watchin' me hook up--we was gettin' ready to move camp--an' all inadvertent I backs the wagon onto Augustus.The hind wheel goes squar' over him an' flattens Augustus out complete.He dies with his eyes fixed on me, an' his looks says as plain as language, "Cheer up, Colonel! This yere contreetemps don't change my affections, for I knows it's a misdeal." You-all can gamble I don't do nothin' more that day but mourn.'
"'Which I should shorely say so!' says Dan Boggs, an' his voice is shakin'; 'a-losin' of a gifted horned toad like Augustus! I'd a-howled like a wolf.'
"'But as I'm sayin',' resoomes the Colonel, after comfortin' himse'f with about four fingers; 'speakin' of the transmigration of souls, Igoes off wrong about Hoppin' Harry that time.I takes it, he used to be one of these yere Eastern toads on account of his gait.But I'm erroneous.Harry, who is little an' spry an' full of p'isen that a-way, used to be a t'rant'ler.Any gent who'll take the trouble to recall one of these hairy, hoppin' t'rant'ler spiders who jumps sideways at you, full of rage an' venom, is bound to be reminded partic'lar of Hoppin' Harry.'
"'What did you-all use to be yourse'f, Colonel?' asks Enright, who notices that Hoppin' Harry is beginnin' to bristle some, like he ain't pleased none with these yere revelations.'What for a anamile was you before you're a hooman?'
"'I was a good-nachered hoss,' says the Colonel mighty confident an'
prompt; 'I'm a good-nachered hoss in a country neighborhood, an'
everybody rides me that wants to.However, I allows we better shift the subject some.If we-all talks about these yere insects an'
reptiles a little longer, Huggins over thar--whose one weakness is he's too frank with an' puts too much confidence in his licker--will have another one of them attacks of second sight, which Peets cures him of that time, an' commence seein' a multitood of heinous visions.'
"'Of course,' says Enright, plumb p'lite, 'of course, Colonel, I can tell a whole lot about your fam'ly by jest lookin' at you;partic'lar where as at present you're about ten drinks ahead; still thar's nothin' gives me more pleasure than hearin' about the sire from the colt; an' if you won't receive it resentful, I'd ask you as to your folks back in Kaintuck.'
"'As you-all knows,' observes Colonel Sterett, 'I was foaled in Kaintucky; an' I must add, I never recalls that jestly cel'brated commonwealth with-out a sigh.Its glories, sech as they was before the war, is fast departin' away.In my yooth, thar is nothin' but a nobility in Kaintucky; leastwise in the Bloo Grass country, whereof I'm a emanation.We bred hosses an' cattle, an' made whiskey an'
played kyards, an' the black folks does the work.We descends into nothin' so low as labor in them halcyon days.Our social existence is made up of weddin's, infares an' visitin' 'round; an' life in the Bloo Grass is a pleasant round of chicken fixin's an' flour doin's from one Christmas to another.'
"'Sech deescriptions,' remarks Enright with emotion an' drawin' the back of his hand across his eyes, 'brings back my yearlin' days in good old Tennessee.We-all is a heap like you Kaintucks, down our way.We was a roode, exyooberant outfit; but manly an' sincere.It's trooly a region where men is men, as that sport common to our neck of timber known as "the first eye out for a quart of whiskey"testifies to ample.Thar's my old dad! I can see him yet,' an' yere Enright closes his eyes some ecstatic.'He was a shore man.He stood a hundred-foot without a knot or limb; could wrastle or run or jump, an' was good to cut a 4-bit piece at one hundred yards, offhand, with his old 8-squar' rifle.He never shoots squirrels, my father don't; he barks 'em.An' for to see the skin cracked, or so much as a drop of blood on one of 'em, when he picks it up, would have mortified the old gent to death.'
"'Kaintucky to a hair,' assented the Colonel, who listens to Enright plenty rapt that a-way.'An' things is so Arcadian! If a gent has a hour off an 'feels friendly an' like minglin' with his kind, all he does is sa'nter over an' ring the town bell.Nacherally, the commoonity lets go its grip an' comes troopin' up all spraddled out.
It don't know if it's a fire, it don't know if it's a fight, it don't know if it's a birth, it don't know if it's a hoss race, it don't know if it's a drink; an' it don't care.The commoonity keeps itse'f framed up perpetyooal to enjoy any one of the five, an'
tharfore at the said summons comes troopin', as I say."'My grandfather is the first Sterett who invades Kaintucky, an' my notion is that he conies curvin' in with Harrod, Kenton, Boone an'
Simon Girty.No one knows wherever does he come from; an' no one's got the sand to ask, he's that dead haughty an' reserved.For myse'f, I'm not freighted to the gyards with details touchin' on my grandfather; he passes in his chips when mebby I'm ten years old, an' the only things about him I'm shore of as a child, is that he's the greatest man on earth an' owns all the land south of the Ohio river.
"'This yere grandfather I'm talkin' of,' continyoos the Colonel after ag'in refreshin' himse'f with some twenty drops, 'lives in a big house on a bluff over-lookin' the Ohio, an' calls his place "The Hill." Up across one of the big stone chimleys is carved "John Sterett," that a-way; which I mentions the same as goin' to show he ain't afeard none of bein' followed, an' that wherever he does come p'intin' out from, thar's no reward offered for his return.'
"'I ain't so shore neither,' interjects Texas Thompson.'He might have shifted the cut an' changed his name.Sech feats is frequent down 'round Laredo where I hails from, an' no questions asked.'
