Mink’s gust of temper had served to divert him for the moment from the contemplation of his perplexities. Now they reasserted themselves. Before, however, he had seen no hope of extrication. But Alethea’s words had given him something. He began to appreciate the necessity of a definite plan of action. If he should go up to Piomingo Bald he would be taken at the herders’ cabin by the officers of the law. His home could be no refuge. He felt a respite essential. He craved the time to think of Alethea’s suggestion, to canvass the ground, to judge what was possible. At last he dismounted and turned his mare out; even here he could hear the occasional jangling bells of the herds, and the animal would soon follow the familiar sound. He took his way on foot down the mountain and through Eskaqua Cove. “The news’ll travel slower ’n me,” he said.
He hardly felt hunger; he did not realize his fatigue. The red clay roads were vacant, the few daily passers were not yet astir. He avoided, as far as he might, the possibility of meeting them by taking short cuts over the mountains and through valleys. His instinct was to remove himself from his accustomed haunts. Nevertheless, he had no definite intention of hiding, for after traversing Hazel Valley, he struck boldly into the county road that leads up the eastern slope of Big Injun Mountain. He had no thought of resisting arrest. He walked along meditatively, hardly conscious even of the company of his shadow climbing the mountain with him, until he suddenly found that it had skulked away and he was bereft of this vague similitude of a comrade. For the sun was already west of Big Injun. A pensive shade lay far down the slope, but below there was again the interfulgent play of sunshine itinerant with the wind among the leaves.
Once he sat down on a rock close by the road, with his head in his hands and his elbows on his knees, and sought again to adjust his course to the best interests of conscience and policy. A woman with a bag of fruit on her back passed him presently. He replied to her “howdy;” then after a time rose and trudged up and up the road. He had known repentance before, for he was plastic morally. But in his experience there had been no perplexity. It seemed to him, with the urgency of decision and the turmoil of doubt pressing upon him, that it was happier to be resolutely reckless. The harassments of uncertainty had affected his nerves, and he gave a quick start when the abrupt jangle of a bell smote the air. On the opposite side of the road, among the great craggy steeps, there was a wide, low niche in the face of the cliff, with a beetling roof and a confusion of rocks and bushes below. Sheep had climbed into it; some were standing looking down at him, now and then stirring and setting the bell to clanking fitfully; others lay motionless in the shadowy nook. He was about to go on; suddenly he turned and began to scale the huge fragments of rock to the niche in the cliff.
“Ye clar out,” he said to the sheep as they scuttled away at his approach; “ye hev got the very spot I want.”
They huddled together as he crept in; two or three hastily ran out upon the rocks,—only a little frightened, for they began presently to nibble the grass growing in the rifts. He lay down, pillowing his head upon his arm, and turning his eyes on the scene without. He could see far below into the depths of Hazel Valley, with hill and dale in undulatory succession. The light glanced here and there on the minute lines of a zigzag fence; on a field in which the stark and girdled trees stood in every gaunt attitude of despair; on a patch striped with green where tobacco grew in orderly ranks,—all amongst the dense forests, upon which these tiny suggestions of civilization seemed only some ephemeral incident, ineffective, capable of slightest significance. Beyond, the wooded mountains rose in the densities of unbroken primeval wilderness, with irregular summit-lines, with graduating tones from bronze-green to blue-gray, with a solemnity that even the sunshine did not abate. Still further, the Great Smoky, veiled with mist and vague with distance, stood high against the sky,—so high that but for the familiar changeless outline it must have seemed the fiction of the clouds.
The sheep came back and crowded about him,—he lay so still. Once he was conscious of their motion; he intended to rouse himself in a moment and drive them off. And once afterward he was vaguely aware of the tinkle of the bell. Then he heard no more.
The afternoon wore on. The sunlight deepened to orange and burned to red. The mountains were all garbed in purple. The sky above that splendid summit-line of the Great Smoky caught the reflection from the west and was delicately roseate. Cow-bells were clanking in Hazel Valley, faintly, faintly. A star, most serene, was at the zenith.
The sheep in the dark niche of the crags stirred, and huddled together again, and were quiet. The moon came and looked coyly in, as if she sought Endymion. The face of the mountaineer, its reckless spirit all spent, was gentle and young in the soft, shy light.
All at once he was awake. The sheep were crowding timorously about him. A voice broke with sudden discord into the harmonies of the night.
“Nuthin’ but sheep, I reckon.”