The Prophet of the Great Smoky Mountains | Page 5

hyar ez long ez ye kin, ter gin me a start."
He mounted his horse, and rode noiselessly away along the newly turned mould of the furrow.
She stood leaning upon her plough-handles, and silently watching him. His equestrian figure, darkly outlined against the far blue mountains and the intermediate valley, seemed of heroic size against the landscape, which was reduced by the distance to the minimum of proportion. The deep shadows of the woods, encompassing the clearing, fell upon him presently, and he, too, was but a shadow in the dusky monochrome of the limited vista. The dense laurel closed about him, and his mountain fastnesses, that had befriended him of yore, received him once again.
Then up and down the furrows Dorinda mechanically followed the plough, her pulses throbbing, every nerve tense, every faculty alert. She winced when she heard the frequent striking of hoofs upon the rocky slopes of the road below. She was instantly aware when they were silent and the party had stopped to breathe the horses. She began accurately to gauge their slow progress.
"'T ain't airish in no wise ter-day," she said, glancing about at the still, noontide landscape; "an' ef them air valley cattle they mus' git blowed mightily travelin' up sech steep mountings ez the Big Smoky." She checked her self-gratulation. "Though I ain't wantin' ter gloat on the beastis' misery, nuther," she stipulated.
She paused presently at the lower end of the clearing, and looked down over the precipice, that presented a sheer sandstone cliff on one side, and on the other a wild confusion of splintered and creviced rocks, where the wild rose bloomed in the niches and the grape-vine swung. The beech-trees on the slope below conserved beneath their dense, umbrageous branches a tender, green twilight. Loitering along in a gleaming silver thread by the roadside was a mountain rill, hardly gurgling even when with slight and primitive shift it was led into a hollow and mossy log, that it might aggregate sufficient volume in the dry season to water the horse of the chance wayfarer.
The first stranger that rode into this shadowy nook took off a large straw hat and bared his brow to the refreshing coolness. His grizzled hair stood up in front after the manner denominated "a roach." His temples were deeply sunken, and his strongly marked face was long and singularly lean. He held it forward, as if he were snuffing the air. He had a massive and powerful frame, with not an ounce of superfluous flesh, and he looked like a hound in the midst of the hunting season.
It served to quiet Dorinda's quivering nerves when he leisurely rode his big gray horse up to the trough, and dropped the rein that the animal might drink. If he were in pursuit he evidently had no idea how close he had pressed the fugitive. He was joined there by the other members of the party, six or eight in number, and presently a stentorian voice broke upon the air. "Hello! Hello!" he shouted, hailing the log cabin.
Mirandy Jane, a slim, long-legged, filly-like girl of thirteen, with a tangled black mane, the forelock hanging over her wild, prominent eyes, had at that moment appeared on the porch. She paused, and stared at the strangers with vivacious surprise. Then, taking sudden fright, she fled precipitately, with as much attendant confusion of pattering footfalls, flying mane, and excited snorts and gasps as if she were a troop of wild horses.
"Granny! Granny!" she exclaimed to the old crone in the chimney corner, "thar's a man on a big gray critter down at the trough, an' I ain't s'prised none ef he air a raider!"
The hail of the intruders was regarded as a challenge by some fifteen or twenty hounds that suddenly materialized among the beehives and the althea bushes, and from behind the ash-hopper and the hen-house and the rain-barrel. From under the cabin two huge curs came, their activity impeded by the blocks and chains they drew. These were silent, while the others yelped vociferously, and climbed over the fence, and dashed down the road.
The horses pricked up their ears, and the leader of the party awaited the onslaught with a pistol in his hand.
The old woman, glancing out of the window, observed this demonstration.
"He'll kill one o' our dogs with that thar shootin'-iron o' his'n!" she exclaimed in trepidation. "Run, Mirandy Jane, an' tell him our dogs don't bite."
The filly-like Mirandy Jane made great speed among the hounds, as she called them off, and remembered only after she had returned to the house to be afraid of the "shootin'-iron" herself.
The old woman, who had come out on the porch, stood gazing at the party, shading her eyes with her hand, and a long-range colloquy ensued.
"Good-mornin', madam," said the man at the