“Drap!” All dropped and, with those two, all put up their guns—each man, however, watching now the man who had just been covering him. It is not wise for the stranger to show too much interest in the personal affairs of mountain men, and Hale left the judge berating them and went to the hotel to get ready for the Gap, little dreaming how fixed the faces of some of those men were in his brain and how, later, they were to rise in his memory again. His horse was lame—but he must go on: so he hired a “yaller” mule from the landlord, and when the beast was brought around, he overheard two men talking at the end of the porch.
“You don't mean to say they've made peace?”
“Yes, Rufe's going away agin and they shuk hands—all of 'em.” The other laughed.
“Rufe ain't gone yit!”
The Cumberland River was rain-swollen. The home-going people were helping each other across it and, as Hale approached the ford of a creek half a mile beyond the river, a black-haired girl was standing on a boulder looking helplessly at the yellow water, and two boys were on the ground below her. One of them looked up at Hale:
“I wish ye'd help this lady 'cross.”
“Certainly,” said Hale, and the girl giggled when he laboriously turned his old mule up to the boulder. Not accustomed to have ladies ride behind him, Hale had turned the wrong side. Again he laboriously wheeled about and then into the yellow torrent he went with the girl behind him, the old beast stumbling over the stones, whereat the girl, unafraid, made sounds of much merriment. Across, Hale stopped and said courteously:
“If you are going up this way, you are quite welcome to ride on.”
“Well, I wasn't crossin' that crick jes' exactly fer fun,” said the girl demurely, and then she murmured something about her cousins and looked back. They had gone down to a shallower ford, and when they, too, had waded across, they said nothing and the girl said nothing—so Hale started on, the two boys following. The mule was slow and, being in a hurry, Hale urged him with his whip. Every time he struck, the beast would kick up and once the girl came near going off.
“You must watch out, when I hit him,” said Hale.