mr. wesley tolliver might well have served the turn of romancer or realist, as he stood in the shadow of a cedar-clump with the mysterious stillness of midnight all around him. he was a very real and substantial looking personage, and yet his gun, his pistols, his fantastic mountain garb and the wild setting in which he was framed gave him the appearance of a strong sketch meant to illustrate a story by craddock. above him towered the cliff at eagle’s nest and near by was the mountain “pocket” in which nestled the little distillery whose lurking-place had long been the elusive dream of utopian revenue officers. in a space of brilliant moonlight, tolliver’s dog, a gaunt, brindle cur, sat in statuesque worthlessness, remembering no doubt the hares he never had caught and the meatless bones he had vainly buried during a long ignoble life.
the hotel and its inmates had rendered the distillery and its furtive operatives very uneasy of late, and now as tolliver in his due turn stood guard by night he considered the probability of having to look for some better situation for his obscure manufactory with a species of sadness which it would be impossible to describe. he thought with deep bitterness of all the annoyance he had suffered at the hands of meddling government agents and from the outside world in general and he tried to understand how any person could pretend to see justice in[56] such persecution. what had he done to merit being hunted like a wild beast? nothing but buy his neighbor’s apples at the fair price of twenty cents a bushel and distil them into apple brandy! could this possibly be any injury to any government official, or to anybody else? he paid for his still, he paid for the apples, he paid fair wages to the men who worked for him, what more could be justly demanded of him?
it was while he was wholly absorbed in trying to solve this knotty problem that far above a strange clink and clatter began, which sounded to him as if it were falling from among the stars. nothing within his knowledge or experience suggested an explanation of such a phenomenon. he felt a thrill of superstitious terror creep through his iron nerves as the aerial racket increased and seemed to whisk itself from place to place with lightning celerity. an eccentric echo due to the angles and projections of the cliff added weird effect to the sounds.
the dog uttered a low plaintive whine and crept close to his master, and even wedged himself with tremulous desperation between the knees of that wondering and startled sentinel.
the clinking and clanging soon became loud and continuous, falling in a cataract down the escarpment, accompanied now and again by small fragments of stone and soil.
at last tolliver got control of himself sufficiently, and looked out from his shadowy station[57] and up towards the dizzy crown of eagle’s nest.
just at that moment there was a crash and a scream. he saw a wide-winged, ghostly object come over the edge and swoop down. another scream, another and another, a tearing sound, a crushing of cedar boughs, a shower of small stones and lumps of soil.
tolliver, frightened as he never before had been, turned and fled, followed by his ecstatic dog.
a voice, keen, clear, high, beseeching pursued him and reached his ears.
“help! help! oh, help!”
surely this was the “harnt that walks mt. boab!” this syren of the mountains had lured many a hunter to his doom.
“oh, me! oh, my! oh, mercy on me! help! help!”
tolliver ran all the faster, as the voice seemed to follow him, turn as he would. he bruised his shins on angular rocks, he ran against trees, he fell over logs, and at last found himself hopelessly entangled in a net of wild grape-vines, with his enthusiastic dog still faithfully wriggling between his knees.
the plaintive voice of the syren, now greatly modified by distance, assailed his ears with piteous persistence, as he vainly struggled to free himself. the spot was dark as erebus, being in the bottom of a ravine, and the more he exerted himself the worse off he became.
it was his turn to call for help, but if any of[58] his friends heard they did not heed his supplications, thinking them but baleful echoes of the harnt’s deceitful voice.
it was at the gray of dawn when at last tolliver got clear of the vines and made his way out of the ravine. by this time he had entirely overcome his fright, and with that stubbornness characteristic of all mountain men, he betook himself back to the exact spot whence he had so precipitately retreated. his dog, forlornly nonchalant, trotted behind him to the place and resumed the seat from which the harnt had driven him a few hours ago. in this attitude, the animal drooped his nose and indifferently sniffed a curious object lying near.
“what’s thet ther’ thing, mose?” inquired tolliver, addressing the dog.
