In the "Stranger People's" country

by Charles Egbert Craddock

VI.

His gesture elicited a guffaw.

"Hold on, Buck," cried one of the men, affecting to clutch him to stay his flight.

"'Stan' the storm; it won't be long,'" trolled out another, a rich stave, with the resonance of the echoing walls. "What ye feared o', Buck—the devil? He don't keer ter 'sociate none with we-uns ez long ez ye air abroad an' afoot."

"I dun'no' what ails my eyes," said Cheever, visibly disconcerted, and passing his hand across his brow, as he still stood near the entrance, the bridle in his hand, the fine head of the impatient horse at his shoulder.

"Think ye see the devil?" cried another, jeeringly.

Cheever colored, and frowned heavily. The ridicule elicited what other means might have failed to lead forth. He could not brook this merry insolence, these flouts at his momentary fright. He justified it.

"I 'lowed I seen another man, what ain't hyar, an' never war," he said, gruffly, looking out at them from his drooping lids, his chin high in the air. The words seemed to have subtly transferred his transient terror. It took a longer lease in the exchange.

There was a momentary silence, while they stared with sudden gravity at him. A sort of remonstrance, a struggle against credulity, was in the square face of one burly fellow, seeming less a dark, illegible simulacrum of a man than the others, since he stood at an angle where the light fell slanting upon his features.

"What man, now?" Derridge said, in a deep bass voice, and the argumentative accents of one who will tolerate in evidence only fact and right reason. His tone seemed to challenge the name of the rash being who, in corporal absence, should venture in similitude among them.

"Dad burn ye, shet up!" cried Cheever. "I couldn't see his face. He turned it away. Whenst I looked at him he turned it away."

"In the name o' Gawd!" ejaculated one of the men, in a low-toned quaver.

Another, one Bob Millroy, Cheever's mainstay and lieutenant, glanced over his shoulder. "He ain't hyar now?" he demanded, in expostulatory haste.

"Naw, naw!" exclaimed Cheever, recovering himself, the more quickly as a monition of the possible disintegration of his gang, under the pressure of this mysterious recruit to their number, flitted across his mind. "Naw; he went ez soon ez I kem. Thar, now!" he continued, more lightly; "I know how it happens." He broke into a laugh that might have seemed strained, save that the rocks made such fantastic riot in the acoustics of the place. "It's Steve Yates. I'm used ter seem' six men, an' whenst I count my chickens thar's seven. I looked ter see jes' six!" and he laughed again.

"But Steve air over yander in the shadder!" expostulated Derridge, the disciple of pure reason. "Ye couldn't hev seen him at all."

"Waal, then," sneered Cheever, "I seen double. They say thar air good men, an' ministers o' the gospel, ez kin view a few more snakes 'n air nateral ter thar vision whenst the liquor air strong; an' that thar whiskey o' old Pettingill's kin walk a mile, I reckon, ef need war."

The others had hardly recovered from the superstitious thrill induced by the explanation of the strange agitation that beset him upon his entrance. They were ill-prepared to so summarily cast the subject aside, and stood still, with preoccupied, dilated eyes, mechanically gazing at him as he turned lightly toward Yates, who rose from a saddle on which he had half reclined beside the fire. The young mountaineer's face had a tinge of pallor, despite its sunburn. His dull brown eyes were restless and anxious. He was hardly an apt scholar for scheming and dissimulation, but he sought an air of ease and satisfaction as he asked:

"Waal, did ye hear ennything o' my fambly in yer travels?"

Cheever, all himself again, clapped him on the shoulder with a heartiness that made the blow ring through the high stone vault. "I seen 'em, my fine young cock, I seen 'em. I wouldn't take no hearsay on it. I seen Mis' Yates herself, an' talked a haffen hour with her. An' I seen Moses."

Steve Yates made shift to glance at him once, then he turned his eyes away toward the western sky, nodding repeatedly, but silently, to the items of news with which Cheever favored him.

