Old Jephthah looked wordless contempt at the nephew who knew little enough to impute such a course to him.
“That’s what I say,” put in Jim Cal’s thin, querulous tones from the back of the room—the voice of a fat man in trouble; can anyone say why the sorrows of the obese are always comic to the rest of the world? “A body cain’t sleep nights for thinkin’ what may chance.”
“Oh,—air you thar, podner?” inquired Blatch, with a sort of ferocious banter in his tone which he frequently used toward his fleshy associate. “I thort ye was down in the bed sick.”
“I was,” said Jim Cal sulkily; “but Iley she said—Iley ’lowed——”
Blatch burst into a great horse laugh, which the others joined.
“I know’d in reason ye’d be down when they came any trouble at the still,” he commented. “Hit always affects yo’ health thataway; but I didn’t know Iley had seed reason to dig ye out. What you goin’ to do about Bonbright, Unc’ Jep—stand in with him?”
“Well—you air a fool,” observed the old man meditatively. “Who named standin’ in with Bonbright, or standin’ out agin’ him? When I rented you my farm for five year I had no thought of yo’ starting up that pesky ol’ still on it. But I never was knowed to rue a trade. My daddy taught me when I made a bad bargain to freeze the tighter to it, and I’ve no mind to do other.”
“They’d been a still thar,” said Blatch defensively.
The old man nodded.
“Oh, yes,” he agreed. “Hit had been,—I put it thar. I’ve made many a run of whiskey in my young days—and I’ve seed the folly of it. I reckon you fool boys’ll have to see the folly of it too befo’ yo’ve got yo’ satisfy. As for Creed Bonbright, he ’pears to think that if we have plenty of law in the Turkey Tracks we’ll all go to heaven in a hand-basket. Mebbe he’s right, and then agin mebbe he’s wrong; but this I know, ain’t anybody goin’ to jump on him in my house, and he gets a fair show when fightin’ time comes.”