The Prophet of the Great Smoky Mountains | Page 6

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 trough.
"Good-mornin', sir," quavered the old crone on the mountain slope.
"I'm the sher'ff o' the county, madam, an' I'd like ter know ef" -
"Mirandy Jane," the old woman interrupted, in a wrathful undertone,
"'pears like I hev hed the trouble o' raisin' a idjit in you-uns! Them ain't
raiders,'n nuthin' like it. Run an' tell the sher'ff we air dishin' up dinner
right now, an' ax him an' his gang ter' light an' hitch, an' eat it along o'
we-uns."
The prospect was tempting. It was high noon, and the posse had been in
the saddle since dawn. Dorinda, with a beating heart, marked how short
a consultation resulted in dismounting and hitching the horses; and then,
with their spurs jingling and their pistols belted about them, the men
trooped up to the house.
As they seated themselves around the table, more than one looked back
over his shoulder at the open window, in which was framed, as
motionless as a painted picture, the vast perspective of the endless blue
ranges and the great vaulted sky, not more blue, all with the broad, still,
brilliant noontide upon it.

"Ye ain't scrimped fur a view, Mis' Cayce, an' that's the Lord's truth!"
exclaimed the officer.
"Waal," said the old woman, as if her attention were called to the fact
for the first time, "we kin see a power o' kentry from this spot o' ourn,
sure enough; but I dunno ez it gins us enny more chance o' ever viewin'
Canaan."
"It's a sight o' ground ter hev ter hunt a man over, ez ef he war a needle
in a haystack," and once more the officer turned and surveyed the
prospect.
The room was overheated by the fire which had cooked the dinner, and
the old woman actively plied her fan of turkey feathers, pausing
occasionally to readjust her cap, which had a flapping frill and was
surmounted by a pair of gleaming spectacles. A bandana kerchief was
crossed over her breast, and she wore a blue-and- white-checked
homespun dress of the same pattern and style that she had worn here
fifty years ago. Her hands were tremulous and gnarled and her face was
deeply wrinkled, but her interest in life was as fresh as Mirandy Jane's.
The great frame of the warping-bars on one side of the room was
swathed with a rainbow of variegated yarn, and a spinning-wheel stood
near the door. A few shelves, scrupulously neat, held piggins, a cracked
blue bowl, brown earthenware, and the cooking utensils. There were
rude gun-racks on the walls. These indicated the fact of several men in
the family. It was the universal dinner-hour, yet none of them appeared.
The sheriff reflected that perhaps they had their own sufficient reason
to be shy of strangers, and the horses hitched outside advertised the
presence and number of unaccustomed visitors within. When the usual
appetizer was offered, it took the form of whiskey in such quantity that
the conviction was forced upon him that it was come by very handily.
However, he applied himself with great relish to the bacon and
snap-beans, corn dodgers and fried chicken, not knowing that Mirandy
Jane, who was esteemed altogether second rate, had cooked them, and
he spread honey upon the apple-pie, ate it with his knife, and washed it
down with buttermilk, kept cold as ice in the spring, - the mixture being
calculated to surprise a more civilized stomach.

Not even his conscience was roused, - the first intimation of a
disordered digestion. He listened to old Mrs. Cayce with no betrayal of
divination when she vaguely but anxiously explained the absence of her
son and his boys in the equivocal phrase, "Not round about ter-day,
bein' gone off," and he asked how many miles distant was the
Settlement, as if he understood they had gone thither. He was saying to
himself, the brush whiskey warming his heart, that the revenue
department paid him nothing to raid moonshiners, and there was no
obligation of his office to sift any such suspicion which might occur to
him while accepting an unguarded hospitality.
He looked with somewhat appreciative eyes at Dorinda, as she went
back and forth from the table to the pot which hung in the deep
chimney-place above the smouldering coals. She had laid aside her
bonnet. Her face was grave; her eyes were bright and excited; her hair
was drawn