She's gone away an' left it as neat as wax, an' that gate o' hern swings open sometimes an' them 'tarnal ducks'll git in.

Them's the heads of the tarnal cusses just coming over the line of that rise.

But the axe, as Uncle Jack Lummis says of his brown mare, is "a tarnal great critter, any how!"

I grabbed at the tarnal ghost, and if I could have got a grip on it I'd downed it.