V
It was growing so cold that the little fire no longer sufficed for comfort; so the Watkins family took their departure, and Dad and Bunny set up the tent, and stowed their goods in it, and Bunny did his job of puffing at the mattress until it was full. The stars were shining, so they made their bed in the open. After spreading the blankets, they took off their shoes and outside clothing, and laid them in the tent, and crawled under the blankets in a hurry—gee, but that cold made you jump! Bunny snuggled up into a ball, and lay there, feeling the night breeze on his forehead; and he remarked: “Say, Dad, what is the Church of the True Word?”
Dad chuckled. “The poor old crack-brain,” he said; “I had to get some way to shut him up.”
They lay still, and pretty soon Dad was breathing deeply. But the boy, though he was tired, did not go to sleep at once. He lay thinking: Dad’s code was different from the one which Bunny had decided to follow. Dad would lie, whenever he considered it necessary; he would argue that the other person could not use the truth, or had no right to it in the particular circumstances. And yet, this also was plain, Dad didn’t want Bunny to follow that same code. He would tell Bunny to say nothing, but he would never tell Bunny to lie; and as a rule, when he had to do any lying, he would do it out of Bunny’s presence! There were lots of things like that; Dad smoked cigars, and he took a drink now and then, but he didn’t want Bunny to smoke or to drink. It was queer.
Bunny’s head and face were cold, but the rest of him was warm, and he was drifting, drifting off; his thoughts became a blur—but then suddenly he was wide awake again. What was that? The mattress was rocking; it rolled you from side to side, so that you had to put out your elbows. “Dad!” cried Bunny. “What’s that?” And Dad came suddenly awake; he sat up, and Bunny sat up—putting his two hands out to keep himself steady. “By jiminy!” cried Dad. “An earthquake!”
Sure enough, an earthquake! And say, it was queer to feel the solid ground, that you counted on, shaking you about like that! The tree began to creak over their heads, as if a wind were rocking it; they jumped up and got out from under. A clamor arose, a bleating and moaning—the goats, who liked this sensation even less than the humans, having no ideas of earth structures and geological faults to steady their minds. And then came another kind of clamor—from the Watkins family, who apparently had rushed out of their cabin. “Glory hallelujah! Jesus, save us! Lord, have mercy!”
Dad said, “It’s all over now; let’s crawl in, or we’ll have them folks up here praying over us.”
Bunny obeyed, and they lay still. “Gee, that was a terrible earthquake!” whispered the boy. “Do you think it knocked down any cities?”
“It was likely jist local,” answered Dad. “They have lots of them up here in this hill country.”
“Then you’d think the Watkinses would be used to them.”