In the "Stranger People's" country

by Charles Egbert Craddock

"I don't understand," he exclaimed.

"This is the horse he rode," she said.

V.

The news of the horse's return with an empty saddle was received at first lightly enough by others. The treasures of old Zack Pettingill's whiskey keg and his wife's cherry-bounce, lavished forth on the preceding evening, were deemed amply sufficient to account for any eccentricities of equestrianism. But when several days had passed without the reappearance of the dismounted horseman, the slowly percolating gossip touching a conjugal quarrel began to offer another and a more exciting interpretation of the mystery. So general was its acceptance that although a company of men organized a search and patrolled the roads and the by-paths and the mountain-sides, it was with scant hope or expectation of any definite discovery, and inquiry of the physician whom Yates had been despatched to summon resulted only in a verification of the popular conviction that he had never delivered the message. Thus the fears evoked for his safety were very promptly merged in reprehension, and speculative gossip was mingled in equal parts with pity for his wife.

"Who'd ever hev thunk ez Adelaide Sims, counted the prettiest gal this side o' nowhar, would hev been deserted by her husband 'fore three years war out?" Mrs. Pettingill said, meditatively, her pipe between her lips, as she "walked" a spinning-wheel into the house, making it use first one and then the other of its own spindling legs to achieve progression rather than lifting it by main force. She half soliloquized and half addressed a tall, lank mountaineer who sat upon the edge of the porch, his horse grazing hard by. He had stopped on the pretext of asking for a "bite," saying that he had travelled far over the mountain, looking up some stray cattle of his, and albeit Mrs. Pettingill disapproved of his reputation, the "snack" that she could give him was one of those admirable things in itself that could not go amiss even with a sinner. He had a big-boned, powerful frame and was middle-aged; but despite that his hair was streaked with gray, and the crow's-feet about his eyes gave evidences of the lapse of time, he was the very impersonation of the spirit of "devil may care." He had a keen, hooked nose, an eye far-seeing, gray, and of a steely brilliancy, and the thin lips of his large mouth, mobility itself, curved to a vast range of expression. His manner implied an elated, ever-ready, breezy confidence; his eye now covertly measured you, then gayly overlooked you as of no manner of consequence. His reputation might, indeed, be accounted a doubtful one. He had come before the bar of justice several times: the altering of the brand on certain cattle herded upon the "Bald" had been laid at his door; the manner in which a horse had been lost, by a drover passing through the country, and found in his possession, had been called into question. On each occasion his escape had been made good by the lack of adequate evidence to convict, although little doubt existed as to his guilt. He was one of those singular instances of an undeserved popularity. Better men, amply able to discern right from wrong, often opined that there was no great harm in him, that injustice had been done him, and that much meaner men abounded in the cove who had never been "hauled over the coals." He had been a brave soldier, although the flavor of bushwhacking clung to his war record. He had certain magnetic qualities, and there were always half a dozen stout fellows at his back—ne'er-do-weels like himself. He had been suspected of moonshining, but this was not considered a natural sequence of his lawless habits, for many otherwise law-abiding citizens followed this pursuit; in defence, they would have urged, of their natural right of possession—to make what use they chose of their own corn and apples, as their forefathers had done in the days before the whiskey tax. Buck Cheever's suspected adherence to the popular standpoint on this burning question might have been considered to only lower the tone of the profession.

Mrs. Pettingill regarded him with contradictory emotions. As a religionist, she felt that she would prefer his room to his company; but his room was but scant encroachment, for he only sat upon the edge of the porch, and he by no means asserted any equality of piety or moral standpoint; on the contrary, he seemed to esteem her, and, by her reflected lustre, Mr. Pettingill, as shining lights, and vastly different from the general run of the cove. His breezy talk was peculiarly refreshing to her in the midst of the ordeal, still in process, of restoring the routine of twenty years, shattered by the havoc of the infair. He had a discerning palate and a crisp and flexible tongue, and she felt, with a glow of kindness, that he said as much in praise of her corn-dodgers, which formed a part of his lunch, as any one else would have said for her pound-cake.

"Mos' folks don't sense the differ in corn-meal cookin'. It takes a better cook ter make a plain, tasty corn-dodger, ez eats short with fried chicken, 'n a cake."

"It takes Mis' Pettingill ter make this kind o' one," he protested, with his mouth full. "No sech air ever cooked ennywhar else I ever see."

"I hev got some mighty nice fraish buttermilk, Buck, jes' churned," she remarked, precipitately. "I be goin' ter fetch ye a glass right off."

Old Zack Pettingill, with his shock head of thick gray hair, and his deeply grooved face, sat in his shirt-sleeves in his accustomed chair on the porch, and his expression betokened a scorn of his helpmeet's susceptibility to the praises of her culinary accomplishments, and held a distinct intimation, by which Buck Cheever might have profited had he been so disposed, that he was not to be propitiated in any such wise. Little, however, Buck Cheever cared. The lady in command of the larder dwarfed her husband's importance.