“Why, you see, later on we’ll be in the saddle; and if such a thing should jess accidentally happen to happen, which I hope it won’t, to be sho’, that I should happen to sort o’ absent-mindedly yell out ‘Go!’ like as if a hornet had stabbed me, you jess come down with that switch, and make the critter under you run like a scared dog, as it were.”
“Must I?”
“No, I don’t say you must, but you’d better, I bet you. You needn’t if you don’t want to.”
Presently the dim path led them into a clear, rippling creek, and seemed to Mary to end; but when the buggy wheels had crunched softly along down stream over some fifty or sixty yards of gravelly shallow, the road showed itself faintly again on the other bank, and the horse, with a plunge or two and a scramble, jerked them safely over the top, and moved forward in the direction of the rising moon. They skirted a small field full of ghostly dead trees, where corn was beginning to make a show, turned its angle, and saw the path under their feet plain to view, smooth and hard.
“See that?” said the man, in a tone of playful triumph, as the animal started off at a brisk trot, lifted his head and neighed. “‘My day’s work’s done,’ sezee; ‘I done hoed my row.’” A responsive neigh came out of the darkness ahead. “That’s the trick!” said the man. “Thanks, as the felleh says.” He looked to Mary for her appreciation of his humor.
“I suppose that means a good deal; does it?” asked she, with a smile.
“Jess so! It means, first of all, fresh hosses. And then it means a house what aint been burnt by jayhawkers yit, and a man and woman a-waitin’ in it, and some bacon and cornpone, and maybe a little coffee; and milk, anyhow, till you can’t rest, and buttermilk to fare-you-well. Now, have you ever learned the trick o’ jess sort o’ qui’lin’[2] up, cloze an’ all, dry so, and puttin’ half a night’s rest into an hour’s sleep? ’Caze why, in one hour we must be in the saddle. No mo’ buggy, and powerful few roads. Comes as nigh coonin’ it as I reckon you ever ’lowed you’d like to do, don’t it?”
He smiled, pretending to hold back much laughter, and Mary smiled too. At mention of a woman she had removed her bonnet and was smoothing her hair with her hand.
“I don’t care,” she said, “if only you’ll bring us through.”
The man made a ludicrous gesture of self-abasement.