I
He was passing my cabin late at night, and unexpectedly found me
sitting on the moonlit doorstep. I was not longing for conversation,
but Sam’s voice, as mere sound, was no more interruptive than purling
water or a cajoling minor wind. It mellowed its way over uncouth words
in a manner that seemed to be its owner’s gentle amends for using
anything in your presence so angular and knotty as the language of man.
“I thought,” he said, “maybe I could ketch that coon what uses over in
Grape Vine Cove; but my dog Buck got onter a fox-trail, an’ coon wasn’t
nothin’ to him after that. I knowed that fox ’ud take him to Katter
Knob, so I let him go on by hissef an’ I shammucked along toward home.”
There was no hint in his easy air that he had broken my rule against
hunting in springtime. Any Merlin would violate any rule occasionally,
as a matter of self-respect; and of all the Merlins, Sam was the least
capable of inferior misgiving. His whole mental interior was as bare of
obeisance as an iceberg of things that grow.
“I could ’a’ chivvied that fox out if I had gone after him; but if a
man don’t sleep he’s weak at the plough-handles. Yore work first, Mis’
Dolly.”
But a falling moon was marking 1 A. M.
“That fox-hide would ’a’ brought me four dollars, an’ Krettie keeps
pesterin’ me fer a pair o’ shoes. My head might as well be under the
forestick. But she’ll jest have to make out.”
This was clearly an impeachment, but I made no defense, and he passed
to a topic with, presumably, no implications.
“Yer company comin’ to-morr’, I reckon?”
“Yes, Sam.”
“So ye’re enjoyin’ yersef to-night.”