“Well, I guess that’s all right. I’ll let you go. But don’t come around here scarin’ me again,” replied the evil-looking old woman. “Now you get!”
We got. Hunky stepped on the gas and we traveled. I hope I am not a saffron member of the coward league, but just the same I own there are many views I prefer infinitely more than the muzzle of a dog that both barks and bites. Hunky was not much upset. He’s familiar with guns. I prefer fishing rods.
“A quaint old party,” he mused, as we got under way. “Old house, everything all dust-covered, old woman—and an up-to-date automatic in her fist. How many old farm ladies pack new guns?”
Now I was awake. “Yes, and how many old ladies up in this section of the hinterland speak with an unbucolic accent. I know the local dialect, and she doesn’t belong.”
“We’ll stop here for gas,” said Hunky, guiding the car around another which was filling from a tank by a country store.
A thick-set young man was turning the gasoline pump-handle and another man, athletic in build and in his early thirties, was watching the flow into the tank of his car.
Nobody up in that section of the world ever hurries, and the conversation between the two was easy and unruffled.
“Sure you won’t disappoint us?” asked the store-keeper.
“No fear,” answered the other. “Cases all taken care of and I can get away with no trouble. Better give me two quarts of oil, Ed, medium.”
The one called Ed went inside, and Hunky and I followed him in search of tobacco. He obliged me with a package and also some conversation which he seemed anxious to spill.