Chapters (12)
“ ’Long in the evenin’ ’bout three o’clock I could smell my shirt smokin’ in the heat. I heerd the mosquitoes makin’ that fuss they makes when they’s so full o’ blood they cain’t fly. I says to ’em, ‘Git your rations, you scoundrels. I’ll git mine to-morrer.’ I don’t even slap ’em. You kin hear a feller slappin’.
“I thought of liftin’ my head to look. But I’ve done turkey-hunted. You know, when you’re sittin’ quiet, waitin’ for a gobbler to fly in? And a squirrel comes down a tree and comes on you sudden-like? That squirrel is goin’ to run up and chatter. And over yonder in the black-jack I heerd a squirrel run up and chatter. So I knowed Cooter was there right on.
“ ’Long about good-dark he starts hisself a skeeter smudge and I could smell hit a-smokin’. I says: ‘Well, you rascal, hit’s a question who fust gits a bait o’ waitin’, you or me, one.’ The mosquitoes was crowdin’ so on me they was fightin’ for standin’-room. A big ol’ moccasin slides by so clost I could o’ spit on him, but I figgers ’twa’n’t no use to budge. I could smell rattlesnake musk along in the night. Lyin’ there in the dark, dogged iffen hit didn’t make me kind o’ faintified. I says: ‘Go give Cooter a smell of you.’ ”
Tim chuckled deeply.
“I don’t reckon Cooter nor me would study none on spendin’ another day and another night in jest that pertickler fashion. But anyways, I shore outwaited him.
“Come crack o’ day, t’other feller comes back. They comes to the edge o’ the palmeeters.
“ ‘They ain’t nary mortal in there,’ says the other.
“ ‘I reckon not,’ says Cooter. ‘If they is, hit ain’t no human being. Hit’s half rabbit or half snake or half wildcat, but hit ain’t human.’
“And then they goes off. I mean, they’s good gone.”
Tim yawned sleepily.
“Well, hit serves me dogged right,” he admitted. “I shore knowed better. It proves I orter allus let my conscience be my guide.”
“I mean!” agreed the Georgia boy. “You kin put that ol’ still on top of a alligator and I ain’t got ary word to say. How soon kin we fix to git to work again?”
“To-morrer. Them scoundrels done the carelessest smashin’.”
“Reckon they’ll be traipsin’ back again?”
Tim shook his head.
“No. We ain’t in ary danger a whiles yet. Cooter’ll be crowdin’ on to Marion County. I reckon——”
He arose and stretched.
“I reckon for about thirty days I’d orter have a plumb clare conscience.”