The bunch turned their heads away from Mother, and pretended to ignore her—and to ignore Crook’s swaying shoulders and clenching fists. In low but most impolite-sounding voices they began to curse the surprised and unhappy Mother. Father ranged up beside her, protectingly. He was sure there was going to be a fight, and he determined to do for some one, anyway. He was trapped, desperate. Crook McKusick stood with them, too, but his glance wavered from them to the group at the fire and back again, and he was clearing his throat to speak when—
“Hands up!” came a voice from the shadows beyond the fire.
CHAPTER XV
WHILE he was raising his arms so high that his cuffs were pulled half-way down to his elbows, Father was conscious that the hoboes by the fire, even the formidable Crook McKusick, were doing the same. Facing them, in the woods border, was a farmer in a coon-skin overcoat, aiming a double-barreled shot-gun, beside him two other farmers with rifles under their arms. It seemed to Father that he was in a wild Western melodrama, and he helplessly muttered, “Gosh! Can you beat it?”
The man with the leveled shot-gun drawled, “I’m the deputy sheriff for this locality and I’ll give you dirty bums just five minutes to pick up your duffle and git out, and keep a-going. I guess we don’t need you around here. You been robbing every hen-roost for ten miles. Now step lively, and no funny business.”
“Stung!” muttered Crook McKusick, hopelessly. “Got us.”
Suddenly a downy figure—who might herself have come from a large, peaceful human hen-roost—fluttered straight at the muzzle of the sheriff’s shot-gun. It was Mother.
“Hands up, I told juh!” stormed the sheriff, amazedly.