"Mis' Yates ain't wantin' fur nuthin', though Moses wants everything, 'ceptin' teeth; like ter hev took my horse-critter away from me, willy-nilly! Mis' Yates hev got that thar ugly, leetle, frazzle-headed Pettingill vixen ter 'company her, an' Baker Anderson with his rifle bides thar o' nights. Mis' Yates war cheerful an' laffin'. 'Steve will kem back whenst he gits tired,' she say. 'He an' me had words 'fore he lef'. I'll hold out ez long ez he kin,' she say. 'I don't believe he hev done nuthin' agin the law,' she say. 'But ef he hev,' she say, 'he air better off away than hyar at home, 'kase lynchers air mighty lawless round these parts.' An' she say, 'I know Steve air man enough ter take keer o' hisself an' do fur the bes', an' I'm willin' ter bide by what he do.'"

Alack! that a lie can so counterfeit the truth! To this wily and specious representation Stephen Yates listened with his eyes full of tears, afraid to trust a glance upon the face of his crafty companion.

"She say," Cheever went on, "ef Steve hev done ennything agin the law, I hope he'll make hisself sca'ce.'"

The other men, now affecting to stroll about in the ample spaces of the cavernous place, busying themselves with replenishing the fire or feeding the horses, of which there were half a dozen in a shadowy nook that seemed to extend downward to further subterranean regions, all gave furtive heed to these domestic reports. Ever and again they eyed the disingenuous face of the narrator with its half-closed lids and flexible lips. Then they would look at one another, and slyly wink their recognition of his craft. One of them, standing with his hands in his pockets and with a fire-lit face above the blazing logs, after a survey of this sort, grotesquely imitated the speaker's attitude and gesture, and silently worked his jaws with abnormal activity, as if in emulation of Cheever's ready eloquence, shook his head in affected despair, and desisted amid a smothered titter from the rest.

"Moses hev got another tooth; mighty nigh ez long ez a elephint's I seen at Colbury, I told him; an' it seemed ter make him mad—leastwise madder'n he war at fust. He wouldn't take no notice o' me, 'ceptin' whenst I put my finger in his mouth ter view his teeth, an' durned ef he didn't nearly bite it off. Oh, ye needn't ter trouble, Steve; ye air all right, an' hev done the bes' ye could, cornsiderin' all."

"I reckon so! I hope so!" said Yates, with something very like a sob.

They all sat around the fire late that night, after their supper of venison broiled on the coals, and corn-bread baked in the ashes, and washed down with a plentiful allowance of innocent-looking moonshine whiskey, colorless and clear as spring-water. The stars seemed very near, looking in at the wide portals of the niche; the tops of the gigantic trees swaying without were barely glimpsed above the verge. The shadows of the men lengthened over the floor, or fluctuated on the wall as the flames rose or fell. Now and again the fire-light was strong enough to show the horses at their improvised manger in those recesses where the darkness promised further chambers of the cavern. One steed lay upon the ground, the others stood, some still and drowsing, but more than once the sharp pawing of an iron-shod hoof challenged the abrupt echoes.

Outside, so sweet, so pure was the summer night; the buds of the elder-bush were riven into blooms, the mocking-bird piped for the rising moon, the katydids twanged a vibrant note, and the river sang the self-same song it had learned in the prehistoric days of the pygmies. Even so still, so calmly pensive was the time that the far-away murmur of the water-fall came to Yates's ears, or it may be to his memory only, which transmitted the fancy transmuted in sound to his sense. He lounged, half pillowed upon his saddle, in the circle about the fire, and strove to drink and laugh and talk with the rest. Many a merry jest had those walls echoed, seeming almost sentient in emulation of the boisterous joy. To-night, somehow, they had forgotten their jovial wiles. More than once the echo of laughter quavered off into strange sounds that the ear shrank to hear, and one after another of the brawny fellows looked furtively over his shoulder.

A sudden jar—only a screech-owl shrilling in a tree on the river-bank below—but one of the men was on his feet, all a-tremble, crying out, "What's that?" And this was the bold Cheever.

