I had never seen “Squealing John” Runnels, but that this was he I had no doubt. He sat on an upturned grain-bucket with his skirts pulled up about him, wore a woman’s broad hat of dingy black felt, and a veil partly draped his face; he was smoking a corn-cob pipe.
“I’ll be cussed if I see any good sense in being titrivated out like this the whole afternoon,” he complained, in tones as strident as a scolding woman’s. “It’s getting on to my nerves.”
“You’ve got to get used to ’em, you old fool,” barked my uncle, “I don’t propose to have you forgetting yourself. It would be just like you, right in the middle of that dicker-talk, to prill up your dress and reach into your pants pocket for a plug of tobacco. Now get up and let me see you practise walking; and forget that you’re wearing pants.”
Runnels went grunting and limping around the room, whining like a teased quill-pig. His feet were pinched into women’s shoes. My uncle seemed to see much humor in this exhibition, but I couldn’t find any. It looked to me only like a grotesque sham, and pitiful, too, for I knew it was not going to succeed. “Squealing John” appeared to be of the same opinion. He kept complaining that he would not be able to fool a sharp man like the judge, and asked, anxiously, what the law penalty was when a man dressed up like a woman.
“I’m a good mind to let ye foreclose and be shet of the thing,” he said, facing my uncle and cracking together his bony little fists. “All that will come of this trick is that I’ll be took up and sent to jail. I’m a good mind to go to the judge and tell him how I’m persecuted and hectored and see if he won’t take up that bill o’ sale.”
“I’ll kill you if you do—I’ll kill anybody else who blows on me and my plans: Now, Queen of Sheby, remember that this is my champion performance. I ain’t in any frame of mind to be trifled with.”
He went to the oat-bin and brought in his bottle.
“You need to be teaed up a little so that you’ll have some courage, you old angleworm.”
After the two of them had swallowed stiff drinks my uncle turned on me.
“I have half a mind to dress you up instead of Runnels, son. Your face is smooth and you’ve got nerve enough to act the thing out right.”