“I’m your half-brother,” he said. “I’m Tyrell Jones Morris. Your mother might have been a good woman, but she was not good to me—she wasn’t fair; she prejudiced my father again’ me. You were sellin’ tickets at an elevated station in New York when I found you. You looked a good deal like your mother, for you were weak and sickly. I didn’t know then, whether I brought you back with me because we had the same blood in our veins, or because I hated you—and I don’t know yet. I’m not tellin’ you this now, because I care any thing for you, or the preacher; but Badger-face was square, and I know now ’at he’d never have turned again’ me if the rest of ya hadn’t tampered with him. I’m sorry I didn’t tell him before he died—and that’s why I’m tellin’ you now.”
I winked my eyes to the boys, and we filed out and went over to the bunk-shack. We lighted our pipes and sat a long time smokin’ in silence. One by one they dropped off to bed until only me and ol’ Tank Williams was left. Tank sat with a sour look on his face, and so deeply buried in thought that the burnt matches around his stool looked like a wood pile. “What are ya thinkin’ of, Tank?” I said to him.
“I’m not kickin’, understand,” sez he; “but it does seem to me that when all The asked for was a cradle-song, the Friar could ’a’ thought up somethin’ besides another one o’ those doggone sheep-herder hymns. The didn’t have any more use for sheep-herders ’n I have.”
This was the real Tank, all right. Once an idee took possession of him, it rode him rough shod till he keeled over with his tongue hangin’ out.
[CHAPTER FORTY-SIX—THE FINAL MOVES]
We buried The by the side o’ Tim Simpson. Horace insisted on makin’ a coffin for him—fact was, he wanted to have a regular funeral, but we talked him out o’ this; so he made a coffin himself and lined it with silk which Ty Jones had brought out for Janet to make dresses of. The Friar held some short services, but he didn’t sing or preach any. Some way, the’ didn’t seem to be any need of it. After we had covered him over we stood around talkin’ for quite a while; and then only turned away because the first rain we had had for months came rattlin’ down from the mountains.
“Do you see that, now?” asked ol’ Tank after we had reached the porch and were sittin’ watchin’ it come down in torrents.
“I’m not totally blind,” sez I.
“Well, I’m not superstitious,” sez Tank; “but I’m bettin’ that he’s had that tended to, himself. He wasn’t one to forget his friends, and he knew ’at what we needed most was rain—so he’s called attention to it the first chance he’s had.”
Fact was, Tank was so everlastin’ superstitious that he spelt Tomas with an “h” in it to keep from havin’ thirteen letters in his full name; but it did seem queer about this rain, because they wasn’t any sane man in the world who would have expected a rain just at this time. It’s astonishin’ how many curious things there is if a feller just takes notice of ’em.