“Meanin’ Gawd?” asked Cash.
He wanted to be sure of every step. While he did not at all know the meaning of “renounce,” yet his attendance at mountain camp-meeting revivals had given him a possible inkling as to what “All Highest” meant.
“What?” inquired the puzzled colonel, not catching his drift.
“The ‘All Highest’ is Gawd, ain’t it?” said Cash.
“It is His Imperial Majesty, the Kaiser,” sharply retorted the scandalized colonel.
“Oh!” exclaimed Cash, much interested. “I see. In Wes’ V’ginny we call Him ‘Gawd.’ An’ over in this neck of the woods your Dutch name for Him is ‘Kaiser.’ What a ninny I am! I’d allers had the idee the Kaiser was jes’ a man, with somethin’ the same sort of job as Pres’dent Wilson’s. But——”
“This picture represents the flag of the United States,” resumed the impatient Von Scheurer, waiving the subject of theology for the point in hand. “You have renounced it. You have declared your wish to fight against it. Prove that. Prove it by tearing that sketch in two—and spitting upon it!”
“Hold on!” interposed Cash, speaking with tolerant kindness as to a somewhat stupid child. “Hold on, Cap! You got me wrong. Or may be I didn’t make it so very clear. I didn’t ever say I wanted to fight Old Glory. All I said I wanted to do was to fight that crowd of smart Alecks over yonder who jail me all the time an’ won’t let me fight in my own way. I’ve got nothin’ agin th’ old flag. Why, that ’ere’s the flag I was borned under! Me an’ pop an’ gran’ther an’ the hull b’ilin’ of us—as fur back as there was any ’Merica, I reckon. I don’t go ’round wavin’ it none. That ain’t my way. But I sure ain’t goin’ to tear it up. And I most gawdamightysure ain’t goin’ to spit on it. I——”
He checked himself. Not that he had no more to say, but because to his astonishment he found he was beginning to lose his temper. This phenomenon halted his speech and turned his wondering thoughts inward.
Cash could not understand his own strange surge of choler. He had not been aware of any special interest in the American flag. A little bunting representation of the Stars and Stripes—now faded close to whiteness—hung on the wall of his shack at home, where his grandmother, a rabid Unionist, had hung it nearly sixty years earlier, when West Virginia had refused to join the Confederacy. Every day of his life Cash had seen it there; had seen without noting or caring.