“No, that’s a fact! I didn’t holler; I didn’t have time; while you were working away on that gum-knot, I were standin’ up agin a little dog-wood finishin’ the licker!”
“How comes it that you never wrung in that part of the story about the knot before?”
“ ’Cause, I’d done got the licker, and I was satisfied; you thought you’d gin me some mighty big licks, and you was satisfied; and it would have been mean in me to crow over you then: you was out of licker, tobacco, and had your fist all skinned and beat as soft as a bar’s foot! Oh no, Jim, I’m reasonable, I is.”
“Well, go along; if I don’t set you to gnawin’ somethin’ harder than that knot afore long, then my name ain’t nothin’ to me, and I don’t car for nobody, that’s all.”
“All sot,” says Chunkey, “let’s licker. You wanted to know what ‘fallin off a log’ meant, and I thought I’d show you; but, my honey, I’ll jist let you know if you’d a hit me any of them licks what you struck ‘right and left’ into that knot, I’d a gin you a touch of panter fistcuffs—a sort of cross of the scratch on the bite—and a powerful strong game it is, in a close fight. Come, gents, let’s licker, and then I can beat any man that wars har, for a mighty nice chunk of a poney, at any game of short cards:
Oh, the waggoner was a mighty man, a mighty man was he:
He’d pop his whip, and stretch his chains, and holler ‘wo, gee!’ ”
XI.
A YANKEE CARD-TABLE.[[10]]
When I was about leaving New Orleans, standing upon the Levee, waiting for my luggage, I was thus addressed by a long, lean, down-Easter:
“Say yeou, which of these things slips up fust?”