I don’t want to talk much about the next day. I reckon I’ll cut it pretty short. I waked up about dawn, and was a-going to turn over and go to sleep again when I noticed how still it was—didn’t seem to be anybody stirring. That warn’t usual. Next I noticed that Buck was up and gone. Well, I gets up, a-wondering, and goes down-stairs—nobody around; everything as still as a mouse. Just the same outside. Thinks I, what does it mean? Down by the woodpile I comes across my Jack and says: “What’s it all about?” Says he: “Don’t you know, Mars Jawge?” “No,” says I, “I don’t.” “Well, den, Miss Sophia’s run off! ’deed she has. She run off in de night some time—nobody don’t know jis when; run off to get married to dat young Harney Shepherdson, you know—leastways, so dey ’spec. De fambly foun’ it out ’bout half an hour ago—maybe a little mo’—en’ I _tell_ you dey warn’t no time los’. Sich another hurryin’ up guns en hosses _you_ never see! De women folks has gone for to stir up de relations, en ole Mars Saul en de boys tuck dey guns en rode up de river road for to try to ketch dat young man en kill him ’fo’ he kin git acrost de river wid Miss Sophia. I reck’n dey’s gwyne to be mighty rough times.” “Buck went off ’thout waking me up.” “Well, I reck’n he _did_! Dey warn’t gwyne to mix you up in it. Mars Buck loaded up his gun en ’lowed he’s gwyne to fetch home a Shepherdson or bust. Well, dey’ll be plenty un ’m dah, I reck’n, en you bet you he’ll fetch one ef he gits a chanst.” I took up the river road as hard as I could put. By and by I begin to hear guns a good ways off. When I came into sight of the log store and the woodpile where the steamboats lands I worked along under the trees and brush till I got to a good place, and then I clumb up into the forks of a cottonwood that was out of reach, and watched. There was a wood-rank four foot high a little ways in front of the tree, and first I was going to hide behind that; but maybe it was luckier I didn’t. There was four or five men cavorting around on their horses in the open place before the log store, cussing and yelling, and trying to get at a couple of young chaps that was behind the wood-rank alongside of the steamboat-landing—but they couldn’t come it. Every time one of them showed himself on the river side of the woodpile he got shot at. The two boys was squatting back to back behind the pile, so they could watch both ways.