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Updated: May 14, 2025
I held the lantern, an old iron frame with glass sides, while Jud and Ump curried the horses, rubbing the dust out of their hair, and washing their eyes and nostrils. We were speculating on the mission of the blacksmith, and the destination of Parson Peppers, of whose singing I had told, when the talk came finally to Twiggs.
You've long years before you, and you can make anything you please of yourself." "It's a lie! a bloody lie!" he shouted in my face, flinging off the hand. "It's a lie, and you know it. I'm already myde, an' myde out of leavin's an' scraps. It's all right for you, 'Ump. You was born a gentleman.
I sat on the poplar horse-block with my hands around my knee, while Ump was in the road examining El Mahdi's feet. For once he had abandoned the Bay Eagle. He rubbed the fetlocks, felt around the top of the hoofs with his finger, scraped away the clinging dirt with the point of a knife blade, and tried the firmness of each shoe-nail.
Opposite me in the shadow of the tall hickory timber the man Ump, doubled like a finger, was feeling tenderly over the coffin joints and the steel blue hoofs of the Bay Eagle, blowing away the dust from the clinch of each shoe-nail and pressing the flat calks with his thumb. No mother ever explored with more loving care the mouth of her child for evidence of a coming tooth.
'Mugridge, sez 'e to me, 'Mugridge, sez 'e, 'you've missed yer vokytion. 'An' 'ow's that? sez I. 'Yer should 'a been born a gentleman, an' never 'ad to work for yer livin'. God strike me dead, 'Ump, if that ayn't wot 'e sez, an' me a-sittin' there in 'is own cabin, jolly-like an' comfortable, a-smokin' 'is cigars an' drinkin' 'is rum." This chitter-chatter drove me to distraction.
"Christian," I cried, pointing to the seared spots on the leather. Jud crushed the cap in his fingers. "He's got back," he said. "Was he ridin' a horse?" "Footin' it," answered Ump, "an' by himself. That's what makes me leary. Them others are up to somethin' or they'd a come with him. He's had just about time to make the trip on Shank's mare by takin' short cuts.
Then he climbed on the anvil, and began to move the manufactured shoes that were set in rows along the rafters, looking for a size that would fit. "Them won't do," said Ump. "You'll have to make a shoe, Christian." The man got down without a word, seized a bar of iron and thrust it into the coals. Jud caught the pole of his bellows, and pumped it for him. The smith turned the iron in the coals.
Jud stood with his broad shoulders bent forward, and Ump squatted, peering down under the palm of his hand. I rode back just in time to catch the flash of wheels sweeping into the wood from one of the bare turns of the road. Yet even in that swift glimpse, I thought I knew who was below, and so I did not ask, but waited until they should come into the open space again farther down.
The song ran to fifty-nine verses, and no others printable. Peppers dropped the fiddle and seized the pitcher. "Correct," he roared. "Here's to 'em. May the Lord bless 'em, an' bind 'em, an' tie their hands behind 'em, an' put 'em in a place where the devil can't find 'em." "Nor you," mumbled Ump in the echo. They drank, and the hunchback eyed his man over the rim of the pitcher.
Andrew gave a wave of his hand that condensed scorn. "What'd you get out o' him, a-gabblin' and sailin' all summer?" "I dunno, Andy, as I could jest put into words," said William, thoughtfully, "what I did get out o' him." "Ump! I guess you couldn't nor anybody else. When he sends you anything for that boat o' yourn, you jest let me know it, will you?"
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