I.

Towering into the air, reflected deep in the river, the great height of Keedon Bluffs is doubled to the casual glance and augmented in popular rumor. Nevertheless a vast mass of rock it is, splintered and creviced, and with rugged, beetling ledges, all atilt, and here and there a niche which holds a hardy shrub, subsisting surely on the bounty of the air or the smile of the sun, for scant sustenance can be coaxed from the solid sandstone.

Here bats and lizards colonize, and amongst the trailing vines winged songsters find a home, and sometimes stealthy, four-footed, marauding shadows, famous climbers, creep in and out of the hollows of the rocks, for it is in the very heart of the wilderness on a slope of the Great Smoky Range. Naught was likely to behold them—save their own bright-eyed images in the swift current below, or perhaps a wayfaring cloud above, journeying adown the sky from the zenith—until one day a boy chanced to come this way in driving home the cow; he paused on one side of the horseshoe bend, which the river describes just here, and gazed fixedly across the bight at the bluffs.

If at this moment one of the shy dwellers of the cliff had thrust forth an unwary head there was no need to hastily withdraw it. The boy’s attention was concentrated on a motionless object lying on a ledge; he looked at it in doubting surprise. It was a cannon-ball, precariously lodged where it had fallen, spent and harmless, years ago.

For Keedon Bluffs had not always been so silent. They had echoed the clamors of artillery. Not that a battle was ever fought in these fastnesses, but once from a distant point the woods in the cove were shelled, and, ranging further than the bursting bombs, this solid round shot cleared the river at the mountain’s base, and dropped at last on the ledge, remaining the only memento of the day. Covered with rust, half draped by a vine, peaceful and motionless and mute, it lay. And Ike Guyther, looking at it, wished that he had lived in those times of riding and raiding, when the batteries roared their sulphurous thunder, and flung their shells, hurtling along these quiet woodland ways, with fuses all a-flaring.

“Folks in them days hed a chance ter show thar grit, an’ ride, an’ fight, an’ fire off them big guns,” he grumbled, when he had gone back to his father’s cabin, in Tanglefoot Cove, three miles away, and had detailed his discovery to the fireside group. “They war mos’ly boys, no older sca’cely ’n me. An’ hyar _I_ be—_a-drivin’ up the cow_!”

“Waal, now,” exclaimed his mother in her consolatory drawl, “ye oughter be powerful thankful ye hev got a cow ter drive. The gu’rillas made beef o’ yer aunt Jemimy’s cow.”

“An’ fur goodness’ sake look at yer uncle Abner ef ye hanker so ter go a-fightin’,” his aunt Jemima tartly admonished him.

There sat all day beside the wood-fire a man of middle age, but with a face strangely young. It was like the face of a faded painting, changing only in the loss of color. The hair, growing off a broad forehead, was bleaching fast; the tints had become dim on cheek and lip, but time and care had drawn no lines, and an expression of childlike tranquillity hovered about the downcast eyes, forever shielded by the drooping lids. Life seemed to have ended for him twenty years before, on a day surcharged with disaster, when the great gun, which had been a sort of Thor to him, and which he had served with an admiring affection and reverent care, was spiked by its own cannoneers that it might fall useless into the hands of the enemy. It was the last thing he ever saw—this great silenced god of thunder—as he stood beside it with the sponge-staff in his hand. For among the shells shrieking through the smoky air, one was laden with his doom. A hiss close at hand, the din of an abrupt explosion, and he fell unconscious under the carriage of the piece, and there he was captured.

And when the war was over and he came forth alike from the prison and the hospital, blinded and helpless, naught remained to him but to vaguely ponder on what had been in the days that had gone forever, for he hardly seemed to look to the future, and the present was empty-handed.

He had met his grief and the darkness with a stoicism difficult to comprehend. He spent his days in calm unimbittered meditation, not gentle, but with flashes of his old spirit to attest his unchanged identity. Acclimated to sorrow, without hope, or fear, or anxiety, or participation in life, time could but pass him by, and youth seemed to abide with him.

The old martial interest flared up when Ike told of his discovery on the ledge of Keedon Bluffs.

“What kind o’ ball, Ike?” he demanded.

But Ike had been born too late to be discerning as to warlike projectiles.

