“Well, I don't know,” said Uncle Ike, as he wiggled around a little when the first peanut shuck got down near the small of his back. “These scientific people make me weary, talking about preventing tornadoes by firing cannon into the funnel-shaped clouds. Why don't they do it? If a tornado came up, you would find these cannon sharps in a cellar somewhere. They are a passel of condemned theorists, and they want someone else to take sight over a cannon at an approaching tornado, while the sharps look through a peep-hole and see how it is going to work. You might have a million cannon loaded ready for tornadoes, and when one came up it would come so quick nobody would think of the cannon, and everybody would dig out for a place of safety. Not one artilleryman in a million could hit a tornado in a vital part. Do these people think tornadoes are going around with a target tied on them, for experts to shoot cannon balls at? A tornado is like one of these Fourth of July nigger-chasers, that you touch off and it starts somewhere and changes its mind and turns around and goes sideways, and when it finds a girl looking the other way it everlastingly makes for her and runs into her pantalets when she would swear it was pointed the other way. No, I am something of a sportsman myself, and can shoot a gun some, but if I had a cannon in each hand loaded for elephants, and I should see a tornado going the other way, I would drop both guns and crawl into a hole, and the tornado would probably turn around and pick up the guns and fire them into the hole I was in. That's the kind of an insect a tornado is, and don't you ever fool with one. A tornado is worse than a battle. I remember when we were at the battle of Gettysburg——”
“Oh, for Heaven's sake, Uncle Ike, what have I done that you should fight that war all over again every time I try to have a quiet talk with you?” and the boy stuffed his fingers in his ears, and got up off the old man's lap, and the uncle got up and walked around, and when the peanut shells began to work down his legs, and scratch his skin, and he found his foot asleep from holding the big boy in his lap, the old man thought he was stricken with paralysis, and he sat down again, and called the boy to him and said, in a trembling voice:
“My boy, you are going to lose your Uncle Ike. I feel that the end is coming, and before I go to the beautiful beyond I want to say a few serious words to you. It is coming as I had hoped. The disease begins at my feet, and will work up gradually, paralyzing my limbs, then my body, and lastly my brain will be seized by the destroyer, and then it will all be over with your Uncle Ike. Remove my shoes, my boy, and I will tell you a story. When we scaled the perpendicular wall at Lookout Mountain, in the face of the Confederate guns, and——”
“Can this be death?” said the boy, as he took off one of the old man's shoes and emptied out a handful of peanut shucks, and laughed loud and long.
“Well, by gum!” said Uncle Ike, “peanuts instead of paralysis,” and he jumped up and kicked high with the lately paralyzed legs; “now, I haven't eaten peanuts in a week, and I suppose those shucks have been in my clothes all this time. I am not going to die. Go dig some worms and I will show you the liveliest corpse that ever caught a mess of bullheads,” and the boy dropped the shoe and went out winking and laughing as though he was having plenty of fun, and Uncle Ike went to a mirror and looked at himself to see if he was really alive.
CHAPTER VII.
“You are a nice-looking duck,” said Uncle Ike, as the red-headed boy came into the sitting-room with a black' eye and a scratch across his nose, and one thumb tied up in a rag, but looking as well, otherwise, as could be expected. “What you been doing? Run over by a trolley car or anything?”