"What man, now?" Derridge said, in a deep bass voice, and the argumentative accents of one who will tolerate in evidence only fact and right reason. His tone seemed to challenge the name of the rash being who, in corporal absence, should venture in similitude among them.
"Dad burn ye, shet up!" cried Cheever. "I couldn't see his face. He turned it away. Whenst I looked at him he turned it away."
"In the name o' Gawd!" ejaculated one of the men, in a low-toned quaver.
Another, one Bob Millroy, Cheever's mainstay and lieutenant, glanced over his shoulder. "He ain't hyar now?" he demanded, in expostulatory haste.
"Naw, naw!" exclaimed Cheever, recovering himself, the more quickly as a monition of the possible disintegration of his gang, under the pressure of this mysterious recruit to their number, flitted across his mind. "Naw; he went ez soon ez I kem. Thar, now!" he continued, more lightly; "I know how it happens." He broke into a laugh that might have seemed strained, save that the rocks made such fantastic riot in the acoustics of the place. "It's Steve Yates. I'm used ter seem' six men, an' whenst I count my chickens thar's seven. I looked ter see jes' six!" and he laughed again.
"But Steve air over yander in the shadder!" expostulated Derridge, the disciple of pure reason. "Ye couldn't hev seen him at all."
"Waal, then," sneered Cheever, "I seen double. They say thar air good men, an' ministers o' the gospel, ez kin view a few more snakes 'n air nateral ter thar vision whenst the liquor air strong; an' that thar whiskey o' old Pettingill's kin walk a mile, I reckon, ef need war."
The others had hardly recovered from the superstitious thrill induced by the explanation of the strange agitation that beset him upon his entrance. They were ill-prepared to so summarily cast the subject aside, and stood still, with preoccupied, dilated eyes, mechanically gazing at him as he turned lightly toward Yates, who rose from a saddle on which he had half reclined beside the fire. The young mountaineer's face had a tinge of pallor, despite its sunburn. His dull brown eyes were restless and anxious. He was hardly an apt scholar for scheming and dissimulation, but he sought an air of ease and satisfaction as he asked:
"Waal, did ye hear ennything o' my fambly in yer travels?"
Cheever, all himself again, clapped him on the shoulder with a heartiness that made the blow ring through the high stone vault. "I seen 'em, my fine young cock, I seen 'em. I wouldn't take no hearsay on it. I seen Mis' Yates herself, an' talked a haffen hour with her. An' I seen Moses."