The earth was moist from the recent rains, as the narrow, slippery path, curving between a sheer declivity on one side and an almost perpendicular ascent on the other, might testify. His mare traveled it in a devil-may-care fashion, snatching as she went at leaves on the slope above, regardless that a false step would precipitate both herself and her rider into eternity. Noticing this breach of manners, Mink now and then gave a reckless jerk at the bit.
“Dad-burn ye! ye buzzard! A greedy body would ’low ye hed never hearn tell o’ nuthin’ ter eat afore in this worl’!”
Here it was only, above these depths, that he might see the sky,—afar off, as was meet that it should be: he, the earthling, had no kinship with its austere infinities. The growths of the forest were now of incredible magnitude and magnificence. Up and up towered the massive boles, with a canopy of leaves so dense that all the firmament was effaced, and the sunshine trickling through had a white, tempered glister like the moonbeams. What infinite stretches of solitudes! What measureless mountain wilds! In these solemn spaces Silence herself walked unshod.
Yet stay! A crystalline vibration, a tinkling tremor, a voice smiting the air, so delicately attuned to all sylvan rhythms, with an accent so fine, so faint,—surely, some oread a-singing!
Nay—only the mountain torrent, dashing its fantastic cascades down its rocky channel, with a louder burst of minstrelsy and a flash of foam as its glittering swirl of translucent water revealed itself, the laurel and ferns crowding upon its banks and a cardinal flower reflected multiform in a deep and shadowy pool. A mossy log spanned it as foot-bridge, and then it slipped away into the forest, to spring out suddenly and cross the road again and again before it reached the base of the mountain. Mink reckoned the distance by its reappearances, in default of other means.
“Ye be a-travelin’ toler’ble smart this evenin’,” he observed to the mare. “Ye be mighty nigh ez glad ter git off’n that thar buzzard’s roost up yander ez I be, though I don’t crack my heels tergether ’bout it like you-uns do yourn.”
He did not follow the road into Eskaqua Cove when he reached the level ground. He struck off through one of the ridges that lie like a moulding about the base of the mountains, crossed another nameless barrier, then descended into Piomingo Cove. Sequestered, encompassed by the mountains, rugged of surface, veined with rock, its agricultural interest is hardly served by the conditions which enhance its picturesque aspect. The roofs of a few log cabins at long intervals peer out from among scanty orchards and fields. Tobacco flourishes down the sides of steep funnel-shaped depressions worked exclusively with the hoe, and suggesting acrobatic capacity as a co-requisite with industry to cultivate it. The woods make heavily into the cove, screening it from familiar knowledge of its hills and dales.
Mink, trotting along the red clay road, came suddenly upon the banks of the Scolacutta River, riotous with the late floods, fringed with the papaw and the ivy bush. Beyond its steely glint he could see the sun-flooded summit of Chilhowee, a bronze green, above the intermediate ranges: behind him was the Great Smoky, all unfamiliar viewed from an unaccustomed standpoint, massive, solemn, of dusky hue; white and amber clouds were slowly settling on the bald. There had been a shower among the mountains, and a great rainbow, showing now only green and rose and yellow, threw a splendid slant of translucent color on the purple slope. In such environment the little rickety wooden mill—with its dilapidated leaking race, with its motionless wheel moss-grown, with its tottering supports throbbing in the rush of the water which rose around them, with a loitering dozen or more mountaineers about the door—might seem a feeble expression of humanity. To Mink the scene was the acme of excitement and interest. His blood was quickening as he galloped up, his hair tossing under the wide brim of his hat, his stirrup-leathers adjusted to the full length of his leg according to the custom of the country, his rifle laid across the pommel of his saddle.
“Enny chance lef’ fur me?” he asked, as he reined in among the loungers.
This observation was received in some sort as a salutation.