Rood said no more, appreciating the futility of remonstrance. He stood, surly enough, in the doorway, listening absently to the garrulous clamor of the old miller, who was telling again and again of Mink’s iniquity in teaching Tad “five corn,” and of his threats against the mill.
“I dare ye ter lay a finger on the mill!” he cried. “I’ll put ye in that thar hopper an’ grind every ounce o’ yer carcass ter minch meat.”
Mink gave him no heed. He had joined the group of marksmen near the tree on which the targets were to be fixed. He was loading his gun, holding the ball in the palm of his hand, and pouring enough powder over it to barely cover it in a conical heap. He dexterously adjusted the “patching,” and as he rammed down the charge he paused suddenly. From a little log cabin on a rise hard by, a delicate spiral wreath of smoke curled up over the orchard, and airily defined itself against the mountain. Beside the rail fence a girl of fifteen was standing; sunny-haired, blue-eyed, barefooted, and slatternly. The peaches were ripe in the weighted trees above her head; he heard the chanting bees among them. The pig was grunting luxuriously among their roots and the fallen over-ripe fruit; for his driver, ’Gustus Tom, and the elder boy, Joseph, had gone down to the mill for a closer view of the shooting; the small girls who had mounted the fence being deterred from accompanying them by feminine decorum. The dogs appertaining to the place had also gone down to the mill, and were conferring with the followers of the contestants in the match. One, however, a gaunt and gray old hound, that had half climbed the fence, hesitated, his fore-paws resting on the topmost rail, a lean, eager curiosity on his grave, serious countenance, his neck stretched, his head close to the pretty head of the golden-haired maiden.
“Howdy, sis!” called out the bold Mink, the ramrod arrested half-way in the barrel, his face shadowed by his broad-brimmed hat, his hair flaunting in the wind.
She gave a flattered smile, full of precocious coquetry.
“Sick him, Bose!” she exclaimed to the faithful dog. “Sick him!”
Bose fastened his glare on Mink, raised his bristles, and growled obediently.
The young man with a gay laugh drove the charge home, and rattled the ramrod sharply into its place.
Already the first report of the rifle had pealed into the quietude of the cove; the rocks clamored as with the musketry of a battle. Far, far and faint the sound clanged back from the ranges between Chilhowee and the river, from all the spurs and ravines of the Big Smoky. The sunshine had the burnished fullness of post-meridian lustre, mellow, and all unlike the keen, matutinal glitter of earlier day; but purple shadows encircled the cove, and ever and anon a shining curve was described on the mountain side as the wings of a homeward-bound bird caught the light. Sometimes the low of cattle rose on the air. The beef, as the young ox was prematurely called, lifted his head, listening. He stood, the rope about his neck, secured to a hitching-post near the mill, looking calmly upon the ceremonies that sealed his destiny. It is to be hoped, in view of the pangs of prescience, that the animal’s deductive capacities and prophetic instincts are not underrated, or the poor beef’s presence at the shooting-match might express the acme of anguished despair. He was an amiable brute, and lent himself passively to the curiosity of ’Gustus Tom, who came up more than once, gazed fixedly at him, and examined his horns and hoofs, his eyes and nozzle, doubtless verifying some preconceptions as to facts in natural history.