The two boys shrieked with excitement as they beheld the coincidence of this strange return. They burst into the stable, making almost as much noise as Duke, who had become frantic at the invasion. Sam laid hands upon a rake.
"You get out o' there, you ole horse, you!" he bellowed. "I ain't afraid to drive him out. I--"
"WAIT a minute!" Penrod shouted. "Wait till I--"
Sam was manfully preparing to enter the stall.
You hold the doors open," he commanded, "so's they won't blow shut and keep him in here. I'm goin' to hit him--"
"Quee-YUT!" Penrod shouted, grasping the handle of the rake so that Sam could not use it. "Wait a MINUTE, can't you?" He turned with ferocious voice and gestures upon Duke. "DUKE!" And Duke, in spite of his excitement, was so impressed that he prostrated himself in silence, and then unobtrusively withdrew from the stable. Penrod ran to the alley doors and closed them.
"My gracious!" Sam protested. "What you goin' to do?"
"I'm goin' to keep this horse," said Penrod, whose face showed the strain of a great idea.
"What FOR?"
"For the reward," said Penrod simply.
Sam sat down in the wheelbarrow and stared at his friend almost with awe.
"My gracious," he said, "I never thought o' that! How--how much do you think we'll get, Penrod?"
Sam's thus admitting himself to a full partnership in the enterprise met no objection from Penrod, who was absorbed in the contemplation of Whitey.
"Well," he said judicially, "we might get more and we might get less."
Sam rose and joined his friend in the doorway opening upon the two stalls. Whitey had preempted the nearer, and was hungrily nuzzling the old frayed hollows in the manger.
"Maybe a hunderd dollars--or sumpthing?" Sam asked in a low voice.
Penrod maintained his composure and repeated the newfound expression that had sounded well to him a moment before. He recognized it as a symbol of the non--committal attitude that makes people looked up to. "Well"--he made it slow, and frowned--"we might get more and we might get less."