“The plot of that story is a pe’plexity to me, suh. I think of things to put in it when I am out on the rivah, and when I get back I fo’get what they ah. I am going to get some moah papeh and write the whole thing oveh. Maybe I will kill that infe’nal Pud Calkins and I will myself marry that female whose face is concealed. Somebody must marry her or she will be left without suppo’t at the end of the book. People will nevah buy my memoahs. They will look in the back, and if theah is no wedding theah, they will cast the volume aside.
“That Pud Calkins is much on my mind, suh. He is a predicament. He wakes me f’om my slumbehs, an’ sits beside me at my humble meals. He has dammed up the flow of my fancy in my novel, suh. I have nevah read a novel that had anything like him in it. He is a damned nuisance, suh, and he has got to go.
“The next time you come down I would like to read to you what I have written. It is too much mixed up now, but I will have it all in o’deh when you come again. And anotheh thing that bothehs me is my chestnut filly that I rode durin’ the wah. I have got to have her in the story. I rode her through battle smoke and oveh fields of ca’nage. I was at the head of my men, suh, an’ ev’ry fall of her hoofs was on dead Yankees that fell befoah ouah onslaught. It would break my heaht if Pud Calkins should evah ride that hawss, even in a story, and yet Pud Calkins was on the field where I fell covehed with wounds, and he rode some hawss home to tell the tale, and if he had some otheh hawss, I would have to leave my filly out, foh only one live hawss was left at the end of that cha’ge, and that was the one I fell f’om, an’ Great Gawd, man, I couldn’t kill my filly!
“Of co’se my hawss will succumb in my memoahs to the immutable laws of natcha, but that must appeah as the reco’d of the actual fact, afteh the wah was oveh. She will not die by my hand, even in fiction—no, suh! I will kill Pud Calkins a thousand times first, suh!
“The prepahation of all this written matteh has been a great labah to me, but it has occupied many houahs that would othe’wise be unbeahable in this Gawd fo’saken country. I sit heah by my fiah and wo’k with my pen, but this Pud Calkins is always by my side, suh.”
Barring a few unavoidable discomforts, I spent a very pleasant week with the Colonel. The fishing had been good, and there was a world of interest and joy in the stretches of the great marsh, teeming with wild life, and filled with the gentle melodies of hidden waters.
I paid mine host his modest bill, bade him good bye at the landing, rowed up stream, and, after spending a day with Tipton Posey at Bundy’s Bridge, left the river country.
It was six months before I returned. I sought the Colonel and found him much changed. A trouble had come upon him. His eye had lost its lustre, he had an air of listlessness and preoccupation, and he looked older.
It seemed that there had been great excitement in the county after my departure, and the Colonel had been the storm center.
When we had finished our simple evening meal, and had lighted our pipes before the fire, the Colonel handed me a copy of The Index, the weekly paper, published at the county seat. Its date was about four months old.