We drove along at a pretty good clip for two or three miles and no ideas occurred to us. We knew we had to do something before we got to Litchfield, but when it came to doing it we didn’t seem to be any good. It seemed to us to be just as hard to get a look at Kinderhook’s churn in his buggy as it was to get a look at it in his room at the hotel.

“We’ll just have to wait for somethin’ to turn up,” says I.

“Things don’t never turn up unless you make ’em,” says Catty.

“Then our beans is spilled,” says I.

“It’s four miles to Litchfield yet,” says Catty. “With a nice smooth road,” says I. “Kinderhook ain’t goin’ to git out of that buggy to pick flowers just so’s we can look at his old churn.”

“But he’s got to git out, just the same.”

“If he did he’d carry his churn along with him in his pants pocket,” says I.

Just then we came to a bridge across a sort of boy’s size river, about fifteen or twenty feet wide. Somebody had been working around it, because you could see new braces in the foundation, or whatever they call it, and some new planks. Over in the bushes at the side was some boards, and onto one of the boards was some kind of a sign. Catty took a look and then he pulled up our horse and jumped out. In a second he came back, looking as tickled as if he had eaten the cook’s best pumpkin pie, and he says: “I guess we kin manage. Git out quick and take a look,” says he. So I did, and there was a sign: “Bridge closed. Under repair.”

“Well,” says I, “what about it?”

“You drive the hoss up beyond and hustle back while I fix this up,” says he.

“Fix what up?” says I.

“You hustle along and you’ll see when you git back,” says he. And I hustled. I drove the horse along a piece, past the first farmhouse, and pulled him over to the side of the road in a clump of bushes. Then I ran back as tight as I could go. While I had been gone Catty had got out those boards and fixed them up across the bridge so as to block the way, and the sign was sticking right out in anybody’s face that came along.

“There,” says he.

“That ’ll stop him,” says I, “but it won’t show us the churn.”

“Huh!” says he. “Wait and see.”

“Goin’ to stay here?”

“Got to meet Kinderhook,” says he. “Won’t he know us?”

“Not him. He hain’t the kind of man that takes notice of kids, and he won’t be expectin’ anybody he ever see ’way out here. No, he won’t know us for a cent.”

“All right,” says I. “If you kin take a chance, why, so kin I.”

And just then Kinderhook came a-driving around a bend in the road. He drove right up to the bridge and stopped and scowled. “What’s this?” says he, sharplike. “Bridge,” says Catty, like he didn’t have much sense.

“I see it’s a bridge. What’s it blocked off for?”

“You kin read what the sign says if you want to,” says Catty. “It was put there for folks to read. Don’t cost nothin’ extry, neither. No, sir, you can read that there sign without spendin’ a cent.”

“Knock that barrier down. I’m going across,” says Kinderhook.

“You hain’t,” says Catty.

“Who’ll stop me, I’d like to know? That bridge looks safe, and I’m in a hurry. Knock down those boards.”

“Can’t be did,” says Catty.

“I’ll get out and knock them down myself.”

“If you do I’ll holler,” says Catty, “and I kin holler so’s to be heard. They’ll hear me at the house, too.”

“What house?”

“That house,” says Catty, pointing.

“What of it?” says Kinderhook, kind of undecided.

“You’d find out quick,” says Catty.

Then Kinderhook changed his manner a lot and got real friendly. “I’m in a big hurry to get to Litchfield,” says he. “Is there a way around?”

“By goin’ back to town and drivin’ five miles north.”

“But I can’t do that. Now you look here, Sonny, I’ll give you a quarter if you’ll let down that barrier and let me cross.”

“Can’t be done,” says Catty.

“I’ll make it a half.”

“Nothin’ doin’.”

“I’ll make it a dollar.”

“You couldn’t git to cross this bridge for ten dollars,” says Catty, “not unless the man in that house says you kin.”

“What’s he got to do with it?”

“If he was to say you could cross, then I wouldn’t stop you,” says Catty.

“Run down and ask him, then.”

“My job’s to stay right here.”

“You go,” says Kinderhook to me.

“My job’s stayin’ here, too,” says I. “There hain’t but one way to do,” says Catty, “and that’s for you to go yourself. ’Tain’t a quarter of a mile.”

Well, Kinderhook he grumbled and said a lot of words and sentences and things, but he got down off the seat and went across the bridge and started down the road—and he never paid any attention at all to the package that had the churn in it. He just left that standing in the back of the buggy. He hadn’t got more than a hundred yards before Catty was back there.

“You keep your eye on him,” says he, “while I stick my nose into the churn.”

“Be careful,” says I, “that you don’t git it churned into butter. You wouldn’t look handsome with a pad of butter in the middle of your face.”

“You’d be improved if you had a pad of butter inside of your head instead of what you got,” says be, with a grin, and began trying to find a way to look at the churn without disturbing the package so it would be noticed. The package was a kind of a big box made out of some sort of cardboard—one of those things they ship packages of breakfast food or something in, and it was just tied up with a rope. In about two seconds Catty turned up a corner of the top and looked inside, and then he said something under his breath that sounded like he didn’t have enough breath left to speak louder.

