, with a kind of a hint of a grin, “I shouldn’t be surprised if folks had to get used to Catty being here, then.”
“Can’t they make him go?” I asked.