Uncle Sagamore and His Girls Read Online Free PDF

was hurt. “Likker? Why, Shurf, even if I’d do a low-down thing like that, I’d have better sense. It bein’ election year and all, a man was to light a cigar down there in that bottom timber, there’d be seven deppities yellin’ ‘Smoke!’ before he could put out the match.”
    The Sheriff’s face got red. “Just you try something, and see what happens. Here! Take a look at this!”
    He slammed the paper into Uncle Sagamore’s hand. While him and Pop was reading it, I leaned over their shoulders to see what all the fuss was about. It was the Jerome newspaper, the Blossom County Bee, and the part the Sheriff was pointing at was on the front page. There was a lot of long words I didn’t understand too well, but the headline said: A PUBLIC DISGRACE.
“Blossom County should hang its head in shame. Law enforcement is a mockery, and yet with only two days left in which to file for the Democratic Primary, the present Sheriff is unopposed for re-election. Have we run out of men? Or don’t we even want our laws enforced?
    “Right now moonshine whiskey is being made in open defiance of the law within ten miles of this newspaper office. It always has been. Maybe it always will be. During the twelve long years the present Sheriff has allegedly been trying to turn off this welling Niagara of Old Popskull, law enforcement has deteriorated from bumbling inefficiency to futility to the status of a comic opera routine. The corn continueth to give forth its juice, con games flourish, gangsters assassinate each other, and young ladies cavort among the pinoaks clad only in a few glass beads.
    “We need a change in the Sheriff’s office, but how can we have one if nobody will even ask for the job? Stand up, somebody, and file. This paper will back you to the limit. But remember, time is running out. In two days it will be too late.”
    Uncle Sagamore finished reading and handed the paper back to the Sheriff. “Shucks,” he says, “seems like you’re out politickin’ a mite early this year, Shurf, but there ain’t no cause to fret. You got our support. Me and Sam aim to vote for you early and late.”
    The Sheriff got redder in the face. He slammed the paper on the ground and his false teeth started to whistle again.
    Uncle Sagamore shifted his tobacco over in his other cheek and puckered up his mouth kind of thoughtful. “You know, Sam,” he says to Pop, “that there’s the cruel thing about politics. A man just ain’t got no security. He don’t never know when he may lose out in election and have to do somethin’ desperate, like goin’ to work for a livin’—”
    The Sheriff went on swelling up. It looked like he was going to bust, but then he got his teeth to making words at last. “All right, you just go on bein’ smart, Noonan!” he yelled. “I’ve warned you.” He said four or five bad words, kicked at the newspaper, and stomped back to his car. It dusted up the hill and out of sight in the trees by the gate.
    “You reckon anybody’ll run against him?” Pop asked.
    “I don’t think it’s hardly likely, Sam,” Uncle Sagamore says. “Ain’t nobody else really wants the job, and as long as things stays quiet for the next few days he ort to be all right.”
    But it seems like it didn’t work out that way. It was the very next day when this other thing happened, the one that really started all the election ruckus.
    I was down by the lake around ten that morning trying to catch some crawfish, when Pop yelled and said he was going to town. We had to buy some more hog lard to fry the baloney in. We left our car, and all three of us went in Uncle Sagamore’s truck. Uncle Sagamore didn’t bother to change clothes, or put on his shoes, and Pop was dressed in the Levis and cowboy boots and straw sombrero that he always wore around the tracks when his business name was Stablehand Noonan.
    By the sand road it’s about four miles over the hills and through the timber till you get out on the highway, and