"That's him! that's his jump," said "little Kike," a nephew of Captain Lumsden. "Couldn't many fellers do that eight-rail fence so clean."
"Hello, Mort!" they all cried at once as he came up taking off his wide-rimmed straw hat and wiping his forehead. "We thought you wuzn't a comin'. Here, you and Conkey choose up."
MORT GOODWIN.
"Let somebody else," said Morton, who was shy, and ready to give up such a distinction to others.
"Backs out!" said Conkey, sneering.
"Not a bit of it," said Mort. "You don't appreciate kindness; where's your stick?"
By tossing a stick from one to the other, and then passing the hand of one above that of the other, it was soon decided that Bill McConkey should have the first choice of men, and Morton Goodwin the first choice of corn. The shuckers were thus all divided into two parts. Captain Lumsden, as host, declining to be upon either side. Goodwin chose the end of the corn which had, as the boys declared, "a desp'rate sight of nubbins." Then, at a signal, all hands went to work.
The corn had to be husked and thrown into a crib, a mere pen of fence-rails.