“All right,” says Billy. “Two haids is better ’n one, if one is a sheep’s haid.”
After supper, I passed Silverstein’s two ’r three times, and about nine o’clock I seen Macie. She was ’way back towards the end of the store, a lamp and a book in front of her; and she was a-workin’ like a steam-thrasher.
Somehow it come over me all to oncet then that she’d meant ev’ry single word she said, and that, sooner ’r later–she was goin’. Goin’. And I’d be stayin’ behind. I looked ’round me. Say! Briggs City didn’t show up much. “Without her,” I says, (they was that red-hot-iron feelin’ inside of me again) “–without her, what is it?–the jumpin’-off place!”
Beyond me, a piece, was Up-State’s tent. A light was burnin’ inside it, too, and Doc Trowbridge was settin’ in the moonlight by the openin’. Behind him, I could see Up-State, writin’.
I trailed home to my bunk. But you can understand I didn’t sleep good. And ’way late, I had a dream. I dreamed the Bar Y herd broke fence and stampeded through Briggs, and after ’em come about a hunderd bull-whackers, all a-layin’ it on to them steers with the flick of they lashes -zip, zip, zip, zip.
Next mornin, I woke quick–with a jump, y’ might say. I looked at my nickel turnip. It was five-thirty. I got up. The sun was shinin’, the air was nice and clear and quiet and the larks was just singin’ away. But outside, along the winda-sill, was stretched a’ inch-wide trickle of sand!
In no time I was hoofin’ it down the street. When I got to Up-State’s tent, Billy Trowbridge was inside it, movin’ ’round, puttin’ stuff into a trunk, and–wipin’ the sand outen his eyes.
“He was right?” I says, when I goes in, steppin’ soft, and whisperin’–like Up-State ’d allus whispered. Billy turned to me and kinda smiled, fer all he felt so all-fired bad. “Yas, Cupid,” he says, “he was right. One more storm.”
Just then, from the station–
| “Sweet is the vale where the Mohawk gently glides On its fair, windin’ way to the sea–” |