“Maybe,” says he, “I can’t see a j-joke that is, but I’m perty average sure to see when one hain’t. And that one,” says he, “was a star m-member of the Hain’t family.”
“All right,” says I, “you spring a joke and see how you make out.”
“When I s-spring one,” says he, “it’ll be a joke, you can bet. I won’t just shoot off somethin’ on the chance somebody’ll laugh. I’ll study over it some, and kind of try it out in my mind, and maybe repeat it out loud to myself a couple of times to see how it sounds when I say it. That’s the way to do with jokes. Jokes is like dollars. A good dollar is worth a hundred cents, but a bad dollar is apt to get you s-s-shut up in jail. Or eggs,” says he. “You don’t have to crack a joke to tell if it’s bad, like you do an egg.”
“I suppose,” says I, “that was a joke?”
“There’s folks would call it sich,” says he.
“Aw, come on,” says Binney. “Quit your jawin’ like old wimmin at a knittin’-bee and git to work. What’s goin’ to be done?”
“I wisht I knew,” says Mark.
“If we found him he wouldn’t come back,” says Binney. “He’d be afraid of the sheriff.”
Mark slapped his leg. “There’s somethin’ for us to d-d-do,” says he. “We kin fix it so George dast come back.”
So he sent Binney after the mail, and Tallow to order in a car to make a shipment, and him and I went off to see the deputy sheriff, whose name was Whoppleham. Mostly you could find him down by the blacksmith shop pitching horseshoes. He was about the best horseshoe-pitcher in the county. He was there, all right, pitching with old Jim Battershaw, and they was down on their knees measuring from the peg to a couple of horseshoes with a piece of string to find out which was the nearest, and quarreling about it as if it was the most important thing that had happened in the world since Noah built his ark. We waited for them to decide which horseshoe was nearest, but they couldn’t decide, and they wouldn’t call it even. I calc’late they’d have gone for the county surveyor to measure them up scientific if just then Battershaw’s setter-dog and Whoppleham’s shepherd-dog hadn’t got tired of waiting and started an argument of their own. It was quite considerable of an argument, and it come swinging and clawing and snarling right across the lot to where the horseshoes was and settled down to business there. The way them dogs clawed into the ground and kicked up the dust was a caution, and old Battershaw and Whoppleham dancing around the edge of it, hollering like all-git-out and trying to stop it.