"Put up yor pistol, ye darned idjit!" exclaimed Derridge, the disciple of reason. "Don't ye know a squeech-owel whenst ye hear one? Ye must be plumb sodden in Pettingill whiskey."

Cheever, with a half-articulate oath, sank back upon the saddle upon which he half lay and half sat, and presently evolved an excuse for his nervousness. He had something too in his face that implied a doubt, a need of support, a wish for counsel.

"That gal at Yates's, I mean Litt Pettingill, sorter purtended ez she b'lieved ez I knowed o' Steve's wharabouts. Now Steve's welcome to shelter with we-uns. But I'd hate it powerful ef jes' 'kase he fell in with we-uns that night ez he war a-goin' fur the doctor ter patch Len Rhodes's head, 'twar ter be the means o' draggin' the law down on we-uns, an' gittin' it onto our trail."

"Ye mus' hev said suthin'. She couldn't jes' hev drawed the idee out'n nuthin'," reasoned the deep bass voice of Derridge, who wore a severe and reprehensive frown. "Ye air a smart man, Buck, an' I ain't denyin' it none, but whenst a man talks ez much ez you-uns he can't gin keerful heed ter all his words, an' ye mus' hev said suthin' ez gin her a hint. Folks kin talk too much, specially whenst they set up ter be smart." He was a silent man himself, and was accounted slow.

Cheever sneered. "Ye air powerful brigaty ter-night. I reckon I be ekal ter keepin' a secret from enny gal folks. Leastwise I hev knowed a power o' secrets an' cornsider'ble gal folks. An' they never got tergether ez I ever hearn tell on."

This was logic, and it silenced his interlocutor. They all sat musing for a time, while the smoke mounted into the lofty dome of the niche, and the fire leaped fitfully, casting its flicker on all their faces, and the whole interior, a dull red and a dusky brown, seemed a discordant contrast to the white, lucent light of the unseen moon, stretching across the shadowy landscape. Dew there was on the trees without; it scintillated now and then, and far away rose soft and noiseless mists. More than once the night sighed audibly in sheer pensiveness.

"Boys," said Bob Millroy, suddenly, "I be a believer in signs."

There was a motionless interest in every face turned toward him. A contagion of credulity was in the very word.

"Hyar we-uns hev been," he went on, "a-goin' tergether fur many a day in secret, an' sech ez our workin's air they ain't 'cordin' ter law nor the 'pinion o' the cove. An' I ain't felt 'feard nowise—though some mought say the hemp air growed an' spun, an' the rope air twisted—till this evenin', whenst Buck Cheever seen an' extry man 'mongst we-uns, ez turned away his face. Sence then the fire's cold!"

He spread out his hands toward it, shaking his head in token of the futility of its swift combustion, with its flashes and sparkle and smoke, as he chafed them together.

"Lord A'mighty, ye durned cowardly fool!" cried the leader of the party, beside himself with anxiety and many a premonition. "Didn't I tell ye agin 'twar jes' Steve, ez I never looked ter view, bein' ez he ain't reg'lar 'mongst we-uns?"

"Ye 'lowed he turned his face away," said the believer in signs.

"Waal, hev Steve got enny crick in his neck that disables him from a-turnin' of his face away?" demanded Cheever.

"He war in the shadder; ye never seen Steve," said Derridge, slowly shaking his logical head.

"He turned his face away so ez ye mought not view it," said Millroy, with a credulity that coerced responsive conviction.

Cheever was shaken. He suddenly desisted from argument. "Who air ye a-'lowin' 'twar?" he demanded from the opposite side of the fire.

The ligaments of his neck were elongated as he thrust his head forward. The fire-light showed only a glassy glitter where it struck upon the eyeballs beneath his half-closed lids. Bereft of the expression of his eyes, it was wonderful how much of suspense, of petrified expectation, of the presage of calamity, the hard lines of his face conveyed.

"'Twar him we met up with on the road that night," said Millroy, who from the affluence of his resources of conjecture could afford to dispense with mere proof and fact.

