In the "Stranger People's" country

by Charles Egbert Craddock

An aptitude in emergency is a natural trait, not cultivated, and Rhodes possessed it to a useful degree. He flung himself from his horse, and followed on his friend's heels with such despatch that albeit he did not hear the words with which Shattuck greeted the party within, he was on the threshold before a rejoinder was elicited. No friendly greeting had it been, to judge from the dismayed, deprecatory faces grouped about the fire. Adelaide had risen with a slow look of doubt, a sort of stunned surprise. Letitia, who had been out milking the cows, stood in the back doorway, the brimming piggin on her head, one hand lifted to stay it, the wind rustling the straight skirt of her dress, the twilight and the fire-light mingled on her face. Her blue eyes were alight with a sort of wonder, that held nevertheless an intimation of comprehension, which was at variance with the stolid amazement in Baker Anderson's countenance, as, just arrived and still breathless, he sat squarely in his chair, one hand on either knee, his jaw fallen, gaping thunder-struck at the intruder. The centre of the family group, Moses, was seated upon the floor in the fire-light, and turned himself dexterously about to survey over his small shoulder the new-comers; he was silent in seeming recognition of the fact that their gaze overlooked him, and had no reference to his existence; his soft face only expressed a sort of infantile apprehensiveness and suspension of opinion. A tallow dip sputtered on the high mantel-piece; there was pine amongst the fuel, and the resin flared white in the flames. Very distinct the scene was, although, as the lights fluctuated, the fire flickered in the breeze, which swayed it like a canvas: the brown walls; the purplish black squares where the night looked in through the windows, with here a feathery bough, and here a star, and here the dim contours of a dark summit against the sky; the red-bedecked warping bars; the table not yet set forth with the supper crockery, save only a great brown pitcher and a yellow bowl; the sheen of tin-ware on a shelf; even Shattuck's shadow, as sarcastically nonchalant as the substance which it mimicked, as it waved its hand in mockery of courtesy, while he reiterated his bitterly merry congratulations. The white light showed the very flare of fury in his eyes that oddly dallied with the smile on his face.

"You are a courageous rifleman, Mrs. Yates," he was saying, glancing up at the rifle on the wall, glittering upon the rack of deer antlers. "You have set three men off at full run this evening. Few ladies could say as much, I am sure. If you would only mend your aim a little!"

With a blunt accusation she could doubtless have coped; but she could only stare at him in silent amazement as he made these elusive feints. The other two men, lumbering and massive shadows in the background, stared too in surprise at him, and silently waited developments.

He had his hat in his hand as he leaned on the tall back of a chair, and he looked steadily at her with an air of graceful and good-natured raillery, all at variance with the fire in his eyes.

"Mend your aim, only a trifle, Mrs. Yates, and next time perhaps your target won't be so unmannerly as to run off from so accomplished a marksman," and once more he laughed with a genial inflection, then caught his breath with a sort of gasp as his face grew scarlet.

Rhodes laid a hand upon his shoulder. "Why, Shattuck," he exclaimed, with a resonant amazement that made the roof of the little cabin ring like a sounding-board, "what are you thinking of? Mrs. Yates to fire a rifle at us?"

"At me, if you please!" cried Shattuck. Then addressing Adelaide: "Didn't you say you would—or perhaps my treacherous memory misleads me—in case I ventured to open the pygmy graves? Your husband told me this."

"Yes; but I never—" she faltered; then she paused.

Letitia had placed the piggin on the shelf, and crossed the room with a quick, light, definite step. The clumsy rifle was off the rack and in her slight, incongruous grasp in another moment. She held it up before the men; there was the powder stain of a recent discharge about its lock. And then her eyes, like blue flames, burned upon the shrinking, overwhelmed mistress of the house, thus seemingly convicted on her own hearth-stone.

Adelaide never knew how she found the breath to gasp forth the words; the instinct of self-defence alone framed them. "I fired the rifle off at a hawk ez war arter the chickens, early, early this arternoon whilst ye war away," she replied to the woman who had said nothing, instead of to the man who had spoken so plainly.