Not fifty feet away from him, separated from the thicket he was hiding in but by a narrow stretch of mountain sward, he saw, among the mountain side's disordered rocks, the carefully masked entrance to a cave.
An untrained eye would never have made note of the few signs which made it clear to him, at once, that this cave was, as it had been long years before when he had known it well, a place of frequent call for footsteps skilled in mountain cunning. No path was worn to its rough entrance, but, here and there, a broken grass-blade, in another place a pebble recently dislodged from its accustomed hollow, elsewhere a ragged bit of paper, torn from a tobacco-package, proved to him that, although hidden in the wilderness of old Mount Nebo's scarred and inaccessible sides, this spot was yet one often visited by many men.
A grim smile stirred the leathern folds of his old cheeks.
"Thar yet," he thought, "an' doin' business yet."
Again, after he had worked about to get a better view.
"Best-hidden still in these here mountings. Revenuers never will get run of it."
The place had a mighty fascination for him, as if it might have played a tremendous part in long-gone passages of his own life. As he stood gazing at it cautiously, the mountaineer seemed definitely to emerge from his low-country dress and superficial "bluegrass" manner, fastened on him by long years of usage. Old expressions of not only face but muscles came clearly to the front. Now, no person watching him, could ever for a moment doubt that he was mountain-born and mountain-bred, if they but knew the ear-marks of that people—almost a race apart. The sight of the old cave-mouth plainly stirred in him a horde of memories not wholly pleasant. Leathern as his face was, it none the less showed his emotions with remarkable lucidity now that he was off his guard. Now sly cunning dominated it, with, possibly, a touch left of the early fear to flavor it.
"I bet a hundred revenuers in these mountains have looked for that there still," he thought, "an' no one ever found it, yet. Forty years it's been thar—through three generations o' th' Loreys—damn 'em!—an' no one's ever squealed on 'em. I ... wonder...."
A look of vicious craft and malice wholly drove away the searching curiosity which had possessed the old man's features. For a time he plainly planned some work of bitter vengefulness. Then, with shaking head, he evidently abandoned the enticing thought.
"Too resky," he concluded, and edged a little nearer to the thicket's edge. "Might stir up old—"