The boy nodded indifferently.
"I 'lowed ye hed ther power ter shout fer me when ye war ready, I wasn't more'n a whoop an' a holler distant."
The mother, hovering in the shadowed interior of the house, listened silently, and a little anxiously. This friction of unbending temper between her husband and son was a thing to which she could never quite accustom herself. Always she was interposing herself as a buffer between their threats of clashing wills.
"Turner," said the elder man slowly, and now he spoke quietly with an effort to curb his irascibililty, "I knows thet boys often-times gits uppety an' brash when they're a-growin' inter manhood. They've got thar growth an' they feel thar strength an' they hain't acquired neither sense ner experience enough ter realize how plumb teetotally much they don't know yit. But speakin' jedgmatically, I hain't never heered tell of no Stacy afore what hain't been loyal ter his family an' ther head of his house. 'Pears like ter me hit pleasures ye beyond all reason ter sot yoreself crost-wise erginst me."
The boy's eyes grew somberly dark as they met those of his father with undeviating steadiness. An analyst would have said that the outward surliness was after all only a mask for an inner questioning—the inarticulate stress of a cramped and aspiring spirit.
"I don't know as ye hev any rightful cause fer ter charge me with bein' disloyal," he answered slowly, as if pondering the accusation. "I hain't never aimed ter contrary ye."
Lone Stacy paused for a moment and then the timbre of his voice acquired the barb of an irony more massive than subtle.
"Air yore heart in torment because ye hain't ther President of ther country, like Abe Lincoln was? Is thet why ye don't delight in nothin' save dilitary dreams?"
A slow, brick-red flush suffused the brown cheeks of Bear Cat Stacy, and his answer came with a slowness that was almost halting.
"When Abraham Lincoln was twenty years old he warn't no more President then what I be. Thar hain't many Lincoln's, but any feller kin have ther thing in him, though, thet carried Lincoln up ter whar he went. Any feller kin do his best and want ter do some better. Thet's all I'm aimin' after."