It was hard to say what might be bought at the store except powder and coffee, and sugar perhaps, if 'long-sweetenin'' might not suffice; for each of the half-dozen small farms was a type of the region, producing within its own confines all its necessities. Hand-looms could be glimpsed through open doors, and as yet the dry-goods trade is unknown to the homespun-clad denizens of the Settlement. Beeswax, feathers, honey, dried fruit, are bartered here, and a night's rest has never been lost for the perplexities of the currency question on the Big Smoky Mountains.
The proprietor of the store, his operations thus limited, was content to grow rich slowly, if needs were to grow rich at all. In winter he sat before the great wood fire in the store and smoked his pipe, and his crony, the blacksmith, often came, hammer in hand and girded with his leather apron, and smoked with him. In the summer he sat all day, as now, in front of the door, looking meditatively at the scene before him. The sunlight slanted upon the great dead trees; their forms were imposed with a wonderful distinctness upon the landscape that stretched so far below the precipice on which the little town was perched. They even touched, with those bereaved and denuded limbs, the far blue mountains encircling the horizon, and with their interlacing lines and curves they seemed some mysterious scripture engraven upon the world.
It was just six o'clock, and the shadow of a bough that still held a mass of woven sticks, once the nest of an eagle, had reached the verge of the cliff, when the sound of hoofs fell on the still air, and a man rode into the clearing from the encompassing woods.
The storekeeper glanced up to greet the new-comer, but did not risk the fatigue of rising. Women looked out of the windows, and a girl on a porch, reeling yarn, found a reason to stop her work. A man came out of a house close by, and sat on the fence, within range of any colloquy in which he might wish to participate. The whole town could join at will in a municipal conversation. The forge fire showed a dull red against the dusky brown shadows in the recesses of the shop. The blacksmith stood in front of the door, his eyes shielded with his broad blackened right hand, and looked critically at the steed. Horses were more in his line than men. He was a tall, powerfully built fellow of thirty, perhaps, with the sooty aspect peculiar to his calling, a swarthy complexion, and a remarkably well-knit, compact, and muscular frame. He often said in pride, 'Ef I hed hed the forgin' o myself, I wouldn't hev welded on a pound more, or hammered out a leader differ.'
Suddenly detaching his attention from the horse, he called out, 'Waal, sir! Ef thar ain't Rick Tyler!' This was addressed to the town at large. Then, 'What ails ye, Rick? I hearn tell ez you-uns war on yer way ter Shaftesville along o' the sher'ff.' He had a keen and twinkling eye. He cast it significantly at the man on the fence. 'Ye kem back, I reckon, ter git yer handcuffs mended at my shop. Gimme the bracelets.' He held out his hand in affected anxiety.
'I ain't a-wearin' no bracelets now.' Rick Tyler's hasty impulse had its impressiveness. He levelled his pistol. 'Ef ye hanker ter do enny mendin', I'll gin ye repairs ter make in them cast-iron chit'lings o' yourn,' he said coolly.
He was received at the store with a distinct accession of respect. The blacksmith stood watching him, with angry eyes, and a furtive recollection of the reward offered by the governor for his apprehension.
The young fellow, with a sudden return of caution, did not at once venture to dismount; and Nathan Hoodendin, the storekeeper, rose for no customer. Respectively seated, for these diverse reasons, they transacted the negotiation.
'Hy're, Rick,' drawled the storekeeper languidly. 'I hopes ye keeps yer health,' he added politely.
The young man melted at the friendly tone. This was the welcome he had looked for at the Settlement. Loneliness had made his sensibilities tender, and 'hiding out' affected his spirits more than dodging the officers in the haunts of men, or daring the cupidity roused, he knew, by the reward for his capture. The blacksmith's jeer touched him as cruelly as an attempt upon his liberty. 'Jes' toler'ble,' he admitted, with the usual rural reluctance to acknowledge full health. 'I hopes ye an' yer fambly air thrivin',' he drawled, after a moment.
A whiff came from the storekeeper's pipe; the smoke wreathed before his face, and floated away.
'Waal, we air makin' out—we air makin' out.'
'I kem over hyar,' said Rick Tyler, proceeding to business, 'ter git some powder out'n yer store. I wants one pound.'
Nathan Hoodendin smoked silently for a moment. Then, with a facial convulsion and a physical wrench, he lifted his voice.
'Jer'miah!' he shouted in a wild wheeze. And again, 'Jer'miah!'
The invoked Jer'miah did not materialize at once. When a small tow-headed boy of ten came from a house among the stumps, with that peculiar deftness of tread characteristic of the habitually barefoot, he had an alert, startled expression, as if he had just jumped out of a bush. His hair stood up in front; he had wide pop-eyes, and long ears, and a rabbit-like aspect that was not diminished as he scudded round the heels of Rick Tyler's horse, at which he looked apprehensively.
'Jer'miah,' said his father, with a pathetic cadence, 'go into the store, bub, an' git Rick Tyler a pound o' powder.'
As Jeremiah started in, the paternal sentiment stirred in Nathan Hoodendin's breast.
'Jer'miah,' he wheezed, bringing the fore-legs of the chair to the ground, and craning forward with unwonted alacrity to look into the dusky interior of the store, 'don't ye be foolin' round that thar powder with no lighted tallow dip nor nuthin'. I'll whale the life out'n ye ef ye do. Jes' weigh it by the winder.'
Whether from fear of a whaling by his active parent, or of the conjunction of a lighted tallow dip and powder, Jeremiah dispensed with the candle. He brought the commodity out presently, and Rick stowed it away in his saddle-bags.
'Can't ye 'light an' sot a while 'an talk, Rick?' said the storekeeper. 'We-uns hev done hed our supper, but I reckon they could fix ye a snack yander ter the house.'
Rick said he wanted nothing to eat, but, although he hesitated, he could not finally resist the splint-bottomed chair tilted against the wall of the store, and a sociable pipe, and the countryside gossip.
'What's goin' on 'round the mounting?' he asked.
Gid Fletcher, the blacksmith, came and sat in another chair, and the man on the fence got off and took up his position on a stump hard by. The great red sun dropped slowly behind the purple mountains; and the full golden moon rose above the corn-field that lay on the eastern slope, and hung there between the dark woods on either hand; and the blades caught the light, and tossed with burnished flashes into the night; and the great ghastly trees assumed a ghostly whiteness; and the mystic writing laid on the landscape below had the aspect of an uninterpreted portent. The houses were mostly silent; now and then a guard-dog growled at some occult alarm; a woman somewhere was softly and fitfully singing a child to sleep, and the baby crooned too, and joined in the vague, drowsy ditty. And for aught else that could be seen, and for aught else that could be heard, this was the world.
'Waal, the Tempter air fairly stalkin' abroad on the Big Smoky—leastwise sence the summer season hev opened,' said Nathan Hoodendin. His habitual expression of heavy, joyless pondering had been so graven into