Part 35 (1/2)
”All right,” I says, ”I can walk it in three days And I'll start this very afternoon”
”No you wont, you'll start _now_; and don't you lose any ti by the way Just keep a tight tongue in your head and et into trouble with _us_, d'ye hear?”
That was the order I wanted, and that was the one I played for I wanted to be left free to work my plans
”So clear out,” he says; ”and you can tell Mr Foster whatever you want to Maybe you can get hier?some idiots don't require documents?leastways I've heard there's such down South here And when you tell hius, maybe he'll believe you when you explain to hi now, and tell hi you want to; but mind you don't work your jaw any _between_ here and there”
So I left, and struck for the back country I didn't look around, but I kinder felt like he atching ht out in the country as h the woods towards Phelps' I reckoned I better start in onaround, because I wanted to stop Jiet away I didn't want no trouble with their kind I'd seen all I wanted to of theet entirely shut of theot there it was all still and Sunday-like, and hot and sunshi+ny; the hands was gone to the fields; and there was thes and flies in the air that one; and if a breeze fans along and quivers the leaves it makes you feel ?spirits that's been dead ever soabout _you_ As a general thing it makes a body wish _he_ was dead, too, and done with it all
Phelps' was one of these little one-horse cotton plantations, and they all look alike A rail fence round a two-acre yard; a stile s sawed off and up-ended in steps, like barrels of a different length, to climb over the fence with, and for the wo to ju yard, but mostly it was bare and s-house for the white folks?hewed logs, with the chinks stopped up with mud or mortar, and thesekitchen, with a big broad, open but roofed passage joining it to the house; log ser-cabins in a row t'other side the sainst the back fence, and sos down a piece the other side; ash-hopper and big kettle to bile soap in by the little hut; bench by the kitchen door, with bucket of water and a gourd; hound asleep there in the sun; more hounds asleep round about; about three shade trees away off in a corner; soooseberry bushes in one place by the fence; outside of the fence a garden and a waterins, and after the fields the woods
I went around and clumb over the back stile by the ash-hopper, and started for the kitchen When I got a little ways I heard the di down again; and then I knowed for certain I wished I was dead?for that _is_ the loneso, not fixing up any particular plan, but just trusting to Providence to put the right words in my mouth when the time coht words in ot half-way, first one hound and then another got up and went for me, and of course I stopped and faced them, and kept still And such another po as they made! In a quarter of a minute I was a kind of a hub of a wheel, as you s?circle of fifteen of theether around me, with their necks and noses stretched up towards ; you could see the over fences and around corners fro out of the kitchen with a rolling-pin in her hand, singing out, ”Begone _you_ Tige! you Spot! begone sah!” and she fetched first one and then another of the, and then the rest followed; and the next second half of the friends with me There ain't no harm in a hound, nohow
And behind the woer boys without anything on but tow-linen shi+rts, and they hung on to their own, and peeped out from behind her at me, bashful, the way they always do And here co from the house, about forty-five or fifty year old, bareheaded, and her spinning-stick in her hand; and behind her co the sa all over so she could hardly stand?and says:
”It's _you_, at last!?_ain't_ it?”
I out with a ”Yes'ht; and then gripped me by both hands and shook and shook; and the tears come in her eyes, and run down over; and she couldn't see, ”You don't look as much like your mother as I reckoned you would; but law sakes, I don't care for that, I'lad to see you! Dear, dear, it does seem like I could eat you up! Children, it's your cousin Tom!?tell him howdy”
But they ducked their heads, and put their fingers in their mouths, and hid behind her So she run on:
”Lize, hurry up and get hiet your breakfast on the boat?”
I said I had got it on the boat So then she started for the house, leading ot there she set me down in a split-bottomed chair, and set herself down on a little low stool in front ofboth of ood_ look at you; and, laws-a-ry for it ayears, and it's co you a couple of days and round?”
”Yes'et aground?”
I didn't rightly knohat to say, because I didn't knohether the boat would be coood deal on instinct; andup?froh; for I didn't know the naot to invent a bar, or forget the naround on?or?Now I struck an idea, and fetched it out:
”It warn't the grounding?that didn't keep us back but a little We blowed out a cylinder-head”
”Good gracious! anybody hurt?”