“Gentlemen,” he said, a little ill at ease because of the restive mare, “I must thank you for the story you told me. You don’t know how much good it did me. A pretty little story, with a pretty little hero. A very pretty little story, indeed.”
He bent his roseate, dimpled smile upon them, and waved his hand satirically; with a bound the mare disappeared in the mist, leaving the grave, saturnine mountaineers staring after him, and listening to the measured hoof-beat of his invisible progress till it died in the distance.
Then they looked at each other.
“Sam,” said Jeb, when they had turned again into their fastnesses, where they could ride only in single file, “I dunno ef we-uns done right las’ night. This worl’ would be healthier ef that man war out’n it.”
“I ain’t misdoubtin’ that none,” replied Marvin. “’Peared ter me powerful comical, the way he took off down the road, an’ I ain’t able ter study out yit what he meant. My gran’mam always ’lowed ez them ez talks in riddles larnt thar speech o’ the devil, him bein’ the deceivin’ one. But ’twarn’t healthy fur we-uns ter kill him, even ef we could hev agreed ter do it. I reckon them hunters would hev tracked him. An’ I don’t b’lieve he war no spy nor sech.”
“Nor me nuther,” said “hongry Jeb,” well enough satisfied with the termination of the adventure, “though I ain’t likin’ him now ez well ez I done a-fust.”
They liked him still less, and all their old suspicions returned with redoubled force, upon reaching home, when the afternoon was well advanced. For no hunters had yet appeared, and the lurking moonshiners, becoming surprised because of this, had tracked Harshaw’s way to the house by the broken brush, the hairs from the mane and tail of the mare, a bit of his coat clutched off by the briers, the plain prints of the mare’s hoofs along a sandy stretch protected from the rain by the beetling ledges of a crag. There were many oak-trees along this path,—not one blazed by a hunting-knife. They understood at last his clever lie. And Marvin upbraided M’ria:—
“Thar air more constancy in the ways o’ the wind, an’ mo’ chance o’ countin’ on ’em, ’n that thar woman. Fust he mus’ be dragged out straight an’ kilt,—flunged off’n the bluff,—else we-uns would all go ter jail, an’ Philetus be lef’ ter starve ’mongst the painters, ez wouldn’t keep him comp’ny, but would eat him up. Then when the man limbered his jaw an’ sot out ter lyin’, she gits so all-fired skeered, she hed breakfus’ cooked for we-uns ter journey ’fore I could sati’fy my mind ’bout nuthin’. Ef the truth war knowed, we’d all be safer ef M’ria were flunged over the bluff.”
And Maria, staring at the line of oak-trees, all undesecrated by the knife, could not gainsay it.