It is difficult for a man, without the hope of deceiving, to maintain a deception, and it was with scant verisimilitude that Micajah Green denied the detection of his clumsy ruse, and swore that he only wanted to come up with Rick Tyler. He went through the motions, however, while the blacksmith looked at him with uncovered teeth, and a demonstration that in a man might be described as a smile, but in a wild cat would be called a snarl. The fierce, surprised glare of the eyes added the complement of expression. Now and then he growled indignant interpolations:
'Naw; ye 'lowed ez I'd tell ye, an' ye'd tell the raiders, an' then somehow ye'd hev shifted the blame on me, an' them Cayces—five of 'em an' all thar kin—would hev riddled me with thar bullets till folks wouldn't hev knowed which war metal an' which war man.'
Still Micajah Green maintained his feint of denial, and the blacksmith presently ceased to contradict.
It was Fletcher's privilege to entertain this visitor at the Settlement, and the behests of hospitality could hardly be served without ignoring the disagreement that had arisen between them. Little, however, was said while the waggon axle and skene were in process of completion, and then adjusted to the vehicle by the light of a lantern.
Jer'miah came over from the store, and presided after the manner of small boys, regarding each phase of the operation with an interest for which a questioner would have found no corresponding fulness of information—a sort of spurious curiosity, satisfying the eye, but having no connection with the brain. Euralina, who was small for her sun-bonnet, a grotesque and top-heavy little figure, stood in the door of the forge—also a wide-eyed and impressed spectator.
The blacksmith was a very good illustration of a rural Hercules, as he riveted his bolts, and lifted the body of the ponderous vehicle, and went lightly in and out of the forge. He did his work well and quickly too, for a mountaineer, and he had the artisan's satisfaction in his handicraft, as, with his hammer still in his hand, he watched the slow vehicle creak along the road between the corn-field and the woods, and disappear gradually from view.
The wheels still sounded assertively on the air; the katydids' iteration rose in vibrant insistence; the long, vague, pervasive sighing of the woods added to the night its deep melancholy. The golden burnished blade of the new moon was half sheathed in invisibility behind a dark mountain's summit.
The blacksmith's house was on the elevated slope beyond the forge, and as he turned on his porch and looked back, he noted the one salient change in the landscape as seen from the higher level—above the distant mountain-summit the moon showed its glittering length, as if withdrawn from the scabbard. He glanced at it and shut the door.
Micajah Green had the best that the humble log cabin could afford, and no dearth of fair words as a relish to the primitive feast. It was only the next morning, when his foot was in the stirrup, that his host recurred to the theme of the evening before.
'Look-a-hyar, 'Cajah Green, you-uns jes' let old Groundhog Cayce be. Ye ain't a-goin' ter find out whar his still air a-workin', an' ef he war ter hear ez ye had been 'quirin' 'round 'bout'n it 'twould be ez much ez yer life air wuth.'