In the "Stranger People's" country

by Charles Egbert Craddock

That they had not used him more unkindly than the interests of their own safety necessitated made no claim upon his gratitude. Perhaps, although he had not the courage to court it, he would have preferred death. He only took advantage of their leniency to stipulate that Pettingill's horse should be turned loose to return. "He mought be viewed 'mongst our'n some time. He's too close a neighbor ennyhow," said Cheever, and so he consented. Even the trivial detail of the creature's bewilderment was still in the young man's mind—how the horse persistently trotted along in the cavalcade, with his lustrous surprised eyes and his empty saddle, his erstwhile rider mounted behind one of the other men. More than once after he was driven back he reappeared from behind a sharp curve of the road, nimbly cantering and with an appealing whinny. Finally blows prevailed, and from the crest of a ridge they afterward saw him ambling erratically homeward along the white moonlit road, now and again stopping by the wayside to crop the grass or bushes.

"Ef he keeps on that-a-way he'll git home next week," Cheever had commented.

Even now, reviewing the disaster, Yates could not say definitely what he should have done, but it seemed that some rescue would have waited upon his effort had his slow brain but devised it. More than all, above all, the sight of the saddle-bags containing a considerable sum of money taken from the stranger had a horror for him. He dwelt upon the idea that among the people of the cove he must be believed to have committed the crime, until he had a morbid sense of complicity. His mind was, as he knew, but a poor tool for scheming, but he was imperatively, urgently moved by some inward power to make an effort which might result in the restoration of the money to its proper owner. He began to feel that integrity is not a repute; it is an attribute of the mind and a spontaneous emotion of the heart. "'Tain't ter hev folks say ye're honest; it air ter be honest."

He felt himself forever blasted; he doubted if, in any event, he would ever dare to return to his home. He had known of men with far less evidence against them than these perverse lies, that masqueraded as facts in his case, strung up to a tree without judge or jury. He would do himself, his wife, his child scant favor in courting that ignoble doom. He only revolved the robbery for the sake of honesty alone, that he might devise some scheme to frustrate the highwaymen and restore the money.

Somehow, as he lay looking out at the gibbous moon, visible now, all distorted and weird in the purple sky, and no less lustrously yellow because of the sense of dawn gradually stealing upon the air, he could not disassociate Shattuck from his train of ideas despite the lack of logical connection. It was perhaps, he thought dully in recognizing the fact, because it was upon Shattuck's errand that he had gone to this dreadful fate; perhaps because the mention of a box-like tombstone had suggested to him the strange underground sarcophagi, also box-like and of stone, of the pygmy burying-ground in which Shattuck was interested. And suddenly he caught his breath and lay still, thinking, a long time.

So languid-footed was the night, but he smelt the rose in its morning blossoming! A mocking-bird sang, all faint and sweet and fresh, and dreamed again. Stars were fading; the great valley of East Tennessee was beginning to be outlined, with ridges and smaller valleys and rivers and further mountains, with a sense of space and of large symmetry that outdoes the imagination. And still the moon shone in his face.

"Buck," he said, suddenly, for all the others slept, and it was Cheever's turn to watch, "did you-uns ever hear tell o' the Leetle Stranger People?"

Cheever, smoking his pipe near at hand, as he lay on the floor, lifted himself upon one elbow. He nodded. "Many a time."

"Folks 'low they useter hev this kentry. They seem sorter small ter hev ter die."

"I dun'no' but what they do," said Cheever, impressed by the hardship of the common fate which overtook even such "leetle people." "An' folks hev fairly furgot they ever lived, too."