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It came on steadily, edge on, and I felt it break against my forehead. Then I blacked out. I had the grandaddy of all headaches when I came to. Doc Napier's face was over me, and Jenny and Muller were working on Bill Sanderson. There was a surprisingly small and painful lump on my head. Pietro and Napier helped me up, and I found I could stand after a minute.
Brownie waited in silence while the old gentleman thought, with his eyes shut tight. Brownie watched him for a long time. Once or twice he thought he heard something that sounded like a snore. But he knew it couldn't be that it was only the thoughts trying to get inside Grandaddy's head. At last Grandaddy sat up with a start. "Have you thought of something?" Brownie inquired. "What's that?"
And he told the hot-headed younger members of the colony to keep cool, which seems a simple thing for them to have done, swimming about as they were in the icy water, which flowed down from springs on the side of Blue Mountain. "Timothy Turtle has been here before," Grandaddy Beaver announced. "I can remember my great-grandfather's telling me about his passing two whole weeks in our pond.
"My house " said Grandaddy Beaver "my house is very old. It has had mud and sticks piled upon it every season for over a hundred years. You can see for yourself that it's much bigger than yours. And I reckon it's strong enough to stay where it is, no matter how hard the wind blows. But your house is different.... Let me think a minute!" the old gentleman said.
Just now, I would put you back in some city as a public relations officer, a Mister Fixit, to diagnose and cure personal and community ills. You would fix 'em or discard 'em instantly. "But, badinage aside, I know very little of the Bar-O entanglements and complications. It's an old story. Grandaddy knows all about it but he doesn't talk. There are few facts and many rumors.
And I don't see how it could have been a gun, because there was no roar.... Did you hear a sort of whistle?" he asked. "Anything that sounded like a bullet passing over your head?" Brownie Beaver shuddered at the mere mention of a bullet. "I heard nothing but that odd click," he replied. "That's what a gun sounds like when it's cocked," said Grandaddy Beaver.
"The moon looks just the same and the sun looks just the same. I had a twinge of rheumatics in my left shoulder yesterday; and to-day the pain's in my right. It was exactly that way before the last cyclone." Brownie Beaver did not doubt that the old gentleman knew what he was talking about. He remembered that Grandaddy Beaver had warned everyone there was going to be a freshet.
McLean's dream, Julius?" I asked. The man had not yet finished cleaning the spring, and we might as well put in time listening to Julius as in any other way. We had found some of his plantation tales quite interesting. "Mars Jeems McLean," said Julius, "wuz de grandaddy er dis yer gent'eman w'at is des gone by us beatin' his hoss. He had a big plantation en a heap er niggers.
"Grandaddy and me used to talk by the hour about comin' back to Forest Glen. And I always wanted to get back that bad it made me sick. But now I think I'd sooner not see the old place, because he can't see it too." Elizabeth's forced calm was forsaking her. The tears welled up in her eyes. "Ye're not well yourself to-day, Lizzie," whispered Eppie. "What's troublin'?"
"I resign," he said, "and anyone that wants to go in my place is welcome to do so." But nobody cared to go. And the whole village seemed greatly disappointed, until Grandaddy Beaver made a short speech. "We've all had a good holiday, anyhow," he said. "And I should say that was something to be thankful for." "Have you heard the news?" Tired Tim asked Brownie Beaver one day.
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