sleep none to-night. I allows it's 'cause he's among rank strangers, an' he figgers it's a good safe play to lookout his game for himse'f.'
"'I wonder couldn't we sing him to sleep,' says Cherokee Hall.
"'Nothin' ag'in a try,' says Jack, some desp'rate, wipin' his lips after the drink.
"'S'pose we-alls gives him "The Dyin' Ranger" an' "Sandy Land" for an hour or so, an' see,' says Boggs.
"In we trails. Cherokee lines up on one side of the infant, an' Jack on t'other; an' the rest of us takes chairs an' camps 'round, We starts in an' shore sings him all we knows; an' we keeps it up for hours. All the time, that child is a-settin' thar, a-battin' his eyes an' a-starin', sleepless as owls. The last I remembers is Boggs's voice on 'Sandy Land'
"'Great big taters on sandy land,
Get thar, Eli, if you can.'
"The next thing I'm aware of, thar's a whoop an' a yell outside. We-alls wakes up—all except the infant, who's wide awake all along— an' yere it is; four o'clock in the mornin', an' the mother has come. Comes over on a speshul buckboard from the station where that old inebriate, Monte, drove off an' left her. Well, son, everybody's plumb willin' an' glad to see her. An' for that matter, splittin' even, so's the infant."