Cheever was conscious that the others were watching him with the urgent anxiety of those who have a personal interest at stake. The sense of emergency was substituted for courage.

"I wish 'twar," he said, coolly. "He ain't dead—a mighty pity! I'd give the bes' horse I ever see"—he nodded his head toward the gallant roan—"ef I could view his harnt."

There was an evident revulsion in the plastic minds of his followers. They had no sense of consistency to sustain adherence to any dogma. Millroy was in the minority when he said, still mysteriously shaking his head, "I'll bet the minit ye seen him 'mongst we-uns an' he turned his head away war the minit o' his takin' off."

"Ye air always skeered o' yer shadder, Bob," said Cheever; "an' I never knowed a feller so rich in signs ez kem ter nuthin'. That man would be powerful welcome hyar in the sperit. I be a heap more pestered 'kase we let him git off soul an' body tergether. I know he war shot. I dun'no' who fired it"—he mechanically closed his right hand as upon the handle of a pistol, his first finger extended and crooked upon the imaginary trigger, while the observant Bob Millroy scanned with unspoken deductions the unconscious, involuntary gesture. "I never thunk he war much hurt, though ez he went scourin' off he war bowed ter the saddle-bow, but that war ter escape the bullets ez kem arter him. He'll live ter lead a posse an' the sher'ff ter the spot, mos' likely; I'm 'feared o' that. I'd delight ter see his harnt."

"Bob oughter hev a muzzle," said the reasonable Derridge, irritably—"ter keep him from spittin' out signs hyar, whilst we-uns oughter be cornsiderin' how the law mought be takin' us, red-handed, with all our plunder ter convict us"—he cast a glance at certain saddle-bags that lay close to Cheever's side. "He jes' sets up an' gins us a sign fur this, an' a warnin' fur that, till we air plumb wore out with his foolishness."

"This place be safe enough, I'm a-thinkin'; no use a-worryin' an' a-fussin'," said the unctuous voice of Pete Beckett, always full of a hopeful content, and like oil upon the troubled waters.

The others listened with clearing countenances, but Cheever shook his head. "Revenuers know it; they raided a still hyar wunst." The red fire-light on the circle of faces showed their alarm at the recollection, the prophetic suggestion. "Old man Peake run it."

"Ye 'low ef they war ter s'picion ennybody roundabouts, they mought s'arch hyar," said Derridge, drawing the logical conclusion.

"Edzac'ly," said Cheever, impatient of the waste of words by so patent a deduction.

"They do say," remarked Millroy, sepulchrally, "that arter Zeb Tait went deranged, he hid hyar whenst they wanted ter jail him ez a crazy."

"Too crazy ter want ter go ter jail," exclaimed Derridge, satirically.

"An'," pursued Millroy, lugubriously, "he starved hisself ter death in this place; leastwise they fund his corpse hyar, though he mought hev died from his ailment. But I dun'no' ef folks do die from jes' bein' crazy an' bereft."

"Naw, they don't," said Cheever, suddenly, "else ye'd hev been dead long ago, ez crazy a loon ez ever went a-gibberin' o' foolishness around."

Somehow his magnetic quality was at fault. The others failed to fall in with his humor. They all sat silent, staring at the red coals; the image of the distraught, solitary creature, who had in the secret stronghold of the mountains wrought out his terrible doom, was in the mind of each.

Millroy spoke rather to their thought than to the words of Cheever, when he said, "The buzzards an' the eagles flyin' an' flusterin' round the body led the sher'ff ter the spot."

The prosaic word, full of worldly omen, broke the breathless spell.

"An' the sher'ff knows the place, too!" cried Derridge. "Waal"—he turned his eyes, at once furious and upbraiding and full of prescient terror, upon Cheever—"hell-fire be my portion ef I don't think ye hev tuk the mos' public place about the cove fur these hyar doin's"—he pointed at the saddle-bags. "An' a man in Colbury either dead by this time, with warrants sworn out for we-uns, or else on our track ter identify us fur the sher'ff."

