In response to a call old man Sumter appeared.
“This yer man” (the mountaineer is apt to be off-hand in his introductions), “is the owner of that veneerin’ mill in Kentucky. He’s come to look at that ar curly wa’nut and to make you a offer for it; and here’s two letters from two other men that runs that kind of mills. One of ’em bids ’leven-hundred-an’-fifty dollars for it and the other a hundred or two more.”
Sumter fumbled with the letters, affecting even more than his habitual gruffness.
“Looks like you ain’t been to look at your property lately. That ar curly wa’nut ain’t no good for veneerin’ nor nothin’ else; it’s done chopped to pieces.”
Apparently his neighbour was absorbed in switching a fly off the white mule’s back, for he replied with his eye following the fly:
“I was up thar yesterday evening an ’twas all right then. You jump in thar ’long side of my boy and we’ll go up and look at it,” and the embarrassed old man got in because he didn’t know what else to do or what to say.
When next they halted they were among the felled trees. It was strange, but Colonel Ledbetter’s eyes never happened to light on that scarred log as he led his party past it and toward the summit of the hill.
“There’s only ten trees lying here,” he said, “that curly I left standing. Sometimes the man that buys it will give more for it that-a-way because he wants to have it cut particular; sometimes they count on gettin’ root and all.”
“Thar she is neighbour,” he said to the Kentuckian, slapping the old tree’s sides as proudly as if it had been a three-year-old thoroughbred and his own, “and if you don’t ’low she’s a giant and a beauty, you want to go out of the lumber business.”
He waited to hear his sentiment confirmed and then hand in hand with his grandson walked away leaving Sumter to make his own bargain.