“His wife’s terrible upsot. I been searchin’ for him since daybreak, but not a hide or hair kin I find—nor a soul that seen him. He might of went up in a balloon right out of his back yard for all the trace he’s left.”
“What d’ye mistrust?” asked Tubal.
“You hain’t seen him?”
“No.”
“Well, say, don’t make no hullabaloo about it in the paper—yit. Mebby everything’s all right.”
The hunchback laughed, not a long, hearty laugh of many haw-haw-haws after the fashion of male Gibeon, but one short nasal sound that was almost a squawk.
“Might be,” said Simmy, “he sneaked off to lay for one of them rum runners.”
“What rum runners?” said the hunchback, snapping out the words viciously and fixing his gimlet eyes on the boy with an unblinking stare.
“The ones,” said Simmy, with perfect logic, “that’s doin’ the rum runnin’.”
“Hum!... Jest dropped in to ask if you seen him—and to kind of warn you not to go printin’ nothin’ prematurelike. We’ll be gittin’ along, Peewee and me.... Seems mighty funny a man ’u’d up and disappear like that, especial the sheriff, without leavin’ no word with me.” Deputy Jenney allowed his bulk to surge toward the door, and Peewee Bangs followed at his heels—a good-natured, dull-witted mastiff and an off-breed, heel-snapping, terrier mongrel....