“Huh! thought you’d git away from me, did ye?” said the boy, picking up the still body. “I reckons I kin do some things yit,” he said, “ef I don’t know much.”
The boy was in a strange, new mood. He did not understand himself. Though a good hunter for a lad of twelve he had been heretofore a generous friend or conqueror of the fur and feathered folk, wont to deal gently with a fallen foe. Now he jerked up the limp body of the rabbit savagely and struck its head spitefully against a near-by tree trunk.
“I kin kill rabbits ef I can’t do nothin’ else.”
Just then a big black and tan dog came into view with the dignity befitting age. Boy and dog had been born the same month, but while one was scarcely well entered upon life, the other’s race was almost run. The boy was usually most considerate of the infirmities of his lifelong friend, but to-day he scolded the dog till with drooping tail and grieved, uncomprehending eyes he slunk away out of sight.
A strange experience had come to the mountain boy the day before which had changed his whole world. It was as though the wooded mountains 13 which hemmed in his little cabin home had parted for a moment and given him a glimpse of a fascinating world beyond. He and Tige had wandered farther from home that day than ever before, though wanderers they had always been, the woods holding a deep interest for Steve. He loved to hide in the densest solitudes, lie still with his dog and dream, fantastic, unreal dreams. Now a definite, tangible vision had come to him out of the solitude of a hazy November day in the mountains of Kentucky. He had lain for two hours or more in the stillness when suddenly Tige lifted his head and gave a sharp bark, then came the sound of voices, strange voices Steve at once knew them to be, and as he caught the tones more clearly, recognized that one at least was of a kind which he had never heard before. Keeping Tige quiet with a firm hand, he lifted his head and listened with ear and soul, then into view stepped a man of medium height with a clean, fine face, clothes of a sort unknown to the boy, and an easy, alert stride totally foreign to the mountaineer’s slouching gait. A mountain man accompanied him, but he too was a stranger to the boy.
The man of the new, strange species smiled at the boy’s gaping mouth and wonder-wide eyes.
“Well, son,” he said pleasantly, “are you a sportsman too?”
The quick, clear, cultured voice, the unfamiliar accent was so utterly foreign to anything the boy had ever heard that he could not take in the import of the words, and amazed silence was his only reply.
“Wal,” drawled the mountain guide, “who’d er thought er seein’ a chap lack that heah? Whar’d you come from anyways?”