The Young Mountaineers | Page 3

safely undertake a solitary jaunt
on horse-back.
"I war tole not ter leave ye fur a minit, gran'dad. I war ter stay nigh ye
an' mind yer bid."
"That's my bid!" said the old man sternly. "Fotch the beastis."
There was no one else about the place. Jonas Creyshaw had gone
fishing shortly after daybreak. His wife had trudged off to her sister's
house down in the cove, and had taken the baby with her. Tad was
ploughing in the cornfield on the other side of the ravine. Si had no
advice, and he had been brought up to think that Old Daddy's word was
law.
When the old man, mounted at last, was jogging up the road, Tad
chanced to come to the house for a bit of rope to mend the plough-gear.
He saw, far up the leafy vista, the departing cavalier. He cast a look of
amazed reproach upon Si. Then, speechless with astonishment, he
silently pointed at the distant figure.

Si was a logician.
"I never lef' him," he said. "He lef' me."
"Ye oughter rej'ice in yer whole bones while ye hev got 'em," Tad
returned, with withering sarcasm. "When dad kems home, some of 'em
'll git bruk, sure. Warn't ye tole not ter leave him fur nuthin', ye triflin'
shoat!"
"He lef' me!" Si stoutly maintained.
Meantime, Old Daddy journeyed on.
Except for the wonderful mountain air, the settlement, three miles
distant, had nothing about it to indicate its elevation. It was far from the
cliffs, and there was no view. It was simply a little hollow of a clearing
scooped out among the immense forests. When the mountaineers clear
land, they do it effectually. Not a tree was left to embellish the yards of
any of the four or five little log huts that constituted the hamlet, and the
glare was intense.
As six or eight loungers sat smoking about the door of the store, there
was nothing to intercept their astonished view of Old Daddy when he
suddenly appeared out of the gloomy forest, blinking in the sun and
bent half double with fatigue.
Even the rudest and coarsest of these mountaineers accord a
praiseworthy deference to the aged among them. Old Daddy was held
in reverential estimation at home, and was well accustomed to the
respect shown him now, when, for the first time in many years, he had
chosen to jog abroad. They helped him to dismount, and carried him
bodily into the store. After he had tilted his chair back against the rude
counter, he looked around with an important face upon the attentive
group.
"My son," shrilly piped out Old Daddy,--"my son air the strongest man
ever seen, sence Samson!"

"I hev always hearn that sayin', Old Daddy," acquiesced an elderly
codger, who, by reason of "rheumatics," made no pretension to muscle.
A gigantic young blacksmith looked down at his corded hammer-arm,
but said nothing.
A fly--several flies--buzzed about the sorghum barrel.
"My son," shrilly piped out Old Daddy,--"my son air the bes' shot on
this hyar mounting."
"That's a true word, Old Daddy," assented the schoolmaster, who had
ceased to be a Nimrod since devoting himself to teaching the young
idea how to shoot.
The hunters smoked in solemn silence.
The shadow of a cloud drifted along the bare sandy stretch of the
clearing.
"My son," shrilly piped out Old Daddy,--"my son hev got the peartest
boys in Tennessee."
"I'll gin ye that up, Old Daddy," cheerfully agreed the miller, whose
family consisted of two small "daughters."
The fathers of other "peart boys" cleared their throats uneasily, but
finally subsided without offering contradiction.
A jay-bird alighted on a blackberry bush outside, fluttered all his blue
and white feathers, screamed harshly, bobbed his crested head, and was
off on his gay wings.
"My son," shrilly piped out Old Daddy,--"my son hev been gifted with
the sight o' what no other man on this mounting hev ever viewed."
The group sat amazed, expectant. But the old man preserved a stately
silence. Only when the storekeeper eagerly insisted, "What hev Jonas
seen? what war he gin ter view?" did Old Daddy bring the fore legs of

the chair down with a thump, lean forward, and mysteriously pipe out
like a superannuated cricket,--
"My son,--my son hev seen a harnt, what riz up over the bluff
a-purpose!"
"Whar 'bouts?" "When?" "Waal, sir!" arose in varied clamors.
So the proud old man told the story he had journeyed three laborious
miles to spread. It had no terrors for him, so completely was fear
swallowed up in admiration of his wonderful son, who had added to his
other perfections the gift of seeing ghosts.
The men discussed it eagerly. There were some jokes cracked--as it
was still broad noonday--and at one of these Old Daddy