"Yeah. Too easygoing. Got a heart in him big as a mule. Jodie, have you heard any more about Ward making you-know-what?"
"No, sir. Ned told me last week he still hadn't rigged up the still. And Doctor Elton says he didn't come across no signs last time he was over there to see Miss Dink. If Ward had had any mash fermenting, the doctor would've smelled it. But, I'm just waiting. I aim to call the Law, threats or no threats! Hal Goode laughed and told me if I had brains enough to carry me across the branch, I'd encourage Ward, help him make some money so he'd pay me what he owes!"
"You oughta've took a mortgage on Ward's mules last year, Jodie. That's what other storekeepers do when they're furnishing a man. Then in the fall, if the man won't pay up, they foreclose and get a little of their money back. You're too trusting."
"I know, Pa. Trouble is, if you take a man's mule, come the next spring he can't make a crop! And you never would collect."
"Well, have it your way. What happened this morning that made Hawk Lumpkin so mad at Ward?"
"It was what Ward said about the road. You see, Old Man Hawk had come riding up in that one-horse wagon of his pretty soon after the automobile stopped. He was mad and just a-ranting. I couldn't tell at first if he was talking to his mule or to himself."
"Probably both, if I know Hawk. He thinks more of that old gray mule than he does of his wife! Why, he's had that old bag of bones thirty years!"
Papa laughed.
"The mule, Jodie! Not the wife!" Grandpa laughed too. "What was Hawk raving about?"
"He was grumbling that a man and his mule ain't safe on the road no more. He said that all them dad-burned automobiles come tearing through—'course 'dad-burned' wasn't exactly the word he used—trying to run a-body in the ditch and scaring the living daylights outta you."