Page:Harvey O'Higgins--Silent Sam and other stories.djvu/123

Rh She was sitting up, stiff-backed and defiant. He was nursing a sharp knee in his clasped hands, gazing out under his hat-brim gloomily.

"'E don't consider your feelin's, 'En," she told him.

"Well," he said, "you know I never cut much ice in the bus'ness till we come here. He ain't been used to considerin' me. I don't blame him, neither. I guess I ain't such a much."

"You 're as much as 'e is," she cried. "An' 'e need n't poke fun at you, anyway. I gave 'm a good bump for that."

"Fer what? How?"

"Did n't you know I shoved 'im off the 'orse?"

"No! What 'd you do that fer?"

"Fer w'at 'e said. 'E 's too fresh by 'alf."

"He don't mean anythin' by it. He 's always been like that. He 's all right."

"Well, 'e don't stick up fer you the way you stick up fer 'im, 'En."

"I guess he thinks I don't need it any more then." He shook his head. "We been stickin' together a long while. We been through a lot o' trouble." He sat, thinking it over. "We were near lynched together, once, in Macon. They took us fer a pair o' huckmen that 'd been skinnin' the crowd with a shell game, out on 'the lot.' An' when we went into town to get some crackers an' cheese they folly'd us. They 'd 'a' lynched us if it had n't been fer some o' the zinc I had in m' ears. They would n't believe us when we said we were