Uncle Eb hesitated, chewed hard, swallowed, and gulped a noisy drink of cold coffee.
“The wust thing into the world, son—he got caught. He never done no harm, but gittin’ caught for a thing is ’nough, whether ye done it or not. S’posin’ we let him talk for hisself.”
He stamped twice on the floor. A couple of minutes later a door silently opened and Steve stepped up from the cellar stairs. After one glance he leaped to Douglas’ side and gripped his hand.
“Hamp!” he gulped. “Ye’re a white man! I ain’t a-goin’ to forgit this. Jest wait till I git my chance to pay ye some way——”
“Oh, forget it! Man alive, I don’t want any pay. If you owe anything to anybody it’s to Uncle Eb, not to me. I just blundered in and had a lot of fun with those fellows. Uncle Eb’s the one to thank.”
“I ain’t a-forgittin’ Uncle Eb—he knows it. But the way ye took holt——”
“All right, all right, let it slide. But now, if you don’t mind telling me, what’s it all about? What are those fellows after you for? Don’t tell me if you don’t want to.”
“Why, don’t ye know? Wal, if that ain’t—— Ye jest went ahead an’ helped me anyways, huh? My Gawd! I didn’t s’pose there was sech folks into the world.
“It’s this way, Hamp. We pick a lot o’ berries round here into the summer—not right here into the Traps, but ’way over to Long Pond an’ miles an’ miles further ’long the mount’ins—an’ sell ’em to dealers. An’ other fellers come from down b’low to do the same—it’d take a hull army to pick ’em all, they’re so thick. Some o’ them fellers are pretty hard. An’ when some of us folks from here was pickin’ round Three-Mile Post, I fit with the Bump boys—three of ’em, brothers, that lived down ’bout a mile outside o’ the Wall over yender, onto the road to Paltz.
“Wal, they licked me—three of ’em, all bigger’n me. They licked me bad. Course, I was crazy mad, an’ I swore to Gawd I’d come down outen the Traps some day an’ buckshoot ’em, an’ burn their house an’ I dunno what all. But there was four weeks more o’ pickin’, an’ the Bumps went somewheres else, an’ I got cooled off, an’ by the time I got back here to the Traps I’d made up my mind to leave ’em ’lone. An’ I did.