The Prophet of the Great Smoky Mountains

II.

THE summer days climbed slowly over the Great Smoky Mountains. Long the morning lingered among the crags, and chasms, and the dwindling shadows. The vertical noontide poised motionless on the great balds. The evening dawdled along the sunset slopes, and the waning crimson waited in the dusk for the golden moonrise.

So little speed they made that it seemed to Rick Tyler that weeks multiplied while they loitered.

It might have been deemed the ideal of a sylvan life, — those days while he lay hid out on the Big Smoky. The region is the Elysium of a hunter. His rifle brought him food with but the glance of the eye and a touch on the trigger. “ Ekal ter the prophet’s raven, ef the truth war knowed,”he said sometimes, while he cooked the game over a fire of dead-wood gathered by the wayside. A handful of blackberries gave it a relish, and there were the ice-cold, never - failing springs of the range wherever he might turn.

But for the unquiet thoughts that followed him from the world, the characteristic sloth of the mountaineer might have spared him all sense of tedium, as he lay on the bank of a mountain stream, while the slow days waxed and waned. Often he would see a musk-rat — picturesque little body — swimming in a muddy dip. And again his listless gaze was riveted upon the quivering diaphanous wings of a snake-doctor, hovering close at hand, until the grotesque, airy thing would Hit away. The arrowy sunbeams shot into the dense umbrageous tangles, and fell spent to earth as the shadows swayed. Further down the stream two huge cliffs rose on either side of the channel, giving a narrow view of far-away blue mountains as through a gate. In and out stole the mist, uncertain whither. The wind came and went, paying no toll. Sometimes, when the sun was low, a shadow — an antlered shadow — slipped through like a fantasy.

But when the skies would begin to darken and the night come tardily on, the scanty incidents of the day lost their ephemeral interest. His human heart would assert itself, and he would yearn for the life from which he was banished, and writhe with an intolerable anguish under his sense of injury.

“ An’ the law holds me the same ez ’Bednego Tynes, who killed Joel Byers, jes’ ter keep his hand in, — hevin’ killed another man afore,— an’ I never so much ez lifted a finger agin him ! ”

He pondered much on his past, and the future that he had lost. Sometimes he gave himself to adjusting, from the meagre circumstances of their common lot on Big Smoky, the future of those with whose lives his own had heretofore seemed an integrant part, from which it should forevermore be dissevered.

All the pangs of penance were in that sense of irrevocability. It was done, and here was his choice : to live the life of a skulking wolf, to prowl, to flee, to fight at bay, or to return and confront an outraged law. He experienced a wild frenzy of rage to realize how hardily his world would roll on without him. Big Smoky would not suffer ! The sun would shine, and the crops ripen, and the harvest come, and the snows sift down, and the seasons roll. The boys would shoot for beef, and there was to be a gander-pulling at the Settlement when the candidates should come, “ stumpin’ the Big Smoky ” for the midsummer elections. And when, periodically, “ the mountings ” would awake to a sense of sin, and a revival would be instituted, all the people would meet, and clap their hands, and sing, and pray, and that busy sinner, D’riudy, might find time to think upon grace, and perhaps upon the man whom she likened to the prophets of old.

Then Rick Tyler would start up from his bed of boughs, and stride wildly about among the bowlders, hardly pausing to listen if he heard a wolf howling on the lonely heights. An owl would hoot derisively from the tangled laurel. And oh, the melancholy moonlight in the melancholy pines, where the whippoor-will moaned and moaned !

“I’d shoot that critter ef I could make out ter see him! ” cried the harassed fugitive, his every nerve quivering.

It all began with Dorinda ; it all came back to her. He drearily foresaw that she would forget him ; and yet he could not know how the alienation was to commence, how it should progress, and the process of its completion. “ All whilst I’m a-roamin’ off with the painters an’ sech ! ” he exclaimed bitterly.

And she, — her future was plain enough. There was a little log-cabin by the grist-mill : the mountains sheltered it; the valley held it as in the palm of a hand. Hardly a moment since, his jealous heart had been racked by the thought of the man she likened to the prophets of old, and now he saw her spinning in the door of Amos James’s house, in the quiet depths of Eskaqua Cove.

This vision stilled his heart. He was numbed by his despair. Somehow, the burly young miller seemed a fitter choice than the religious enthusiast, whose leisure was spent in praying in the desert places. He wondered that he should ever have felt other jealousy, and was subacutely amazed to find this passion so elastic.

With wild and haggard eyes be saw the day break upon this vision. It came in at the great gate, — a pale flush, a fainting star, a burst of song, and the red and royal sun.

The morning gradually exerted its revivifying influence and brought a new impulse. He easily deceived himself, and disguised it as a reason.

“ This hyar powder is a-gittin’ mighty low,” he said to himself, examining the contents of his powder-horn. " An’ that thar rifle eats it up toler’ble fast sence I hev hed ter hunt varmints fur my vittles. Ef that war the sher’ff a-ridin’ arter me the day I war at Cayce’s, he’s done gone whar he b’longs by this time, — ’t war two weeks ago; an’ ef he ain’t gone back he would n’t be layin’ fur me roun’ the Settlemint, nohow. An’ I kin git some powder thar, an’ hear ’em tell what the mounting air a-doin’ of. An’ mebbe I won’t be so durned lonesome when I gits back hyar.”

He mounted his horse, later in the day, and picked his way slowly down the banks of the stream and through the great gate.

The Settlement on the Big Smoky illustrated the sacrilege of civilization. A number of trees, girdled years ago, stretched above the fields their gigantic skeletons, suggesting their former majesty of mien and splendid proportions. Their forlorn leafless branches rattled together with a dreary sound, as the breeze stirred among the gaunt and pallid assemblage. The little log-cabins, five or six in number, were so situated among the stumps which disfigured the clearing that if a sudden wind should bring down one of the monarchical spectres of the forest it would make havoc only in the crops. The wheat was thin and backward. A little patch of cotton in a mellow dip served to show the plant at its minimum. There was tobacco, too, placed like the cotton where it was hoped it would take a notion to grow. Sorghum flourished, and the tasseled Indian corn, waving down a slope, had aboriginal suggestions of plumed heads and glancing quivers, A clamor of Guinea fowls arose, and geese and turkeys roved about in the publicity of the clearing with the confident air of esteemed citizens. Sheep were feeding among the ledges.

