"Here, stranger, sit," he said, pulling a chair out from the table. "We're just about to eat and there's enough for three and we'd be proud to have you join us."

"But the car," I reminded him. "I'm in something of a hurry."

He shook his head. "Can't be done. Not tonight, at least. The horses aren't in the barn. They're out in the pasture somewhere, probably up atop the hill. Couldn't pay me enough, no one could, to go out hunting them with it about to rain and the rattlesnakes."

"But rattlesnakes," I said, somewhat foolishly and to no great point, "aren't out at night."

"Let me tell you, son," he said, "no one ever rightly knows about a rattlesnake."

"I forgot myself," I said. "My name is Horton Smith." I was getting tired of his calling me «son» and "stranger."

The woman turned from the stove, a big fork held in her hand.

"Smith," she said, excited. "Why, that is our name, too! Could it be that you are kin?"

"No, Maw," said the man. "There is a passel of Smiths. Just because a' man's named Smith don't signify that he'd be related to us. But," he said, "it seems to me that this fortunate similarity of names might call for a snort."

He reached down under the table and brought up a gallon jug. From a shelf behind him he picked up a couple of glasses.

"You look to me like a city feller," he said, "but I hear that some of them are fairly good at drinking. Now this stuff ain't what you'd rightly call first class likker, but it is top grade corn squeezings and it is guaranteed not to poison you. Don't take too big a slug to start with or it might strangle you. But along about the third gulp that you take you don't need to worry none, because by that time you will be acclimated to it. I tell you there ain't nothing cozier on a night like this than to cuddle up alongside a jug of moonshine. I got it off Old Joe Hopkins. He makes it on an island in the river…"