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As for Ab's own name, it came from no personal mark or peculiarity or as the result of any particular incident of his babyhood. It was merely a convenient adaptation by his parents of a childish expression of his own, a labial attempt to say something.
There were now five members in this family of the period, One-Ear, Red-Spot, Ab, Bark and Beech-Leaf, the two last named being Ab's younger brother and little more than baby sister. The names given them had come in the same accidental way as had the name of Ab.
Perched comfortably upon a rock, the sides of which were so precipitous that they afforded a foothold only for human beings, was a young woman of the Shell People who had before attracted Ab's attention and something of his admiration. She was fishing diligently.
Ab's first impulse was to pursue his sinful younger brother, but, after the first leap, he checked himself and paused to pluck away the thing which, so light the force that had impelled it, had not gone deeply in. He knew now that Bark was really blameless, and, picking up the abandoned plaything, began its examination thoughtfully and curiously.
What should he do, what should all his friends do in the matter of relation to this unknown thing? With this day and hour did not come really the beginning of Ab's thought upon the subject of what was, to him and those he knew, the supernatural. He had thought in the past he could not help it of the shadow and the echo.
Then the girl covered her face with her hands as she recalled Ab's face, distorted by passion and murderous hate, and Oak's equally maddened look as, before the onrush, he had grasped her so firmly that the marks of his fingers remained blue upon her arms and slender waist and neck.
"I used to cry sometimes when I looked at myself in the glass as a child," she confessed. "My hands were the only thing that consoled me." "I kissed them once," he told her. "You were asleep, curled up in Uncle Ab's chair." "I wasn't asleep," said Ann. She was seated with one foot tucked underneath her. She didn't look a bit grown up. "You always thought me a fool," he said.
"Wa'al, yes, he did," the mountaineer admitted "Yo' never knew the one. He was my brother-in-law, Ab's younges' sister's first husband. He had been married jes' two months, an' was only a hundred yards from this house when Isaac shot him." "How did you know for sure that it was Howkle who had done the shooting?" asked Hamilton. "We didn't know for sure, at first.
'Went into his cave with a sledge stake an' whaled 'im whaled 'im 'til he run fer his life. Whether it was true or not I have never been sure, even to this day, but Ab's manner was at once modest and convincing. 'Should 'a thought he'd 'a rassled with ye, Uncle Eb remarked. 'Didn't give 'im time, said Ab, as he took out his knife and began slowly to sharpen a stick.
There was an air of deep mystery about Handy and when he put his arm on Hedrick to whisper in his ear, Hedrick, smelling the statesman's breath heavy with whiskey and onions and cloves and cardamon seeds and pungent gum, heard this: "Say, Charley, I'm fooling 'em I've got 'em all fooled. They think I'm poor. They think I ain't got any money. But old Ab's too smart for them.
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