The Prophet of the Great Smoky Mountains. Mary Noailles Murfree

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СКАЧАТЬ style="font-size:15px;">      It served to quiet Dorinda's quivering nerves when he leisurely rode his big grey 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 grey critter down at the trough, an' I an'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 hands, 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, remarked 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 whisky 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 whisky 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 back, except for the tendrils about her brow, and coiled, with the aid of a much-prized 'tuckin'-comb,' at the back of her head in a knot discriminated as Grecian in civilization. He remarked to her grandmother that he was a family man himself, and had a daughter as old, he should say, as Dorinda.

      'D'rindy air turned seventeen, now,' said Mrs. Cayce disparagingly. 'It 'pears like ter me ez the young folks nowadays air awk'ard an' back'ard. I war married when I war sixteen—sixteen scant.'

      The girl felt that she was indeed of advanced years, and the sheriff said that his daughter was not yet sixteen, and he thought it probable that she weighed more than Dorinda.

      He lighted his pipe presently, and tilted his chair back against the wall.

      'Yes 'm,' he said meditatively, gazing out of the window at the great panorama, 'it's a pretty big spot o' kentry ter hev ter hunt a man over. Now ef 'twar one o' the town folks we could make out ter overhaul him somehows; but a mounting boy—why, he's ez free ter the hills ez a fox. I s'pose ye hain't seen him hyar-abouts?'

      'I hain't hearn who it air yit,' the old woman replied, putting her hand behind her ear.

      'It's Rick Tyler; he hails from this deestric'. I won't be 'stonished ef we ketch him this time. The gov'nor has offered two hunderd dollars reward fur him, an' I reckon somebody will find it wuth while ter head him fur us.'

      He was talking idly. He had no expectation of developments here. He had only stopped at the house in the first СКАЧАТЬ