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By Root 5635 0

truck and after a while I heard her quit moving around and I knew that she had done got fixed to sleep. And I lay there—I had done got kind of waked up myself, now—and it was a right smart while. But I knew that he was somewhere close, waiting maybe for the fire to die down or for me to get good to sleep. Because, sho enough, just about the time the fire had died down good, I heard him come up, quiet as a cat, and stand over me, looking down at me, listening. I never made a sound; I don’t know but I might have fetched a snore or two for him. Anyway, he goes on toward the truck, walking like he had eggs under his feet, and I lay there and watched, him and I says to myself, ‘Old boy, if you’d a just done this last night, you’d a been sixty miles further south than you are now, to my knowledge. And if you’d a done it two nights ago, I reckon I wouldn’t ever have laid eyes on either one of you.’ Then I got a little worried. I wasn’t worried about him doing her any harm she didn’t want done to her. In fact, I was pulling for the little cuss. That was it. I couldn’t decide what I had better do when she would begin to holler. I knew that she would holler, and if I jumped up and run to the truck, it would scare him off, and if I didn’t come running, he would know that I was awake and watching him all the time, and he’d be scared off faster than ever. But I ought not to worried. I ought to have known that from the first look I’d taken at her and at him.”

I reckon the reason you knew you never had to worry was that you had already found out just what she would do in a case like that the wife says.

Sho the husband says. I didn’t aim for you to find that out. Yes, sir. I thought I had covered my tracks this time.

Well, go on. What happened?

What do you reckon happened, with a big strong gal like that, without any warning that it was just him, and a durn little cuss that already looked like he had reached the point where he could bust out crying like another baby? He continues: “There wasn’t any hollering or anything. I just watched him climb slow and easy into the truck and disappear and then didn’t anything happen for about while you could count maybe fifteen slow, and then I heard one kind of astonished sound she made when she woke up, like she was just surprised and then a little put out without being scared at all, and she says, not loud neither: ‘Why, Mr. Bunch. Ain’t you ashamed. You might have woke the baby, too.’ Then he come out the back door of the truck. Not fast, and not climbing down on his own legs at all. I be dog if I don’t believe she picked him up and set him back outside on the ground like she would that baby if it had been about six years old, say, and she says, ‘You go and lay down now, and get some sleep. We got another fur piece to go tomorrow.’

“Well, I was downright ashamed to look at him, to let him know that any human man had seen and heard what happened. I be dog if I didn’t want to find the hole and crawl into it with him. I did for a fact. And him standing there where she had set him down. The fire had burned down good now and I couldn’t hardly see him at all. But I knew about how I would have been standing and feeling if I was him. And that would have been with my head bowed, waiting for the Judge to say, ‘Take him out of here and hang him quick.’ And I didn’t make a sound, and after a while I heard him go on off. I could hear the bushes popping, like he had just struck off blind through the woods. And when daylight came he hadn’t got back.

“Well, I didn’t say anything. I didn’t know what to say. I kept on believing that he would show up, would come walking up out of the bushes, face or no face. So I built up the fire and got breakfast started, and after a while I heard her climbing out of the truck. I never looked around. But I could hear her standing there like she was looking around, like maybe she was trying to tell by the way the fire or my blanket looked if he was there or not. But I never said anything and she never said anything. I wanted to pack up and get started. And I knew I couldn’t