In the "Stranger People's" country

by Charles Egbert Craddock

In his state of feeling he had scant regard for logic. It was only for the space of a moment that he sat silent, then asked, "Who, then, Litt—who is the man?"

She looked down upon him with a sort of solemnity that induced a forlornly eager, palpitating expectancy, as he looked up wincing and waiting to hear.

"Baker Anderson!" She pronounced the words soberly. Then, with a peal of laughter, she flung herself back in the rocking-chair, swinging backward with a precipitancy that startled the idle thrush, still preening his morning wing on the honeysuckle vine, and sent him flashing through the sunshine like a silver arrow to the woods.

Guthrie stared stolidly at her for a time, hardly knowing his mind between anger and surprise. Then his stern features gradually relaxed. There was something in her merry subterfuge that savored of coquetry. The terrible vitality of his starveling hope roused itself upon the intimation. His long sigh was a breath of relief. Perhaps he should not have expected a direct response in his favor. "Wimmin 'pear ter set store on all sort'n round-about ways; I reckon I'll hev ter try a haffen dozen." This was his unspoken deduction. He only said, cumbrously seeking to adopt her lightsome vein, "I be powerful 'flicted ter hear it be Baker ez air the favored ch'ice. I dun'no' how I'll ever make out ter stan' up agin Baker."

And he slowly laughed again. He could hardly have expressed how much the incongruity of the idea comforted him. He was looking about with the relief that ensues upon a grave and poignant crisis happily overpast. He saw, with a sort of indiscriminating satisfaction, the dew so coolly glittering on the long grass; in the deep green shadow of the trees the white elder blossoms gleamed. The wind came straight from the mountains, so full of strength and freshness and perfume, it seemed like the very breath of life. So often a wing cleft the blue sky, and all the nestlings were abroad! He noted a dozen yards down a dank path a stubby, ruffled scion of a mocking-bird, standing in infantine disaffection to the prospect of locomotion, and watching with unambitious eyes the graceful example of the paternal flight, as the parent aeronaut darted across short distances from honeysuckle to glowing cabbage-rose, and called forth encouragement in clearest clarion tones, and sought to stimulate emulation—fated, like some disappointed worldly fathers, to hear only a whining vibrant declination of the mere attempt at progression from the sulky brat in the path. Guthrie, his mind once more receptive to details, observed for the first time that the little party on the porch had been joined by the old dog, who so valued the society of Moses, and who sat beside him as the infant capably went through all the motions of hackling flax; the canine friend followed with alert turns of the head and puzzled knitted brow the wavings of the short fat arm, and kept time the while with an approving wagging tail.

"Thinks mo' of him now than Steve do," Guthrie reflected, for the very sight of Moses's bald head was pathetic in his eyes. Then his mind reverted to his own anxiety because of Letitia. "Litt," he said, and there was a sort of peremptory proprietary vibration in the tone, "I don't want ye ter 'bide hyar no longer. I want ye ter go home."

She paused, the flax motionless in her hand. A resolute light was in her eyes. She gave a decisive nod. "Mis' Yates ain't a-goin' ter shoot off that rifle at nobody agin," she said, unexpectedly. "I be goin' ter company that rifle closer'n a brother."

For a moment Guthrie was a trifle bewildered—the story of the mysterious shots fired at the party in the pygmy burial-ground, the slain colt, Mrs. Yates's futile denials, all detailed by Ephraim, had been superseded in interest by his own adventures and the theories that he had deduced from them. "Waal," he said at last—formally taking her standpoint into account—"that ain't nuthin' ter you-uns; ye can't guide Mis' Yates's actions. It jes' shows another reason why ye oughter be at home. Mis' Yates s'prises me; she ain't the 'oman I took her fur; but ef she kills Mr. Shattuck fur her foolish notions 'bout opening the graves o' the Leetle People, she'll hev ter answer ter the law. 'Tain't nuthin' ter you-uns."

He was not looking at her; he had plucked a blade of the sweet-flag that grew by the step, casually tearing its delicate stripes of white and green, all unnoting that her face had turned a pallid, grayish hue; that she sat as still as if petrified, her eyes dilated, and fixed with a sort of fascinated terror upon some frightful mental picture.

"Mis' Yates s'prises me," Guthrie resumed. "Eph says she 'lows ez her husband lef' her 'kase she swore she would fire that very rifle at Shattuck ef he opened a 'pygmy' grave, ez he calls it. I'll be bound, though, Steve didn't leave fur sech ez that. I ain't got nuthin' agin the Leetle People," he stipulated, with a quick after-thought. "I know no harm of 'em, an' I respec' 'em, though dead an' leetle. I wouldn't 'low nobody ter kerry thar bones off'n my lan', not even Mr. Shattuck, though I'd do mo' fur him 'n ennybody else—he hev got sech a takin' way with him! I tole him he mought hev one o' thar pitchers ez air buried with 'em, an' I'd gin the leetle pusson one o' my pitchers out'n the house. I reckon 'twould be ez good ez his'n." He paused, meditating on the ethics of this exchange. "But I war glad when Shattuck 'lowed he hankered fur no pitcher, but jes' wanted ter take a look at thar jugs an' ornamints an' sech, fur the knowledge o' the hist'ry o' the kentry." He repeated these last words with a sort of solid insistent emphasis, as charged with impressiveness and importance, for the whole enterprise was repugnant to him, and he sought to justify it to himself by urging its utility, a magnified idea of which he had gleaned from Shattuck's talk. He had torn the blade of sweet-flag into shreds, and now he cast the fragments from him. "But it jes' shows ez Mis' Yates ain't a fit 'oman fur ye ter be with, firin' rifles an' sech, an' knowin' the hiding-place o' evil-doers, purtendin' all the time ter be so desolated an' deserted. Litt, air it jes' lately ye knowed whar Steve war, or did ye know it 'fore ye kem hyar ter keep her comp'ny?" Then, as she sat stonily gazing at him, he added, "Did ye know it them evenin's ez I kem a-visitin' down hyar?"