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Him and me fixed up the buggy agin, and he's gone to borry Harmon's me-yule so as you uns can git back to Black Log." "Tip's left Black Log forever," I said firmly. Then John Shadrack's widow laughed. She laughed so hard that she blew the ashes out of her pipe, and they showered down over my face, and made me wink and sputter. "There there," she said solicitously, dusting them away with her hand.
We'll drop the car under the bridge shed. When you get the fire going, climb aboard the tender." He left the men gathering the splintered boards into a heap, and returned to the engine. Shadrack's head appeared above the edge of the tender presently. He motioned to Tom. "This wood is so wet we can't light it. We haven't any paper." "Wait," ordered Tom.
"No, sir, I live with my cousin John Shadrack's widder." "Ah!" I cried. "It's plain now, Tip, you deceiver. So there's the attraction." "The attraction?" Tip's brow was furrowed. "Mrs. John Shadrack," I said. The fugitive broke into a loud guffaw. He leaned over the gate and let his pipe fall on the other side and beat the post violently with his hands.
She was so cheery. Even now she was offering me a piece of gingerbread. I ate it ravenously. Then I asked, "Where is Tip?" "He's gone down the walley to my brother-in-law, Harmon Shadrack's. He's tryin' to borry a me-yule." "A what?" "A me-yule. The colt was dead beside you in the creek.
And we stay here in our dim light, in our dull monotones, when, to the westward, there's a land all capped with clouds of red and gold. There is Tip's Valley of Peace. John Shadrack's widow may not be a celestial being, but that is my sunset country.
Did you ever hear her sing?" "I should say I had," I answered. The whining strains of "Jordan's Strand" came wandering out of the past, out of the kitchen, joining with the sizzle of the cooking and the clatter of the pans. "I should say I had," I said again. "She must be a splendid singer," John Shadrack's widow exclaimed with much enthusiasm.
Ahead of them were four freight cars and another coach. Brown and Tom found a seat not far from Andrews; Wilson and Knight settled themselves across the aisle. Tom glanced back and saw the others scattered through the car. His eyes met Shadrack's and, mindful of Andrews' warning, he turned away before he laughed outright.
"Couldn't you hear me saying Dutch words? Them was the charm." "I guess I was sleeping," I returned a bit irritably. How the store would have smiled could it have seen me there on the bed, in that bare little room in John Shadrack's widow's clutches! Many a night, around the stove, Isaac Bolum, and Henry Holmes and I had had it tooth and nail over the power of the powwow.
A score of times I tried to speak, but something failed me, and when I attempted to wave my hand in greeting to her I could not lift it from the bed. At last strength came. "This is John Shadrack's house?" I said. "Yes," said she, "and I'm his widder." She came to my side and stood looking down at me very hard. I saw a woman in the indefinable seasons past fifty.
"What did I tell you, Tip?" cried John Shadrack's widow. She handed me a piece of gingerbread just to chew on till she got some breakfast for me, and while I munched it, Tip and I argued it out. "Nanny'll think I've left her," Tip said. "You did, Tip," said I. "You ran away forever." "She'll be gittin' married agin," pleaded Tip.
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