“Well, they are some quarrelsome, Barbara, and that’s why I think I ought to see them, carrying a dove of peace on my shoulder.”
“They’d kill a dove of peace and eat it, wouldn’t they?” she asked laughingly. “Don’t they shoot everything in sight?”
“Pretty nigh,” agreed Absalom. “They certainly do have nervous dispositions. They own a lot of land up there on Longstreet Mountain, and the two of them used to live side by side. But their chickens were so inquisitive about what was doing in the next yard, and they got so mixed up running through the fence and forgetting which place was home, that there was a row on early and late between my uncles. It was the same with the calves. If they wanted to break into a field and eat up the corn, they always picked out the field of the next door neighbor. And that made the brothers just dancing mad. Then once Uncle Ephriam shot a hound of Uncle Aaron’s—said he thought it was a timber wolf.
“And so it went. There was always trouble. When they heard I’d become a preacher they sent for me to come up and straighten things out. I stayed up there a month and talked things over and I couldn’t get either old stiff-neck to give an inch. So I worked out a plan. Aaron had a likely building site for his house, but Uncle Ephriam’s was on a slope and water ran into the cellar when it rained. Well, just in front of them was a deep ravine—mighty pretty it is too. I proposed that Ephriam should move across to the other side of that gulley. I told him if he would, I’d stay and help him put up his house. So Aaron bought Ephriam’s old house to use for a barn, and Ephriam moved—chickens, stock, truck and all—across the gulley. We got him a nice sizable house there, and settled him and his wife as comfortable as you please. It was altogether too much work for the calves and the chickens to get across that crack in the earth, and so everyone lived in peace.”
“That was fine. But why should you leave Jonathan and me to go to see them if they’re doing so well?”
“They aren’t doing so well as you might think, wife. No sooner had I got those families separated, by a convulsion of nature, so to speak, than they took to pining for each other.”
“Nonsense, Absalom.”
“It’s a fact, my dear. They were as lonely as owls. Said they didn’t have anyone to talk to, and that it wore them all out plunging up and down that gulley.”
“Well, what can you do about that? You don’t propose moving Uncle Ephriam back again, do you?”
“Not at all, Barbara, not at all. I merely propose making conversation easy and simple for them.”