“But—but where did they come from?”
“Peers like there don’t nobody rightly know.”
“How very strange!” she had exclaimed. “When did they come?”
“Mebby two years back. Came from somewhere away over back of Pine Mounting. Quarest people you most ever seed. One man half as big as a mounting, and no arm except one. Mighty onfriendly folks. Coupla men who went up thar huntin’ got scared off. Quarest folks you most ever seed.”
“Perhaps that’s where little Hallie came from.”
“Might be. But if I was you I’d never go near thar.”
Ransom had gone on to tell weird tales of these strange people, a dozen families in all who had leased land from a coal company and had gone up there beyond a natural stone gateway which appeared to shut them from the rest of the world. He had told how they had stayed there, never coming down to the settlements for barter and trade, and how they kept other mountain people away.
Other tales he had told, too; tales that had made her blood run cold. There was the story of a peddler with a pack who had gone up there at nightfall and had never been seen to return, and a one-armed fiddler who had never come back.
“But couldn’t they have gone out some other way?” she had asked.
“Narry a pass at the head of this branch, narry a one. Jest rocky ridges, so steep an’ high that if you was to drop your hat from the top it would blow back up to you. No, Miss,” he had added with a shake of his head, “don’t you never go up thar!”