“Waal,” rejoined Bylor, “I hev hearn some folks ’low ef ye shoots at a harnt they don’t like it, an’ sorter makes tharse’fs sca’ce arter that. I dunno what ailed him ter take arter me. I never herded with him on Thunderhead. I ain’t no herder, an’ never war. I hate powerful ter go down inter the cove ter drivel fur a year an’ a day. I never done no work sca’cely las’ year, through feelin’ sorter keerless ’bout’n it. An’ ef I hed drempt bout’n’ this hyar harnt a-takin’ arter me I’d hev put in my work then.”
“Waal, ye can’t git the time back,” said Ben Doaks; and many an idler before and since Bylor has learned this melancholy truth.
He sat silent for a time, ruefully pondering upon his blasted industrial prospects. Then he broke forth fretfully once more:—
“I war fool enough ter go so close. I seen the very hat he wore,”—his tones were full of a despairing regret,—“a big white hat sot onto the back o’ his head.”
“That war jes’ Josh Nixon,” said the elder of the herders, gravely shaking his head. “That war the very kind o’ hat he wore, an’ set the same.”
Three of the five hats in the room were of that exact description; in fact, it was a fashion common enough in the region for Jerry Price to have two alike, and the old one which Mrs. Purvine had lent the fugitive was hardly distinguishable from Mink’s own, floating down the Tennessee River.
It did not shadow a face altogether appreciative of his own pranks, as Mink drew it down over his brow and rode away in the mist, when convinced that the herders were likely to come out no more for the present.
“I can’t take no sure enough enjyemint in nuthin’,” he complained. “I feel so badgered an’ hunted.”
He looked about him doubtfully. A few strides of his horse and he would be across the state line, and safer than for many a day. He stood drearily contemplating the vacancy of the clouds above the Carolina side, as unresponsive to the imagination as his future, which in vain he sought to forecast. He suddenly wheeled.
“I’m bound ter see Lethe, though! I’m bound ter tell her I hev fund her out. She’ll know what I think o’ her afore I’m done.”