“I say, mind how you throw your water! Jim Sparks is a triflin’ dog—if I have got a wife, Betsy, she is goin’ fast.”
“Goin’ whar?” asked Betsy, striking the water again.
“Confound your paddle! can’t you keep it still? Providence is goin’ to take her home, Betsy—she’s dwindled away to a shadder, with that cough and one thing and another. She ain’t long for this world,” he added, mournfully; “and if you, Betsy, will only make up your mind—the devil take that paddle!—you’ll turn over the boat, and throw me in the river!—make up your mind to step into her shoes, it looks like it would sort o’ reconcile me to lose her”—and here a tear leaked out of each corner of the Captain’s eyes.
“Oh, Captin,” said Betsy, half shutting one eye, and looking quizzical; “thar’s so many good-lookin’ young fellers about, I hate to give ’em up. I like you, Captin, but thar’s Bill Edwards, and Jet Wallis, and Jim Sparks, and”—
“ ‘Good lookin’!’ and ‘Jet Wallis’ and ‘Jim Sparks!’ Why Jet’s mouth is no better than a hole made in the fore part of his head with a claw-hammer—and as for Jim Sparks, he’s got the face of a terrier dog.”
“Do you count yourself good-lookin’?” asked Betsy, with great naïveté.
“Gal!” replied Suggs, with dignity, “did you ever see me in my uniform? with my silver oppolots on my shoulder? and my red sash round my waist? and the sword that Governor Bagby give me, with the gold scabbard a hangin’ by my side?”
Just at this moment a step was heard, and before the Captain and Betsy had recovered from the shock of intrusion, Sheriff Ellis stepped into the boat, and asserted that Suggs “was his prisoner!”
“Treed at last!” said the Captain; “but it’s no use frettin’; the ways of Providence is mysterious. But whar did you cross, Ellis?”
“Oh, I knew you’d be about the old lick log ’a fishin’ with Betsy. I’ll turn the kunnoo loose, and Bets will take us across. I crossed at Hambrick’s ferry, left my horse on t’other side, and come down on you, like a mink on a settin’ hen. Come! come! it’s time we were off to Dadeville.”