Even a light breeze rested heavy on my back when dad got through with me--say, Mattie, perhaps I oughtn't to say so, now that he's gone, but I don't think that's the proper way to use a boy, do you?"

"No, I don't," said Miss Mattie. "Your father meant well, but his way was useless and cruel."

"I've forgiven him the whole sweep," said Red. "But d.a.m.n me! If I had a boy I wouldn't club the life out of him--I'd try to reason with him first, anyhow. Makes a boy as ugly as anybody else to get the hide whaled off his back for nothing--once in a while he needs it. Boy that's got any life in him gets to be too much occasionally and then a warming is healthful and nourishing. Lord!

You'd think I was the father of my country to hear me talk, wouldn't you? If somebody'd write a book, 'What Red Saunders don't know about raising children' it would be full of valuable information--how's that breakfast coming on?"

"All ready--sit right down, Will."

"Go you!" cried Red, and incautiously flung himself upon one of the kitchen chairs, which collapsed instantly and dropped him to the floor.

"Mercy on us! Are you hurt?" cried Miss Mattie, rushing forward.

"Hurt?" said Red. "Try it!--Just jump up in the air and sit on the floor where you are now, and see if you get hurt! Oh, no!

I'm not hurt, but I'm astonished beyond measure, like the man that tickled the mule.

I'll take my breakfast right here--shouldn't wonder a bit if the floor went back on me and landed me in the cellar--no sir! I won't get up! Hand me the supplies, I know when I'm well off. If you want to eat breakfast with me come sit on the floor. I'm not going to have my spine pushed through the top of my head twice in the same day."

"Will! You are the most ridiculous person I ever did see!" said Miss Mattie, and she laughed till she cried in sheer light-heartedness. "But there's a chair you can trust--come on now."

"Well, if you'll take your solemn oath that this one has no moustache to deceive me,"

said Red doubtfully. "It looks husky--well, I'll try it--Hooray! She didn't give an inch.

This kind of reminds me of the time Jimmy Hendricks came back from town and walked off the edge of the bluff in the dark. It just happened that Old Scotty Ferguson's cabin was underneath him. Jim took most of the roof off with him as he went in. He sat awhile to figure out what was trumps, having come a hundred and fifty feet too fast to do much thinking. Then, 'h.e.l.lo!' he yells.

Old Scotty was a sleeper from 'way back, but this woke him up.

"'h.e.l.lo!' says he. 'Was'er matter?'

"Jim saw he wasn't more than half awake yet, so he says, 'Why, I was up on the bluff there, Scotty, and seeing it was such a short distance I thought I'd drop in!'

"'Aw ri',' grunted Scotty. 'Make y'self t'

home,' and with that he rolls over.

"Jim couldn't wait for morning, and though his leg was pretty badly sprained, he made the trip all the way round the trail and woke us up to tell us how he'd gone through Ferguson's roof and the old man asked him to make himself at home. Next morning there was Scotty out in front of his cabin, his thumbs in his vest holes, looking up.

"'What's the matter, Scotty?' says I.

"'Well, I wisht you'd tell me what in the name of G.o.d went through that roof!' says he.

"I swallered a laugh cross-ways and put on a serious face. 'Must have been a rock,' says I.

"'Rock nothin'!' says he. 'If it had been a rock 'twould have stayed in the cabin, wouldn't it! Well, there ain't the first blasted thing of any shape nor description in there but the hole--you can go in and look for yourself.'

"It cost Scotty one case of rye to make us forget those circ.u.mstances."

"I should have thought the man would be killed, striking on the roof that way," said Miss Mattie.

"Oh, no! Roof was made of quaking-asp saplings, just about strong enough to break his fall. Scotty was the sleeper, though! It wasn't hardly natural the way that man could pound his ear through thick and thin. He had quite a surprising time of it once. He'd been prospecting 'round the Ruby refractory ore district and he came out at Hank Cutter's saw-mill, just at sun-down. Hank's place was full of gold rushers, so Old Scotty thought he'd sleep out-doors in peace and quiet. He discovered some big boxes, that Hank was making for ore bins for the new mill, and as the ground was kind of damp from a thunder-shower they had that day, he spreads his blanket inside the box and goes to sleep; ore bins have to be smooth and dust tight, so it wasn't a bad shanty.

