“All right, Uncle Ranz,” said one of the younger men. “That’s what we want. I reckon this is the last time we’ll all corcus over Uncle Nathe.” “Y’all keep Lizy from pesterin’ me then, an’ turn that feist out, some o’ ye.” II “Nathe took me to live with him an’ Ponnie,” began Uncle Ranz, “when they’s fust married. I wuz about ten years old then, an’ I’ve got to say it fer Nathe, he wuz as good to me as a daddy. He wuz thirty years old when his fust trouble come up, an’ he’d been married turnin’ onto ten years. Him an’ Ponnie had four childern a livin’ an’ two dead.” “You wuz there, Uncle Ranz,” put in a guest, “the very day o’ the trouble, wuzn’t you?” “I wuz right there, but ef I’m goin’ to talk it will have to be on my own time an’ not yorn.” There was a chastened silence, then he continued amiably: “Ponnie had been spittin’ fire fer two er three days, an’ the childern wuz dodgin’ her. I wuz grown up by that time, an’ could look out fer myself. Nathe an’ Ponnie had been plum crazy about each other when they got married, but they had black eyes pineblank alike, an’ I’ve noticed that don’t work out as well as when you marry a different color. Nathe’s hair wuz curly, though, an’ Ponnie’s wuz straight an’ long. It wuz powerful thick, too, an’ she could twist it an’ wrap it round her head big as a dish-pan mighty nigh. I’ve _hearn_ she had a drap o’ Cher’kee in her----” “That wuzn’t so, Ranz,” Aunt Lizy interjected. “Me an’ Ponnie wuz the same age, an’ run together from the time we’s out of our cradles, an’ ef there’d been any Indian in her I’d ’a’ knowed it.”