“I don't see either end of it,” says I. “You're a bad one, Jim, a downright bad one.”
“That's so. It's Jeaney you mean,” he says, looking kind of interested. “It'll be hell for Jeaney, won't it?”
The wind and rain was whooping round the house so we could hardly hear each other. It was like a wild thing trying to get in, which didn't know how to do it, and wouldn't give up; and then you'd hear like something whimpering, and little fingers tapping at the window-glass.
My opinion of Jim Hawks was that I didn't seem to get on to him, and that's my opinion up to now; and it appeared to me then that Jim might be the proper explanation himself of anything the extra woman did which seemed unreasonable; but I didn't tell him that, because I didn't see rightly what it would mean if I said it.
Jim got up and stretched his legs. “Now, I tell you, Fargus,” says he, “I'm going to put the thing to Jeaney, being a clipper little woman, not to say sharp. If it comes to the worst, I daresay Canada Center will give us a burying; or if she wants to slide over the mountains with me, there's no trouble about it; or if she'd rather go her own way, and me mine, that's reasonable; or if she says to do nothing but hold the fort, why, that's all right, too, only Canada Center would be likely to take a hand, and then there'd surely be trouble, on account of me getting mad. Now, I have to say to you, Fargus, that you've been as friendly as a man could be, as things are; and maybe you've seen the last of me, and maybe you wouldn't mind if you had.”
“Speaking generally,” says I, “you're about right, Jim.”
With that he laughed, and went out, pulling the door to hard against the storm.
Next day the rain came streaming down, and my cellar was flooded, and the valley was full of the noise of the flood brooks. I kept looking toward the Hawkses' place, having a kind of notion something would blow up there. It appeared to me there was too much gunpowder in that family for the house to stay quiet. Besides, I saw Tioba had been dropping rocks in the night, and there were new boulders around. One had ploughed through Jim's yard, and the road was cut up frightful. The boulder in Jim's yard looked as if it might be eight feet high. I told my wife the Hawkses ought to get out of there, and she said she didn't care, she being down on Jim on account of his mixed drinks, which had a way of getting under a man, I'm free to say, and heaving him up.
About four o'clock in the afternoon it come off misty, and I started over to tell Jim he'd better get out; and sudden I stops and looks, for there was a crowd coming from Canada Center—the Storrses and the Petersons and the Merimys, and the extra woman in a buggy with Henry Hall, who was county sheriff then. “Well, 'Mighty!” says I.
They pulled up in front of Jim's place, and I took it they were going to walk in and settle things prompt. But you see, when I got there, it was Jim a-standing by his door with his rifle, and the sheriff and Canada Center was squeezing themselves through the gate and Jim shooting off sideways at the pickets on his fence. And the sheriff ups and yelled: