Page:Harvey O'Higgins--Silent Sam and other stories.djvu/124

112 the clowns—until I showed 'm the make-up I had n't washed out o' m' ears."

He smiled slowly as he added: "At first, when Harry seen 'em pointin' us out an' follyin' us up on the street, he thought we 'd made a hit. He thought they were pointin' us out because we were the clowns."

"Served 'im right," she said. "'E thinks 'e 's the whole show now."

He did not reply to her. He went on with his thoughts: "Once, when we got stranded in Kansas, we was beatin' our way back to Chicago, an' we begged a couple o' handouts from a back door an' went an' sat 'n under a water-tank waitin' fer a freight to come along— We drank the water that dripped out o' the tank, too—an' there was a lot o' names cut in the beams that the tank was on, an' while Harry was cuttin' his name in with the rest, a big farmer's dog sneaked up an' eat his grub—an' then he was mad because I 'd eat mine while he was carvin' his name."

She made a contemptuous sound in her throat.

"I had m' arm broke comin' home—sleepin' in among the lumber on a flat car, an' the load shifted onto me in the night—an' Harry tore the back out of his shirt to make a sling fer me."

He drew up his sleeve to bare his forearm, and sat studying it for so long a time that she leaned forward, beside him, to look. There was nothing that she could see. When he had pulled down his cuff again he concluded: "He 's all right, I guess. That 's just his way. He thinks he ought to be clownin' all the time."