The cook was mighty good to me while I was backin' it; he used to
deal out fussy little fixin's 'at kept the appetite an' the fever both down, an' when they wasn't no one around he used to pat out my pillers an' oncet he smoothed back my hair. He cut out his cussin' too, an' he used to line up the kid for it.
"You're from the South, ain't ya, Happy?" sez he to me one day.
"Not so you could notice," sez I. "I reckon this is the southest I ever got before."
"Hu," sez the cook, "Texas ain't south. Texas is just the rubbish heap o' this whole country. Where did you hook up to that word 'reckon'?"
"I dunno," sez I, thinkin' back. "A feller just catches words like the mumps, I suppose; but my pap, he used to use it right often."
"Where did your folks come from?" sez the cook.
"Oh, they come from Kentucky, an' before that from Virginia an' No'th Carolina, an' before that they came from Scotch Irish an' English, an' go clear back to Adam an' you'll find us Hawkinses was a ramblin' crew, I reckon; but what on earth you drivin' at, Monody, an' where on earth did your line hail from?"
He sat there a moment with lights an' shades dartin' over his ugly face, which somehow wasn't ugly to me any more, an' at last he said: "I have the blood of an Injun chief an' an African king an' a Spanish nobleman in my veins, an'—"
"Lord, man, you ought to let some of it out," I interrupted. "You'll have an eruption in your in'ards some day 'at'll blow you into a million pieces."
"No, I got 'em all whipped out now, Happy, an' I reckon 'at you did it. You 're the only man I ever met 'at I ain't once felt like killin'."