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short with his talk. Because you pass three cabins on the way down, and four more up the mountainside that you can't see but they see you, and if we ever gave them a chance to wake up to what was going on we might see something cutting the leaves. We hustled him down to the car and Wash drove and I sat on the outside. So when we got to my cabin, the table was set out under the trees with some candles on it and both Kady and Jane were looking down the creek to see what had become of us. Wash began talking to Kady. "Don't wait for us. We'll be back soon as we can after we get this thing booked, but don't let the stuff get cold waiting for us."
    "Booked? What are you talking about?"
    "Didn't he kidnap our boy?"
    "He didn't mean any harm."
    "It could have cost Danny his life."
    "Wash, Moke is a friend of my mother's, and she's not well, and maybe she needs him. He's not any more than half-witted anyhow, no matter what he did, so why can't we forget it and go about our business instead of putting him in jail for the next five or ten years, where's he's not any good to anybody?"
    "Maybe I'm not so half-witted as you think."
    "Maybe a skunk don't stink."
    It was me that said that, and then I told her there were some things that can't be forgotten, and, that Moke was lucky we didn't shoot him, as that's what he had coming to him. But while I was talking she kept looking at me, and then she said: "Jess, you've had plenty to say since I've been living here about things that had to be fought if they were wrong and they were in you, and all I've got to say is that remembering things long after they do you any harm is another thing that people might fight a little bit, specially if they live up the creeks in this part of the country, and got the habit of remembering things long after anybody could remember what they were trying to remember."
    "Do we take him in, Jess?"
    "Let's go."
    He had cut his motor, but now he started it again, and she stood aside. "All right, Wash, but you're taking a lot of trouble for nothing."
    "You think it's for nothing?"
    "He's not yet your child."
    "He will be tomorrow."
    "I'm not talking about what he will be. I'm talking about what he is, and what he was when he was taken. If they ask me, I'll tell them I've got nothing to say, and if the mother won't sign the writ, that ends it, unless of course the child has a father."
    "Kady, why are you standing up for Moke?"
    "Jess, are you crazy? Who's standing up for Moke? I'm standing up for myself, and for my little boy that nobody else is thinking about that I can see. Do you think I want this in the papers, and then have it come out that Danny is what they call a love child, and God knows what else they would think up to put in?"
    "It's not any piece for the papers."
    "A kidnapping?"
    She stepped up to the window and talked straight at Wash. "Haven't you done enough to me without this, and for no reason except to give a simple-looking imitation of a West Virginia bad man?"
    "I'm turning him over to the law."
    "You can't even do that, right."
    "So you know a better way?"
    "You're turning him over to Carbon County when the crime was committed in Blount? Gee, but you're smart, aren't you? Gee, but you're going to look wonderful when you get to Carbon City with him and they say, sorry, son, you're in the right church but the wrong pew. Gee —
    "Suppose you shut up."
    For a minute, steel had been facing steel, but now they weren't anything but a pair of kids jawing at each other, and next thing they were laughing and he got out and she said he was so dumb it was pitiful but there was no steam in it and the fight was over. So I got out and told Moke to get out of there and get quick. So he got out and started up the creek. So Wash, he ran after him and gave him a kick that knocked him over on his face. So he got up and began to cuss out Wash, mean, whispering cusswords, all covered with spit. That was when Kady walked over and slapped his face, and told him he'd got