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When you grow up, Billy Louise, you'll know what I mean. So me and Jase packed up we kinda had to do it on the sly, on account uh the bishops and we struck out with a four-ox team. "We kep' a-goin' and kep' a-goin', fer I was scared to settle too clost. I seen how they keep spreadin' out all the time, and I wanted to git so fur away they wouldn't ketch up.
He had the feeling that the old tree outside the door still held its beneficent spell and that this magic would regulate for him those elements of chance and luck without which he could not hope to survive until Dorothy and Uncle Jase came back and Dorothy had started on a hard journey over broken and pitch-black distances.
"What for?" Billy Louise demanded, watching Jase reach languidly out for another potato. "She seen me diggin' bait," Jase said tonelessly. "I did think some of ketchin' a mess of fish before I went to sproutin' p'tatoes, but Marthy she don't take no int'rest in nothin' but work." "Are the fish biting good?" Billy Louise glanced toward the wider stream, where it showed through a gap in the alders.
At least I sh'an't go back any more unless he was to send for me." "Bully for you! I wouldn't either. Give you the shake 'cause you wouldn't let him put a bullet hole through me! Well, I swow!" Jase stared at Ralph in mingled admiration and compassion. "The dadburned old fool!" he continued.
"Jase has got all-gone feelings now, mommie," she remarked irrelevantly during a brief pause and relapsed into silence again. She knew that was good for at least five minutes of straight monologue, with her mother in that talking mood. She finished her supper while Warren listened abstractedly to a complete biography of the Meilkes and learned all about Marthy's energy and Jase's shiftlessness.
He would plan these things sometimes in an expansive mood, whereupon Marthy would stare at him with her hard, contemptuous look until Jase trailed off into mumbling complaints into his beard. He was not as able-bodied as she thought he was, he would say, with vague solemnity. Some uh these days Marthy'd see how she had driven him beyond his strength.
Later in the day Lute Brown addressed a caucus attended by a half dozen men, including Jase Mallows. That meeting took place behind closed doors and though a general accord of purpose prevailed there was some dissension as to detail.
Billy Louise puckered her eyebrows, pressed her lips together understandingly and disapprovingly and opened the door. Jase, humped over a heap of sprouting potatoes, blinked up apathetically into the sudden flood of sweet, spring air and sunshine. "Why, hello, Billy Louise," he mumbled, his eyes brightening a bit. "Say, you was locked in here!" Billy Louise faced him puzzled.
What's ther matter, gal? Ye looks like ye'd been seein' hants." "I hain't seed nothin' else fer days past," she declared, almost hysterically. "I've done sickened with waitin', Uncle Jase, an' I aimed ter start out soon termorrer mornin', letter or no letter."
"All right hit belongs ter ye jist as rightfully as ther other given name. Write hit down Parish Thornton in thet paper, Jase. Thet don't give no undue holt ter yore enemies, boy, an' es fer ther last name hit's thicker then hops in these parts, anyhow."
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