Had any Stranger been seen without the hills, he would have been mobbed by an hysterical populace. Sober, God-fearing men huddled their families together and stood guard over them. Women watched their children with their husbands’ shotguns in their hands. Wilder and ever wilder rumors sped with lightning speed from homestead to homestead in the valleys.
And all this was done without malice. The native-born people had distrusted the Strange People because they were strange. They disliked them because they were aloof. And they came to hate them because they were mysterious. It is always dangerous to be a mystery. The story of what the sheriff and his four constables had seen among the fires on the heights became enlarged to a tale of unspeakable things. It would have required no more than a leader with a loud voice to mobilize a mob of farmers who would have invaded the hills with pitchforks and shotguns to wipe out the Strange People entirely.
They did not fear the Strangers as witches, but as human beings. They feared them as possible kidnapers of children to be killed in the inhuman orgies the fire-ceremony had become in the telling. They had no evidence of such crimes committed by the Strangers. But there is no evidence of kidnaping against the gipsies, yet many people suspect them of the same crime. Had any man spoken the truth about the Strangers, he would have been suspected of horrible designs—of being in sympathy with them. And because of the totally false tales that sprang up like magic about their name, to be suspected of sympathy with the Strangers was to court death.
Cunningham’s rage grew. Gray shrugged and rode furiously to Bendale to send more telegrams. Vladimir went about softly, purring to himself, and passed out bribes lavishly to those who could be bribed, and told lies to those who preferred to be suborned in that way.
He was holding back the plans of mobbing. The sheriff, acting on his orders, broke up every group of wild-talking men as soon as it formed. But Vladimir held the Strange People in the hollow of his palm. Half a dozen murmured words, and the men who had taken his lavished money would stand aside and let the simmering terror of the countryside burst out into the frenzy of a mob. And then the hills would be invaded by Christian men who would ferret out the Strangers and kill them one by one in the firm belief that they were exterminating the agents of Satan and the killers of innumerable children.
It did not matter that Vladimir’s hold was based on lies. The lies were much more exciting than the truth. The truth was dull and bare. The Strangers had been dancing about the fires. The constables had rushed out and they had fled, without attempting to resist or harm their attackers. One of them had stabbed himself when caught. And the truth was mysterious enough, and inexplicable enough, but it did not compare with the highly colored tales of human sacrifice and heathen orgies that had been embroidered upon the original tale.
Cunningham was inevitably in the thick of all these rumors. Men came rushing with news. A Stranger had been seen lurking about where children were playing. He was instantly suspected of planning to kidnap one of them. He had been shot at and now was being chased by dogs. A Stranger had stopped a doctor in the road and asked for bandaging for an injured arm. He had been shot by one of the constables the night before. Other Strangers guarded him lest the doctor try to arrest him while he dressed the wound.
That was in the morning. As the day went on the reports became more horrible. It became clear that if any Stranger showed his face he would be shot at as if he were a mad dog.
Word came from one place. Two Strangers had been seen and fired on. They vanished, leaving a trail of blood. From another place came another report. An old Strange woman had come out of the hills, to beg for medicines for their wounded. Dogs were set on her as she screamed her errand. She fled, and knives came hurtling from the brushwood, killing or wounding the dogs that were in pursuit.