the Cumberland, is my Sarah Ann.
Her ha'r, black as paint, is as thick as a pony's mane; her lips is
the color of pokeberry juice; her cheeks--round an' soft--is as cl'ar
an' bright an' glowin' as a sunset in Jooly; her teeth is as
milk-white as the inside of a persimmon seed. She's five-foot-eleven
without her mocassins, stands as up an' down as a pine tree, got a arm
on her like the tiller of a scow, an' can heft a full-sized side of
beef an' hang it on the hook. That's fifty years ago. She's back home
on the Hawgthief waitin' for me now, my Sarah Ann is. You'd say she's
as gray as a 'possum, an' as wrinkled as a burnt boot. Mebby so; but
not to me, you bet. She's allers an' ever to me the same endoorin'
hooman sunburst I co'tes an' marries that long time ago.'

"Old Stallins pauses to reefresh himse'f, an' Texas, who's been
fidgetin' an' frettin' since the first mention of Sarah Ann, goes
whisperin' to Boggs.

"'Can't some of you-all,' he says, plenty peevish, 'head this yere
mushy old tarrapin off? This outfit knows what I suffers with that
Laredo wife of mine. An' yet it looks like I'm to be tortured constant
with tales of married folks, an' not one hand stretched out to save me
from them reecitals.'

"'Brace up,' returns Boggs, tryin' to comfort him. 'Thicken your hide
ag'in sech childish feelin's, an' don't be so easy pierced. Besides, I
reckons the worst's over. He's comin' now to them catamounts.'

"Texas grinds his teeth, an' old Stallins resoomes his adventures.

"'My Sarah Ann's old pap has his location jest across the Hawgthief
from me. Besides him an' Sarah Ann, thar ain't nobody but the old
woman in the fam'ly, the balance of 'em havin' been swept away in a
freshet. Shore, old man Bender--that's Sarah Ann's pap's name--has
fourteen children once, Sarah Ann, who's oldest, bein' the first
chicken on the domestic roost. But the other thirteen is carried off
one evenin' when, what with the rains an' what with the snow meltin'
back on Gingham Mountain, the Hawgthief gets its back up. Swish comes
a big wave of water, an' you hear me them children goes coughin' an'
kickin' an' splutterin' into the misty beyond.

"'Which I says thirteen only because that's whar old Bender allers
puts his loss. Zeb Stiles, who lives on the Painted Post, insists that
it's fifteen who gets swept away that time. He allows he counts them
infant Benders two evenin's before, perched along on old Bender's
palin's like pigeons on