Little Lee Roy was looking from one white man to the other, excited almost beyond respectful silence. He trembled all over, and a look of amazement and sudden life came into his eyes.

“Two years ago,” Steve was saying impatiently. “And we was travelin’ through Texas in those ole trucks.—See, the reason nobody ever come clost to it before was they give it a iron bar this long. And tole it if anybody come near, to shake the bar good at ’em, like this. But it couldn’t say nothin’. Turned out they’d tole it it couldn’t say nothin’ to anybody ever, so it just kind of mumbled and growled, like a animal.”

“Hee! hee!” This from Little Lee Roy, softly.

“Tell me again,” said Max, and just from his look you could tell that everybody knew old Max. “Somehow I can’t get it straight in my mind. Is this the boy? Is this little nigger boy the same as this Keela, the Outcast Indian Maiden?”

Up on the porch, above them, Little Lee Roy gave Max a glance full of hilarity, and then bent the other way to catch Steve’s next words.

“Why, if anybody was to even come near it or even bresh their shoulder against the rope it’d growl and take on and shake its iron rod. When it would eat the live chickens it’d growl somethin’ awful—you ought to heard it.”

“Hee! hee!” It was a soft, almost incredulous laugh that began to escape from Little Lee Roy’s tight lips, a little mew of delight.

“They’d throw it this chicken, and it would reach out an’ grab it. Would sort of rub over the chicken’s neck with its thumb an’ press on it good, an’ then it would bite its head off.”

“O.K.,” said Max.

“It skint back the feathers and stuff from the neck and sucked the blood. But ever’body said it was still alive.” Steve drew closer to Max and fastened his light-colored, troubled eyes on his face.

“O.K.”

“Then it would pull the feathers out easy and neatlike, awful fast, an’ growl the whole time, kind of moan, an’ then it would commence to eat all the white meat. I’d go in an’ look at it. I reckon I seen it a thousand times.”

“That was you, boy?” Max demanded of Little Lee Roy unexpectedly.

But Little Lee Roy could only say, “Hee! hee!” The little man at the head of the steps where the chickens sat, one on each step, and the two men facing each other below made a pyramid.