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"Waal," there was an expression of embarrassment on the important freckled face, and the small red head nodded forward in an explanatory manner, "he fell off'n the bluffs arter the tur-r-key whings I mean, he went down to the ledge arter the tur-r-key, and the vines bruk an' he couldn't git up no more.
Nick's face turned red as he answered, "That thar tur-r-key ain't a-nigh thar." "What ails ye, Nick? thar's su'thin' wrong. I kin tell it by yer looks. Ye never hed the grit ter sarch thar, I'll be bound; did ye, now?" Nick could not bring himself to admit having been near the place. "No," he faltered, "I never sarched thar." "Ye'll do it now, though!" his mother declared triumphantly.
Then he prostrated himself once more at full length, for the mountain children are very careful of the precipices, snaked along dexterously to the verge of the crag, and protruding his red head cautiously, began to parley once more, trading on Ethan's necessities. "Ef I go on this yerrand fur ye," he said, looking very sharp indeed, "will ye gimme one o' the whings of that thar wild tur-r-key?"
I'm goin' down ter the hollow, whar they built thar fire, ter see ef that old missin' tur-r-key-hen o' our'n hain't hid her nest off 'mongst them dead chunks, an' sech." "A tur-r-key ain't sech a powerful fool ez that," said Barney, coming to the edge of the precipice and looking over at the ledge, which ran along the face of the cliff twenty feet below.
And Ethan was silent. "What's this hyar thing at the e-end o' the rope?" asked Pete, as he began to draw the cord up, and felt a weight still suspended. "It air the tur-r-key," said Ethan meekly. "I tied her ter the e-end o' the rope afore I kem up." "Waal, sir!" exclaimed Pete, in indignant surprise.
He "caught it" considerably, but not sufficiently to impair his appetite for the dodgers. After all this, he was ready enough for bed when small boy's bedtime came. But as he was nodding before the fire, he heard a word that roused him to a new excitement. "These hyar chips air so wet they won't burn," said his mother. "I'll take my tur-r-key whing an' fan the fire." "Law!" he exclaimed.
This was washing-day, and as she began to scrub away on the noisy washboard, a sudden thought struck her. "Ye told me two weeks ago an' better, Nick, that ye hed laid off ter sarch the Conscripts' Hollow; ye 'lowed ye hed been everywhar else. Did ye go thar fur the tur-r-key?" She faced him with her dripping arms akimbo.
And as he told it he would shoulder a smoke-blackened stick, and stride about in the Conscripts' Hollow, and feel very brave. He had no idea in those days how close at hand was the time when his own courage should be tried. "Kem on, Barney!" he urged. "Let's go down an' sarch fur the tur-r-key." But Barney had thrown himself down upon the crag with a long-drawn sigh of fatigue.
An' he tole me that ef I'd tell ye ter fotch him a rope ter pull up by, he would gimme the whings. That happened a leetle while arter dinner-time." "Who got him a rope ter pull up by?" demanded Pete. There was again on the important face that indescribable shade of embarrassment. "Waal," the youngster balanced this word judicially, "I forgot 'bout'n the tur-r-key whings till this minute.
No longer he felt a native of the mountain cove where he had been born and reared. He had had a glimpse of the world from a different standpoint, and it lured him. A dreary, disaffected life he led for a time. "'Minds me of a wild tur-r-key in a trap," his mother was wont to comment. "Always stretchin' his neck an' lookin' up an' away when he mought git out by looking down."
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