"I tuk this place 'kase 'twar our reg'lar stampin'-groun'," cried Cheever, lifting his voice to defend himself against the burly, swelling tones of his accuser. "It air ez safe ez enny other. Thar ain't none o' us out o' place 'ceptin' Steve." He winked slyly at the others, for the young mountaineer lay a little in the shadow and a trifle behind him. So blunted was the conscience, the humanity in each, that the sense of possessing a scape-goat, the opportunity of profit on another's injury, had a suave and unctuous influence to heal their dissension. "We-uns, why, we-uns air some a-herdin' o' cattle twenty mile away on the Balds; some war in Car'liny yistiddy tradin' fur cattle"—he pointed at the mire on the boots of two of the party—"Buncombe County mud! An' I hev jes' got back from ridin' in open daylight about the cove, with my mouth an' eyes stretched ter hear how Yates hev disappeared. I be a-goin' home ter-morrer ter git salt fur my cattle"—he put on a waggishly virtuous air. "An' I war thar ter-day, ez my fambly kin testify. 'Tain't safe, though, I know, ter keep this truck hyar long"—he winked at the saddle-bags—"nor ter divide it yit."

The alert expression with which each man hearkened to the allusion of partition was eminently suggestive of the pricking-up of ears. Indeed, as they all sat indistinct in the shadow and the flicker, there was something dog-like or wolf-like in the whetted expectancy of their waiting attention.

"I laid off ter hide it hyar fur ter-night an' ter-morrer," continued Cheever, "an' whilst some gyards it, the t'others go off an' show tharsef's in place—'ceptin' Steve"—his thin, expressive lips were slightly elongated. "The news 'ain't got ter the cove yit, but time it do they will all be fur stringin' him up. Him—knowed ter be on that road that night at that hour, an' 'ain't never showed up no mo'."

A grin of many conceits was upon his countenance, unseen by the subject of conversation, while the men in the full flare of the fire-light had some ado to suppress any facial response of relish. For in this circumstance the dullest amongst them found it easy to discern their safety. Some discussion ensued as to the best method of secreting the treasure until it should be safe to divide and use it.

"Jest ter think," remarked Cheever, with jovial hypocrisy, "o' the strange workin's o' Providence. All we-uns war arter war the man's horse—jes ter take the horse-critter an' turn the man afoot in the road—an' stiddier that we tuk this pile o' money. It'll buy a hundred sech horses."

Perhaps it was because of the succumbing of their fears in the drowsy influences of the hour, waxing late, perhaps because of the confidence engendered by elation and success, but a new sentiment of security, of capability, was perceptible upon the mere mention of their exploit, and several were disposed to dilate upon the future expenditure of their share rather than to devise means to properly secrete it. Here was where they seemed, strangely enough, Yates thought, to misunderstand Cheever. He took little part in the discussion; he listened to each with a sneering negation, half masked beneath his lowered eyelids, and Yates readily divined that none probably would know the hiding-place of the plunder but himself and Millroy, his loyal henchman, and the only one of them all in whom he really reposed any confidence.

Derridge sat gazing at the embers; once he offered a characteristic observation. "I know 'twouldn't do ter keep it hyar till the s'arch be over," he said, ponderingly, accepting Cheever's suggestion, "an' 'twouldn't do fur all o' we-uns ter light out fur Texas an' sech tergether. The folks would be a-talkin' 'bout our vamosin' like Steve done, an' the sher'ff would be on our track with a requisition. An' it hev ter be hid; not in the woods, 'kase we-uns might lose the spot, or a big rain mought wash the dirt off'n it, or sech."

"I tell ye," interjected Beckett, with a swift look of inspiration. "You know old Squair Beamen's fambly buryin'-groun'. Old Mis' Beamen hev got a tombstone like a big box. Lift up the top, and put the truck in thar."

"I'd like ter put ye in thar," replied Cheever, who had stolidly eyed him during this prelection. "I wouldn't hev that truck that close ter a jestice o' the peace fur nuthin'."

