Mr. Pullum looked confounded, but said nothing, and he and the Captain walked over to a vacant blacksmith’s shop across the street, where they could be free from observation.
“You’re from Wetumpka last,” remarked Suggs with severity, and as if his words charged a crime.
“What if I am?” replied Pullum, with an effort to appear bold.
“What’s cotton worth?” asked the Captain, with an almost imperceptible wink.
“Which will you tell your wife you sold yours—_hers_ for?”
“What do you know about my wife?” he asked.
“Never mind about _that_. Was you in the habit of gettin’ drunk before you left Talbot county, Georgy?”
“I never lived in Talbot; I was born and raised in Hanis,” said Pullum, with something like triumph.
“Close to the line, though,” replied Suggs, confidently relying on the fact that there was a large family of Pullums in Talbot; “most of your connexions lived in Talbot.”
“Well, what of all that?” asked Pullum, with impatience; “what is it to you whar I come from, or whar my connexion lived?”
“Never mind—I’ll show you—no man that married Billy Stearns’s daughter can carry on in the way _you’ve been doin’_, without my interferin’ for the intrust of the family!”
Suggs said this with an earnestness, a sternness, that completely vanquished Pullum. He tremulously asked:
“How did you know that I married Stearns’s daughter?”
“That’s a fact ’most anybody could have known that was intimate with the family in old times. You’d better ask how I knowed that you tuk _your wife’s_ cotton to Wetumpka—sold it—got on a spree—after Sally give you a caution too—and then came by here, _got on another spree_. What do you reckon Sally will say to you when you get home?”
“She won’t know it,” replied Pullum, “unless somebody tells her.”
“Somebody _will tell her_,” said Suggs, “I’m going home with you as soon as you’ve had breakfast. My poor Sally Rugby shall not be trampled on in this way. I’ve only got to borrow fifty dollars from some of the boys, to make out a couple of thousand. I need to make the last payment on my land. So go over and eat your breakfast quick.”
“For God’s sake, Sir, don’t tell Sally about it; you don’t know how unreasonable she is.”
“The divil I don’t! she bit this piece out of my face,” here Suggs pointed to a scar on his cheek, “when I had her on my lap a little girl only five years old. She was always game.”