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Scattergood sat on his piazza as usual, the morning after the portentous visit, and called a greeting to Wade Lumley, dry-goods merchant, as that prominent citizen passed to his place of business. "How's the geldin' this mornin', Wade?" he asked. "Feelin' his oats. Got to take him out on the road this evenin'. Time to begin shapin' him up for the county fair." "Three-year-old, hain't he?"
Well, when I got to shapin' him out, I found my piece o' wood wouldn't be long enough to give him his height; so I says, 'Well, I don't care, I'll cut the Duke right down and make Napoleon Bonaparte. I'd 'a' been all right if I'd cal'lated better, but I cut my block off too short, and I couldn't make Napoleon nohow; so I says, 'Well, Isaac Watts was an awful short man, so I guess I'll make him! But this time my wood split right in two.
You see, we have a good deal in common. You've spent your boyhood in this camp, so did I mine. Your father was an English gentleman, so was mine. Your mother is a Pawnee Indian, so was mine." "It's a proud day fer me, sir, your comin' back here, an' me walkin' alongside o' you," faltered Rube. "An' if you're shapin' ter stay here for a while, I shall learn a lot.
But the Lord was in it leastwise, He didn't go agin the proper shapin' of things arterwards. Come, Bill, let's stir round lively, and git the shanty in shape a leetle, and some vict'als on the table afore she comes. Yis, git out your axe, and slash into that dead beech at the corner of the cabin, while I sorter clean up inside.
He's been t' our first campin' ground. Now he's shapin' for the island, led by our fire-smoke." Kiddie whistled a shrill, long, tremulous note. He was an uncommonly good whistler. The sound was echoed and re-echoed from every chasm and cañon on the far shores of the lake; it might have been heard many miles away.
I'm jest lettin' things go the way they've started, 'n' stan'in' to one side to see whar they'll fetch up, kind o' like Providence. I'm leavin' Miss Vildy a free agent, but I'm shapin' circumstances so 's to give her a chance. But, land! if I'd fixed up the thing to suit myself I couldn't 'a' managed it as Timothy hez, 'thout knowin' that he was managin' anything. Look at that letter bizness now!
Nate give 'em all the chance possible to be together, and as for old Professor Whiskers, all he thought of, anyway, was his blessed flyin' machine. So things was shapin' themselves well, 'cordin' to Scudder's notion. "One afternoon Nate come, unexpected, to the top of a sand hill at t'other end of the island, and there, below, set Olivia and Augustus.
If I hadn't been right up against it, I wouldn't have sold the horse at all attached to him the way I was. I'd worked with him a long time, gettin' him ready to win, and it was a mistake to let him go just when he was shapin' up. I I'd like to buy him back. Put a price on him, old man."
He thanked me humbly, and was about to go away, when Sergeant Corney took him by the hand as he said: "What's in the past can't be brought back for the fixin'; but we've got in our own keepin' the shapin' of the to-morrows. I'm thinkin' you won't go astray agin, Reuben Cox, an' whenever I see a chance to speak a good word for you it shall be said."
"Young Rube ain't anyways liable to be in error in a serious case like this," Gideon assured his companion. "And if Broken Feather's shapin' ter steal horses, why, nat'rally he'll calculate on findin' what he covets right here the best herd within fifty miles, ter say nothin' of that Arab mare, which he's had his eye on for a while back. No, Young Rube's warnin' ain't no false alarm.
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