Grace Harlowes Overland Riders Among the Kentucky Mountaineers | Page 7

man. Couldn't resist the temptation
to give the pickaninny a scare. Oh, thank you," he added as Nora
handed a heaping plate of food to him and a tin cup full of steaming
coffee.
"You are a peddler. Is that it?" questioned Emma.
"Heavens, no! I'm a promoter. I promote the well-being of these good
mountain folks by giving them sight and by furnishing them with
nick-nacks to delight the eye. If you-all are troubled with poor sight I'll
be happy to fit you with glasses warranted to make you see double.
More coffee, if you please. This is the real article. I think I'll have to
make this camp my headquarters."
"This camp will be some miles from here by this time to-morrow,"
Grace Harlowe informed him.

"So will I. So will I. No bother at all about that. Wash, come here!"
Washington would not budge, so Hippy led him over to the caller.
"Scared you, didn't I, eh? Mebby it is the seventh year, but don't let that
bother you. Here! Here's a new harmonica for you. It will make more
noise than the one you lost when I whispered in your ear out yonder.
Go on now, and behave yourself," he added, giving Wash a playful
push. "What can I do for you, folks?"
"I suppose you know this country well?" questioned Grace.
Long shrugged his shoulders.
"Sometimes I think I do, then I discover that I don't," he replied soberly.
"No one knows it. I know the people, on the surface, and know my way
around."
"Perhaps you know something about the moonshiners and the
feudists?" suggested Nora.
Jeremiah Long gave her a quick glance of inquiry.
"Take a word of advice from the Mystery Man. The less you know
about anything up here in these hills the better off you are in the end.
Some folks have made the mistake of knowing too much for their own
good, and some of them are here yet, but they ain't saying anything."
Grace thanked him and agreed that his advice was good, at the same
time speculating in her own mind over their guest. She was not wholly
satisfied that he was what he pretended to be, but what he was in reality,
she could not even guess.
In the meantime, Washington, lost in admiration of his new possession,
was drawing harmony, and some discord, from it and rolling his eyes
soulfully. In the ecstasy of the moment he had forgotten his recent
fright. Tom and the Mystery Man were engaged in conversation, Hippy
now and then interjecting a question, for the topic under discussion was

the tract of land owned by Hippy, though not since Emma's remark had
any reference been made to Hippy's ownership of it. The guest's talk
was largely about the lay of the land there and its possibilities.
"I'll see you folks if you are going there," he promised finally. "I shall
be in that section of the range about three weeks from now, and maybe
I can do you some good."
"Thank you," smiled Grace. "We shall be pleased to see you then or at
any other time. Mr. Gray leaves to-morrow morning for the
Cumberlands where he has business, and we hope to join him, or rather
to have him join us, in about that time. I think--"
"Hulloa the camp!" shouted a voice from the bushes on the opposite
side of the camp from that by which Mr. Long had entered.
"Hulloa yourself!" bellowed Hippy Wingate. "Come in. The door's
wide open."
An instant later a man stepped into the camp, a rifle slung under one
arm, a revolver hanging from his belt in its holster. He was tall, gaunt
and raw-boned, a typical Kentucky mountaineer, and, as he stood there
surveying the Overland Riders from beneath his broad-brimmed hat,
not a word was spoken on either side. The mountaineer was studying
the members of the Overland party, and the Overland Riders were
regarding him inquiringly.
"Why, where is--" began Emma Dean, but a gesture from Grace
checked her. Not so with Washington Washington, however.
"Whar dat man?" he cried, referring to their first visitor.
A quick glance about the camp revealed to the amazed Overlanders that
Jeremiah Long, the Mystery Man, had suddenly and mysteriously
disappeared. No one had seen or heard him go. He had simply melted
away.
CHAPTER III

HIPPY BOUNCES THE "SHEREEF"
Still the newcomer stood peering into the faces of the Overlanders.
Hippy began talking to the man with his fingers in the deaf and dumb
system. The stranger regarded him frowningly, then shifted his rifle
into his right hand.
"Who be yuh?" demanded the man.
"Oh! I thought you were a dummy," apologized Hippy. "A thousand
pardons, old man."
"May I ask who you are and