"I don't know. Let's follow our noses and go where they lead."
Jeff took the first mule and footpath that branched from the road, for he was sure that most of the people he wanted to see would be back in. Most hill people preferred plenty of room and they did not, as one hillbilly had expressed it to Jeff, like to be "All cluttered up with people. Skassly a week passes but what three, four go by."
Ranging ahead, Pal flushed a buck from its thicket, chased it a little way, and let it go. He returned to Jeff and Dan, lingered to sniff at some interesting rabbit tracks, and ran to catch up. There came a faint smell of wood smoke.
Jeff sniffed eagerly, trying to determine the smoke's origin, and he thought with some amusement that he was doing exactly as he had told Dan they would do. In a very real sense he was following his nose, and when he came to a less-traveled path that swung from the one they were following, he took it.
Pal at his heels, Dan bringing up the rear, he walked fast. In three minutes they came to a clearing. Apparently without plan, it had been hacked out of the forest. It was irregularly-shaped, probably to follow the easiest cutting, and a few large trees had been allowed to stand in it. There were many stumps, a small garden, a mule that hung its head over the topmost of two strands of rusting wire and looked cynical, and four half-wild pigs that squealed and scuttled into the brush. The barn, that had listed badly and seemed in immediate danger of falling, was propped up with saplings. The house, made of hand-hewn timbers, was very small and very old. Rains, snow, sun and wind had so beaten it that it had achieved a unique color all its own and somehow it looked sad.
Jeff knocked confidently and waited. The door opened an inch, then another inch, and in the gloomy interior Jeff saw, not too well, a scowling face that was framed in a veritable haystack of black hair and beard. But he saw very clearly the sinister snout of a rifle that was aimed squarely at his middle and he heard very clearly a growled,
"Git goin' an' start now!"
"Right away," Jeff agreed.
He whirled and started back to the main path. Too over-awed to speak, Dan trotted at his heels and he dared say nothing until they were once more where they had started from. Then,
"Gee!" he breathed. "Weren't you scared?"