In the "Stranger People's" country

by Charles Egbert Craddock

"'Twar a powerful onlucky hit fur Steve Yates," one of the mountaineers observed at the blacksmith's shop one day, where a group stood about the door. "Ef' twarn't fur that, he'd hev been hyar yit, I reckon."

"Why did that thar Shattuck hev ter sen' Steve a-skedaddlin' off in the midnight fur another doctor-man when Phil Craig war thar, handy ter physic Rhodes with everything ez grows? That 'pears powerful cur'ous ter me," said the blacksmith, "every time I git ter studyin' 'bout'n it."

"Mark my words," said an elderly wight, the smith's father, who spent much time gossiping in his son's shop—he had a grizzled head of hair, on which his hat was tilted backward; a clean-shaven face, full of the script of years; and a manner not less weighty and impressive because his opinions were in some sort impeded by a toothless utterance, so did the evidences of age and experience lend value to his prelections—"whenst ye find out whar Steve Yates went, an' what he went thar fur, ye'll know why Shattuck sent him. They air tergether in that business. Mark my words!"

The suspicion exploded like a bomb-shell amongst the coterie, doing great execution. It was so patent a possibility that Shattuck should have used his friend's temporary unconsciousness and his own affected solicitude as a blind to despatch Steve Yates upon some mysterious errand of their own, from which he was never intended to return, that it amazed all the cronies that so obvious an idea had never occurred to them before. Far more natural than that Shattuck should experience so preposterous a fear for so slight a hurt. "Why," said the old man, "Rhodes looks ez survigrous ez that thar oak-tree!" pointing to a kingly and stalwart specimen, full-leaved and flush of sap, in all its ample verdure, as it stood overlooking the barn-like place. Far more natural than that Shattuck should distrust the science of Philip Craig, famous as a "yerb doctor," and prefer Dr. Ganey, the man of nauseous tinctures and extracts, and pills and powders, who was reputed, moreover, to have poisoned people by his "store drugs," and was known to have set a man's leg, fractured by a fall, so that although he walked he could not run nor leap, and had had the good use of it never since—to send for him, with Phil Craig at hand!

There were busy times after this at the blacksmith's shop, although not much forging was done, so completely did the mystery absorb both the frequenters of the place and its working force. They made a thousand guesses far from the truth, none of which seemed, even to the projectors, sufficiently plausible to adopt, until one day a conjecture, with all the coercive force of probability, came to their minds upon the receipt of strange news, which seemed to account at once for Steve Yates's absence and Shattuck's motive in employing him on this wild-goose chase.

On the previous day Shattuck had been singularly ill at ease. He was not a man vigilant for cause of offence, and when his friendship and trustfulness had been enlisted he was even obtuse to any change in the moral temperature of his associates. It had affected his nerves vaguely, before the fact was even elusively present to his perceptions, that Rhodes had begun to regard him differently, and that the new estimate colored his friend's manner. As this gradually grew upon his convictions, he received it with a sense of injury. He had in naught justified it. His presence here was not of his own motion. He remembered how Rhodes had besought his companionship upon this electioneering tour; how he had painted the beauties of the country, the quaint character of its inhabitants; how he had promised the opening of a mound on his own land to feed his friend's archæological fad, and a monopoly of all the curios that should be found therein, floridly offering them as lures, protesting himself, too, as under infinite prospective obligations, and urging his own interest. "I have to have a friend along, and Lord knows I don't want any of those Colbury galoots, with one word for me and ten for themselves."

And when Shattuck had acceded, and the peculiarity of his manner had proved attractive to the mountaineers, and encomiums from the simple people followed him here and there, Rhodes had been impressed with the idea that his friend was an immense acquisition and a positive help in the canvass, in which small matters of personal popularity would have to count against party principles. Few men in this world could be more engagingly genial and affectionate than was Leonard Rhodes at this stage of his onslaught upon the predilections of Kildeer County. Shattuck, who gave as slight attention as might be to these circumstances and their influence upon his friend's manner, had only felt that his heart warmed in turn. Although vaguely aware for some time that a change had supervened, he experienced a shock when a surly preoccupation, an intentional espousing of an opposite opinion, which evidently had no root in conviction, a dull monosyllable in reply, that was hardly reply at all, acquainted him definitely with Rhodes's state of mind and his indifference to its discovery—nay, that he rather courted a quarrel.

The culmination came shortly after the midday dinner; they still sat in the dining-room and smoked their pipes over a small smouldering fire, for, despite the brilliance of a July day, the air was chilly. They had gone back from Pettingill's cabin to Rhodes's own house, some seven miles distant down the valley, and were re-established there. It had been unoccupied for many a year; the transient tenant merely rented the lands of the farm; the house and the furniture remained much as his grandfather had left them. It was a double frame house, with curiously low ceilings; and although it had been for fifty years amazingly fine for the district, it was not quite equal to Colbury ideals, and its owner often pondered upon getting rid of it when he should have a sufficient offer for its purchase. He had lately utilized it as a point of departure for his hill-country canvass of the two counties, being more convenient than periodic returns to Colbury, and he had in the kitchen a scornful colored couple—strictly townsfolk—languishing in exile, amazed at the lack of culture of the mountaineers, and by the fact that there was so large an extent of waste country in the world.

"Ef Len Rhodes hatter be made gov'nor o' the State, he ain't gwine ter do it by foolin' dis chile agin up ter dis hyar mizzable, destitute wilderness ter cook fur him, sure!" Aunt Chancy had remarked to the equally disaffected and lugubrious Uncle Isham, who had come to cut wood and feed the horses.

Rhodes made no inquiry as to how they contrived to get through the lonely time during his absences, nor was he moved by their reproachful dark faces in the interludes of his returns. They were fond of society, and ornaments of select colored circles in their normal sphere, and their imaginings had never pictured aught so bereft of interest as this uninhabited space in the "flat woods" so near to the great ranges.