“I wisht I could lay my hand on it!” said the blind artillery-man. “I’ll be bound I’d know, ef I jes’ could heft it wunst! Whar did it lodge, Ike? Could I make out ter git a-nigh it? Could ye an’ me git thar tergether?”

“Ye ’pear b’reft, Abner!” aunt Jemima cried out angrily. “Ye mus’ hev los’ more ’n yer sight. Hev ye furgot how Keedon Bluffs look? Thar ain’t nobody sca’cely ez could keep foot-hold ’mongst them sheer cliffs. An’ ye oughtn’t ter be aggin’ on Ike ter climb sech places—git his neck bruk. Ye hain’t got no call, sure, ter set store on no mo’ cannon-balls, an’ artillery, an’ sech. I ’low ez ye’d hev hed enough o’ guns, an’ I wish ye’d never hed nuthin’ ter do with no rebels.”

For this was one of the divided families so usual in East Tennessee, and while the elders had clung to the traditions of their fathers—the men fighting staunchly for the Union—the youngest had as a mere boy fled from his home to join the Confederate forces, and had stood by his gun through many a fiery hail of battle storms. But the bitterness of these differences was fast dying out.

“I hev gin the word,” said Ike’s father, and grizzled, and stern, and gigantic, he looked eminently fitted to maintain his behests, “ez no mo’ politics air ter be talked roun’ this ha’th-stone, Jemimy.”

“I ain’t talkin’ no politics,” retorted aunt Jemima, sharply. “But I ain’t goin’ ter hold my jaw tee-totally. I never kin git over hevin’ Ab settin’ up hyar plumb benighted! plumb benighted!—ez blind ez a mole!” She shook her head with a sort of acrimonious melancholy.

“Yes,” drawlingly admitted the blind artillery-man, all unmoved by this uncheerful discourse. “Yes, that’s a true word.” He lifted his head suddenly and tossed back the gray hair from his boyish face. “But I _hev_ seen—sights!”

Even less tolerated than politics were Ike’s repinings and longings for some flaunting military exploit. “Take yer axe,” his soldier-father said sternly, “an’ show what sort’n grit ye hev got at the wood-pile.”

The blind man with a laugh more leniently suggested, “Ye wouldn’t hev been much use ter we-uns in our battery, Ike, throwin’ up a yearth-work ter pertect the guns an’ sech, seein’ the way ye fairly _de_-spise a spade.”

Ike had yet to learn that it is the spirit in which a deed is done that dignifies and magnifies it.

He found the stories of the military glories he would have achieved, had the opportunity fallen to his lot, much more gently treated by a certain young neighbor, who had indeed a good and willing pair of ears, and much readiness and adaptability of assent. Very pliable, withal, was “Skimpy” Sawyer—by the nickname “Skimpy” he was familiarly known, a tribute to his extreme spareness. He was peculiarly thin, and wiry, and loose-jointed. He had a good-natured freckled face, paler for the contrast with a crop of red hair; a twinkling and beguiling brown eye; great nimbleness of limb; and many comical twists of countenance at command.

He accompanied Ike blithely enough to Keedon Bluffs, one afternoon, to look at the cannon-ball on the ledge. A bridle-path, almost a road it might have seemed—for the woods, bereft of undergrowth by the annual conflagrations, gave it space—wound along the side of the mountain near the verge of the cliffs. The river, all scarlet, and silver, and glinting blue, was swirling far down in the chasm beneath them; the sheer sandstone bank rose opposite, solid as a wall; and beyond, the cove—its woods, and cabins, and roads, and fences, bounded by the interlacing mountains—lay spread out like an open map.

Peaceful enough it was to-day, as the boys stood on the Bluffs. There were wings, homeward bound, hurrying through the air, instead of shells with fuses burning bright against the sunset sky. No bugle sang. The river was murmuring low a plaintive minor lay that one might hear forever and never tire. Scanty shrubs of dogwood and sour-wood flaunted, red and orange, from the rifts of the great crags; here and there were fissures, irregularly shaped, and dark, save that upon the upper arch of each a ceaseless silvery light shimmered, reflected from the water. On one of the many ledges the cannon-ball lay unstirred.

