Just as he got fairly upon the platform the car started and he fell through the open door into the aisle, scattering his goods and chattels in every direction. As he got upon his knees he remarked in a tone of conviction:
“There now! I knew I shouldn’t like the blarsted country!”
§ 143 Only Three Had Remained
From where he lived high up on a ridge of the mountains along the boundary between Kentucky and West Virginia, an elderly hillsman came down to the general store at the cross roads for provender. There he met a lowland acquaintance who asked him whether there was any news up in the knobs.
“Well, son,” said the mountaineer, “I don’t know as there’s any neighborhood gossip stirrin’ without you’d keer to hear about my affair with them dad-fetched Hensley boys.”
The visitor professed a desire to know the details.
“Well,” said the old gentleman, “off and on, here lately, I’ve been havin’ a right smart trouble with them Hensleys. The whole passel of ’em live right up the creek a little piece above my place, and they tuck a sort of a grudge ag’inst me. Every night when I went out to feed the stock they’d be hid in the brush-fence at the lower end of my hoss-lot and they’d shoot at me with them high-powered rifles of their’n. It pestered me no little!
“Finally I got plum’ outdone over it. Of late years I’ve tried to live at peace with one and all; but there’s a limit to any man’s patience. Besides, I’m gittin’ along in years and I can’t see to aim the way I could oncet, on account of my eyesight; but I jest made up my mind the other night that I wouldn’t stand it no more.
“So that night when I went out to feed I taken my old gun along with me. Shore enough, they was ambushed in the same place, and they cut down on me jest as soon as I came into sight.
“So I up with my gun and I sort of sprayed them bushes with bullets. That seemed to quiet ’em down, and I went on with my feedin’; but after I’d got through I felt sort of curious and I walked down to that there brush fence and taken a look over on the fur side of it. And, son, all of them Hensleys was gone but three!”