Despite the reproof, Doaks was looking kindly at him, for the wayward Mink had evidently endeared himself in some sort to the elder herder, who was weakly conscious of not regarding his enormities with the aversion they merited.
The young man’s countenance fell. His mischief differed from that of his namesake in all the sequelæ of an accusing conscience. But stay! What do we know of the mink’s midday meditations, his sober, ex post facto regrets?
“An’ what do ye do then,—’kase they turned ye off? Ye go thar of a night, when nobody’s at the windlass, an’ ye busts it down an’ flings the bucket an’ rope an’ all down the shaft.”
Mink was embarrassed. “How d’ ye know?” he retorted, with acrid futility. “How d’ ye know ’twar me?”
“’Kase it air fairly kin ter yer actions,—know it by the family favor,” said Doaks. “Ax ennybody ennywhar round the Big Smoky who did sech an’ sech, an’ they’d all say, Mink. Ye know the word they hev gin ye, ‘Mink by name an’ Mink by natur.’”
Lorey made no further feint of denial. He seemed a trifle out of countenance. He glanced over his shoulder at the rugged horizontal summit line of Chilhowee, rising high above the intervenient mountains, and sharply imposed upon the mosaic of delicate tints known as the valley of East Tennessee, which stretches so far that, despite its sharp inequalities, it seems to have the level monotony of the sea till Walden’s Ridge, the great outpost of the Cumberland Mountains, meets the concave sky.
Then, as his wandering attention returned to those sterner heights close at hand, their inexpressible gravity, their significant solemnity, which he could not apprehend, which baffled every instinct of his limited nature, smote upon him.
He broke out irritably:—
“What do ye jes’ set thar a-jowin’ at me fur, Ben, like a long-tongued woman, ’bout what I done an’ what I hain’t done, in this hyar lonesome place whar I hev been tolled ter by you-uns? I never begged ter be ’lowed ter herd along of ye, nohow. When I kem an’ axed ye ’bout’n it, ye ’lowed ye’d be powerful glad. An’ ye said ez so many o’ the farmers in the flat woods hed promised ter bunch thar cattle an’ send ’em up ter ye fur the summer season, that ye war plumb skeered ’bout thar bein’ too many fur one man ter keer fur, an’ ye didn’t see how ye’d git along ’thout a partner. An’ ye ’lowed ye’d already rented Piomingo Bald right reasonable, an’ the owners o’ the cattle would pay from seventy-five cents to a dollar a head; an’ ye’d gin me a sheer ef I’d kem along an’ holp ye,—an’ all sech ez that. An’ I kem up in the spring, an’ I hev been on this hyar durned pinnacle o’ perdition ever sence. It ’minds me all the time o’ that thar high mounting in the Bible whar the Tempter showed off all the kingdoms o’ the yearth. What ails ye ter git arter me? I hain’t tried no minkish tricks on you-uns.”