“How was that?”
“Why, you see, he was out fishing, and climbed out on a log and slipped someway. It’s about two miles further down the river, between his parents’ farm and ours; and by a God’s mercy we were riding by, Dave and the baby and I—the baby wasn’t out of long-clothes then—and we heard the scream. Dave jumped out and ran, peeling his clothes as he ran. I only waited to throw the weight out of the wagon to hold the horses, and ran after him. I could see him plain in the water. Oh, it surely was a dreadful sight! I dream of it nights sometimes yet; and he’s there in the water, with his wet hair streaming over his eyes, and his eyes sticking out, and his lips blue, fighting the current with one hand, and drifting off, off, inch by inch, all the time. And I wake up with the same longing on me to cry out, ‘Let the boy go! Swim! Swim!’”
“Well, did you cry that?” says Amos.
“Oh no, sir. I went in to him. I pushed a log along and climbed out on it and held out a branch to him, and someway we all got ashore—”
“What did you do with the baby?”
“I was fixing to lay him down in a soft spot when I saw a man was on the bank. He was jumping up and down and yelling: ‘I caynt swim a stroke! I caynt swim a stroke!’ ‘Then you hold the baby,’ says I; and I dumped poor Davy into his arms. When we got the boy up the bank he looked plumb dead; but Dave said: ‘He ain’t dead! He caynt be dead! I won’t have him dead!’ wild like, and began rubbing him. I ran to the man. If you please, there that unfortunate man was, in the same place, holding Baby as far away from him as he could get, as if he was a dynamite bomb that might go off at any minute. ‘Give me your pipe,’ says I. ‘You will have to fish it out of my pocket yourself,’ says he; ‘I don’t dast loose a hand from this here baby!’ And he did look funny! But you may imagine I didn’t notice that then. I ran back quick’s I could, and we rubbed that boy and worked his arms and, you may say, blowed the breath of life into him. We worked more’n a hour—that poor man holding the baby the enduring time: I reckon his arms were stiff’s ours!—and I’d have given him up: it seemed awful to be rumpling up a corpse that way. But Dave, he only set his teeth and cried, ‘Keep on, I will save him!’”
“And you did save him?”
“He did,” flashed the wife; “he’d be in his grave but for Dave. I’d given him up. And his mother knows it. And she said that if that child was not named Johnny ayfter his paw, she’d name him David ayfter Mist’ Brown; but seeing he was named, she’d do next best, give him David for a middle. And as calling him Johnny David seemed too long, they always call him Johnny D. But won’t you rest your hat on the bed and sit down, Mister—”