“Marion,” he repeated absently. “But who’s Nigger Nat? Not a colored man!”
The frank eyes looked steadily back at him.
“Why, yes he is. He’s yeller—half nigger. He’s my pop. And mom’s part Injun.”
CHAPTER III
PIPE-SMOKE—AND POWDER-SMOKE
Dawn swept across the Shawangunks.
From the far-off crests of the Berkshires light leaped athwart the silvery Hudson and smote the frowning cliffs of the Great Wall of the Wallkill Valley: a grim gray precipice stretching mile after mile to the northeast, towering eight hundred feet upward from the lower lands; unscalable, impenetrable save at one small high gap—the Jaws of the Traps, whence in other days the redskin had slipped forth in bloody foray on the settlers below, and where in turn the white man had lurked in retaliatory ambush. Through that gap now wormed the sandy road of the descendants of those pioneers, and along that road at this early hour passed nothing more sinister than dawn-sheen and morning breeze.
At the top of the crag-wall the light sped across the forested gulf of the Traps itself, with its tiny scattered farmhouses and its rocky clearings and mysterious by-paths, to strike against more cliffs—the glacier-gouged wall of Minnewaska, holding in its stony setting a tiny jewel of an upland lake; and the fissured butte of Dickie Barre, father of gigantic bowlders and guardian of unknown caverns. And as the dayshine flung itself against those forbidding ledges and then fled on westward, the following breeze also threw against them a wave of sound—the dry quacking chorus of myriads of katydids.
All through the moonless September night those queer insects had ground out their tuneless song, so monotonous and so steady that the ears of other living things had long since become dulled to it. But now, swept by the dawn-wind in among the echoing crevices and cañons, it seemed suddenly redoubled in volume. Upon the senses of native bird and beast it made slight impact, for they were well used to it; but on the nerves of a long, blanketed figure lying in a narrow passage between towering stone walls it struck like the clatter of an alarm-clock. His towsled blond head moved, his long-lashed lids lifted, and his blue eyes darted about in inspection of his surroundings.
Beside his head lay a shotgun, its muzzle pointing outward, its safety-catch off, ready for instant use. Beyond the slit of an entrance showed nothing but more rocks and a labyrinthine tangle of trees and brush. Behind, the sheer wall of Dickie Barre alone was visible across a roomy space open to the sky. The only sounds were the everlasting quack of the insects and the subdued yarrup of some invisible yellowhammer flitting about in search for a breakfast.
He yawned, stretched, and sat up. The blanket dropped from his chest, and he stared blankly at it. Then his gaze shot toward the cliff beyond.