"An' I hev hearn o' other truck bein' hid thar," objected Ben Tyson, indignantly. "Them men ez robbed the cross-roads store up on Scolacutta River—thar plunder war fund thar."

"Not fur a long time; 'twar powerful well hid," insisted Pete Beckett, as if stating an essential value. But the other two laughed, and the vexed question seemed hardly soon to be decided.

The waning moon in the skies had swung now so high that her white light lay upon the verge of the niche with a sharply drawn and jagged outline—the shadow of the roofing ledge. Momently this belt grew broader, and the glow of the coals more dully red. The two mountaineers who were deputed to watch while the others slept beguiled the tedium by a game with a greasy pack of cards, using as a table the seat of a saddle laid between them as they half reclined on the floor, and played less by the light of the fire than the clear lustre streaming in at the arched opening of the grotto. The prone figures of the others gave evidence in heavy breathing of their unconscious slumbers. All was silent without; the silver sheen made splendid the woods, although it was invested with some strange yearning melancholy, belonging only to the moon on its wane. The frogs had ceased their chanting; the katydid was dumb; the earth seemed to sigh no more; the insensate vegetation slept. Once across the white space at the verge, where fell on the floor the sharp rugged shadow of the roof, there was in the midst of the stillness a sudden movement; it came from the top of the precipice above. The two gamesters sat as if petrified, the cards in their hands, their burning eyes intent upon the shadow of the summit of the cliff. Nothing—a long moment of suspense. Nothing! And then it came again; the outline of a floating wing—a swift similitude of the night-hawk sweeping in its noiseless flight through the air to seek its unwarned prey. The two men did not so much as glance at one another as they resumed their game; of these thrilling moments, charged with suspense and danger, their lives counted many.

So still it was without that it seemed to Yates that he might lose in sleep the consciousness of those few momentous hours that had changed the whole current of his life. He went over them again and again in his scanty dreams with a verisimilitude of repetition that sufficed almost to prevent him from discerning his waking thoughts from his slumber. Now and again as he reviewed them he so realized to his imagination a different ordering of their sequence, which might have been so readily effected at the time had he but foreseen, that he experienced almost the relief of escape. Why had he not refused old Pettingill's request to ride seventeen miles for the doctor? But, indeed, had he not offered the service from the superabundance of his good-nature? "I hope the old man got his horse again, like Cheever say," he sighed; for in the interim his conscience had been loaded with every ounce that the good bay weighed. And then, again, without the fancy of what he might have done and what he wished, he would recall the circumstances as they had befallen him. Never had impressions been so burned into his consciousness as in those most significant moments of his life. He could even now recollect the glow of friendly feeling with which he said, "I don't b'lieve but what the yerb doctor kin bring Len Rhodes through; but ter pleasure Mr. Shattuck I'll ride fur the t'other doctor, Mr. Pettingill—I'll ride fur him." He could even feel again his foot in the stirrup, the quick, smooth gallop of the fresh horse beneath him. And then, the winding lengths of the sandy woodland roads, so sweet with the breath of the azaleas, all white and star-eyed in dark bosky places, so fresh with the dew, so idealized by the moon. And thinking no harm! Thinking of Adelaide, with regrets for the harsh words between them, with resolutions that they should be the last. Alack! they were likely to be the last indeed. And of Moses—proteanwise! For he could see Moses as a half-grown lad, tall and strong and straight; and then as a bearded man; sometimes as a justice of the peace; sometimes the elastic paternal ambition pre-empted for him a seat in the State Legislature; and then the image dwindled, best of all, to the small limits of the cradle where he slept, so pink and white and warm, the highest potentate in all the land! Thinking of these things Yates was as the miles sped; hearing once afar, afar, a horn wound in the stillness, and then only his horse's hoofs with the alternate beat of the gallop.

