Dwellers in the Hills

by Melville Davisson Post

For the first time the man spoke. "No iron," he answered.

Ump arose and began to look over the shop. Presently he found an old scythe blade and threw it to the smith. "That'll do," he said; "take the back."

Old Christian broke the strip of iron from the scythe blade and heating it in his forge, made the nails, hammering them into shape, and cutting them from the rod until he had a dozen lying by the anvil. When they were cool, he gathered them in his hand, smoothed the points, and went over to El Mahdi.

The old man lifted the horse's foot, and set it on his knee, and Ump arose and stood over him. Then he shod the horse as the hunchback directed, paring the hoof and setting the nails evenly through the outer rim, clipping the nail ends, and clinching them by doubling the cut points. Then he smoothed the hoof with his great file and the work was over.

We rode south along the ridge, leaving old Christian standing in his shop door, his face sullen and his grimy arms folded. I flung him a silver dollar, four times the price of the shoeing. It fell by the shop sill, and he lifted his foot and sent it spinning across the road into the bushes.

The road ran along the ridge. A crumbling rail fence laced with the vines of the poison ivy trailed beside it. In its corners stood the great mullein, and the dock, and the dead iron-weed. The hickories, trembling in their yellow leaves, loomed above the fringe of sugar saplings like some ancient crones in petticoats of scarlet. Sometimes a partridge ran for a moment through the dead leaves, and then whizzed away to some deeper tangle in the woods; now a grey squirrel climbed a shell-bark with the clatter of a carpenter shingling a roof, and sat by his door to see who rode by, or shouted his jeer, and, diving into his house, thrust his face out at the window. Sometimes, far beyond us, a pheasant walked across the road, strutting as straight as a harnessed brigadier,—an outlaw of the Hills who had sworn by the feathers on his legs that he would eat no bread of man, and kept the oath. Splendid freeman, swaggering like a brigand across the war-paths of the conqueror!

We were almost at the crown of the ridge when a brown flying-squirrel, routed from his cave in a dead limb by the hammering of a hungry woodpecker, stood for a moment blinking in the sunlight and then made a flying leap for an oak on the opposite side of the road; but his estimate was calculated on the moonlight basis, and he missed by a fraction of an inch and went tumbling head over heels into the weeds.

I turned to laugh at the disconcerted acrobat, when I caught through the leaves the glimpse of a horse approaching the blacksmith-shop from one of the crossroads. I called to my companions and we found a break in the woods where the view was clear. At half a mile in the transparent afternoon we easily recognised Lem Marks. He rode down to the shop and stopped by the door.

In a moment old Christian came out, stood by the shoulder of the horse and rested his hand on Marks' knee. It was strange familiarity for such an acrimonious old recluse, and even at the distance the attitude of Woodford's henchman seemed to indicate surprise.

They talked together for some little while, then old Christian waved his arm toward the direction we had taken and went into his shop, presently returning with some implements in his hand. We could not make out what they were. He handed them up to Marks, and the two seemed to discuss the matter, for after a time Marks selected one and held it out to old Christian. The smith took it, turned it over in his hand, nodded his head and went back into his shop, while Marks gathered up his reins and came after us in a slow fox trot.