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The Chicken
by
“Well, he was, wasn’t he?” asked Sandlot. “You killed him all right. It was you swung on him with the rock, Wixy, remember that!”
“Tryin’ to put it off on me, ain’t you!” said Wixy angrily. “Well, you can’t do it. If I hang, you hang. Maybe I did take a rock to him, but you had him strangled to death before I ever hit him.”
“What’s the use gabbin’ about it?” said Sandlot. “He’s dead, and we made our get-away, and all we got to do is to keep got away. There ain’t anybody ever goin’ to find him, not where we sunk him in that deep water.”
“Ain’t I been sayin’ that right along?” asked Wixy. “Ain’t I been tellin’ you you was a fool to be scared of an old feller like White-Whiskers? Cuttin’ across country this way when we might as well be forty miles more down the Rock Island, travelin’ along as nice as you please in a box car.”
“Now, look here!” said Sandlot menacingly. “I ain’t goin’ to take no abuse from you, drunk or sober. If you don’t like my way, you go back to the railroad and leave me go my own way. I’m goin’ on across country until I come to another railroad, I am. And if I come to a river, and I run across a boat, I’m goin’ to take that boat and float a ways. When I says nobody is goin’ to know anything about what we did to the Chicken, over there in Chicago, I mean it. Nobody is. But didn’t Sal know all three of us was goin’ out on that job that night? And when the Chicken don’t come back, ain’t she goin’ to guess something happened to the Chicken?”
“She’s goin’ to think he made a rich haul, like he did, and that he up and quit her,” said Wixy. “That’s what she’ll think.”
“And what if she does?” said Sandlot. “She and him has been boardin’ with Mother Smith, ain’t they? Ain’t Mother Smith been handin’ the Chicken money when he needed it, because he said he was workin’ up this job with us? I bet the Chicken owed Mother Smith a hundred dollars, and when he don’t come back, then what? Sal will say she ain’t got no money because the Chicken quit her, and Mother Smith will–“
“Well, what?” asked Wixy.
“She’ll send word to every crook in the country to spot the Chicken, and you know it. And when word comes back that there ain’t no trace of him–“
“You’ve lost your nerve, that’s what ails you,” said Wixy scornfully.
“No, I ain’t,” Sandlot insisted. “I’ve heard plenty of fellers tell how Mother Smith keeps tabs on anybody that tries to do her out of ten cents even. Why, maybe the Chicken promised to come back that night and pay up. I bet he did! And I bet he was sour on Sal. And I bet Mother Smith knew it all the time, and that when he didn’t come back that night she sent out word to spot him or us. I bet you!”
“You’ve lost your nerve!” said Wixy drunkenly. “You never did have no nerve. You’re so scared you’re seein’ ghosts.”
“All right!” said Sandlot, rising. “I’ll see ghosts, then. But I’ll see them by myself. You can go–“
“Goo’-bye!” said Wixy carelessly, and finished the last drop in his bottle. “Goo’-bye, ol’ Sandlot! Goo’-bye!”
Sandlot hesitated a moment and then arose and, after a parting glance at Wixy, struck out across the drying floor of the brick-yard, and was lost in the darkness. Wixy blinked and balanced the empty bottle in his hand.
“He’s afraid!” he boasted to himself. “He’s coward. ‘Fraid of dark. ‘Fraid of ghosts. Los’ his nerve. I ain’ ‘fraid.”
He arose to his feet unsteadily.
“Sandlot’s coward!” he said, and threw down the empty bottle with a motion of disgust at the cowardice of Sandlot. The bottle burst with a jangling of glass.