—Hired Man’s Sea-song.
Lane’s quick ear was the first to catch a new sound. He stopped and looked down into the Pogey trail. Barrett ceased his wails, and looked and listened, too.
Men of the woods who knew Prophet Eli of Tumbledick were never surprised to see him appear anywhere in the Umcolcus region. And it was usually a time of trouble that he chose for his appearance. In his twenty years’ search of the forest he had found trails and avenues that were hidden to others. In places where veteran guides wandered and blundered, Prophet Eli knew a short-cut or detour, and moved with wraithlike swiftness, enjoying his reputation for surprises with the keen relish of the shatter-pate.
Those who did not call him “Prophet Eli,” his own choice of title, dubbed him “Old Trouble,” for he scented disaster with an elfish sense, and followed it north, east, and west.
He came down the Pogey Notch on a ding-swingle. It was drawn by his little white stallion. A ding-swingle is the triangle of a trimmed tree-crotch, dragged apex forward, its limbs sprawling behind. With peak mounted on a sapling runner it is the woods vehicle that best conquers tote roads.
From under the prophet’s knitted woollen cap, with its red knob, his white hair trailed upon his shoulders. His white beard brushed the oddly checkered jacket, flamboyant with its bizarre colors.
“The Skeets and the Bushees are still running south,” he cried at the two men, in shrill tones. “But I’m around to the front of the trouble, as usual.”
He appeared to have no eyes for the plight of the trussed-up Barrett, who began to shout desperate appeals to him. He cocked shrewd eyes at “Ladder” Lane, who, with a muttered oath, started to scramble down the slope towards him. Perhaps he saw a threat in the madman’s face.
He glanced once more at Barrett, as though interested a bit in that miserable man’s frantic urgings, and piped this amazing query, “Don’t you think a stuttering man is an infernal fool to have a name like McKechnie Connick?”