“Skimpy, I b’lieve I could actially climb down this hyar bluff an’ coon it roun’ that thar ledge an’ git that ball,” said Ike, balancing himself dangerously over the precipice.

So far did it overhang the river at this point that he was startled by seeing a hat and face suddenly looking up at him from the depths below, and it was a moment before he realized that the hat and face were his own, mirrored in a dark pool.

“Ye couldn’t climb up ag’in with it in yer paw,” retorted Skimpy.

“Naw,” Ike admitted. “But ennyhow I’d like ter climb down thar an’ see what’s in them hollows. I b’lieve I could git inter one o’ ’em.”

Skimpy had taken a handful of pebbles and was skipping them down the river. He turned so suddenly that the one in his hand flew wide of the mark and nearly tipped his friend’s hat off his head.

“What air ye a-hankerin’ ter git in one o’ them holes fur?” he demanded, surprised, “so ez ye can’t git out ag’in? ’Pears-like ter me they’d be a mighty tight fit on sech a big corn-fed shoat ez ye air. An’ then I’d hev ter climb down thar an’ break my neck, I reckon, ter pull ye out by the heels.”

“I wouldn’t git in ’thout thar ’peared ter be plenty o’ elbow room,” Ike qualified.

“Who’s that?” said Skimpy, suddenly.

So absorbed had they been that until this moment they were not aware of a slow approach along the road behind them. The sight of a stranger was unusual, but so little curiosity do the mountaineers manifest in unknown passers-by that if the man’s manner had had no appeal to the boys, they would hardly have lifted their eyes; they would not even have stared after his back was turned.

But the stranger was about to hail them. He had already lifted his hand with an awkward wave of salutation. Still he fixed his eyes upon them and did not speak as he slouched toward them, and the two boys were impressed with the conviction that he had heard every word that they had been saying.

He was a tall, dawdling fellow of forty, perhaps, carrying a rifle on his shoulder, and dressed in an old brown jeans suit, ill-mended and patched here and there, and with some rents not patched at all. His hair, long and brown, streaked with gray, hung down to his collar beneath his old broad-brimmed wool hat. His face was lined and cadaverous, his features were sharp and shrewd. His eyes, bright, small, dark, and somehow not reassuring, expressed a sort of anxiety and anger that the boys could not comprehend.

There came along the road after him, plainly defined on the summit of the great bluffs, between the woods and the sunset sky, with the river in the abyss beneath and a gleaming star in the haze above, a grotesque little cart, the wheels creaking dismally with every revolution and filling the air with the odor of tar and wagon grease. A lean scraggy ox was between the shafts; a cow shambled along at the tail-board; a calf and two or three dogs trotted further in the rear. The man was moving, evidently, for the poverty-stricken aspect of the vehicle was accented by the meagre show of household utensils—frying-pan, oven, skillet, spinning-wheel—and the bedding, and two or three chairs with which it was laden. On top of it all, sitting in a snug nest of quilts, with a wealth of long yellow hair, tousled and curling upon her shoulders, was a little girl, four or five years old. Her infantile beauty had naught in common with his down-looking, doubtful, careworn face, but she fixed the two boys with a pair of grave, urgent, warning gray eyes, which intimated that whatever the man might do or say he had a small but earnest backer. And though the autumn leaves were red and yellow above her head, the roses of spring bloomed on her cheek, and its sunshine was tangled in her hair; all its buoyant joys were in her laugh when she chose to be merry, and her smile brightened the world for him and for her. She was at the threshold of her life—likely to be a poor thing enough and hedged with limitations, but it had space for all the throbs of living, for all there is of bliss and woe.

The man glanced back at her as he spoke.

“Jes’ set a-top thar, Rosamondy; set right still an’ stiddy, leetle darter. I hev got a word or two ter pass with these folkses. Howdy! Howdy! Strangers! Do you-uns know whar old man Binwell hev moved ter hyar-abouts? I stopped at his house a piece back, an’ thar warn’t nobody thar, ’pears like; chimbly tore down; nare door in the cabin; empty.”

He had a strained rasping voice; his tone was not far from tears.

The two boys looked at one another. “Old man Binwell” was Ancient History to them—like Cæsar or Hannibal to boys of wider culture.

