“And so I saw the ol’ man under ground and come up here with the girl. Got the missionary, Father Donahan, to do the tyin’. (Oh, damn him!) And then I begun to be happy. Seemed like God heard the ol’ man for a spell, tho’ his voice was weak when he said it. Now I guess mebbe he didn’t hear. Does he always hear, Hank?”
“Dunno,” muttered the big man, who sat with his face in his hands; “seems like He ain’t out here ’t all, sometimes.”
“Oh, shut up, will you?” peevishly snapped the little man. “Le’ me talk! You got plenty of time for talkin’! Le’ me talk, will you?”
The big man sighed, and the other continued rapidly in a sort of a dazed sing-song voice with little inflection in it, like a man in a trance.
“Big change come over me then; better man all ’round. Factor saw it and sent me on some long trips; seemed to trust me more’n before. But I always done the longest trips in the shortest poss’ble time. Doted on that girl wife, and I guess I was about the happiest feller that ever cussed a pack mule. Used to like to set around the cabin when I could and watch her skip about the place makin’ things comfort’ble like a woman can when she’s a mind.
“And by and by I was happier’n ever. That was when the little boy come. Cute little feller, that boy was. Don’t you mind? Had blue eyes, and that tickled me half to death, ’cause black eyes is the rule in my fambly and hers, and it seemed like God was tryin’ to be kind to me.
“When Father Donahan christened the young’n, I drawed his attention to them blue eyes and Donahan (no, I ain’t goin’ to call him Father no more, ’cause if he was a priest, he was a priest of the devil!) What was I sayin’?”
At the sound of Donahan’s name upon his own lips, the little man’s face writhed into malevolent contortions.
“What was I sayin’?” he repeated dazedly.
“Blue eyes,” suggested Hank.