474
THE GREEN BAG
"I ain't got nuthin'," Lamb answered. Here was a contingency to which the attorney had not given previous consider ation. He began a mental calculation as to the probable length of time he could practice law with his present fixed charges for board. and washing, and a buggy, say twice a week. It occurred to him that he could pick oranges during one season for the expenses of practicing law the next. 1 ' I reckon I kin try to borrow five dol lars," Lamb said and went out. A clerk, who came in to mix some powders, helped Brown to a better understanding of the case, before Lamb came back. The latter handed his defender five dollars and took his seat. The store outside was in view through the cracks between the planks. The Jtide of loungers had now flowed back to the shade. Some were whittling, some sat nursing their legs, and now and then there was a dull murmur as of feeble con versation. Lamb folded his arms across his narrow chest and twisted himself into a limp bone less attitude so that it would be impossible to say what parts supported the. others. He began after much urging in this fashion. "It was this-a-way. My wife ain't much. We've had six children and buried four, and when the last baby came she didn't have no milk. That was in the beginning of comin'-on-winter. I hadn't made no crop worth talk-about and one day my mule dropped dead. There was a feller whar rented a piece of land with a cabin on it and he had two mules. He proposed we go shares. My wife was to do the cookin' and keep house. My wife's mother lives with us. She ain't much and her health ain't nuthin'. She has fever and ager when its comin'-on sun-down, not regular, but most always. The feller took a dislike to her from the start. Lamb had a trying way of stopping be tween sentences. He seemed to lose his thread in these silences. Brown had often
to recall to him what he had said to straighten him out on his road. "We planted our crop," continued Lamb, "and it come time for first ploughing and the meat and meal, we had calculated to last us, give out. He was a tremenjous feller with middlin' but he said it give out because we was a feedin' so many. Now my wife can't eat middlin' and she ain't much for co'n-pone — stomach sorter turns against it, she says. The baby was fretful nights because she didn't have no milk much and she couldn't wean it on co'nbread and bacon. These fellers here in this store fixed us up with stuff to cook until we could grind our co'n, but the feller would come in to eat and say it wasn't cooked fit for a dog. My wife tried to suit him but it wasn't no use. He told my wife's mother that she hadn't no busness living and taking the food outer people's mouth's who worked to make it. Told my wife it would have been a lucky thing if her mother had died instead of the mule." Here Lamb stopped and it was a long time before he again got under way. "I stood it a long time," said Lamb and, as he raised his hollow eyes, the lawyer fancied that a glimmer of expression was in them. "He'd come in and take off his coat and yell to my wife, ' Bring on the slop and the dog bread. I can't eat it but I want to see you doing some cursed thing. ' Now she want in no fix to be talked to like that. She used to cry nights and wish she was dead. Well, one day he come in and said more'n that. He said —" — What he said cannot be written down . "Then he took the plate of meat and gravy and threw it out of the window. I went out and studied what I was goin' to do. Then I went back and I said — he was yellin' all the time — I said, 'you quit or git out.' Then I went in his room and got his gun. When I come back he didn't make no motion. He yelled, 'tain't loaded,' like 'twas all a joke. I pulled the trigger and it was loaded. "
