I come onto
the place where our campfire had been them nights
we was there. Looey had drug an old fence post
onto the fire one night, and the post had only burned
half up. The butt end of it, all charred and flaked,
was still laying in the grass and weeds there. It
hit me with a queer feeling--like it was only yester-
day that fire had been lit there. And yet I knowed
it had been a year and a half ago.
Well, it has always been my luck to run into
things without the right kind of a lie fixed up ahead
of time. They was three or four purty good stories
I had been trying over in my head to tell Martha
when I seen her. Any one of them stories might of
done all right; but I hadn't decided WHICH one to
use. And, of course, I run plumb into Martha.
She was standing by the gate, which was about
twenty yards from the veranda. And all four lies
popped into my head at oncet, and got so mixed up
with one another there, I seen right off it was useless
to try to tell anything that sounded straight. Be-
sides, when you are in the fix I was in, what can you
tell a girl anyhow?
So I jest says to her:
"Hullo!"
Martha, she had been fussing around some flower
bushes with a pair of shears and gloves on. She
looks up when I says that, and she sizes us all up
standing by the gate, and her eyes pops open, and so
does her mouth, and she is so surprised to see me she
drops her shears.
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