"Whar's yoah buddy?" I was asked.
"Did unt you-all hev no buddy wit' you?"
"Yes, I did have a buddy with me, but—" trying to give Bud a chance of escape,—"but he caught a freight West, just a little bit ago."
"You're a liar," said the one in authority, who I afterward heard was the head-clerk of the company that ran the warehouse. The negro boy had run to his house and roused him. He had drawn the posse together....
"You're a liar! Your buddy's still in there!"
"No, I'll sweah they haint nobuddy else," protested McAndrews.
But prodded by their urging, he climbed in again over the sacks of guano, and soon brought out Bud, who had waked, heard the rumpus, and had been hiding, burrowed down under the hay as deep as he could go.
There was a burst of laughter as he stood framed in the doorway, in which I couldn't help but join. He had such a silly, absurd, surprised look in his face ... a look of stupefied incredulity, when he saw all the men drawn up to receive him. From a straggled lock of hair that fell over one eye hung several long hay-wisps. His face looked stupid and moon-fat. He rolled his big, brown eyes in a despairful manner that was unconsciously comic. For he was, instinctively, as I was not, instantly and fully aware of the seriousness of what might come upon us for our innocent few hours' sleep.
"Come on, boys. Up with your hands till we go through your pockets."
On Bud's hip they found a whiskey flask, quarter-full. In my inside pocket, a sheaf of poor verse—I had barely as yet come to grips with my art—and, in an outside pocket, the Bible I had filched from the woman's sewing machine in Tuscon.