"I reckon." He laughed and strode off toward the one small station in the opposite direction from the way the man had taken.
Frale knew well where he had gone. On the outskirts of the village was a small grove of sycamore and gum trees, by a little stream, where it was the custom for the mountain people to camp with their canvas-covered wagons. There they would build their fires on a charred place between stones, and heat their coffee. There they would feed their oxen or mule team, tied to the rear wheels of their wagons, with corn thrown on the ground before them. At nightfall they would crawl under the canvas cover and sleep on the corn fodder within.
Often beneath the fodder might be found a few jugs of raw corn whiskey hidden away, while the articles they had brought down for sale or barter at the village stores were placed on top in plain view. Sometimes they brought vegetables, or baskets of splints and willow withes, made by their women, or they might have a few yards of homespun towelling.
The man Frale had seen was the older brother of his friend Ferdinand Teasley, and well Frale knew that he was camped with his ox team down by the spring, where it had been his habit to wait for the cover of darkness, when he could steal forth and leave his jugs where the money might be found for them, placed on some rock or stump or fallen trunk half concealed by laurel shrubs. How often had the products of Frale's still been conveyed down the mountain by that same ox team, in that same unwieldy vehicle!
Giles Teasley's cabin and patch of soil, planted always to corn, was a long distance from his father's mill, and also from his brother's still, hence he could with the more safety dispose of their illicit drink.
In the slow but deadly sure manner of his people, he had but just aroused himself to the fact that his brother's murderer was still alive and the deed unavenged; and Frale knew he had come now, not to dispose of the whiskey, since the still had been destroyed, but to find his brother's slayer and accord him the justice of the hills.
To the mountain people the processes of the law seemed vague and uncertain. They preferred their own methods. A well-loaded gun, a sure aim, and a few months of hiding among relatives and friends until the vigilance of the emissaries of the law had subsided was the rule with them. Thus had Frale's father twice escaped either prison or the rope, and during the last four years of his life he had never once ventured from his mountain home for a day at the settlements below; while among his friends his prowess and his skill in evading pursuit were his glory.
Now it was Frale's thought to dare the worst,—to walk to the station like any village youth, buy his ticket, and take the train for Carew's Crossing, and from there make his way to his haunt while yet Giles Teasley was taking his first sleep.
He reasoned, and rightly, that his enemy would linger about several days searching for him, and never dream of his having made his escape by means of the train. Since the first scurry of search was over, it was no longer the officers of the law Frale feared, but this same lank, ill-favored mountaineer, who was now warming his coffee and eating his raw salt pork and corn-bread by the stream, while his drooling cattle stood near, sleepily chewing their cuds.