“Wee-wee,” says he, “come here and look.” I went and looked, and I ’most lost my breath, too, because there wasn’t a dog-gone thing in that package but the big water-pitcher out of the hotel.

“What kind of a churn is that?” says I. “That,” says Catty, “is a kind of a churn I never seen in any catalogue.”

“What’s the idee?” says I.

“Hanged if I know,” says he, “unless he jest stuck that in to make the package feel like it had somethin’ in it if anybody lifted it.” He stood there a second, thinking, and then he banged the buggy with his fist. “I got it,” says he. “Kinderhook didn’t have no churn a-tall. Not no kind of a churn whatever. And he’s got to have one. He’s got to give his demonstration. See? And so now he’s got to git him a model to do the demonstratin’ with. I guess we got Mr. Kinderhook’s goose close to cooked.”

“Maybe,” says I. “You can’t never tell. This looks like some kind of a scheme to me.”

“Here he comes,” says Catty. “I calc’late it would be healthier if we wasn’t here when he come, too.”

“B’lieve you’re right,” says I, and we slid off into the bushes and hid.

In a couple of minutes along come Kinderhook, looking like he was mad enough to bite himself in the back of the neck if he could reach it, and he began kicking down our barricade and using a lot of language and mentioning us. If I remember right he was going to do a number of things to us if ever he laid hands on us, which we hoped he wouldn’t. But he didn’t wait to look around—jest jumped in his buggy and off he went.

We didn’t wait long, but put off after him and got into our own rig and followed along just far enough behind so he wouldn’t notice. In a half an hour we got into Litchfield, which is a pretty big town—almost a city—with lots of stores. We followed after Kinderhook till he came to a big hardware-store, and there he stopped and hitched. We stopped and hitched, too, and saw him go inside.

“Guess we’ll have to separate,” says Catty. “He’s goin’ in after a churn, I’ll bet. Soon’s he comes out you go in and git a churn jest like his’n. I’ll follow him and make chalk-marks on the sidewalk so you kin follow me.”

“All right,” says I, “but what ’ll I buy the churn with?”

“Money,” says he, and he give me a ten-dollar bill. “I got this a couple of days ago jest in case somethin’ happened that we’d need it.”

In twenty minutes Kinderhook came out, lugging a big bundle, and I went into the store pretty quick. There was a man there, and I asked for the churn department. It was up-stairs, and I walked. When I got there I says to the clerk, “There was a big, rich-lookin’ feller in here and he bought a churn.”

“Yes,” says he; “anything the matter with it?”

“No,” says I. “I calc’late it was a good churn. I calc’late it was so good I want one jest like it. Got one?”

“You bet,” says he, and he set one out. “This jest like his?” says I.

“I-dentical,” says he.

“How much?” says I.

“Nine seventy-five,” says he, and I paid for it and had it wrapped up and lugged it out.

Right in front of the store chalk-marks with an arrow-head at one end pointed down the street, and I followed where they pointed. They went around a few corners, but I didn’t have any trouble to follow them, and after a while I saw Catty kind of hanging around the front of a paint-shop.

“Hello!” says he. “Got the churn?”

“No,” says I. “This package is full of song-sparrers and I’m goin’ to make a pie of them.”

“What kind of a churn is it?” says he.

“It’s a Criterion,” says I, calling it by its catalogue name.

“He got the best there was, didn’t he?”

“The best hain’t none too good for Kinderhook. Where is he?”

“In that paint-shop.”

“What for?”

“Havin’ a white stripe painted down the side of his pants so’s he kin join the band,” says Catty. “How do I know what for? That’s what I’m here to find out.”

Well, we hung around till Kinderhook came out, and he didn’t have his churn. He’d left it inside. We didn’t have any interest in him after that, but we did in the churn, so in about five minutes we went into the shop, and Catty says, “How long will it be before Mr. Kinderhook’s churn is done?”

“I told him it would be an hour, anyhow, if Kinderhook’s his name. Say, who is he, anyhow? Hain’t crazy, is he?”

“Not special. Why?”

“Havin’ a churn painted all red, white, and blue stripes runnin’ round and round like a barber-pole. Does he think it ’ll churn better that way?”

“Shouldn’t be s’prised,” says Catty.

“Yes, and he had all the markin’s took off it, too. The name and everythin’.”

“Of course,” says Catty, and then he said much obliged and we went out.

“Well,” says Catty, “he’s got his model churn now.”

“Havin’ it fixed up so there won’t be anythin’ to identify it by,” says I.

“That’s the idee. With red, white, and blue stripes around it it won’t look like any other churn that was ever made—and it ’ll work fine at the demonstration. It ’ll make butter quick, because the Criterion is a dandy churn.”

“Now what?” says I.

“Now we git home and sit down to wait for him to demonstrate,” says Catty.