THE sheriff was riding slowly down the narrow mountain road to the ford
over Tug River,--“Jim's Ford” the natives of McDowell had dubbed this
crossing far back when the dry ginseng root was a legal tender for all
debts public and private southwest, as the crow flies, from the county
of Mercer. Whence the name had come, and by reason of what, tradition
was silent. No doubt the original Jim had dwelt in this rugged gorge,
and by accidental hap had given his name to this rocky ford that lived
on and proclaimed him long after the man had passed out into the hands
of the Wind.
To the negro miner, seven miles up at the town of Welch, this rugged
crossing, studded with great bowlders, was respectfully referred to as
“Hell's Gap,”--respectfully, for no other reason than that the negroes
were superstitious, and the mammoth gorge, silent as the grave floor,
and deep and foggy except in the long summer afternoons, was calculated
to conjure every grim phantom set down in the African catalogue.
The sheriff pulled up his “dun” horse suddenly, and threw his leg over
the pommel of his saddle. Just below him in the ford of the river was
a man wading out into the water,--a tall mountaineer, bare-headed, his
dress indicating a rather equal compromise between the barbarity of the
village and the barbarity of the mountain. For upper garment he wore the
red-fringed hunting shirt of his fathers and his grandfathers and on;
and for nether garment, the blue overalls purchased at the country store
for a haunch of venison or a bundle of hides. The mountaineer was tall,
rugged, and powerful,--a proper inhabitant for such a place.
“Spitler Hamrick,” murmured the sheriff.
“By every limping god! The toughest pine knot in the mountains of
McDowell. I wonder what the old wolf is looking for.”
Then he tightened his knee on the pommel of the saddle and a slow smile
crept over the features of the sheriff. “By my troth'” he drawled, “it
is certain that Spitler is no Vere de Vere. Still, if blue blood ran
to back, and bunches of muscles on the shoulders, Spitler's claim to
princely lineage would be unquestioned.”
White Carter stopped short, and adjusted his eye-glasses. The
mountaineer had gathered up a bundle from the river and was turning to
wade ashore. The man did not at once see the sheriff; he was looking
down into the water in order to avoid slipping on the smooth stones.
When he stepped on to the rocky bank of the river, the sheriff called.
At the sound, the mountaineer dropped the bundle and jerked up a
Winchester that lay nearby against a bowlder. It was an act after the
custom of the mountains. One armed himself first, and observed the “lay
of the land” afterwards.
White Carter remained perfectly motionless. “I would n't shoot,
Spitler,” he drawled, “it's vulgar.”
The mountaineer dropped the butt of his rifle on the stones, and looked
up in astonishment. “Smoky hell!” ejaculated the mountaineer, “it air
the sheriff. Smoky hell!” The refrain was a nervous idiom with Spitler
Hamrick.
White Carter put his hand into the pocket of his coat, took out a
pipe, knocked the ashes from the bowl and began to fill it with
great deliberation. This act, remaining after the red man had passed,
proclaimed a status of dignified truce.
The play of action faded from Hamrick's face, leaving it stolid, heavy,
prodigiously indifferent. It was the mountain's stamp on its minion, the
silence, and the abominable indifference of the rugged earth ground into
the faces of the men who struggle for life on her stony breast.
“Hot,” observed the sheriff, crowding the bowl of his pipe and thrusting
the tobacco down with his broad thumb.
The mountaineer folded his arms over the muzzle of his rifle and leaned
upon it heavily.
“Yas,” he responded, “warmish,”
It was the full measure of salutation, and the full measure of
introduction to all matters, important or unimportant, on the watershed
of the Alleghanies. In the mountains no man hurried with his speech.
There was time to be fully understood, and time to answer fully; then
what one did afterwards, one was not so likely to regret. In the flat
lands men are not so wise, perhaps.
The sheriff struck a match on his saddle skirt, lighted his pipe, and
puffed a cloud of blue smoke rings out over the placid ears of the
“murky dun.” Presently he took the pipe stem from between his teeth and
looked down at the solitary proprietor of Jim's Ford.
“Spitler,” he drawled, “what 's in the bundle?”
“Ye kin look,” responded the mountaineer with prodigious unconcern.
The sheriff replaced his pipe and lapsed into silence for a moment. Then
he said:
“Where did you find it, Spitler?”
“I reckin ye saw,” replied the scion of the house of Hamrick.
The guardian of order looked up at the blue sky over the top of his nose
glasses. Then he looked down. “Spitler,”--he said softly.
The mountaineer interrupted. “Sheriff,” he growled, “old Spitler Hamrick
don't stand no shammackin' round the bush. Smoky hell! He aint never
stood it. Things air goin' to be like this: ye kin mosey' down here and
git this bundle, air ye kin ride on. But ye can't set on you hoss and
jaw. Smoky hell! Ye can't set on you hoss and jaw.”
There was no circumlocution, no trick of equivocation, no shadow of
obscurity in the speech of the denizen of Hell's Gap He used words for
the purpose of expressing exactly what he believed to be true, and for
no other purpose. This the sheriff knew, and others had learned and
remembered by certain long glistening scars, covered afterward with the
red flannel of their hunting shirts.
White Carter removed his knee from the pommel of his saddle and slipped
down to the ground. Here he paused for a moment, knocked the ashes from
his pipe and replaced it in his pocket. Then he clambered down the steep
bank to the river. The proprietor of Jim's Ford looked on with mighty
indifference. The sheriff took up the bundle without a word, returned to
his horse, and unbuckling the “throat latch” of his bridle, strapped the
bundle to the horn of his saddle. Then he placed his right foot in the
stirrup and turned to the mountaineer.
“Spitler,” he drawled, “we found a dead man in Tug the other day. I
think this is his coat.”
The mountaineer looked up from the muzzle of his Winchester. “Were there
lead in him?” he asked.
The sheriff flung his leg over the saddle and gathered up his bridle
from the horse's neck.
“No bullet holes,” he answered.
“Then,” said the giant Hamrick, “he were not killed in the hills.”