“Him? he’s dead,” they said together, slowly producing the recollection.

“I war ’feared so,” said the stranger. “An’ whar’s ’Liza Binwell, an’ Aleck?”

These were more modern. “Waal—her,” said Ike, “I hev hearn tell ez how she merried a man ez kem hyar in the war-times along o’ the Texas Rangers; an’ he seen her then, an’ kem arter her when the fightin’ war over. I disremember his name. An’ he persuaded Aleck an’ his fambly ter move with them ter Texas.”

The man nodded his head in melancholy reception of the facts.

“They be my brother an’ sister,” he said drearily. “I hain’t hearn nothin’ ’bout’n ’em fur a long time. But when we-uns lef’ cousin Zeke Tynes’s this mornin’—we bided thar las’ night—an’ started fur Tanglefoot Cove, he ’lowed they war hyar yit. I counted on stayin’ with ’em this winter. Who’s a-livin’ hyar-abouts now ez mought be minded ter let us bide with ’em fur ter-night?”

The boys prompting each other, mentioned the names of the few families in the cove. The stranger’s face fell as he listened. There was no house nearer than three or four miles, and the gaunt and forlorn old ox was not a beast of unrivaled speed. The man looked up doubtfully at the ragged edges of a black cloud, barely showing above the mountain summits, but definitely in motion before a wind that was beginning to surge in the upper regions of the air, although it hardly swayed the tops of the trees on Keedon Bluffs. The evening had stormy premonitions, despite the exquisite clearness of the western sky.

“I’m ’feared I’ll hev ter feed an’ water the beastis, else he won’t hold out so fur,” he half soliloquized, looking at the ox, drowsing between the shafts.

Then his attention reverted to the boys.

“Thanky, strangers, thanky fur tellin’ me. I dunno ye, ye see, but I war born an’ bred hyar-abouts. Thanky. If thar’s enny favior I kin do fur you-uns lemme know. Fish-in’?” he inquired suddenly.

Skimpy colored. To be asked if he were fishing from the great heights of Keedon Bluffs savored of ridicule.

“How could we fish from sech a place ez this?” he said a trifle gruffly.

“Sure enough! Sure enough! I hed furgot how high ’twar,” and the stranger came up and peered with them over the river. “I ain’t seen this spot fur a good many seasons, folkses,” he said, his eyes fixed upon the cavities of the great cliffs across the bend. The cow was munching the half-withered grass by the roadside; the dogs laid their tired bones down among the fallen leaves and went to sleep; Rosamond on her throne among the household goods sat in the red after-glow of the sunset, all flushed and gilded, and swung one plump bare foot, protruding its pink dimples from beneath her blue checked homespun dress, and planted the other foot recklessly upon her discarded dappled calico sunbonnet which she suffered to lie among the quilts.

“I tell ye what,” he added, still looking about at the darkling forests, at the swift current below the stern grim cliffs, at the continuous shifting shimmer reflected upon the upper arch of the hollows, “you-uns hev got mo’ resky ’n ever I be, ter bide ’roun’ this hyar spot when it begins ter be cleverly dark.”

Both boys looked quickly at him.

“Hain’t ye hearn what the old folks tells ’bout them hollows in the rock?”

“Naw!” they exclaimed together.

Skimpy’s eyes were distended. He felt a sudden chilly thrill. Ike, although as superstitious as Skimpy, experienced an incredulity before he even heard what this man had to say.

“Waal,” resumed the stranger, and he lowered his voice, “the old folks ’low ez the witches lie thar in the daytime—ye know they never die—an’ the yearth grants ’em no other place in the day, so they takes ter the hollows in the rock. An’ thar they keeps comp’ny with sech harnts ez air minded fur harm ter humans—folks ez hev been hung an’ sech. An’ then in the evenin’-time they all swarms out tergether.”

Skimpy glanced over his shoulder. It was doubtless his fancy, but the foolish boy thought he saw a black head thrust suddenly out of one of the hollows and as suddenly withdrawn.

Now Skimpy was afraid of nothing that went about in the daytime, and indeed of nothing human and mortal. Witches, however, were, he felt, of doubtful destiny and origin, malevolent in character, and he had a vaguely frightful idea concerning their physiognomy and form. He revolted at the prospect of a closer acquaintance.