It was hard to say what might be bought at the store except powder and coffee, and sugar perhaps, if “longsweetenin’ ” might not suffice ; for each of the half dozen small farms was a type of the region, producing within its own confines all its necessities. Handlooms could be glimpsed through open doors, and as yet the dry-goods trade is unknown to the homespun-clad denizens of the Settlement. Beeswax, feathers, honey, dried fruit, are bartered here, and a night’s rest has never been lost for the perplexities of the currency question on the Big Smoky Mountains.

The proprietor of the store, his operations thus limited, was content to grow rich slowly, if needs were to grow rich at all. In winter he sat before the great wood fire in the store and smoked his pipe, and his crony, the blacksmith, often came, hammer in hand and girded with his leather apron, and smoked with him. In the summer he sat all day, as now, in front of the door, looking meditatively at the scene before him. The sunlight slanted upon the great dead trees ; their forms were imposed with a wonderful distinctness upon the landscape that stretched so far below the precipice on which the little town was perched. They even touched, with those bereaved and denuded limbs, the far blue mountains encircling the horizon, and with their interlacing lines and curves they seemed some mysterious scripture engraven upon the world.

It was just six o’clock, and the shadow of a bough that still held a mass of woven sticks, once the nest of an eagle, had reached the verge of the cliff, when the sound of hoofs fell on the still air, and a man rode into the clearing from the encompassing woods.

The storekeeper glanced up to greet the new-comer, but did not risk the fatigue of rising. Women looked out of the windows, and a girl on a porch, reeling yarn, found a reason to stop her work. A man came out of a house close by, and sat on the fence, within range of any colloquy in which he might wish to participate. The whole town could join at will in a municipal conversation. The forge fire showed a dull red against the dusky brown shadows in the recesses of the shop. The blacksmith stood in front of the door, his eyes shielded with his broad blackened right hand, and looked critically at the animal. Horses were more in his line than men. He was a tall, powerfully built fellow of thirty, perhaps, with the sooty aspect peculiar to his calling, a swarthy complexion, and a remarkably well-knit, compact, and muscular frame. He often said in pride, “ Ef I hed hed the forgin ’ o’ myself, I would n’t hev welded on a pound more, or hammered out a leader differ.”

Suddenly detaching his attention from the horse, he called out, “ Waal, sir ! Ef thar ain’t Rick Tyler ! ” This was addressed to the town at large. Then, “ What ails ye, Rick ? I hearn tell ez you-uns war on yer way ter Shaftesville along o’ the sher’ff.” He had a keen and twinkling eye. He cast it significantly at the man on the fence. “ Ye kem back, I reckon, ter git yer handcuffs mended at my shop. Gimme the bracelets.” He held out his hand in affected anxiety.

“ I ain’t a-wearin’ no bracelets now.” The young man’s hasty impulse had its impressiveness. He leveled his pistol. “ Ef ye hanker ter do enny mendin’, I ’ll gin ye repairs ter make in them cast-iron chit’lings o’ yourn,” he said coolly.

Rick Tyler was received at the store with a distinct accession of respect. The blacksmith stood watching him, with an angry gleam in his eyes, and a furtive recollection of the reward offered by the governor for his apprehension.

The young fellow, with a sudden return of caution, did not at once venture to dismount; and Nathan Hoodendin, the storekeeper, rose for no customer. Respectively seated, for these diverse reasons, they transacted the negotiation.

“ Hy’re, Rick,” drawled the storekeeper languidly. “ I hopes ye keeps yer health,” he added, politely.

The young man melted at the friendly tone. This was the welcome he had looked for at the Settlement, Loneliness had made his sensibilities tender, and “hiding out” affected his spirits more than dodging the officers in the haunts of men, or daring the cupidity roused, he knew, by the reward for his capture. The blacksmith’s jeer touched him as cruelly as an attempt upon his liberty. “ Jes’ toler’ble,” he admitted, with the usual rural reluctance to acknowledge full health. “ I hopes ye an’ yer fambly air thrivin’,” he drawled, after a moment.

A whiff came from the storekeeper’s pipe; the smoke wreathed before his face, and floated away.

“ Waal, we air makiu’ out, — we air makin’ out.”

“ I kem over hyar,” said Rick Tyler, proceeding to business, “ ter git some powder out’n yer store. I wants one pound.”

Nathan Hoodendin smoked silently for a moment. Then, with a facial convulsion and a physical wrench, he lilted his voice.

“ Jer’miah ! ” he shouted in a wild wheeze. And again, “ Jer’miah ! ”

The invoked Jer’miah did not materialize at once. When a small towheaded boy of ten came from a house among the stumps, with that peculiar deftness of tread characteristic of the habitually barefoot, he had an alert, startled expression, as if he had just jumped out of a bush. His hair stood up in front; he had wide pop-eyes, and long ears, and a rabbit-like aspect that was not diminished as he scudded round the heels of Rick Tyler’s horse, at which he looked with apprehensive eyes.

“ Jer’miah,” said his father, with a pathetic cadence, “ go into the store, hub, an’ git Rick Tvler a pound o’ powder.”

As Jeremiah started in, the paternal sentiment stirred in Nathan Hoodendin’s breast.

“ Jer’miah,” he wheezed, bringing the forelegs of the chair to the ground, and craning forward with unwonted alacrity to look into the dusky interior of the store, “ don’t ye be foolin’ round that thar powder with no lighted tallow dip nor nuthin’. I ’ll whale the life out’n ye ef ye do. Jes’ weigh it by the window.”

Whether from fear of a whaling by his active parent, or of the conjunction of a lighted tallow dip and powder, Jeremiah dispensed with the candle. He brought the commodity out presently, and Rick stowed it away in his saddlebags.

