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Updated: May 14, 2025
He had striven to move me to his will with a sort of masked edging, and, failing in that, left me with the bitterness drawn out. More than that, shrewd and far-sighted man, taken hot against him, I was almost won over to his star. Under the hammering of the hard-headed Ump, I saw Woodford in another light. But I carried no ill will. He had jousted hard and lost, and youth holds no post-mortems.
And the curiosity piped in her voice. "Did they lie?" "They did," said Ump; "Mister Ward's hurt, but he ain't dangerous." "Bless my life," cried the old woman, "an' they lied, did they? I think a liar is the meanest thing the Saviour died for. They said Mister Ward was took sudden with blood poison last night, an' a-dyin', the scalawags! I'll dress 'em down when I git my eyes on 'em."
I saw the candle which Ump had flung down, flickering by the horse-block, a little patch of light. Then the Cardinal's shoe crushed it out. My coat sleeves cracked like sails. The wind seemed to whistle along my ribs. The horse's shoulders felt like pistons working under a cloth. I was a part of that horse. I fitted my body to him.
Jud lay with his legs stretched out, his back to the earth, and his huge arms folded across his face. Ump sat doubled up on the skirt of his saddle, his elbows in his lap, his long fingers linked together, and the shaggy hair straggling across his face. He was the king of the crooked men, planning his battle with the river while his lieutenants slept with their bellies to the sun.
Ump rode a mile away in the far front of the drove, keeping a few steers moving in the lead, while Jud shifted his horse up and down the long line. I followed on El Mahdi, lolling in the big saddle. Far away, I could hear Ump shout at some perverse steer climbing up against the high road bank, or the crack of Jud's driving whip drifted back to me.
Facing the north at the front door of this house, Ump sat on the Bay Eagle, the reins down on the mare's neck and the hunchback's long hands crossed and resting on the horn of his saddle. The attitude of the man struck me with a great fear. About him lurked the atmosphere of overwhelming defeat.
"Wot's the good of mykin' a 'oly show of ourselves for them mugs?" he demanded. "They don't love us, an' bloody well glad they'd be a-seein' us cuttin' our throats. Yer not 'arf bad, 'Ump! You've got spunk, as you Yanks s'y, an' I like yer in a w'y. So come on an' shyke." Coward that I might be, I was less a coward than he.
Let me pause for a minute to look out over the sea sparkling in the sun, or to gaze at a sailor going aloft to the gaff-topsails, or running out the bowsprit, and I am sure to hear the hateful voice, "'Ere, you, 'Ump, no sodgerin'. I've got my peepers on yer." There are signs of rampant bad temper in the steerage, and the gossip is going around that Smoke and Henderson have had a fight.
'Strikes me you got aht of bed the wrong way this mornin', she said to him. 'Yer didn't think thet when yer said you'd come aht with me. He emphasized the 'me'. Liza shrugged her shoulders. 'You give me the 'ump, she said. 'If yer wants ter mike a fool of yerself, you can go elsewhere an' do it. 'I suppose yer want me ter go awy now, he said angrily. 'I didn't say I did.
Oo's turn next? FRED. Wot's the bleedin' good of bein' dahn in the mahf abaht it? Give me the bleedin' 'ump, you do. JIM. Are we dahn-'earted? Not 'alf, we ain't! BILL. I don't know as I cares. Git it over, I sez. 'Ave done wiv it! I dessay as them wot's gone West is better off nor wot we are, arter all.
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