"But--"
"You said you'd do anything."
"Let's go, Jeff."
With an ease born of long experience, Jeff slipped into the pack.
Knowing that they were going out, Pal leaped to his feet and a doggy
grin framed his jaws. Jeff closed the door but did not lock it. The
cabin had been rifled only because it was thought abandoned. Known to be
occupied, it was safe. The hill men might use force to get what they
wanted, or even kill another man for it, but petty pilfering was beneath
them.
The sun was warm without being too warm, and a breeze fanned the cheeks
of the pair of peddlers. The smile was complete on Jeff's face, and
laughter was in his heart. The horizon stretched limitlessly, with no
end or definition, and good fortune was a certainty. He couldn't be
other than happy.
"Where we going, Jeff?" Dan asked.
"I don't know. Let's follow our noses and go where they lead."
Jeff took the first mule and footpath that branched from the road, for
he was sure that most of the people he wanted to see would be back in.
Most hill people preferred plenty of room and they did not, as one
hillbilly had expressed it to Jeff, like to be "All cluttered up with
people. Skassly a week passes but what three, four go by."
Ranging ahead, Pal flushed a buck from its thicket, chased it a little
way, and let it go. He returned to Jeff and Dan, lingered to sniff at
some interesting rabbit tracks, and ran to catch up. There came a faint
smell of wood smoke.
Jeff sniffed eagerly, trying to determine the smoke's origin, and he
thought with some amusement that he was doing exactly as he had told Dan
they would do. In a very real sense he was following his nose, and when
he came to a less-traveled path that swung from the one they were
following, he took it.
Pal at his heels, Dan bringing up the rear, he walked fast. In three
minutes they came to a clearing. Apparently without plan, it had been
hacked out of the forest. It was irregularly-shaped, probably to follow
the easiest cutting, and a few large trees had been allowed to stand in
it. There were many stumps, a small garden, a mule that hung its head
over the topmost of two strands of rusting wire and looked cynical, and
four half-wild pigs that squealed and scuttled into the brush. The barn,
that had listed badly and seemed in immediate danger of falling, was
propped up with saplings. The house, made of hand-hewn timbers, was very
small and very old. Rains, snow, sun and wind had so beaten it that it
had achieved a unique color all its own and somehow it looked sad.
Jeff knocked confidently and waited. The door opened an inch, then
another inch, and in the gloomy interior Jeff saw, not too well, a
scowling face that was framed in a veritable haystack of black hair and
beard. But he saw very clearly the sinister snout of a rifle that was
aimed squarely at his middle and he heard very clearly a growled,
"Git goin' an' start now!"
"Right away," Jeff agreed.
He whirled and started back to the main path. Too over-awed to speak,
Dan trotted at his heels and he dared say nothing until they were once
more where they had started from. Then,
"Gee!" he breathed. "Weren't you scared?"
"No," Jeff answered wryly, "my heart always pounds."
"Do you think he didn't want us around?"
"I had a slight suspicion."
"What do we do now?"
"Find somebody else," Jeff said cheerfully. "It's part of peddling."
The day was too fine, and too sparkling, to be ruined by any surly
mountaineer. They walked on, feet winged and hearts gay. Jeff thought
whimsically that the money he made selling or trading was the very
smallest part of the reward he received. By far the major portion lay in
walks just like this, in the fact that he loved the work he was doing,
and in trying to anticipate what lay ahead. He always tried to build up
a mental picture of his next customer, always failed to do so, and
invariably had to discard his carefully-rehearsed approach to create a
new one on the spur of the moment. Much of the time he knew the sort of
house in which his next prospect would live, but nothing in his
experience had prepared him for the house they found not a mile from the
one they had left.
Rounding a bend, they saw a little hill. There was nothing majestic or
imposing about it, for it was a very small hill. But it was a very
beautiful one. It was as though the Creator of the mountains, after much
deliberation, had decided that the little hill would fit nowhere except
exactly where it was.
All the trees save one had been stripped from the side, Jeff and Dan
could see, and the grass growing there was so green and soft that it was
almost unreal. The one tree gave it just the right touch, so it was as
though this hill were something out of fairyland. A little herd of sheep
cropped the grass. Delighted, Jeff let his gaze stray upward.
"Gee but it's pretty!" Dan breathed.
"It is that," Jeff agreed. "Look at the house."
There were trees on the very top of the hill. Silhouetted against the
blue sky, they seemed to be outlined against a gentle sea. A log house
nestled in the grove. Something--at first Jeff thought it must be the
whitewash that outlined all the windows and then he knew it was not--set
the house apart. Like the hill, it was a fairyland house and Jeff knew
that they must visit there.
The hill rose in undulating waves, with no harsh angles or uncouth lines
to mar it. But it was not a park-like perfection. Some person, or
persons, must have expended enormous labor to make the hill look as it
did. But every line, every patch of grass, seemed to belong naturally
just where it was.
Jeff could decide only that this was a happy hill and that whoever lived
in the house was either the owner of a rare talent or blessed beyond
belief by the angels. Or perhaps some of both.
They came to the house and marveled. It was made of logs and chinked
with clay, but nothing haphazard had gone into its making. Even the
chinking was not just slapped on and troweled in, but flowed in graceful
lines as though it had always been part of the logs. As old as the cabin
they had left, the house had a sheen instead of a sad and aged
appearance. Whoever lived here must love it greatly.
"Howdy, boys."
The woman came around the house so silently and so unexpectedly that for
a moment Jeff was startled. The top of her head reached scarcely to his
shoulder. Her silver hair glowed like a halo, but there was something
which was far from angelic in the remarkable eyes that dominated her
unusual face. She wore a simple blue dress. Highlighted in silver, an
exquisitely-stitched blue-bird in flight adorned the front of it. Her
movements were quick and graceful. But there was no suggestion of
frailty, and the muzzle loading rifle that swung easily from her right
hand might have been a strong man's weapon.
Without any hesitation, Pal went forward to receive her caress. In a
sudden rush of feeling, Jeff forgot his amazement and felt entirely at
home. He knew all at once that everything and everybody was welcome on
this hill.
"And howdy to you, Granny!" he said graciously. "I'm--" Jeff thought of
introducing himself as Tarrant Enterprises, Ltd., but did not. "I'm Jeff
Tarrant and this is Dan Blazer."