“ Can’t ye ‘light an’ sot a while an’ talk, Rick ? ” said the storekeeper. “ We-uns hev done hed our supper, but I reckon they could fix ye a snack yunder ter the house.”

Rick said he wanted nothing to eat, but, although he hesitated, he could not finally resist the splint-bottomed chair tilted against the wall of the store, and a sociable pipe, and the countryside gossip.

“ What’s goin’ on ’round the mounting?” he asked.

Gid Fletcher, the blacksmith, came and sat in another chair, and the man on the fence got off and took up his position on a stump hard by. The great red sun dropped slowly behind the purple mountains ; and the full golden moon rose above the corn-field that lay on the eastern slope, and hung there between the dark woods on either hand ; and the blades caught the light, and tossed with burnished flashes into the night; and the great ghastly trees assumed a ghostly whiteness ; and the mystic writing laid on the landscape below had the aspect of an uninterpreted portent. The houses were mostly silent; now and then a guard-dog growled at some occult alarm ; a woman somewhere was softly and fitfully singing a child to sleep, and the baby crooned too, and joined in the vague, drowsy ditty. And for aught else that could be seen, and for aught else that could be heard, this was the world.

“ Waal, the Tempter air fairly stalkin’ abroad on the Big Smoky, — leastwise sence the summer season hev opened,” said Nathan Hoodendin. His habitual expression of heavy, joyless pondering had been so graven into his face that his raised grizzled eyebrows, surmounted by a multitude of perplexed wrinkles, his long, dismayed jaw, his thin, slightly parted lips, and the deep grooves on either side of his nose were not susceptible of many gradations of meaning. His shifting eyes, cast now at the stark trees, now at the splendid disk of the rising moon, betokened but little anxiety for the Principle of Evil aloose in the Big Smoky. “ Fust,— lemme see, — thar war Eph Lowry, ez got inter a quar’l with his wife’s half-brother’s cousin, an’ a-tusslin’ ’roun’ they cut one another right smart, an’ some say ez Eph ’ll never have his eyesight right good no more. Then thar war Baker Teal, what the folks in Eskaqua Cove ’low let down the bars o’ the milk-sick pen, one day las’ fall, an’ druv Jacob White’s red cow in; an’ his folks never knowed she hed grazed thar till they hed milked an’ churned fur butter, when she lay down an’died o’ the milk-sick. Ef they hed drunk her milk same ez common, ’t would hev sickened ’em, sure, an’ mebbe killed ’em. An’ they’ve been quar’lin’ bout’n it ever since, Satan’s a-stirrin’,— Satan ’s a-stirrin’ ’roun’ the Big Smoky.”

“ Waal, I hearn ez some o’ them folks in Eskaqua Cove ’low ez the red cow jes’ hooked down the bars, bein’ a tumble hooker,” spoke up the man on the stump, unexpectedly.

“ Waal, White an’ his folks won’t hear ter no sech word ez that,” said the blacksmith ; “ an’ arter jowin’ an’ jowin’ back an’ fo’th they went t’other day an’ informed on Teal ’fore the jestice, an’ the Squair fined him twenty-five dollars, cordin’ ter the law o’ Tennessee fur them ez m’lieiously lets down the bars o’ the milk-sick pen. An’ Baker Teal hed ter pay, an’ the county treasury an’ the informers divided the money ’twixt ’em.”

“ What did I tell you-uns ? Satan’s a-stirrin’, — Satan’s a-stirrin’ ’roun’ the Big Smoky,” said the storekeeper, with a certain morbid pride in the Enemy’s activity.

“ The constable o’ this hyar destric’,” recommenced Gid Fletcher, who seemed as well informed as Nathan Hoodendin, “ he advised ’em ter lay it afore the jestice ; he war mighty peart ’bout’n that thar job. They low ter me ez he air tuk up a crazy fit ez he kin beat Micajah Green fur sher’ff, an’ he’s a-skeetin’ arter law-breakers same ez a rooster arter a Juny-bug. He ’lows it ’ll show the kentry what a peart sher’ff he ’d make,”

“ Shucks ! ” said the man on the stump. “ I ’ll vote fur ’Cajah Green fur sher’ff agin the old boy ; he hev got a nose fur game.”

“ He hain’t nosed you-uns out yit, hev he, Rick?” said the blacksmith, with feigned heartiness and a covert sneer.

“ Ho ! ho ! ho ! ” laughed Nathan Hoodendin. " What war I a-tellin’ youuns ? Satan’s a-stirrin’, — Satan’s surely a-stirrin’ on the Big Smoky.”

Rick sat silent in the moonlight, smoking his pipe, his brown wool hat far back, the light full on his yellow head. His face had grown a trifle less Square, and his features were more distinctly defined than of yore; he did not look ill, but care had drawn a sharp line here and there.

“ One sher’ff ’s same ter you-uns ez another, ain’t he, Rick ? ” said the man on the stump. “ Any of ’em ’ll do to run from.”

“ They tell it to me,” said the storekeeper, with so sudden a vivacity that it seemed it must crack his graven wrinkles, “ ez the whole Cayce gang air a-goin’ ter vote agin ’Cajah Green, ’count o’ the way he jawed at ole Mis’ Cayce an’ D’rindy, the day he run you-uns off from thar, Rick.”

“ I ain’t hearn tell o’ that yit,” drawled Rick, desolately, “ bein’ hid out.”

“ Waal, he jawed at D’rindy, an’ from what I hev hearn D’rindy jawed back; an’ I dunno ez that’s s’prisin’, — the gal-folks ginerally do. Leastwise, I know ez he sent word arterward ter D’rindy, by his dep’ty, —ez war a-scoutin’ ’roun’ hyar, arter you-uns, I reckon, Rick, —ez he war a-kemin’up some day soon ter ’lectioneer, an’ he war a-goin’ ter stop ter thar house an’ ax her pardin’. An’ she sent him word, fur God’s sake ter bide away from thar.”

