THE GREASED PIG
I was put into the car with Scoop, the policeman taking a seat between us, after which the driver turned the car around and started back down the street.
I was scared. I can’t deny it. However undeserving I was of arrest, the fact remained that I had been picked up by the law. And innocent though I was, it might not be easy for me to prove my innocence and thereby gain my freedom.
The automobile stopped in front of the mayor’s office and the policeman gruffly ordered us to pile out.
“If you try to run away,” he scowled, “I’ll catch you an’ give you ten years at hard labor.”
That, of course, was a bluff, and I knew it. For I was well enough acquainted with the processes of the law to know that it was a policeman’s job to capture law breakers and not to sentence them. [[94]]
Still, I didn’t like to have him talk that way. It gave me a sort of trapped, helpless feeling.
We all went into the mayor’s office, the policeman and my chum and I in one group and the car’s other four occupants in another group.
The Strickers were in their glory. Walking on my heels, sort of, Bid kept saying under his breath: “How do you like it, Jerry? Whose turn is it now? You will scare us with your old ghost trick, hey?”
I didn’t say anything back. For what was the use? However, I did a lot of thinking. And, in mentally comparing myself with my tormentor, I told myself that I would rather be a jailbird all the rest of my life than to have his mean disposition. Much as I dislike the Zulutown gang, of which Bid is the leader (and I have good occasion to dislike them, let me tell you), I don’t go out of my way to pester them. Nor do any of my chums, for that matter. But when we do something that gains for us added fun or special public attention, it seems to gall Bid and his gang to the point where all they care to think about is how they can torment us.