"You oughta've took a mortgage on Ward's mules last year, Jodie. That's what other storekeepers do when they're furnishing a man. Then in the fall, if the man won't pay up, they foreclose and get a little of their money back. You're too trusting." "I know, Pa. Trouble is, if you take a man's mule, come the next spring he can't make a crop! And you never would collect." "Well, have it your way. What happened this morning that made Hawk Lumpkin so mad at Ward?" "It was what Ward said about the road. You see, Old Man Hawk had come riding up in that one-horse wagon of his pretty soon after the automobile stopped. He was mad and just a-ranting. I couldn't tell at first if he was talking to his mule or to himself." "Probably both, if I know Hawk. He thinks more of that old gray mule than he does of his wife! Why, he's had that old bag of bones thirty years!" Papa laughed. "The mule, Jodie! Not the wife!" Grandpa laughed too. "What was Hawk raving about?" "He was grumbling that a man and his mule ain't safe on the road no more. He said that all them dad-burned automobiles come tearing through—'course 'dad-burned' wasn't exactly the word he used—trying to run a-body in the ditch and scaring the living daylights outta you." "That's Hawk for you, all right. He hates automobiles." "A few minutes later, when this Hicks man said something to Hal Goode about the stretch of road between Union and Drake Eye Springs being narrow and rough as a washboard, I thought Old Man Hawk would explode! "'Oh,' he said, 'you town fellers figger we ain't got a blessed thing to do but get out and drag the roads nice and smooth for you!' "That set Hicks back on his heels. Ward, though, piped up, 'Why, Mister Hawk, when I get me my automobile, I'm gonna be countin' on you to help lay down a plank road 'fore winter rains set in. Rocky Head Bottom gets powerful muddy!' "Pa, that sent Old Man Hawk into such a rage he nearly swallowed his chewing tobacco!" "I'm here to tell you, Jodie, Ward Lawson had better not tangle with Hawk! Get him riled, and there's no telling what he's liable to do. If Ward was to buy himself a car, Hawk would as soon burn it up as to look at it!" Chapter 4 In September Drake Eye Springs School started again, this time with a new teacher named Mister Shepherd. Mierd and Wiley both got new book sacks. I begged the grownups to get me a book sack and let me go. I could say my ABC's and count all the way to a hundred! But Mama said I wasn't old enough to start to school, Papa said my legs weren't long enough, and Grandpa Thad said I still had to eat a lot more baked sweet 'taters. Shoogie couldn't come any day to play with me because she had to go to Sweet Beulah School. Her legs were already real long. So I played by myself. Sometimes Mama and I kept the store while Papa went to town. That was fun to me, but Mama didn't like it.