A long pause ensued ; the stars shone faint and few ; the iterative note of the katydid vibrated monotonously in the dark woods ; dew was falling ; the wind Stirred.

“ What ailed D’rindy ter say that word?” asked Rick, mystified.

“ Waal, I dunno,” said Hoodendin, indifferently. “ I hev never addled my brains tryin’ ter make out what a woman means. Though,” he qualified, “ I did ax the dep’ty an’ Amos Jeemes from down yander in Eskaqua Cove, — the dep’ty hed purtended ter hev summonsed him ez a posse, an’ they war jes’ rollickin’ ’roun’ the kentry like two chickens with thar heads off, — I axed ’em what D’rindy meant ; an’ they ’lowed they did n’t know, nor war they takin’ it ter heart. They ’lowed ez she never axed them ter bide away from thar fur God’s sake. An’ then they snickered an’ laffed, like single men do. An’ I up an’ tole ’em ez the Book sot it down ez the laffter o’ fools is like the cracklin’ o’ bresh under a pot.”

Rick Tyler was eager, his eyes kindling, his breath quick. He looked with uncharacteristic alertness at the inexpressive face of the leisurely narrator.

“ They capered like a dunno-what-all on the Big Smoky, them two, — the off’cer o’ the law an’ his posse ! Thar goin’s on war jes’ scandalous: they played kyerds, an’ they consorted with the moonshiners over yander,” nodding his head at the wilderness, “an’ got ez drunk ez two fraish biled owels ; an’ they sung an’ they hollered. An’ they went ter the meetin’-house over yander whilst they war in liquor, an’ the preacher riz up an’ put ’em out. He’s toler’ble tough, that thar Pa’son Kelsey, an’ kin hold right smart show in a fight. An’ the dep’ty, he straightened hisself, an’ ’lowed he war a off’cer o’ the law. An’ Pa’son Kelsey, he ’lowed he war a off’cer o’ the law, an’ he ’lowed ez his law war higher ’n the law o’ Tennessee. An’ with that lie barred up the door. They hed a cornsid’ble disturbamint at the meetin’-honse yander at the Notch, an’ the saints war tried in thar temper.”

“ The dep’ty ’lows ez Pa’son Kelsey air crazy in his mind,” said the man on the stump. “ The dep’ty said the pa’son talked ter him like ez ef he war a onregenerate critter. An’ he ’lowed he war baptized in Scolacutta River two year ago an’ better. The dep’ty say these hyar mounting preachers hain’t got no doctrine like the valley folks. He called Pa’son Kelsey a ignorant cuss ! ”

“ Laws a massy ! ” exclaimed Nathan Hoodendin, scandalized.

“ He say it fairly makes him laff ter hear Pa’son Kelsey performin’ like he hed a cut-throat mortgage on a seat ’mongst the angels. He say ez he thinks Pa’son Kelsey speaks with more insurance ’n enny man he ever see.”

“ I reckon, ef the truth war knowed, the dep’ty ain’t got no religion, an’ never war in Scolacutta River, ’thout it war a-fishin’,” said the blacksmith, meditatively.

The fugitive from justice, pining for the simple society of his world, listened like a starveling thing to these meagre details, so replete with interest to him, so full of life and spirit. The next moment he was sorry he had come.

“ That thar Amos Jeemes air a comical critter,” said the man on the stump, after an interval of cogitation, and with a gurgling reminiscent laugh. “ He war a-cuttin’ up his shines over thar ter Cayce’s the t’other day; he war n’t drunk then, ye onderstan’ ” —

“ I onderstan’. He war jes’ fool, like he always air,” said the blacksmith.

“ Edzactly,” assented the man on the stump. “ An’ he fairly made D’rindy laff ter see what the critter would say nex’. An’ D’rindy always seemed ter me a powerful solemn sorter gal. Waal, she laffed at Amos. An’ whilst him an’ the dep’ty war a-goin’ down the mounting — I went down ter Jeemes’s mill ter leave some grist over night ter be ground — the dep’ty, he run Amos ’bout’n it. The dep’ty, he ’lowed ez no gal hed ever made so much fun o’ him, an’ Amos ’lowed ez D’rindy did n’t make game o’ him. She thunk too much o’ him fur that. An’ that bold-faced dep’ty, he ’lowed he thought’t war him ez hed fund favior. An’ Amos, — we war mighty nigh down in Eskaqua Cove then, — he turned suddint an’ p’inted up the mounting. ‘ What kin you-uns view on the mounting ? ’ he axed. The dep’ty, he stopped an’ stared ; an’ thar, mighty nigh ez high ez the lower e-end o’ the bald, war a light. ‘ That shines fur me ter see whilst I’m ’bleegcd ter he in Eskaqua Cove,’ sez Amos. An’ the dep’ty said, ‘ I think it air a star ! ’ An’ Amos sez, sez he, ‘ Bless yer bones, I think so, too, — sometimes ! ’ But ’t war n’t no star. ’T war jes’ a light in the roof-room window o’ Cayce’s house ; an’ ye could see it, sure enough, plumb to the mill in Eskaqua Cove ! ”

Rick rose to go. Why should he linger, and wring his heart, and garner bitterness to feed upon in his lonely days ? Why should he look into the outer darkness of his life, and dream of the star that shone so far for another man’s sake into the sheltered depths of Eskaqua Cove ? He had an impulse which he scorned, for his sight was blurred as he laid his hand on the pommel of his saddle. He did not see that one of the other men rose, too.

An approach, stealthy, swift, and the sinewy blacksmith flung himself upon his prisoner with the supple ferocity of a panther.

“ Naw — naw ! ” he said, showing his strong teeth, closely set. “ We can’t part with ye yit, Rick Tyler! I ’ll arrest you-uns, ef the sher’ff can’t! The peace o’ Big Smoky an’ the law o’ the land air cz dear ter me ez ter enny other man.”

The young fellow made a frantic effort to mount; then, as his horse sprang snorting away, he strove to draw one of his pistols. There was a turbulent struggle under the great silver moon and the dead trees. Again and again the swaying figures and their interlocked shadows reeled to the verge of the cliff ; one striving to fall and carry the other with him, the other straining every nerve to hold back his captive.

