He would have been both amazed and chagrined had he remained peering from his ambuscade, for when Uncle Billy’s shadow fell through the open door the man to whom he had come rose from a chair to meet him, and he presented no mangled or blood-stained breast to the eyes of his visitors.
“Ye ain’t jest a-quippin’ with me, be ye?” demanded the old mountaineer incredulously when he had heard the story in all its detail. “This hyar’s a right serious-soundin’ 95 matter—an’ ye ain’t got no enemies amongst us thet I’ve heered tell of.”
Spurrier pointed out the spot in the newly whitewashed wall where the bullet lay imbedded with its glint of freshly flattened lead.
“After the first experience,” he explained, “I’d had some time to think. I was standing in the door so I fell down—and played dead.” He added after a pause quietly: “I’ve seen men shot to death, and I happened to know how a man drops when it’s a heart hit. I fell inside where I’d be out of sight, because I was unarmed, and all I could do was to wait for you. I watched through the door, but the fellow never showed himself.”
“Come on, boys,” commanded the old mountaineer in a determined voice. “Let’s beat thet la’rel while ther tracks is still fresh. Mebby we mout l’arn somethin’ of this hyar monstrous matter.”
But they learned nothing. Sim Colby had spent painstaking thought upon his effort and he had left no evidence written in the mold of the forest.
“Hit beats all hell,” declared the nonplussed Uncle Billy at last. “I ain’t got ther power ter fathom hit. Ef I war you I wouldn’t talk erbout this ter no man save only me an’ old Dyke Cappeze. Still-huntin’ lands more game then blowin’ a fox horn.” And Spurrier nodded his head.
Though Spurrier for a few days after that slipped through the gorge with the stealth of a sharpshooter, covering himself behind rocks as he went, he heard no sound there more alarming than the chatter of squirrels or the grunt of a strayed razor-back rooting among the acorns. Gradually he relaxed his vigilance 96 as a man will if his nature is bold and his dreams too sweeping to be forever hobbled by petty precautions.
The purpose which he privately served called for ranging the country with a trained eye, and with him went the contour maps upon which were traced red lines.
One day he came, somewhat winded from a stiff climb, to an eminence that spread the earth below him and made of it a panorama. The bright carnival of the autumn was spending itself to its end, but among trees already naked stood others that clung to a gorgeousness of color the more brilliant in the face of death. Overhead was flawless blue, and there was a dreamy violet where it merged mistily with the skyline ridges.