Raymond S. Spears

“ There's trouble all around. The bank at Deerport is pressed hard. Old Clinchell's squeezing it. He says they favored you, and you're a mean scoundrel. I'm just telling you. Now what do you know?"
"I'll tell you what I know," Andrest replied. "I don't know what to make of it myself. I saw Si Hed Jesnie at the ford of the East and West Trace. Then I rowed to the Clinchell plantation, and there were a mule's tracks up the bank. I knew those tracks, for they had a notch out of the right fore hoof. They belonged to Sue Belle's saddle-mule. I took the back track. ”

“ Andrest exclaimed. "I've been a wondering! That mule didn't go back the way he went!"
It was late evening, but Andrest started west along the Railroad Trace. When night fell, he stopped at a cabin beside the road. An old man lived in the cabin, and he had a skiff turned upside down on the roof of his home.
"You see, if the overflow comes suddint," the man explained, "I got my boat so's I can row around. I shore hate to jes' set when the water's all over the bottoms. Some ain't forehanded thataway. They don't have a boat when the water comes, and all they got to do is set. ”

“ The Bullfrogs was always taking rafts out'n the sunk lands, and the Red Flannels was gentlemen that claimed to own the dead timber that was being rafted, and they'd shoot most inconsequential, so to say. ”

“ There he puzzled his brain trying to figure out just what old Clinchell had done, and where Sue Belle was hidden away.
Before dawn he left the shack, returned to the railroad station at Gumtree, and took the train for River Bridge. Thence he tramped down to where he had left his skiff and went about hauling his nets, which had been neglected for more than two days. However, the fish were in fair condition, and he carried his catch to River Bridge. ”