Even the storekeeper stood up and wheezed out a remonstrance.

“ Look a hyar, boys ” — he began ; then, “Jer’miah,” he broke off abruptly, as the hopeful scion peered shyly out of the store door, “ clar out’n the way, sonny ; they hev got shootin’-irons, an’ some o’ em mought go off.”

He himself stepped prudently back. The man on the stump, however, forgot danger in his excitement. He sat and watched the scene with an eager relish which might suggest that a love of bullfights is not a cultivated taste.

“Be them men a-wrastlin’ ? ” called out a woman, appearing in the doorway of a neighboring house.

“’Pears like it ter me,” he said dryly.

The strength of despair had served to make the younger man the blacksmith’s equal, and the contest might have terminated differently had Rick Tyler not stumbled on a ledge. He was forced to his knees, then full upon the ground, his antagonist’s grasp upon his throat. The blacksmith roared out for help ; the man on the stump slowly responded, and the storekeeper languidly came and overlooked the operation, as the young fellow was disarmed and securely bound, hand and foot.

“ Waal, now, Gid Fletcher, ye hev got him,” said Nathan Hoodendin.

“ What d’ye want with him ? ”

The blacksmith had risen, panting, with wild eyes, his veins standing out in thick cords, perspiring from every pore, and in a bounding fury.

“ What do I want with him ? I want ter put his head on my anvil thar, an’ beat the foolishness out’n it with my hammer. I want ter kick him off’n this hyar bluff down ter the forge fires o’ hell. That air what I want. An’ the State o’ Tennessee ain’t wantin’ much differ.”

“ Gid Fletcher,” said the man who had been sitting on the stump, — he spoke in an accusing voice, — “ye ain’t keerin’ nuthin’ fur the law o’ the land, nor the peace o’ Big Smoky, nuther. It air jes’ that two hunderd dollars blood money ye air cottonin’ ter, an’ ye knows it.”

The love of money, the root of evil, is so rare in the mountains that the blacksmith stood as before a deep reproof. Then, with a moral hardihood that matched his physical prowess, he asked, “ An’ what ef I be ? ”

“ What war I a-tellin’ you-uns ? Satan ’s a-stirrin’, — Satan ’s a-stirrin’ on the Big Smoky ! ” interpolated old Hoodendin.

“ Waal, I’d never hev been hankerin’ fur sech,” drawled the moralist.

A number of other men had come out from the houses, and a discussion ensued as to the best plan to keep the prisoner until morning. It was suggested that the time-honored expedient in localities without the civilization of a jail—a wagon-body inverted, with a heavy rock upon it — would be as secure as the state prison.

“ But who wants ter go ter heftin’ rocks ? ” asked Nathan Hoodendin pertinently.

For the sake of convenience, therefore, they left the prisoner with the rope made fast around a stump, that he might not, in his desperation, roll himself from the crag, and deputing a number of the men to watch him by turns the Settlement retired to its slumbers.

The night wore on ; the moon journeyed toward the mountains in the west; the mists rose to meet it, and glistened like a silver sea. Some lonely, undiscovered ocean, this ; never a sail set, never a pennant flying ; all the valley was submerged ; the black summits in the distance were isolated and insular ; the moonlight glanced on the sparkling ripples, on the long reaches of illusive vapor.

At intervals cocks crew; a faint response, like furthest echoes, came from some neighboring cove; and then silence, save for the drone of the nocturnal insects and the far blast of a hunter’s horn.

“ Jer’miah,” said Rick Tyler, suddenly looking at the boy as he crouched by one of the stumps and watched him with dilated, moonlit eyes, — when Nathan Hoodendin’s vigil came the little factotum served in his stead, — “Jer’miah, git my knife out’n the store an’ cut these hyar ropes. I ’ll gin ye my rifle ef ye will.”

The boy sprang up, scudded off swiftly, then came back, and crouched by the stump again.

The moon slipped lower and lower ; the silver sea had turned to molten gold; the stars that had journeyed westward with the moon were dying out of a dim blue sky. Over the corn-field in the east was one larger than the rest, burning in an amber haze, charged with an unspoken poetical emotion that set its heart of white fire aquiver.

“ I ’ll gin ye my horse ef ye will.”

“ I dussent,” said Jer’miah.

The morning star was burned out at last, and the prosaic day came over the corn-field.

III.

Twilight was slipping down on tho Big Smoky. Definiteness was annihilated, and distance a suggestion. Mountain forms lay darkening along the horizon, still flushed with the sunset. The Cove had abysmal suggestions, and the ravines were vague glooms. Fireflies were aflicker in the woods. There might he a star, outpost of the night.

Dorinda, hunting for the vagrant “ crumply cow,” paused sometimes when the wandering path led to the mountain’s brink, and looked down those gigantic slopes and unmeasured depths. She carried her milk-piggin, and her head was uncovered. Now and then she called with long, vague vowels, “ Soo

— cow ! Soo ! ” There was no response save the echoes and the vibrant iteration of the katydid. Once she heard an alien sound, and she paused to listen. From the projecting spur where she stood, looking across the Cove, she could see, above the forests on the slopes, the bare, uprising dome, towering in stupendous proportions against the sky. The sound came again and yet again, and she recognized the voice of the man who was wont to go and pray in the desert places of the bald, and whom she had likened to the prophets of old. There was something indescribably wild and weird in those appealing, tempestuous tones, now rising as in frenzy, and now falling as with exhaustion, — untiringly beseeching, adjuring, reproaching.

“ He hev fairly beset the throne o’ grace ! ” she said, with a sort of pity for this insistent piety. A shivering, filmy mist was slipping down over the great dome. It glittered in the last rays of the sunlight, already vanished from the world below, like an illuminated silver gauze. She was reminded of the veil of the temple, and she had a sense of intrusion.

“ Prayer, though, air free for all,” she remarked, as self-justification, since she had paused to hear.

