“All Laos are brother and sister,” she replied.
Well, I’ve found it best to keep out of native feuds and family jangles. “Some old village quarrel back of it,” I thought.
All night it rained, and in the morning the river was talking to the cliffs in a louder voice. And the water was up and coming. Bits of drift were floating.
Among the traders I found Pra Oom Bwaht settled in a little hut off by himself. He had scant store of Karen cloths, Laos baskets, some hammered brass. He was sitting on a big box, and it was covered with a mat woven of tree-cotton fiber. He arose to meet me and came to the door.
“Let us chat here,” he said. “I like the sun better than the shade.”
It was queer to deny me a seat beside him, I thought; but I let it pass. I was not paying much attention to details then.
So we sat in the doorway and watched the rain and heard the river talking to Kalgai Gorge. Trade was slack and would be until the greater rains came bearing boats and rafts from above and over and beyond, from up the river and the little rivers coming into it.
I could make nothing of Pra Oom Bwaht, I say. I left him and went out to chaffer a bit.
“Who knows the Karen fool?” Ali Beg, just down from Szechuan after trading rifles to Chinese Mohammedans for opium, demanded of me from the door of his own place.