“Kem on, Ike,” he said hastily, clutching his friend’s sleeve, “let’s go home.” And he peered fearfully about in the closing dusk.

But Ike was steadily studying the stranger’s face, and the man looked at him though he addressed Skimpy.

“Yes; it’s better ter be away from hyar betimes. They air special active in the full o’ the moon.”

It had risen before the sun had set, and ever and again, from fleecy spaces amongst the ranks of the dark clouds, its yellow lustre streamed forth in myriads of fine fibrous lines slanting upon the tumultuous palpitating purple vapors massed about it. Sometimes a rift disclosed its full splendor as it rode supreme in the midst of the legions of the storm.

“But them witches an’ sech air in them holes all day an’ ef ennybody war sech a fool ez ter go meddlin’ with ’em, ef so be they could git down thar ennywise—_they’d ketch it_!”

He shook his head in a way that promised horrors.

“What would they do ter ’em?” asked the morbidly fascinated Skimpy. He dared not look over his shoulder now.

The narrator was forced to specify, “Strangle ’em.”

Skimpy shuddered, but Ike was ready to laugh outright. He stared at the speaker as if he found him far more queer than his story.

“Ye ’member old man Hobbs?” said the stranger suddenly.

“I hearn my dad tell ’bout’n him,” returned Ike. “Old man Hobbs said he walked off’n the Bluffs through bein’ drunk an’ fell inter the river—though ez he war picked up alive folks b’lieved he never fell off’n the Bluffs, but jes’ said so, bein’ drunk an’ foolish.”

“Naw, it’s a fac’,” said the stranger, as if he knew all about it. “The witches got ter clawin’ an’ draggin’ of him, an’ they drug him in the water, bein’ ez he war a-foolin’ roun’ them hollows an’ this hyar spot ginerally.”

“Oh, I’m goin’,” cried Skimpy; then as he started off, the idea of being alone in the great woods, with the night settling down, came upon him with overwhelming terror, and he renewed his pleas to Ike. “Kem on, Ike. We-uns hev been hyar long enough.”

“Oh, shet up,” cried Ike roughly. “The witches ain’t goin’ ter strangle ye ez long ez ye hev got me alongside ter pertect ye.”

He wanted to hear more of what this man had to say, for he placed a different interpretation upon his words. But Rosamond had lifted her voice, and seeing that her father was preparing to start anew on their forlorn journeying was insisting on a change in the arrangement.

“I wants ye ter let the calf ride!” she cried in her vibrating musical treble. “I wants the calf ter ri-ride!”

The calf added its voice to hers, and bleated as it ran along behind. It had evidently come far and was travel-worn.

“I wants the calf ter ride wif _me_!” she cried again, with an imperious squeal upon the last syllable.

“The calf can’t ride, Rosamondy,” the man said, in gentlest expostulation. “He’s too heavy fur the steer—pore steer.”

“Naw, pore calf!” cried Rosamondy, and burst into tearful rage.

“Ah, Rosamondy, ain’t ye ’shamed ter be sech a bad leetle gal? Ain’t ye ’feared them boys’ll go off an’ tell ev’ybody what a bad leetle gal ye be!”

But Rosamond evidently did not care how far and wide they published her “badness,” and after the boys had turned off into the woods, leaving the wagon creaking along the road with the ox between the shafts, and the man driving the cow in advance, they still heard the piteous bleats of the little calf trotting behind, and Rosamondy’s insistent squeal, “I wants the calf ter ride wif _me_!”

In the dense woods the darkness was deeper; indeed they might only know that as yet it was not night by seeing vaguely the burly forms of the great boles close at hand. The shadowy interlacing boughs above their heads merged indistinguishably into the mass of foliage. Every sound was startlingly loud and in the nature of an interruption of some sylvan meditation. The rustle of their feet in the crisp fallen leaves seemed peculiarly sibilant, and more than once suggested a pursuer. Skimpy looked hastily over his shoulder,—only the closing obscurity that baffled his vision. A gust of wind swept through the woods rousing a thousand weird utterances of bough, and leaf, and rock, and hollow, and died away again into the solemn silence.