She did not linger. His voice died in the distance, and the solemnity of the impression was gradually obliterated. As she went she presently began to sing, sometimes interpolating, without a sense of interruption, her mellow call of “ Soo

— cow! Soo!” until it took the semblance of a refrain, with an abrupt crescendo. The wild roses were flowering along the paths, and the pink and white azaleas, — what perfumed ways, what lavish grace and beauty ! The blooms of the laurel in the darkling places were like a spangling of stars. Dew was falling, — it dashed into her face from the boughs that interlaced across the unfrequented path, — and still the light lingered, loath to leave. She heard the stir of some wild things in the hollow of a great tree, and then a faint, low growl. She fancied she saw a pair of bright eyes looking apprehensively at her.

“ We-uns hev got a baby at our house, too, an’ we don’t want yourn, ma’am ; much obleeged, all the same,” she said, with a laugh. But she looked back with a sort of pity for that alert maternal fear, and she never mentioned to the youngest brother, a persistent trapper, the little family of raccoons in the woods.

She had forgotten the voice raised in importunate supplication on the bald, until, pursuing the path, she was led into the road, hard by a little bridge, or more properly culvert, which had rotted long ago ; the vines came up through the cavities in the timbers, and a blackberry bush, with a wren’s nest, flourished in their midst. The road was fain to wade through the stream; but the channel was dry now, — a narrow belt of yellow sand lying in a long curving vista in the midst of the dense woods. A yoke of oxen, hitched to a rude slide, stood at rest in the middle of the channel, and beside them was a man, of medium height, slender but sinewy, dressed in brown jeans, his trousers thrust into the legs of his boots, a rifle on his shoulder, and a broad-brimmed old wool hat surmounting his dark hair, that hung down to the collar of his coat. Her singing had prepared him for her advent, but he barely raised his eyes. That quick glance was incongruous with his dullard aspect; it held a spark of fire, inspiration, frenzy, — who can say ?

He spoke suddenly, in a meek, drawling way, and with the air of submitting the proposition : —

“ I hev gin the beastis’ a toler’ble hard day’s work, an’ I’m a-favorin’ ’em, goin’ home.”

A long pause ensued. The oxen hung down their weary heads, with the symbol of slavery upon them. The smell of ferns and damp mould was on the air. Rotting logs lay here and there, where the failing water had stranded them. The grape-vines, draping the giant oaks, swayed gently, and suggested an observation to break the silence.

“ How air the moral vineyard a-thrivin’? ” she asked, solemnly.

He looked downcast. “ Toler’ble, I reckon.”

“ I hearn tell ez thar war a right smart passel o’ folks baptized over yander in Seolacutta River,” she remarked, encouragingly.

“ I baptized fourteen.”

She turned the warm brightness of her eyes upon him. “ They hed all fund grace ! ” she exclaimed.

“ They ’lowed so. I hopes they ’ll prove it by their works,” he said, without enthusiasm.

“Ye war a-prayin’ fur ’em on the bald ? ” she asked, apprehending that he accounted these converts peculiarly precarious.

“ Naw,” he replied, with moody sincerity; “ I war a-prayin’ for myself.”

There was another pause, longer and more awkward than before.

“What work be you-uns a-doin’ of?” asked Dorinda, meekly. She quailed a trifle before the uncomprehended light in his eyes. It was not of her world, she felt instinctively.

“ I hev ploughed some, holpin’ Jonas Trice, an’ hev been a-haulin’ wood. I tuk my rifle along,” he added, “ thinkin’ I mought see sutbin’ ez would be tasty fur the old men’s supper ez I kem home, but I forgot ter look around keen.”

There was a sudden sound along the road, — a sound of quick hoof-beats. Because of the deep sand the rider was close at hand before his approach was discovered. He drew rein abruptly, and they saw that it was Gid Fletcher, the blacksmith of the Settlement.

“ Hev you-uns hearn the news ? ” he cried, excitedly, as he threw himself from the saddle.

The man, leaning on the rifle, looked up, with no question in his eyes. There was an almost monastic indifference to the world suggested in his manner.

“ Thar ’s a mighty disturbamint at the Settlemint. Las’ night this hyar Rick Tyler, — what air under indictment fur a-killin’ o’ Joel Byers, — he kem a-nosin’ ’roun’ the Settlemint a-tryin’ ter buy powder ” —

Dorinda stretched out her hand ; the trees were unsteady before her; the few faint stars, no longer pulsating points of light, described a circle of dazzling gleams. She caught at the yoke on the neck of the oxen ; she leaned upon the impassive beast, and then it seemed that every faculty was merged in the sense of hearing. The horse had moved away from the blacksmith, holding his head down among the bowlders, and snuffing about for the water he remembered here with a disappointment almost pathetic.

“ War he tuk ? ” demanded the preacher.

“ Percisely so,” drawled the blacksmith, with a sub-current of elation in his tone.

There was a sudden change in Kelsey’s manner. He turned fiery eyes upon the blacksmith. Light and life were in every line of his face. He drew himself up tense and erect; he stretched forth his hand with an accusing gesture.

“ ’T war you-uns, Gid Fletcher, ez tuk the boy ! ”

“ Lord, pa’son, how ’d you-uns know that ? ” exclaimed the blacksmith. His manner combined a deference, which in civilization we discriminate as respect for the cloth, with the easy familiarity, induced by the association since boyhood, of equals in age and station. “ I bed n’t let on a word, bed I, D’rindy ? ”

The idea of an abnormal foreknowledge, mysteriously possessed, had its uncanny influences. The lonely woods were darkening about them. The stars seemed very far off. A rotting log in the midst of the débris of the stream, in a wild tangle of underbrush and shelving rocks, showed fox-fire and glowed in the glooms.

“ I knowed,” said Kelsey, contemptuously waiving the suggestion of miraculous forecast, “ bekase the sher’ff hain’t been in the Big Smoky for two weeks, an’ that thar danglin’ shudder o’ his’n rid off las’ Monday from Jeemes’s Mill in Eskaqua Cove. An’ the constable o’ the deestric air sick abed. So I ’lowed ’t war you-uns.”

