Mary's face flushed slightly. "Depends on whin he comes," she said. "Of course, if I am cleaning house, or busy with something I can't put off----"

"Sure!" cried Jimmy. "I'd ask you before I brought him, because I'd want him to have something spicial. Some of this ham, and horse radish, and maple syrup to begin with, and thin your fried spring chicken and your stewed squirrel is a drame, Mary. n.o.body iver makes turtle soup half so rich as yours, and your green peas in cream, and asparagus on toast is a rivilation--don't you rimimber 'twas Father Michael that said it? I ought to be able to find mushrooms in a few weeks, and I can taste your rhubarb pie over from last year. Gee! But I wish he'd come in strawberrying! Berries from the vines, b.u.t.ter in the crust, crame you have to bate to make it smooth--talk about shortcake!"

"What's wrong wi' cherry cobbler?" asked Dannie.

"Or blackberry pie?"

"Or greens cooked wi' bacon?"

"Or chicken pie?"

"Or catfish, rolled in cornmeal and fried in ham fat?"

"Or guineas stewed in cream, with hard-boiled eggs in the gravy?"

"Oh, stop!" cried the delighted Mary. "It makes me dead tired thinkin'

how I'll iver be cookin' all you'll want. Sure, have him come, and both of you can pick out the things you like the best, and I'll fix thim for him. Pure, fresh stuff might be a trate to a city man. When Dolan took sister Katie to New York with him, his boss sent them to a five-dollar-a-day house, and they thought they was some up. By the third day poor Katie was cryin' for a square male. She couldn't touch the b.u.t.ter, the eggs made her sick, and the cold-storage meat and chicken never got nearer her stomach than her nose. So she just ate fish, because they were fresh, and she ate, and she ate, till if you mintion New York to poor Katie she turns pale, and tastes fish. She vows and declares that she feeds her chickens and hogs better food twice a day than people fed her in New York."

"I'll bet my new milk pail the grub we eat ivery day would be a trate that would raise him," said Jimmy. "Provided his taste ain't so depraved with saltpeter and chalk he don't know fresh, pure food whin he tastes it. I understand some of the victims really don't."

"Your new milk pail?" questioned Mary.

"That's what!" said Jimmy. "The next time I go to town I'm goin' to get you two."

"But I only need one," protested Mary. "Instead of two, get me a new dishpan. Mine leaks, and smears the stove and table."

"Be Gorry!" sighed Jimmy. "There goes me tongue, lettin' me in for it again. I'll look over the skins, and if any of thim are ripe, I'll get you a milk pail and a dishpan the nixt time I go to town. And, by gee!

If that dandy big c.o.o.n hide I got last fall looks good, I'm going to comb it up, and work the skin fine, and send it to the Thrid Man, with me complimints. I don't feel right about him yet. Wonder what his name railly is, and where he lives, or whether I killed him complate."

"Any dry goods man in town can tell ye," said Dannie.

"Ask the clerk in the hotel," suggested Mary.

"You've said it," cried Jimmy. "That's the stuff! And I can find out whin he will be here again."

Two hours more they faithfully worked on the garden, and then Jimmy began to grow restless.

"Ah, go on!" cried Mary. "You have done all that is needed just now, and more too. There won't any fish bite to-day, but you can have the pleasure of stringin' thim poor sufferin' worms on a hook and soaking thim in the river."

"'Sufferin' worms!' Sufferin' Job!" cried Jimmy. "What nixt? Go on, Dannie, get your pole!"

Dannie went. As he came back Jimmy was sprinkling a thin layer of earth over the bait in the can. "Why not come along, Mary?" he suggested.

"I'm not done planting my seeds," she answered. "I'll be tired when I am, and I thought that place wasn't fixed for me yet."

"We can't fix that till a little later," said Jimmy. "We can't tell where it's going to be gra.s.sy and shady yet, and the wood is too wet to fix a sate."

"Any kind of a sate will do," said Mary. "I guess you better not try to make one out of the Kingfisher stump. If you take it out it may change the pool and drive away the Ba.s.s."

"Sure!" cried Jimmy. "What a head you've got! We'll have to find some other stump for a sate."

"I don't want to go until it gets dry under foot, and warmer" said Mary. "You boys go on. I'll till you whin I am riddy to go."

"There!" said Jimmy, when well on the way to the river. "What did I tell you? Won't go if she has the chance! Jist wants to be ASKED."

"I dinna pretend to know women," said Dannie gravely. "But whatever Mary does is all richt with me."

"So I've obsarved," remarked Jimmy. "Now, how will we get at this fishin' to be parfectly fair?"

