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Updated: May 25, 2025
Then three men appeared in the farther crooking of the spring path, and at the first glimpse of them she slipped from the flat stone to cower behind Tom, trembling, shaking with terror. "Hide me, Tom-Jeff! Oh, for God's sake, hide me, quick!" she panted. "Lookee there!" He looked and saw the three men walking slowly up the pipe-line which drained the barrel-spring.
Then he rose to the serenest height he had yet attained and said: "I forgive you, you wicked, wicked girl!" Her laugh was a screaming taunt. "But you've et the apple!" she cried; "and if you wasn't scared of goin' to hell, you'd cuss me again you know you would! Lemme tell you, Tom-Jeff, if the preacher had dipped me in the creek like he did you, I'd be a mighty sight holier than what you are.
And Nan's word did not help matters. "What makes you so cross to me, Tom-Jeff?" she asked, when he drew back with the impatient exclamation. "I hain't done nothin' to make you let on like you hate me, have I?" "I don't hate you," said Tom, frowning. "If I did, I shouldn't care."
Hit's on'y a lie to make me tell!" she panted. "No, it's the truth. I was sorry for you and helped you because well, because of the old times. But everybody has misunderstood, even Miss Dabney." Silence again; the silence of the high mountain plateau and the whispering pines. Then she asked softly: "Was you aimin' to marry her, Tom-Jeff?" His voice was somber.
"It's more than fair; it's generous. But let me ask you: is this protracted-meeting talk you're giving me, or just plain, every-day horse lies?" Brother Japheth halted the parade and there was aggrieved reproachfulness in every line of his long, lantern-jawed face. "Now lookee here; I didn't 'low to find you a-sittin' in the seat of the scornful, Tom-Jeff; I shore didn't.
But right here the torections erbout what I'm bounden to do sort o' peter out. I got as many cheeks to turn as any of 'em, but that ain't sayin' that the stock's immortil' With that he ups and allows a heap mo' things about my morils; and me havin' turned both cheeks till my neck ached, and not havin' any mo' toe turn, what-all could I do what-all would you 'a' done, Tom-Jeff?" "Don't ask me.
But lookee here, Tom-Jeff, this ain't sellin' you the finest saddle-hawss in the valley. What do ye say about Saladin?" "Oh, I don't know," said Tom. "I don't love horses very much. You know what the Bible says: A horse is a vain thing for safety. Is this bay going to make me lose my temper and knock his pinhead brains out the first time I put a leg over him?" "No-o-o, suh!
"Law, law," he mused; "'the horrible pit an' the miry clay. What a sufferin' pity it is we pore sinners cayn't dance a little now and ag'in 'thout havin' to walk right up and pay the fiddler! Tom-Jeff, there, now, he's a-thinkin' the price is toler'ble high; and I don't know but it is I don't know but what it is."
His fears touching her understanding, or her lack of it, were confirmed when he had reached a stopping-place. "They-all up yonder in that school where you was at hain't got much sense, it looks like to me," was her comment. "You're a man growed now, Tom-Jeff, and if you want to play cards or drink whisky, what-all business is it o' their'n?"
Then Pettigrass said: "Allowin' ther' might be another man, Tom-Jeff, jest for the sake of argyment, what-all was you aimin' to do if you found him?" It was drawing on to dusk, and the electric lights of Mountain View Avenue and the colonial houses were twinkling starlike in the blue-gray haze of the valley.
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