Hiram slouched down the hill, puffing.
“But there ain’t no use in ’em catchin’ her,” continued the farmer. “It will be like catchin’ smallpox. You can’t do nothin’ sensible with it when you do get it.”
“If you infernal fools would let her alone she’d be all right and go home,” bellowed Hiram over his shoulder as he leaped across the highway fence and began to run with his last remaining strength.
A quarter of an hour later, after struggling in the dusk through an alder swamp, he came out in the rear of some farm buildings. He saw men sprinkled in straggly line about a barn, men who leaned on pitchforks and clubs and guns.
“Where is she?” he shouted at the first man he came across—an individual who was scratched by bushes and brambles and whose blue, drilling overalls hung about him in shreds.
“Ain’t much need of askin’ that if you’ll listen a minit,” returned the elephant hunter surlily.
From the bam came frantic neighings of horses and melancholy lowings of cows. An occasional crash, rattle or clatter indicated that either Imogene was trying to get comfortably into a safe shelter, in spite of the interference of farming tools, or that the terrified inmates were struggling to get out.
In the house a woman could be heard plaintively mourning, once in a while her voice breaking into a scream as some fresh and louder tumult sounded in the barn.
“That’s the widder Abilene Snell that owns this stand,” explained the man solemnly. “She was jest gittin’ over the hysterics she had this noon. Us and el’phunt was here once before this to-day. She’s an awful high-strung woman. I shouldn’t wonder if this second trip would fix her.”
The showman did not hesitate.