Читать книгу Memory's Storehouse Unlocked, True Stories. Pioneer Days In Wetmore and Northeast Kansas онлайн

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As intimated in the foregoing paragraph, the clothing worn by the tanyard gang during the summer months was almost nil—negligible, at any rate. Always there were rents and patches, and more rents. But the gang did not care.

The next day after Davey’s debauch my father came blustering into the house, and bellowed, “Now, who in hell has taken my axe?” My mother said to him in her sweet, calm way, “Oh, don’t be so fussy, William—Davey loaned your axe to Jim Cardwell last night.”

Attaching no significance to this fact, nor sensing forebodings, my father laughingly said, “I wonder what Jim thought he could do with an axe, in his pickled condition?” I should like to tell you now that he found that out, to his dismay, all too soon.

He was a good feeler, was my father, happy as a lark when things went right—and not at all ugly even when he swore, not counting of course the tempo of the sulphurous words of easement which he sometimes released. Just habitual, understand. The indiscriminate use of swearwords was as natural as long-whiskers to the old pioneer. He whistled a lot, and sometimes tried to sing, but he was hot very good at that.