I didn’t wait for him to answer, but jumped up in the road and walked across to him. I didn’t want him coming over to me and looking down the bank.
“Frogs,” says he, “I should say I had heard some. That marsh is alive with ’em.”
“I ain’t been able to git near one in a mile,” says I. “I kin git a nickel a dozen for them down to the hotel.”
“How d’you get ’em?” he wanted to know.
“Whallop ’em with a club. I got to git a new one, too. A longer one with a knob on the end of it. Guess I can cut one off ’n that hick’ry yonder.”
There was a big hickory about a hundred feet off, and I started for it, and of course he came following along. It’s a funny thing, but folks always will follow like that. Just meet a man or a boy or a woman and point to something and say you’re going to do something or other to it, and he’ll come mogging along as interested as if you were a balloon ascension.
“Gimme a boost up,” I says.
He helped me and I got hold of the lower limb and was up in a minute. It was a smooth-bark hickory, and good clubs were growing all over it. It was a regular club tree. I got out my knife and began sawing away at a limb. It was hard cutting, but I got it off pretty soon and dropped it down on the ground. I came down after it, and trimmed it up, talking to Henry C. Batten all the time.
“Summer boarder?” I asked him, looking at his clothes.
He grinned. “Well, something like that,” he admitted. “I guess, seeing the time of year it is, that I’m a spring boarder.”