hape or
manner, not if they should chain her and drag her to the front; she
would die before she would help the great, remorseless power that
killed her husband for a little money. She's made in jest that way,
Arvilly is, jest as faithful to the remembrance of her wrongs as a dog
is to a bone, settin' and gnawin' at it all the time. And when they
come to collect her taxes last year she says:

"No taxes will you ever git out of me to help rare up Saloons and
Canteens to kill some other woman's husband."

"But," sez the tax man, a real good man he wuz and mild mannered, "you
should be willing to help maintain the laws of your country that
protects you."

And then I spose that man's hair (it wuz pretty thin, anyway) riz
right up on his head to hear her go on tellin' about the govermunt
killin' her husband. But seein' she wuz skarin' him she kinder quelled
herself down and sez:

"What has this country ever done for me. I have had no more voice in
makin' the laws than your dog there. Your dog is as well agin off, for
it don't have to obey the laws, that it has no part in makin'. If it
digs up a good bone it don't have to give it to some dog politician to
raise money to buy dog buttons to kill other dogs and mebby its own
pups. Not one cent of taxes duz this hell-ridden govermunt git out of
me agin--if I can help it."

The man ketched up his tax list and flewed from the house, but
returned with minions of the law who seized on and sold her shote she
wuz fattin' for winter's use; sold it to the saloon keeper over to
Zoar for about half what it wuz worth, only jest enough to pay her
tax. But then the saloon keeper controlled a lot of bum votes and the
collector wanted to keep in with him.

Yes, as I wuz sayin', Waitstill Webb is as different from Arvilly as a
soft moonlight night lit by stars is from a snappin' frosty noonday in
January. Droopin' like a droopin' dove, feelin' that the govermunt wuz
the worst enemy she and her poor dead boy ever had, as it turned out,
but still ready to say:

"Oh Lord, forgive my enemy, the Government of the United States, for
it knows what it does."

Which she felt wuz ten-fold worse than as if it did wickedly without
knowin' it, and she knew that they knowed all about it and couldn't
deny it, for besides all the good men and wimmen that had preached to
'em about it, they had had such sights of petitions sent in explainin'
it all out and beggin' 'em to stop it, onheeded by them and s