She stopped short. Only by a narrow margin had she escaped enfolding in those outflung arms a curious little old man who had just emerged from a bypath.
Dressed in loose-fitting homespun jacket and trousers, with shoes that were two sizes too large and hard enough to stand alone either side up, and with a home tanned squirrel skin cap that had shrunken to half its size in the first rain it encountered, this man formed a ludicrous figure.
The girls did not laugh. This was Preacher Gibson. “Uncle Billie” many called him. He it was who had told them of old Jeff Middleton.
“Ho-Ho! Here you are!” he exclaimed. “I been lookin’ for you all. I got a notion about that ar gold. Hit war Confederate gold that old Jeff brought back from the war. Reg’lar old Confederate gold hit war fer sure.”
“But Uncle Billie, how do you know the Confederates coined any gold money?”
“Pshaw, child!” Uncle Billie looked at her in shocked surprise. “Didn’t Jeff Davis take the mint at New Orleans? An’ waren’t there a power of gold in that there mint? Hain’t there powers of hit in all them mints? In course of reason there are. Hit’s what mints are for.”
“But Uncle Billie, Jeff Middleton wasn’t a Confederate soldier, was he?”
“Never hearn that he were,” Uncle Billie’s face fell for a moment. Then his countenance brightened. “But you can’t never tell ’bout folks, kin you? Jeff came home dressed in brown homespun and drivin’ a mule hitched to a sled, the all-firedest kickin’ mule you ever seed, and on that ar sled war that sack of quare gold. Jeff was plum quare hisself. Who knows but he fit the Union arter all, and got that ar gold fer his pay?”
“That doesn’t seem very likely,” said Marion. “The Confederate soldiers weren’t paid when the war ended. But the gold might have been plunder. Jeff may have been a Union soldier with Sherman on his march to the sea. There was plenty of plunder then.”
“So he might. So he might,” agreed Uncle Billie.