“ An’ why air it me more ’n enny other man at the Settlemint ? ” The blacksmith’s blood was rising ; his sensibilities descried a covert taunt which as yet his slower intelligence failed to comprehend.

“ An’ ye hev rid with speed fur the sher’ff — or mebbe ter overhaul the dep’ty — ter kem an’ jail the prisoner afore he gits away.”

“An’ why me, more ’n the t’others?” demanded the blacksmith.

“Yer heart air ez hard ez yer anvil, Gid Fletcher,” said the mind-reader. “ Thar ain’t another man on the Big Smoky ez would stir himself ter gin over ter the gallus or the pen’tiary the frien’ ez trested him, who hev done no harm, but hev got tangled in a twist of a unjest law. Ef the law tuk him, that’s a differ.”

“’T ain’t fur we-uns ter jedge o’ the law! ” exclaimed Gid Fletcher, his logic sharpened by the anxiety of his greed and his prideful self-esteem. “ Let the law jedge o’ his crime.”

“ Jos’ so ; let the law take him, an’ let the law try him. The law is ekal ter it. Ef the sher’ff summons me with his posse, I ’ll hunt Rick Tyler through all the Big Smoky ” —

“ Look a hyar, Hi Kelsey, the Gov’nor o’ Tennessee hev offered a reward o’ two hunderd dollars ” —

“ Blood money,” interpolated the parson.

“ Ye kin call it so, ef so minded; but ef it war right fur the Gov’nor ter offer it, it air right fur me ter yearn it.”

He had come very close. It was his nature and his habit to brook no resistance. He subdued the hard metals upon his anvil. His hammer disciplined the iron. The fire wrought his will. His instinct was to forge this man’s opinion into the likeness of his own. His conviction was the moral swage that must shape the belief of others.

“It air lawful fur me ter yearn it,” he repeated.

“ Lawful ! ” exclaimed the parson, with a tense, jeering laugh. “Judas war a law-abidin’ citizen. He mos’ lawfully betrayed his Frien’ ter the law. Them thirty pieces o’ silver! Sech currency ain’t out o’ circulation yit!”

Quick as a flash the blacksmith’s heavy hand struck the prophet in the face. The next moment bis sudden anger was merged in fear. He stood, unarmed, at the mercy of an assaulted and outraged man, with a loaded rifle in his hands, and all the lightnings of heaven quivering in his angry eyes.

Gid Fletcher had hardly time to draw the breath he thought his last, when the prophet slowly turned the other cheek.

“ In the name of the Master,” he said, with all the dignity of his calling.

As the blacksmith mounted his horse and rode away, he felt that the parson’s rifle-ball would be preferable to the gross slur that he had incurred. His reputation, moral and spiritual, was annihilated ; and he held this dear, for piety, or its simulacrum, on the primitive Big Smoky, is the point of honor. What a text! What an illustration of iniquity lie would furnish for the sermons, foretelling wrath and vengeance, that sometimes shook the Big Smoky to its foundations! He was cast down, and indignant too.

“Fur Hi Kelsey ter be a-puttin’ up sech a pious mouth, an a-turnin’ the t’other-cheek, an’ sech, ter me, ez hev seen him hold his own ez stiff in a many a free-handed fight, an’ hev drawed his shootin’-irons on folks agin an’ agin! An’ he fairly tuk the dep’ty, at that thar disturbamint at the raeet’n’-house, by the scruff o’ the neck, an’ shuck him ez ef he hed been a rat or suthin’, an’ drapped him out’n the door. An’ now ter be a-turnin’ the t’other cheek ! An’ thar’s that thar D’rindy, a-seein’ it all, an’ a-lookin’ at it ez wide-eyed ez a cat in the dark.”

Dorinda went home planning a rescue. Against the law this was, probably, she thought. “ Ef it air—it ought n’t ter he,” she concluded, arbitrarily. “ It don’t hurt nobody.” How serious it was — a felony—she did not know, nor did she care. She went on sturdily, debating within herself how best to tell the news. With an intuitive knowledge of human nature, she reckoned on the prejudice aroused by the recital of the blacksmith’s assault upon the preacher and the forbearance of the man of God. She began to count those who would be likely to attempt the enterprise when it should be suggested. There were the five men at home, all bold, reckless, antagonistic to the law. She paused, with a frightened face and a wild gesture as if to ward off an unforeseen danger. Never, never, would she lift her hand or raise her voice to aid in fulfilling that grimly prophesied death on the muzzle of the old rifle-barrel. She trembled at the thought of her precipitancy. His life was in her hand. With a constraining moral sense she felt that it was she who had placed it in jeopardy, and that she held it in trust.

She was cold, shivering. There was a change in the temperature ; perhaps hail had fallen somewhere near, for the rare air had icy suggestions. She was seldom out so late, and was glad to see, high on the slope, the light that was wont to shine like a star into the dark depths of Eskaqua Cove. The white mists gathered around it; a circle of pearly light encompassed it, like Saturn’s ring. As she came nearer, the roof of the house defined itself, with its oblique ridge-pole against the sky, and its clay and stick chimney, also built in defiance of rectangles, and its little porch, and the hop-vines, dripping, dripping, with dew. In the corner of the rail fence was the “ crumply cow,” chewing her cud.

The radiance of firelight streamed out upon the porch through the open door, around which was grouped a number of shadows, of intent and wistful aspect. These were the hounds, and they crowded about her ecstatically as she came up on the porch.

She paused at the door, and looked in with melancholy eyes. The light fell on her face, still damp with the dew, giving its gentle curves a subdued glister, like marble ; the dark blue of her dress heightened its fairness. A sudden smile broke upon it as she leaned forward. There were three men, Ab, Pete, and Ben, seated around the fire ; but she was looking at none of them, and they silently followed her gaze. Only one pair of eyes met hers, — the eyes of a fat young person, wonderfully muscular for the tender age of three, who sat in the chimney-corner in a little wooden chair, and preserved the important and impassive air of a domestic magnate. This was hardly impaired by his ill-defined, infantile features, his large tow-head, his stolid blue eyes, his feminine garb of blue-checked cotton, short enough to disclose sturdy white calves and two feet with the usual complement of toes. He looked at her in grave recognition, but made no sign.

