It proved to be a curled-up sort of horn with a rubber
bulb on the end. I squoze the bulb and jumped twenty foot over
the remark she made.
"Jarred off the machine," says Tusky.
"Oh, did it?" says I, my nerves still wrong. "I thought maybe it
had growed up from the soil like a toadstool."
About this time we abolished the wire chicken corrals, because we
needed some of the wire. Them long-laigs thereupon scattered all
over the flat searchin' out their prey. When feed time come I
had to screech my lungs out gettin' of 'em in, and then sometimes
they didn't all hear. It was plumb discouragin', and I mighty
nigh made up my mind to quit 'em, but they had come to be sort of
pets, and I hated to turn 'em down. It used to tickle Tusky
almost to death to see me out there hollerin' away like an old
bull-frog. He used to come out reg'lar, with his pipe lit, just
to enjoy me. Finally I got mad and opened up on him.
"Oh," he explains, "it just plumb amuses me to see the dumfool
at his childish work. Why don't you teach 'em to come to that
brass horn, and save your voice?"
"Tusky," says I, with feelin', "sometimes you do seem to get a
glimmer of real sense."
Well, first off them chickens used to throw back-sommersets over
that horn.
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