“But who is She?” put forth the Guardian again; she felt that a lease of the hayloft for the night—perhaps breakfast in the morning—would depend upon the sympathy shown to a highly exasperated man, fresh from an unpleasant “curtain” talk.
“Wal! now, I reckon she’s a stray bird, like yerselves—a stranger, or almost so. She ha’n’t been around these parts much more’n a year—blamed heather cat, always on the roam! The wife she calls her the Little Lone Lady—my wife’s awful stuck on her—an’ I reckon she does come o’ grammar folks—edicate! Other o’ the mountain people call her Magic Margot, jollying-like—or the spell-woman, ’cause she can tell things—put over things—that other folks can’t.” He dropped his voice to a croon of nocturnal mystery.
“Does she—does she ride a bay horse—an umbrella in her stirrup strap, a red handkerchief round her neck—something shiny upon her heel—at times?” Pemrose’s breath came hotly—her hand was to her heart.
“Umph!” The sore bear nodded. “Oh! ’tisn’t the fust time I’ve heard the midnight shog, shog, of her bay cob’s hoofs stoppin’—heard her stealin’ up into this loft, to roost. But—never again, s’ ’elp me!” He brought his unseen feet down upon the ladder, with a vehemence that started a hayquake.
“Why! what has she done now?” It was a general chorus from the guild of glee, excited girls, done to death with weariness, yet tickled all over with the sensation that, much as the vacation had promised them, they had not expected melodrama.
“Gosh! yes. She was at our house to-day, jest a while afore I met you-uns on the valley trail.” The farmer thrust a red lantern up. “I was out diggin’ ’mong the ‘crony hills’, pertater patch; an’ she jest came it all over my wife with some palaver about a good offer we was going to get for this plaguy farm, where rocks grow—an’ every one of ’em rooted out means a back ache,” he mopped his face, “knowledge she didn’t have from no nat’ral source, you understand—the Little Lone Lady. She had some kind of a ‘fore-go’, too, ’bout a great cryin’ out there’d be ’mong all the animals ’fore morning. An’ the wife she was so carried away with her that I’m blessed if she didn’t give her a good fat chicken, to carry home in her saddlebag—she allers has that saddlebag bulging, too—an’ the pair o’ red slippers that she was workin’ with roses fer me—cut ’em down to fit her ... she got the red felt f’om her brother who works in an organ factory.”
So this was the load which the trail-bear had carried upon his sore head when he felt that the valley was beyond “God bless you”! There were smothered shrieks from the hay.
“Poor wronged man! You have all our sympathy—all our sympathy!” The Guardian touched his hand. “Can’t you get them back? Won’t she—disgorge?”
“Not much! Not, when she’s ridden off with ’em to her den, her little cabin on a lonely peak, ’bout nine miles from here. She lived there alone all last winter—when she wasn’t on the go, riding round among the mountains—living on crumbs, the neighbors gave her.... Oh! she’s a sleek-gabbed one, but sometimes I think she’s as cracked as she’s sly—and keen.” He sighed.
“It’s easy to see how she comes by her ‘fore-goes’ about the weather and so forth—a radio receiver in that bulky umbrella,” murmured Pemrose.