“ Jacob,” she softly drawled, “ why n’t ye go ter bed ? ”

But Jacob was indisposed for conversation on this theme ; he said nothing.

“ Why n’t you-uns git him ter bed ? ” she asked of the assemblage at large.

“ He ’ll git stunted, a-settin’ up so late in the night.”

“Waal,” said one of the huge jeansclad mountaineers, taking his pipe from his mouth, and scrutinizing the subject of conversation, “ I ’low it takes more ’n three full-grown men ter git that thar servigrous buzzard ter bed when he don’t want ter go thar, an’ we war n’t a-goin’ ter resk it.”

“ I did ax him ter go ter bed, D’rindy,” said another of the bearded giants, “ but he ’lowed he would n’t. I never see a critter so pompered ez Jacob; he ain’t got no medjure o’ respec’ fur nobody.”

The subject of these strictures gazed unconcernedly first at one speaker, then at the other. Dorinda still looked at him, her face transfigured by its tender smile. But she was fain to exert her authority. “ Waal, Jacob,” she said decisively, “ ye mus’ gin yer cornsent ter go ter bed, arter a while.”

Jacob calmly nodded. He expected to go to bed some time that night.

The hounds had taken advantage of Dorinda’s entrance to creep into the room and adjust themselves among the family group about the fire. One of them, near Jacob, lured by the tempting plumpness, put out a long red tongue, and gave a furtive lick to his fat white leg. The little mountaineer promptly doubled his plucky fist, and administered a sharp blow on the black nose of the offender, whose yelp of repentant pain attracted attention to the canine intruders. Ab Cayce rose to his feet with an oath. There was a shrill chorus of anguish as he actively kicked them out with his great cowhide boots.

“ Git out’n hyar, ye dad-burned beastises ! I hev druv ye out fifty times sence sundown ; now stay druv ! ”

He emphasized the lesson with several gratuitous kicks after the room and the porch were fairly cleared. But before he was again seated the dogs were once more clustered about the door, with intent bobbing heads and glistening eyes that peered in wistfully, with a longing for the society of their human friends, and a pathetic anxiety to be accounted of the family circle.

There was more stir than usual in the interval between supper and bedtime. During the three memorable days that Dorinda had sojourned in Tuckaleechee Cove Miranda Jane’s ineffective administration had resulted in domestic chaos in several departments. The lantern by which the cow was to be milked was nowhere to be found. The filly-like Miranda Jane, with her tousled mane and black forelock hanging over her eyes, was greatly distraught in the effort to remember where it had been put and for what it had been last used, and was “ plumb beat out and beset,” she declared, as she cantered in and cantered out, and took much exercise in the search, to little purpose. One of the men rose presently, and addressed himself to the effort. He found it at last, and handed it to Dorinda without a word. He did not offer to milk the cow, as essentially a feminine task, in the mountains, as to sew or knit. When she came back she sat down among them in the chair usually occupied by her grandmother,—who had in her turn gone on a visit to “Aunt Jerushy” in Tuckaleechee Cove, — and as she busied herself in putting on her needles a sizable stocking for Jacob she did not join in the fragmentary conversation.

Ab Cayce, the eldest, talked fitfully as he smoked his pipe, — a lank, lanternjawed man, with a small, gleaming eye and a ragged beard. The youngest of the brothers, Solomon, was like him, except that his long chin, of the style familiarly denominated jimber-jawed, was still smooth and boyish, and, big-boned as he was, he lacked in weight and somewhat in height the proportions of the senior. Peter was the contentious member of the family. He was wont to bicker in solitary disaffection, until he seemed to disprove the adage that it takes two to make a quarrel. He was afflicted with a stammer, and at every obstruction his voice broke out with startling shrillness, on several keys higher than the tone with which the sentence commenced. He was loose-jointed and of a shambling gait; his hair seemed never to have outgrown the bleached, colorless tone so common among the children of the mountains, and it hung in long locks of a dreary drab about his sun-embrowned face. His teeth were irregular, and protruded slightly. “ Ez hard-favored ez Pete Cayce,” was a proverb on the Big Smoky. His wrangles about the amount of seed necessary to sow to the acre, and his objurgation concerning the horse he had been ploughing with that day, filled the evening.

“ Thar ain’t a durned fool on the Big Smoky ez dunno that tliar sayin’ ’bout ’n the beastises : —

Outside, the rising wind wandered fitfully through the Great Smoky, like a spirit of unrest. The surging trees in the wooded vastness on every side filled the air with the turbulent sound of their commotion. The fire smouldered on the hearth. The room was visible in the warm glow: the walls, rich and mellow with the alternate dark shade of the hewn logs and the dull yellow of the “ daubin’ ; ” the great frame of the warping-bars, hung about with scarlet and blue and saffron yarn ; the brilliant strings of red pepper, swinging from the rafters. The spinning-wheel, near the open door, revolved slightly, with a stealthy motion, when the wind touched it, as though some invisible woodland thing had half a mind for uncanny industrial experiments.

Dorinda told her news at last, in few words and with what composure she could command. As the listeners broke into surprised ejaculations and comments, she sat gazing silently at the fire. Should she speak the thought nearest her heart ? Should she suggest a rescue ? She was torn by contending terrors, — fears for them, for the man in his primitive shackles at the Settlement, for the enemy whose life she felt she had jeopardized. She had a wild vision — half in hope, half in anguish — of her brothers in the saddle, armed to the teeth and riding like the wind. They had not moved of their own accord. Should site urge them to go ?

Oh, never had the long days on the Big Smoky, never had all the years that had visibly rolled from east to west with the changing seasons, brought her so much of life as the last few hours, — such intensity of emotion, such swiftness of thought, such baffling perplexity, such woe !

Charles Egbert Craddock .