“That’s a hoss-scarer,” I said, “an automobile—a gas buggy—run without horses. That crowd have run out from Nashville in perhaps about two hours. That blue line of smoke,” I said, “away off yonder is the ten o’clock express. It makes the run in an hour and—”
He jumped up. “I don’t believe any of your hoss lies, your gas-waggin lies nor your express lies!” he cried. “Why, didn’t I see General Jackson when he went to Washington to be inaugurated President of the United States, moving in his own carriage through the country? And Jeems K. Polk, why he lives right yonder,” he said, pointing up the street. “He is my lawyer and was elicted President jes’ the other year, and I saw him take the stage for Nashville. It’s all a lie you’ve made up.”
“I am telling you the truth. But where have you been?” I asked.
He looked at me sorrowfully. “Sixty years ago I was a horseman, telling lies like the rest of you, swapping yarns, bragging, boasting, owning all the fast ones, and having a mortgage on the future speed of the universe. But one day something happened to me; one day, on the square, I got too close to a horse’s heels, trying to show his owner an imaginary curb. He kicked me. I’ve been dead for sixty years. I’m the young man whose history you’ve been so anxious to learn,” he said, with a diabolical grin. “Keep your seat,” he added, as he saw I was edging away. “I haven’t told you that history yet. Don’t be in a hurry.”
The blood froze in my veins. He had blocked my path up and nothing remained but for me to jump over the precipice. I rushed to the edge and was just taking a farewell view of the earth when the report of a gun, almost in my ear, awoke me.
“Sorry to disturb you,” said a small boy, as he lowered a single-barrel gun from a rest he had on my rock, “but I couldn’t help shootin’ that crow in the sycamore there. He was jabbering and acting like he had hydrophobia. Did the old gun sound loud? It liked to kicked me over. I forgot I loaded it yesterday, and loaded it again to-day. My!” and he rubbed his shoulder and whistled through his fingers.
“It didn’t sound too loud for me, Sonny,” I said. “An earthquake would have been welcome then. You just about saved me from jumping over that rock. Take this dollar, get you all the ammunition you want, and kill all the infernal crows you can. And if ever anybody calls here to inquire for me, just tell them I have found another beautiful place out in a hundred-acre field in a deep valley, and five miles from any unknown graves on lonely bluffs,” and I went after a hot lemon punch to bring me back from the weird land I had been in.
