Say! she went by him like a streak of lightnin’, almost knockin’ him down. And the door slammed so hard you could ’a’ heerd it plumb t’ Galveston.
I hung ’round the corral fer as much as half a’ hour, listenin’ to the pow-wow goin’ on at the house. But nobody seemed to be a-hollerin’ fer me t’ come in, so I made fer the straw. “Aw, wal,” I says to myself, “her dander ’ll cool off t’-morra.”
But the next day, she passed me by without speakin’. And I, like a sap-head, didn’t speak neither. I was on my high hoss,–wouldn’t speak till she did. So off I had t’ go to Hasty Creek fer three days–and no good-bye t’ the little gal.
I got back late one afternoon. At the bunk-house, I noticed a change in the boys. They all seemed just about t’ bust over somethin’–not laughin’, y’ savvy, but anxious, kinda, and achin’ to tell news.
Fin’lly, I went over to Hairoil. “Pardner,” I says, “spit it out.”
He looked up. “Cupid,” he says, “us fellers don’t like t’ git you stirred up, but we think it’s about time someone oughta speak–and put you next.”
“Next about what?” I ast. The way he said it give me a kinda start.
“We’ve saw how things was a-goin’, but we didn’t say nothin’ to you ’cause it wasn’t none of our funeral. Quite a spell back, folks begun to talk about how crazy Macie Sewell was gittin’ to be on the singin’ question. It leaked out that she’d been tole she had a A1 voice––”
“It ain’t no lie, neither.”
“And that her warblin’ come pretty clost to bein’ as good as Melba’s.”