“Well, I do!” Hiram came close and wagged a forefinger up at the man. “You ducked out across country the night of that punkin freshet, when I was mud-bound in that pennyr’yal settlement and the elephant was afraid of the bridges. And you took my dancin’, turkey outfit and a cage of monkeys and a few other things that didn’t belong to you, and—her!” He almost shouted the last word, and then looked around with sudden apprehension that he was overheard by his brother. But the Squire sat on the porch without apparent interest. “What became of her, Sime Peak?” demanded Hiram, hissing the words at him. He seized a spoke of the old, dished wheel and shook the vehicle impatiently. The spoke came away in his hand.
“Never mind it,” quavered the man. “It ain’t nothin’. We’re all comin’ to pieces, me and the whole caboodle. But don’t hit me with it.”
He was eyeing the spoke in Hiram’s clutch.
“What did you steal her for, Sime Peak?”
“There isn’t anything sure about her goin’ away with me,” the other protested weakly.
Hiram yanked away another spoke in the vehemence of his emotions.
“Don’t you lie to me!” he snarled. “The both of you done me when I was tied up with my circus clear’n to the hubs in mud. Mounseer Hercules of the curly hair!” he snorted, and ran a sneering gaze over the outfit. “She wouldn’t chase you very fur now. You took her, I say, a girl I’d lifted off the streets and made the champion lady rider of—and was goin’ to marry and thought more of”—another cautious look at the Squire, “yess’r, thought more of than I did of anyone else in the world. What did you do with her?”
“Well, I was startin’ and she wanted to go along and so I took her aboard. She seemed to want to get away from your show, as near as I could find out.” The giant hugged his knees together and blinked appealingly.
“It must be a bang-up livin’ you’re givin’ her.” Again Hiram disdainfully surveyed the equipage.
“Seems as if you hadn’t heard the latest news,” broke in Peak, his face suddenly clearing of the puckers of apprehension. “She never stuck to me no time—honest to Gawd, Look. She only made believe she was goin’ to marry me. It was so I’d take her along. She ducked out with ev’ry cent of the sixteen hundred I’d saved up and run away with Signor Dellybunko—or whatever his name was—who was waiting for her along the road. Honest, I ain’t seen hide nor hair of her since, nor I don’t ever want to,” he rattled on eagerly, “and I’ve still got the letter that she left for me, and I’ll prove what I say. She said in it that she’d been plannin’ to do the same thing with you, but she had made up her mind that you wasn’t as easy as I was and she couldn’t work you.”