ountain where there was a
great big--shoot now, I d'no as I can call its name but it was like a
trail of fire in the sky, and it was makin' the dangdest racket you ever
heard, Rev'rend. Looked kind of like one of them Fourth-of-July
skyrockets, but it was big as a house. Marthy was screaming and she
grabbed me and hollered, "Hez! Hez, what in tunket is it?" And when
Marthy cusses like that, Rev'rend, she don't know what she's saying,
she's so scared.

I was plumb scared myself. I heard Liza--that's our young-un, Liza
Grace, that got married to the Taylor boy. I heard her crying on the
stoop, and she came flying out with her pinny all black and hollered to
Marthy that the pea soup was burning. Marthy let out another screech and
ran for the house. That's a woman for you. So I quietened Liza down some
and I went in and told Marthy it weren't no more than one of them
shooting stars. Then I went and did the milking.

But you know, while we were sitting down to supper there came the most
awful grinding, screeching, pounding crash I ever heard. Sounded if it
were in the back pasture but the house shook as if somethin' had hit it.

Marthy jumped a mile and I never saw such a look on her face.

"Hez, what was that?" she asked.

"Shoot, now, nothing but the freshet," I told her.

But she kept on about it. "You reckon that shooting star fell in our
back pasture, Hez?"

"Well, now, I don't 'low it did nothing like that," I told her. But she
was jittery as an old hen and it weren't like her nohow. She said it
sounded like trouble and I finally quietened her down by saying I'd
saddle Kate up and go have a look. I kind of thought, though I didn't
tell Marthy, that somebody's house had floated away in the freshet and
run aground in our back pasture.

So I saddled up Kate and told Marthy to get some hot rum ready in case
there was some poor soul run aground back there. And I rode Kate back to
the back pasture.

It was mostly uphill because the top of the pasture is on high ground,
and it sloped down to the crick on the other side of the rise.

Well, I reached the top of the hill and looked down. The crick were a
regular river now, rushing along like Niagary. On the other side of it
was a stand of timber, then the slope of Shattuck mountain. And I saw
right away the long streak where all the timber had been cut out in a
big scoop with roots standing up in the air and a big slide of rocks
down to the water.

It was still rai