Then Poodle’s loafing manner disappeared. Holding out a gold piece, he said to Smith of Smith’s Stables, “Give me your best saddle-horse. Quick. But without a saddle. And I want that big straw-hat, there on the wall.”
The proprietor started to quiz him, but Poodle abruptly, curtly, cried, “Quick, I said. This five bucks is for you.”
As soon as he was out of the stable-yard, Poodle pulled off his shoes and socks and tucked them under his coat. He pulled his straw-hat down on his head. Then he loped round a corner, and was soon going at a lazy country pace, along the dusty, hot road, behind Mr. P. J. Jolls. He stuck out his bare feet, and slouched all over his horse’s back. Jolls took only one look back at him, then paid no further attention.
Poodle rejoiced to see from the way Jolls shifted in his seat that the manufacturer was good and uncomfortable. He needed a little cause for rejoicing like that, for Poodle was not any too comfortable, himself. He had got used to the hard slippery McClellan army-saddles, at Monterey. But this clinging to the sides of a sweating horse, without a saddle, was not pleasant.
He rolled and slid, but he followed closely enough, till Jolls turned in at a private road, which led by a marsh up a wooded hill, where stood a lonely old shack.
Poodle rode by, round a bend, slid off his horse, hitched it back in a thicket, and darted across the road into a field of the abandoned farm which Jolls had entered. He slipped on his shoes and hid the huge straw hat. Running with his head and shoulders low, taking shelter behind shrubs, he approached the hill from behind. Suddenly, his feet sank in mud. A marsh was before him. He ran along its edge, and found that the boggy land surrounded all the hill, except where the road entered, in front.
He jerked off his shoes and rushed into the marsh on the jump. Mud soaked through his socks. Briers scratched him. But he went at the bushes as though they were open doors. He didn’t have time to notice he was being scratched and soaked.
He reached the hillside and sneaked up it on hands and knees. For he had been startled by the sight of a tall, vicious-faced man, strolling about the top of the hill, with a rifle under his arm, as though he were guarding the cabin toward which Poodle was heading.
Once he had to lie flat for three minutes, while mosquitoes covered him. But he didn’t care. Hike must be up there in the cabin!
The guard passed out of sight. Poodle rushed to the cabin. He found a rubbish heap—old shoes, bottles, a couple of boards, damp straw—at the back of the house, and slipped under this ill-smelling but concealing heap. Putting his ear against a crack in the old logs, he almost cried out with joy, for he heard Hike’s voice within. Hike was saying: