“Here, you Jim Hawks! That ain't any way to do.”
Then Jim walks down the road with his rifle over his arm, and Jeaney Merimy comes to the door. She looked some mad and some crying, a little of both.
“Hall,” says he, “you turn your horse and go back where you come from. Maybe I'll see you by and by. The rest of you go back to Canada Center, and if Jeaney wants anything of you she'll come and say so. You go, now!”
And they went. The extra woman drove off with the sheriff, hanging her head, and the sheriff saying, “You'll have to come to time, Jim Hawks, soon or late.” Jeaney Merimy sat in the door with her head hung down, too; and the only one as ought to have been ashamed, he was walking around uppish, like he meant to call down Tioba for throwing rocks into his yard. Then Jeaney sees me, and she says:
“You're all down on Jim. There's no one but me to stand up for Jim.”
She began to cry, while Jim cocked his head and looked at her curious. And she kept saying, “There's no one but me to stand up for Jim.”
That was a queer way for her to look at it.
Now, that night set in, like the one before, with a drizzling rain. It was the longest wet weather I ever knew. I kept going to the window to look at the light over at the Hawkses' and wonder what would come of it, till it made my wife nervous, and she's apt to be sharp when she's nervous, so I quit. And the way Tioba talked double that night was terrible—um-hiss, toot-toot, hour after hour; and no sleep for me and my wife, being nervous.
I do' know what time it was, or what we heard. All I know is, my wife jumps up with a yell, and I jumps up too, and I know we were terrible afraid and stood listening maybe a minute. It seemed like there was almost dead silence in the night, only the um-m went on, but no hissing and no tooting, and if there was any sound of the rain or wind I don't recollect it. And then, “Um!” says Tioba, louder and louder and louder! till there was no top nor bottom to it, and the whole infernal world went to pieces, and pitched me and my wife flat on the floor.
The first I knew, there was dead silence again; or maybe my hearing was upset, for soon after I began to hear the rain buzzing away quietly. Then I got up and took a lantern, and my wife grabs me.