He had ridden hard, since it might be a case of life and death; but there was a bad stretch of road ahead, a long hill to climb, and the horse was blown. It was a saving of time, he thought, as he slackened the pace and went slowly, slowly up the rugged ascent. The grass was thick on the margin; he drew his horse to the side where the hoofs might fall on the smooth dank sward. He could scarcely hear his saddle creak. The animal paused at the summit to snatch a mouthful of cool wet sassafras leaves, munching with relish, despite the hindrance of the bit.

Suddenly a wild hoarse scream rang out, startling the night; a tumult of voices sounded; a pistol shot split the air, another; and, as he looked from the summit of the hill down the declivity, he saw a group of horsemen in fierce altercation in the middle of the road. Scant as the moment was, so bright was the moon that he recognized more than one face. And the moment was scant, for the central figure, his whole pose vigorously resistant, fired again, wide of the mark, the ball whizzing by the ear of Zack Pettingill's bay horse. The animal uttered a sharp neigh, almost articulate, wheeled abruptly, and, heedless of either whip or spur, breaking into an unmanageable run, fled frantically homeward. Behind there were swifter hoofs than his. It was hardly a moment before Cheever's splendid horse was alongside; his burly strength re-enforced Steve Yates's pull on the reins. Whether, in the confusion of the moment, Cheever and his gang had mistaken the neighing of Pettingill's horse and the sound of his hoofs for pursuit and incontinently fled, or whether they thus divined that they were discovered, Yates did not then definitely understand, nor was it clearer to him afterward. Certainly they dreaded the escape of the witness who beheld the deed, and knew its perpetrators by face and name, far more than that of the plundered wayfarer, who, upon the diversion effected in his favor, made good use of his horse's hoofs upon the road that he had so lately travelled. Beyond a pistol ball or two, one of which Yates thought undoubtedly took effect, they did not offer to pursue him. They rode alongside of their protesting and unarmed captive, and discovering shortly how efficacious was the suggestion that he would doubtless be accused of the deed, since so many knew of his errand at this unusual hour and on this unfrequented road, they caused him to be pondering heavily upon the dreary possibilities of circumstantial evidence before they had gone many miles. Not that he did not offer resistance and seek flight. "What's the use o' swallerin' this bullet whether or no, Steve?" Cheever had demanded, as he presented a pistol to his captive's mouth. "I don't want ye ter eat lead, an' how would that mend the matter fur you-uns?" And when Yates sought to urge his horse into a gallop, it was but a shamble in comparison with the smooth, swift gait of the splendid animal that Cheever bestrode. He could do naught at the time, not even by screams arouse a wayside habitation, for they had soon plunged into unfrequented forests, and were far away from the haunts of men.

That they had not used him more unkindly than the interests of their own safety necessitated made no claim upon his gratitude. Perhaps, although he had not the courage to court it, he would have preferred death. He only took advantage of their leniency to stipulate that Pettingill's horse should be turned loose to return. "He mought be viewed 'mongst our'n some time. He's too close a neighbor ennyhow," said Cheever, and so he consented. Even the trivial detail of the creature's bewilderment was still in the young man's mind—how the horse persistently trotted along in the cavalcade, with his lustrous surprised eyes and his empty saddle, his erstwhile rider mounted behind one of the other men. More than once after he was driven back he reappeared from behind a sharp curve of the road, nimbly cantering and with an appealing whinny. Finally blows prevailed, and from the crest of a ridge they afterward saw him ambling erratically homeward along the white moonlit road, now and again stopping by the wayside to crop the grass or bushes.

"Ef he keeps on that-a-way he'll git home next week," Cheever had commented.

Even now, reviewing the disaster, Yates could not say definitely what he should have done, but it seemed that some rescue would have waited upon his effort had his slow brain but devised it. More than all, above all, the sight of the saddle-bags containing a considerable sum of money taken from the stranger had a horror for him. He dwelt upon the idea that among the people of the cove he must be believed to have committed the crime, until he had a morbid sense of complicity. His mind was, as he knew, but a poor tool for scheming, but he was imperatively, urgently moved by some inward power to make an effort which might result in the restoration of the money to its proper owner. He began to feel that integrity is not a repute; it is an attribute of the mind and a spontaneous emotion of the heart. "'Tain't ter hev folks say ye're honest; it air ter be honest."