"Well, there came a jar and waked him up.

The box was rolling a little, and going along, going along forty mile an hour. Scotty lit a match and found he was in a kind of big tunnel but the wall was flying by so fast, he couldn't make out just what kind of a tunnel it was. Now, he'd gone to sleep in peace and quiet on a side hill, and to wake up and find himself boat-riding in a tunnel was enough to surprise anybody. First he pinched himself to see if it was Hank's pie, or a cold fact, found it was a fact, then he lit another match and leaned over and looked at the black water underneath, but this made the box tip so it scart him and he settled down in the bottom again. He didn't try to think--what was the use? No man living could have figured things out with the few facts Scotty had before him.

All of a sudden the box made a rush and shot out into the air, and Scotty felt they were falling. 'G.o.d sakes!' he says to himself.

'What's next, I wonder?' Then they hit the water below with a ker-flap that nearly telescoped Scotty and sent the spray flying. After that they went along smooth again. 'Well,'

says Scotty, 'I don't know where I am, nor who I am, nor what's happened, nor who's it, nor nothing about this game. So far I ain't been hurt, though, and I might just as well lie down and get a little more rest.'

"It was broad daylight when he woke up again, and a man was looking into the box.

'h.e.l.lo, pardner!' he says. 'I hope you've had a pleasant journey--do you always travel this way?'

"Scotty raised up and found his craft was aground--high and dry--no water within a hundred feet of it. On one side was quite a little town.

"'Say,' says he, 'could I trouble you to tell me where I am, friend?'

"'You're at Placerville,' answers the other.

"'Placerville!' yells Scotty, 'and I went to sleep at Cutter's Mill, sixty-five miles from here!--what are you giving us, man?'

"'I'm putting it to you straight,' says the stranger. 'Take a look around you.'

"Scotty looked and there was all kinds of wreckage, from a dead beef critter to a wheel barrow.

"'What in nation's all this?' says he.

"'Washout,' says the man. 'Cloud burst up on the divide--worst we've ever had--your box is about high water mark--you see there was water enough for awhile--I reckon you're about the only thing that came through alive.'

"'Well, wouldn't that knock you?' says Scotty.

--"Whilst the rest of the folk at the mill was taking to the high ground for their lives, with the water roaring and tearing through the gulch, Scotty had peacefully gone off in his little boat, down the creek, and instead of going over the rapids, where he'd have been done, for all his luck, the box ambles through the flume they was building for the new mill.

Of course there was the jounce over the tail race, but that hadn't hurt him much, and after, he rocked in the cradle of the deep, until he got beached at Placerville.

"'Come along, friend,' says Scotty to the feller, 'you and me are going to have a little drink on this, if it is the last act.' And I reckon probably they made it two, for when Scotty got back again he was in a condition that made everybody believe that he'd only guessed at the story he told. But they found out afterward it was a solemn fact. Mattie, give us some more coffee."

Thus abruptly recalled to Fairfield, Miss Mattie started up.

"Well, Will, it does seem as if that was a dangerous country to live in," said she.

"Oh, not so awful!" said Red. "Just as many people die here as they do there--this world's a dangerous place to live in, wherever you strike it, Mattie."

"That's so," said she, thoughtfully.

"And now," said Red, pushing back his chair, "it's time I got to work and left you to do the housework undisturbed."

"What are you going to do, Will?"

"First place, there's fences and things to be tinkered up, I see. I suppose a millionaire like me ought to hire those things done, but I'd have measles of the mind if I sat around doing nothing."

"I have been wanting to get the place in good order for some time," said Miss Mattie, "but what with the money I had to spend for this and that, and not being able to get Mr. Joyce to come in for a day's work when I wanted him, it's gone on, until there is a good deal of wrack to it."

"We'll wrack it t'other way round in no time--got any tools here?"

"Out in the barn is what's left of father's tools--people have borrowed 'em and forgot to return 'em, and they've rusted or been lost until I'm afraid there ain't many of 'em left."

"Well, I'll get along to-day somehow, and later on we'll stock up--want any help around the house?"