“GL,” I says, “now you ain’t joking with your mama, is you? Because if you is, I’ll strap you purple if I live through this.”
Well, GL was pulling on the reins with all his meager strength, and yelling, “Whoa, you. Say now, whoa!” He turned to me just long enough to say, “I ain’t fooling with you, Mama. Honest!”
I reckon that animal weren’t too satisfied with the road, because it made a sharp right turn just then, down into a gulley and struck across a hilly meadow. “Mama,” GL yells. “Mama, do something!”
I didn’t know what to do, but I figured I had to do something so I stood up, hopped down onto the horse’s back and pulled it to a stop. Don’t ask me how I did that; I reckon it was that I was a mother and my baby asked me to do something, is all.
“Well, we walked that animal all the way home; sometimes I had to club it over the nose with my fist to make it come, but we made it, GL and me. You remember how tired we was, Charles?”