He felt himself forever blasted; he doubted if, in any event, he would ever dare to return to his home. He had known of men with far less evidence against them than these perverse lies, that masqueraded as facts in his case, strung up to a tree without judge or jury. He would do himself, his wife, his child scant favor in courting that ignoble doom. He only revolved the robbery for the sake of honesty alone, that he might devise some scheme to frustrate the highwaymen and restore the money.

Somehow, as he lay looking out at the gibbous moon, visible now, all distorted and weird in the purple sky, and no less lustrously yellow because of the sense of dawn gradually stealing upon the air, he could not disassociate Shattuck from his train of ideas despite the lack of logical connection. It was perhaps, he thought dully in recognizing the fact, because it was upon Shattuck's errand that he had gone to this dreadful fate; perhaps because the mention of a box-like tombstone had suggested to him the strange underground sarcophagi, also box-like and of stone, of the pygmy burying-ground in which Shattuck was interested. And suddenly he caught his breath and lay still, thinking, a long time.

So languid-footed was the night, but he smelt the rose in its morning blossoming! A mocking-bird sang, all faint and sweet and fresh, and dreamed again. Stars were fading; the great valley of East Tennessee was beginning to be outlined, with ridges and smaller valleys and rivers and further mountains, with a sense of space and of large symmetry that outdoes the imagination. And still the moon shone in his face.

"Buck," he said, suddenly, for all the others slept, and it was Cheever's turn to watch, "did you-uns ever hear tell o' the Leetle Stranger People?"

Cheever, smoking his pipe near at hand, as he lay on the floor, lifted himself upon one elbow. He nodded. "Many a time."

"Folks 'low they useter hev this kentry. They seem sorter small ter hev ter die."

"I dun'no' but what they do," said Cheever, impressed by the hardship of the common fate which overtook even such "leetle people." "An' folks hev fairly furgot they ever lived, too."

Yates nodded his head.

"I dun'no' ez I hev hearn the Leetle People named fur thirty year an' better. My gran'mam tole me 'bout 'em whenst I war a boy. What ailed you-uns ter git a-goin' 'bout 'em?"

"Jes' thinkin' 'bout home. Thar buryin'-groun' ain't more'n haffen mile from my house," replied Yates, casually. "Ye hev hearn tell how they coffins the dead in stone boxes, two feet undergroun', an' I reckon that fool talk 'bout Mis' Beamen's tombstone bein' like a stone box reminded me of 'em."

Cheever held his pipe in his hand. The coal had dwindled to an ash as he listened. A thought was astir in his crafty brain. Dull at scheming as Yates was, he could almost divine its processes.

"I dun'no' when I hev hearn the Leetle People named afore," Cheever said, meditatively.

"The old folks used ter talk 'bout 'em sometimes," rejoined Steve, apparently inadvertently, "though few knows now they ever lived, nor whar they lie. One grave air right on the south side o' that thar laurel bush—the only laurel on the slope; I know, fur the ground sounds hollow thar; I sounded it one day."

He cast a covert glance at Cheever. The robber's eyes, opened widely for once, were full of light as they glanced swiftly and searchingly at the sleeping men, all unconscious, about them. Then he said, in a casual tone, "I reckon thar's a heap o' lie in all that thar talk 'bout the Leetle People." And his earnest, intent, breathless face belied his words as he spoke them.

Yates sank back upon the improvised pillow of saddle and blanket, breathing quick, feeling alive once more. He had relied on Cheever's ignorance of Shattuck's intention—known, indeed, to few, and infinitely unimportant in their estimation—since the horse-thief's protective seclusion debarred him from much gossip. To this spot beneath the laurel Yates himself had directed Shattuck's attention. Now if the treasure should be concealed there, and Shattuck's enthusiasm should not fail, the discovery would be made and noised abroad, and some right at last would blossom out of all this wrong.