Dwellers in the Hills

by Melville Davisson Post

"An'," interrupted Ump, turning round under the Bay Eagle, "an' then Miss Cynthia looked up sharp at him like a catbird, an' she laughed, an' she said how that advice wasn't needed, because little boys always went home by the safest road."

The taunt sank in as oil sinks into a cloth. I may have blushed and stammered, and I may have blubbered like a milksop, but it was not because I was afraid. I would show Woodford and I would show this fickle Miss Gadabout that I did not need any advice about roads. If my life had been then in jeopardy, I would not have taken it burdened with a finger's weight of obligation to Rufus Woodford or Cynthia Carper. It might have gone out over the sill of the world, for good and all.

I arose and put the bridle rein over El Mahdi's head while I stood, my right hand reaching up on his high withers. Jud and Ump got into their saddles and turned down toward the ford of the Stone Coal on the Hacker's Creek road, which Woodford had suggested. But under the coat my heart was stewing, and I would not have gone that way if the devil and his imps had been riding the other. I climbed into the saddle and shouted down to them. They turned back at the water of the ford. "Where are you going?" I called.

"Home. Where else?" replied the dwarfed Ump.

"It's a nice roundabout way you're taking," I said. "The Overfield road is three miles shorter."

"But the Gauley's boomin'," answered Jud; "Woodford said not to go that way."

"It's the first time," I shouted, "that any of our people ever took directions from Hawk Rufe. As for me, I'm going by the Gauley." And I turned El Mahdi into the wooded road on the left of the turnpike.

For a moment the two hesitated, discussing something which I could not hear. Then they rode up out of the Stone Coal and came clattering after me.

It is wonderful how swiftly the night comes in among the boles of the great oak trees. The dark seems to rise upward from the earth. The sounds of men and beasts carry over long distance, drifting in among the trees, and the loneliness of the vast, empty earth comes back to us,—what is forgotten in the rush of the sunshine,—the constant loom of the mystery. One understands then why the early men feared the plains when it was dark, and huddled themselves together in the hills. Who could say what ugly, dwarfish things, what evil fairies, what dangerous dead men might climb up over the rim of the world? A man was not afraid of the grey wolf, or even the huge beast that trumpeted in the morass by the great water when the light was at his back, but when the world was darkened old men had seen strange shapes running by the wolf's muzzle, or groping with the big mastodon in the marsh land, and against these a stone axe was a little weapon.

Of all animals, man alone has this fear of the dark. Neither the horse nor the steer is afraid of shadows, and from these, as he travels through the night, a man may feed the springs of his courage. I have been scared when I was little, stricken with panic when night caught me on the hills, and have gone down among the cattle and stood by their great shoulders until I felt the fear run off me like water, and have straightway marched out as brave as any trooper of an empress. And from those earliest days when I rode, with the stirrups crossed on my brother's saddle, after some kind old straying ox, I was always satisfied to go where the horse would go. He could see better than I, and he could hear better, and if he tramped peacefully, the land was certainly clear of any evil thing.