“Yer like my first wife,” said Snead, striding alongside of me. “Nothin’ could head her. You’ve heard ’bout the man that had had three wives an’ when he prayed he would say: ‘God bless Patch, an’ Piece-patch, but dern ol’ Tear-all.’ Now I say it back’ards. My first un wuz Tear-all, an’ I’d ruther have her back than any of ’em. There wuzn’t any government them days. Ever’ feller had his own still ef he wanted one, an’ tended to his own business. Governments hadn’t come inter fashion. I’d say to my wife, ‘Serry, I’d like to cut up fer a week an’ lay drunk,’ an’ she’d say: ‘Go it, Ag, I’ll ’tend to the crap.’ An’ when I got through I’d let her have her turn ef she wanted it, and she generally did. When she wuz dyin’ she says ‘Ag, you’ve been square. You’ve come as you wanted an’ gone as you wanted, an’ so’ve I, bless Jesus.’ ‘Yes, Serry,’ I says, ‘you’ve never been tied to the meat-skillet or wash-pot.’ She laffed then an’ says: ‘I reckon you knowed that string would ’a’ broke anyhow, Ag.’ When she wuz dead I wuz fool enough to think my luck wouldn’t turn, an’ I married agin in about six weeks. Lord, Lord, she cleaned an’ she cooked an’ she mended till I begged her to let up an’ go huntin’ with me. I wuz so lonesome I purty near cried, an’ all she done wuz to git down on her marr’s an’ pray fer my soul. ‘O Lord,’ she says, ‘I’ll take keer o’ his pore neglected body ef you’ll jest save his soul.’ Well, I set in then an’ made her glad to git out. I set down an’ cussed her steady fer two days. She was ready to go the first day, but said she couldn’t till she got ever’thing done. She left my clothes all fixed an’ the house like pie, an’ enough cooked to keep me fer a week, an’ me cussin’ her in a solid streak. She had the grit, but it wuz turned the wrong way fer me. It gives me the all-gonest, lonesome feeling now to think of how she worked an’ worked, an’ all I wanted wuz company. ’Twa’n’t long till she married Ham Copp an’ I reckon he suited her, fer they’re livin’ together yit. It’s her two boys what’s been so near that dead sow back yander, no matter what Len Merlin’s got in his head about it. You kain’t blame the boys, they been brought up so religious. I think a heap of religion, but you got to keep it in bounds er it’s like fire an’ water; it’ll eat ye up. The Copp boys don’t want to be et up, an’ when they gets out they make t’other way, toward the devil. I’m a deacon, an’ pay my dues, but nobody can say I treat my religion too familiar.” Sam called us to halt, and we paused in a body to look searchingly down over the cliffs where boulders struggled brokenly and trees and saplings scrambled for distorted life.