Skimpy quickened his pace. “Kem on, Ike,” he muttered, and started at the sound of his own voice.

Suddenly Ike Guyther, without a word of warning, turned about and began to retrace his way.

“Whar ye bound fur?” cried Skimpy, laying hold on his arm and striving to keep him back.

“Bound fur the Bluffs,” said Ike. “’Twon’t take we-uns long. I jes’ wanter sati’fy myself whether that thar man air too ’feard o’ witches ter water an’ feed his steer at that thar spring ’mongst the rocks nigh Keedon Bluffs.”

“_We-uns!_” cried Skimpy. “I tell ye now, I’d be palsied in every toe an’ toe-nail too ’fore I’d go a inch.”

“Waal, I’ll ketch up with ye,” said Ike.

Skimpy made an effort to hold him, but the stronger boy pulled easily away from him and ran. A whirl of the dry leaves, a whisking sound, and he was lost among the trees.

He did not keep this speed. He had slackened his pace to a walk before he emerged upon the road that ran between the verge of the bluffs and the woods. It seemed much earlier now, for here was presented the definite aspect of the evening instead of the uncertain twilight of the forest. In the faint blue regions of the zenith still loitered gauzy roseate reflections of the gorgeous sunset, not yet overspread by the black cloud gradually advancing up the vast spaces of the heavens. The river, in its cliff-bound channel, caught here and there a glittering moonbeam on its lustrous dark current. The amber tints of the western sky shaded into a pallid green above the duskily purple mountains. A pearl-colored mist, most vaguely visible, lurked in the depths of the cove.

Suddenly the rocks by the roadside stood distinct and ruddy in a broad flickering red flare; there were moving figures, grotesque elongated shadows, among the trees. Ike Guyther stopped short, with a sudden dread of the witches of Keedon Bluffs trembling within him. Then, for he was stout-hearted, he ventured to creep along a few steps further. There under the boughs of the pines and the scarlet oaks and the yellow hickory trees a fire of pine knots flamed, throwing hilarious sparks and frisking smoke high into the melancholy white mists gathering in the woods; and grouped about it—not witches nor harnts—but the humble travelers eating their supper by the wayside. Ike recognized the clumsy cart in the shadowy background; the ox, out of the shafts, now munching his well-earned feed; the cow lying on the ground licking the head of her calf. And sitting by the fire with her yellow hair glittering, her face illumined by the blaze, her pink feet presented to the warmth, was Rosamondy, commenting gravely as her father broiled a bit of bacon on the coals and deftly constructed an ash-cake. The dogs too sat beside the fire, all upright and wide awake, and with an alert interest in the proceedings. Now and then as the man turned the meat and the savory odor would rise, one of them would twist his head admiringly askew and lick his chops in anticipation.

The little girl talked continuously, her babyish voice clear on the still air, and the man listened and affected amazement when she thought she was astonishing him, and laughed mightily when she laughed, and agreed punctiliously with whatever she might say. But indeed she seemed a person who would tolerate little contradiction.

The picture vanished suddenly as Ike Guyther turned back into the sombre depths of the woods.

“Waal, sir!” said the shrewd young fellow to himself, “whoever b’lieves ez witches an’ harnts swarm out’n them hollows in the night times ter strangle folks ez be nigh by, the man ez stops ter cook his supper a-top o’ the Bluffs—don’t. An’ that air a true word.”

The more he reflected upon the circumstance, as he took his way through the woods to rejoin Skimpy, the more he felt sure that this stranger had overheard his proposal to climb down to those hollows, and had some purpose to serve in frightening him away from the cavities in the cliffs.

Still pondering upon this mystery he looked back once after he and Skimpy had reached the levels of Tanglefoot Cove. The advancing cloud still surged over the summit of the range, throwing its darkling shadows far down the steeps. In the mingled light of the dying day and the fitful gleam of the moon he could yet distinguish the stern grim crags, and below, on the slope where the grassy road wound in serpentine convolutions, he saw the cart with the little girl once more perched high, the ox between the shafts, the man driving the cow, the dogs and the calf trotting in the rear—all the little procession on the way again to seek shelter in some hospitable farmer’s cabin. And thus they fared down the rugged mountain ways into the future of Tanglefoot Cove.