"Tell ye what I think," said Dannie. "I think we ought to pick out the twa best places about the Black Ba.s.s pool, and ye take ane fra yours and I'll take the ither fra mine, and then we'll each fish from his own place."

"Nothing fair about that," answered Jimmy. "You might just happen to strike the bed where he lays most, and be gettin' bites all the time, and me none; or I might strike it and you be left out. And thin there's days whin the wind has to do, and the light. We ought to change places ivery hour."

"There's nothing fair in that either," broke in Dannie. "I might have him tolled up to my place, and juist be feedin' him my bait, and here you'd come along and prove by your watch that my time was up, and take him when I had him all ready to bite."

"That's so for you!" hurried in Jimmy. "I'll be hanged if I'd leave a place by the watch whin I had a strike!"

"Me either," said Dannie. "'Tis past human nature to ask it. I'll tell ye what we'll do. We'll go to work and rig up a sort of a bridge where it's so narrow and shallow, juist above Kingfisher shoals, and then we'll toss up fra sides. Then each will keep to his side. With a decent pole either of us can throw across the pool, and both of us can fish as we please. Then each fellow can pick his bait, and cast or fish deep as he thinks best. What d'ye say to that?"

"I don't see how anything could be fairer than that," said Jimmy. "I don't want to fish for anything but the Ba.s.s. I'm goin' back and get our rubber boots, and you be rollin' logs, and we'll build that crossing right now."

"All richt," said Dannie.

So they laid aside their poles and tackle, and Dannie rolled logs and gathered material for the bridge, while Jimmy went back after their boots. Then both of them entered the water and began clearing away drift and laying the foundations. As the first log of the crossing lifted above the water Dannie paused.

"How about the Kingfisher?" he asked. "Winna this scare him away?"

"Not if he ain't a domn fool," said Jimmy; "and if he is, let him go!"

"Seems like the river would no be juist richt without him," said Dannie, breaking off a spice limb and nibbling the fragrant buds.

"Let's only use what we bare need to get across. And where will we fix fra Mary?"

"Oh, git out!" said Jimmy. "I ain't goin' to fool with that."

"Well, we best fix a place. Then we can tell her we fixed it, and it's all ready."

"Sure!" cried Jimmy. "You are catchin' it from your neighbor. Till her a place is all fixed and watin', and you couldn't drag her here with a team of oxen. Till her you are GOING to fix it soon, and she'll come to see if you've done it, if she has to be carried on a stritcher."

So they selected a spot that they thought would be all right for Mary, and not close enough to disturb the Ba.s.s and the Kingfisher, rolled two logs, and fished a board that had been carried by a freshet from the water and laid it across them, and decided that would have to serve until they could do better.

Then they sat astride the board, Dannie drew out a coin, and they tossed it to see which was heads and tails. Dannie won heads. Then they tossed to see which bank was heads or tails, and the right, which was on Rainbow side, came heads. So Jimmy was to use the bridge. Then they went home, and began the night work. The first thing Jimmy espied was the barrel containing the milk pail. He fished out the pail, and while Dannie fed the stock, shoveled manure, and milked, Jimmy pounded out the dents, closed the bullet holes, emptied the bait into it, half filled it with mellow earth, and went to Mary for some corn meal to sprinkle on the top to feed the worms.

At four o'clock the next morning, Dannie was up feeding, milking, sc.r.a.ping plows, and setting bolts. After breakfast they piled their implements on a mudboat, which Dannie drove, while Jimmy rode one of his team, and led the other, and opened the gates. They began on Dannie's field, because it was closest, and for the next two weeks, unless it were too rainy to work, they plowed, harrowed, lined off, and planted the seed.

The blackbirds followed along the furrows picking up grubs, the crows cawed from high tree tops, the bluebirds twittered about hollow stumps and fence rails, the wood thrushes sang out their souls in the thickets across the river, and the King Cardinal of Rainbow Bottom whistled to split his throat from the giant sycamore. Tender greens were showing along the river and in the fields, and the purple of red-bud mingled with the white of wild plum all along the Wabash.

The sunny side of the hill that sloped down to Rainbow Bottom was a ma.s.s of spring beauties, anemones, and violets; thread-like ramps rose rank to the scent among them, and round ginger leaves were thrusting their folded heads through the mold. The Kingfisher was cleaning his house and fishing from his favorite stump in the river, while near him, at the fall of every luckless worm that missed its hold on a blossom-whitened thorn tree, came the splash of the great Black Ba.s.s.

Every morning the Ba.s.s took a trip around Horseshoe Bend food hunting, and the small fry raced for life before his big, shear-like jaws.