The stories went on, growing weird as the evening outside waned, in some unconscious sympathy with the melancholy hour—for in these sunless depths one knew nor day nor night—stories of bloody vendettas, and headless ghosts, and strange provisions, and unnamed terrors. And Amos James recounted the fable of a mountain witch, interspersed with a wild vocal refrain:
Cu-vo! Cu-vo! Kil-dar! Kil-dar! Kil-dar!
Thus she called her hungry dogs that fed on human flesh, while the winds were awhirl, and the waning moon was red, and the Big Smoky lay in densest gloom.
The white line of light had yellowed, deepened, grown dull. The furnace needed fuel. Ab suddenly leaned down and threw open the door. The flare of the pulsing coals resuscitated the dim scene and the long dun-coloured shadows. Here in the broad red light were the stolid, meditative faces of the distillers, each with his pipe in his mouth and his hat on his head; it revealed the dilated eye and unconsciously dramatic gesture of the story-teller, sitting upon a barrel in their midst; the horse was distinct in the background, now dreaming and now lifting an impatient fore-foot, and his gigantic stall-mate, the simulacrum of the mastodon, moved as he moved, but softly, that the echoes might not know—the immortal echoes, who were here before him, and here still.
And behind all were the great walls of the vault, with its vague apertures leading to unexplored recesses; with many jagged ledges, devoted to shelf-like usage, and showing here a jug, and here a shot-pouch, and here a rat—fat and sleek, thanks to the plenteous waste of mash and grain—looking down with a glittering eye, and here a bag of meal, and here a rifle.
Suddenly Amos James broke off.
'Who's that?' he exclaimed, and all the echoes were sharply interrogative.
There was a galvanic start among the moonshiners. They looked hastily about—perhaps for the witch, perhaps for the frightful dogs, perhaps expecting the materialization of Mirandy Jane's raider.
Amos had turned half-round and was staring intently beyond the still. The man lying on the ground had shifted his position; his soft brown hat was doubled under his head. The red flare showed its long, tawny, tangled hair, of a hue unusual enough to be an identification. His stalwart limbs were stretched out at length; the hands he thrust above his head were unmanacled; as he moved there was the jingle of spurs.
'Why, thar be Rick Tyler!' exclaimed Amos James.