The engineer walked to the side of the boat, working his lower jaw like he was chewing something, which he wasn’t at all. He stood a minnit without saying a word, then, in the dolefulest voice you ever heard, he says:
“If I was to git into that pesky boat it ’u’d be jest my luck to git tipped over.”
We never got to know him very well, but in the little time we were with him we found out that was just the way he looked at things. So far as we found out he never had anything very awful happen to him, but he didn’t have any faith in his luck, and he was certain-sure the next thing he did was going to turn out bad.
“We want to know about Uncle Hieronymous,” I says.
“Who be you?” he asked. “I don’t calc’late to spread news about anybody until I find out who I’m tellin’. You might mean some harm to Hieronymous.”
“He’s my uncle,” I says. “We boys are staying at his house for the summer.”
He drew down his mouth till it was near a foot long. “Well,” says he, “why don’t you stay there, then, instid of gallivantin’ around the country in a boat that hain’t much short of bein’ murderous?”
“Because,” says Mark, “we g-g-got to see him special and important.”
“Anythin’ unfort’nate happened him?” asked the engineer, leaning over the edge of the scow. It looked like misfortunes were a regular specialty of his.
“No,” says Mark, “but somethin’s goin’ to if we don’t find him p-p-pretty quick.”