‘She lets him take all she’s got and when he’s gone she pukes up a pile of hard words after him for a spell. A Tuesday he drove off a heifer that was half mine. I let that go for the time, and whilst I’m a peaceful man I don’t aim to let no low-trash like Albert run over me, and if he comes again and takes off the property he’ll maybe see trouble and a lavish of it too.’

Ellen put the money, twenty dollars, in the trunk and thought of it no more. The pressure of the planting was past and whenever the need for the plough became immediate Kent found a few spare hours to give. Ellen cut the hay, driving their old mare hitched to the cutting implement, and afterward she raked the hay by hand and built it into stacks. J.B. Tarbell would pass along the road every day, going and coming from his work; he was painting for Squire Stigall. He would stop for a drink at the spring by the roadside and in the sigh that followed his deep draught he would say:

‘That-there’s the best water anywheres this side of Muldraugh’s Hill and I’ve tasted about all the wells in thirty mile around. That-there is rich cold water, I say.’

Often he would sit all afternoon to chat. He would talk about tasty fruits and juicy mouth-watery berries until his own mouth dripped with its imagined sweet, or he would tell of clear springs and long ways to go, of the many times he had passed up and down. Often the Carriers came, and on Sunday afternoon Susie and Pius and Regina, and sometimes the Stigall youth would linger for a little about the door, or Kent would stop as he passed. J.B. Tarbell would have candy that was wrapped in bits of coloured paper on which, folded inside, were lines of verse which expressed admiration and affection. He would pass the candy about with his own hand, taking the pieces out of the sack and presenting each with a bow, scraping his foot. He would hold back some choice bit, the largest piece or the piece wrapped in fringed paper, choosing another for Nellie, another for Bell or Regina, but when he came to Ellen he would kiss the chosen piece and give it to her with a deep bow, or he would say, ‘Here’s a sweet for Sweetnen.’

‘I’m due over beyond the Ridge long afore now,’ he said. ‘I know they-all are a-wonderen why I don’t show up. Well, they’ll be powerful glad to see me walk in some day.’ He told long stories while all sat listening. ‘As soon as they seen it was J.B. Tarbell they called the dogs off… They offered me a big salary to stay and work all year but I’d a heap rather be footloose and my own boss. There’s only one man ever a-goen to boss old J.B. and that man is a woman. And so I says I’d a heap rather be my own boss, but no offence meant. That was when I followed picture-taken.’ His little string tie would sprangle under its faint blackness, always tied in a neat bow. Sometimes he would sing a song,