Steve Yates made shift to glance at him once, then he turned his eyes away toward the western sky, nodding repeatedly, but silently, to the items of news with which Cheever favored him.
"Mis' Yates ain't wantin' fur nuthin', though Moses wants everything, 'ceptin' teeth; like ter hev took my horse-critter away from me, willy-nilly! Mis' Yates hev got that thar ugly, leetle, frazzle-headed Pettingill vixen ter 'company her, an' Baker Anderson with his rifle bides thar o' nights. Mis' Yates war cheerful an' laffin'. 'Steve will kem back whenst he gits tired,' she say. 'He an' me had words 'fore he lef'. I'll hold out ez long ez he kin,' she say. 'I don't believe he hev done nuthin' agin the law,' she say. 'But ef he hev,' she say, 'he air better off away than hyar at home, 'kase lynchers air mighty lawless round these parts.' An' she say, 'I know Steve air man enough ter take keer o' hisself an' do fur the bes', an' I'm willin' ter bide by what he do.'"
Alack! that a lie can so counterfeit the truth! To this wily and specious representation Stephen Yates listened with his eyes full of tears, afraid to trust a glance upon the face of his crafty companion.
"She say," Cheever went on, "ef Steve hev done ennything agin the law, I hope he'll make hisself sca'ce.'"
The other men, now affecting to stroll about in the ample spaces of the cavernous place, busying themselves with replenishing the fire or feeding the horses, of which there were half a dozen in a shadowy nook that seemed to extend downward to further subterranean regions, all gave furtive heed to these domestic reports. Ever and again they eyed the disingenuous face of the narrator with its half-closed lids and flexible lips. Then they would look at one another, and slyly wink their recognition of his craft. One of them, standing with his hands in his pockets and with a fire-lit face above the blazing logs, after a survey of this sort, grotesquely imitated the speaker's attitude and gesture, and silently worked his jaws with abnormal activity, as if in emulation of Cheever's ready eloquence, shook his head in affected despair, and desisted amid a smothered titter from the rest.
"Moses hev got another tooth; mighty nigh ez long ez a elephint's I seen at Colbury, I told him; an' it seemed ter make him mad—leastwise madder'n he war at fust. He wouldn't take no notice o' me, 'ceptin' whenst I put my finger in his mouth ter view his teeth, an' durned ef he didn't nearly bite it off. Oh, ye needn't ter trouble, Steve; ye air all right, an' hev done the bes' ye could, cornsiderin' all."
"I reckon so! I hope so!" said Yates, with something very like a sob.
They all sat around the fire late that night, after their supper of venison broiled on the coals, and corn-bread baked in the ashes, and washed down with a plentiful allowance of innocent-looking moonshine whiskey, colorless and clear as spring-water. The stars seemed very near, looking in at the wide portals of the niche; the tops of the gigantic trees swaying without were barely glimpsed above the verge. The shadows of the men lengthened over the floor, or fluctuated on the wall as the flames rose or fell. Now and again the fire-light was strong enough to show the horses at their improvised manger in those recesses where the darkness promised further chambers of the cavern. One steed lay upon the ground, the others stood, some still and drowsing, but more than once the sharp pawing of an iron-shod hoof challenged the abrupt echoes.
Outside, so sweet, so pure was the summer night; the buds of the elder-bush were riven into blooms, the mocking-bird piped for the rising moon, the katydids twanged a vibrant note, and the river sang the self-same song it had learned in the prehistoric days of the pygmies. Even so still, so calmly pensive was the time that the far-away murmur of the water-fall came to Yates's ears, or it may be to his memory only, which transmitted the fancy transmuted in sound to his sense. He lounged, half pillowed upon his saddle, in the circle about the fire, and strove to drink and laugh and talk with the rest. Many a merry jest had those walls echoed, seeming almost sentient in emulation of the boisterous joy. To-night, somehow, they had forgotten their jovial wiles. More than once the echo of laughter quavered off into strange sounds that the ear shrank to hear, and one after another of the brawny fellows looked furtively over his shoulder.
A sudden jar—only a screech-owl shrilling in a tree on the river-bank below—but one of the men was on his feet, all a-tremble, crying out, "What's that?" And this was the bold Cheever.