“well i’ll ber dorg-goned!” he added, as he picked up a woman’s bonnet. “if this here don’t beat the worl’ an’ all camp meetin’! hit air—well, i’ll ber dorged—hit air—i’m er ghost if hit aint miss sara’ anna crabb’s bonnet, by ned!”
he held it up by one silk string and gazed at it with a ludicrously puzzled stare. the dog whined and wagged his tail in humble sympathy with his master’s bewilderment.
“hit’s kinder interestin’, haint it, mose?” tolliver went on dryly. “we’ll hev ter look inter this here thing, won’t we, mose?”
as for mose, he was looking into it with all his eyes. indeed he was beginning to show[59] extreme interest, and his tail was pounding the ground with great rapidity.
suddenly a thought leaped into tolliver’s brain and with a start he glanced up the escarpment, his mouth open and his brown cheeks betraying strong emotion. mose followed his master’s movements with kindling eyes, and whined dolefully, his wolfish nose lifted almost vertically.
“is that you, mr. tolliver?” fell a voice out of a cedar clump a little way up the side of the cliff.
“hit air me,” he responded, as he saw miss crabb perched among the thick branches. she had her little red note-book open and was writing vigorously. her yellow hair was disheveled so that it appeared to surround her face with a flickering light which to tolliver’s mind gave it a most beautiful and altogether lovely expression.
“well, i’ll ber—” he checked himself and stood in picturesque suspense.
“now, mr. tolliver, won’t you please help me down from here?” she demanded, closing her note-book and placing her pencil behind her ear. “i’m awfully cramped, sitting in this position so long.”
the chivalrous mountaineer did not wait to be appealed to a second time, but laying down his gun to which he had clung throughout the night, he clambered up the steep face of the rock, from projection to projection, until he reached the tree in which miss crabb sat.[60] meantime she watched him with admiring eyes and just as he was about to take her in his arms and descend with her she exclaimed:
“wait a moment, i might lose the thought, i’ll just jot it down.”
she took her note-book and pencil again and hurriedly made the following entry: sinewy, virile, lithe, hirsute, fearless, plucky, bronzed, vigorous, lank, greek-eyed, roman-nosed, prompt, large-eared, typical american. good hero for dramatic, short, winning dialect story. the magazines never refuse dialect stories.
“now, if you please, mr. tolliver, i will go with you.”
it was an herculean labor, but tolliver was a true hero. with one arm wound around her, after the fashion of the serpent in the group of the laocoön, and with her long yellow hair streaming in crinkled jets over his shoulder, he slowly made his way down to the ground.
meantime mose, the dog, with true canine sympathy and helpfulness, had torn the bonnet into pathetic shreds, and was now lying half asleep under a tree with a bit of ribbon in his teeth.
“well, i’ll jest ber—beg parding miss crabb, but thet ther dog hev et up yer head-gear,” said tolliver as he viewed with dilating eyes the scattered fragments.
she comprehended her calamity with one swift glance, but she had caught a new dialect phrase at the same time.
“head-gear, you call it, i believe?” she inquired, again producing book and pencil.
“beg parding all over, miss crabb, i meant bonnet,” he hurried to say.
“oh, it’s all right, i assure you,” she replied, writing rapidly, “it’s a delightfully fresh and artistic bit of special coloring.”
miss crabb’s clothes were badly torn and she looked as if she had spent the night wretchedly, but with the exception of a few slight scratches and bruises she was unhurt.
“well jes’ look a there, will ye!” exclaimed tolliver as he spied mose. there was more of admiration than anger in his voice. “ef thet ther ’fernal dog haint got yer chin-ribbon in his ole mouth, i’m er rooster!”
“chin-ribbon,” repeated miss crabb, making a note, “i’m er rooster,” and she smiled with intense satisfaction. “you don’t know, mr. tolliver, how much i am indebted to you.”
“not a tall, miss crabb, not a tall. don’t mention of it,” he humbly said, “hit taint wo’th talkin’ erbout.”
the morning was in full blow now and the cat-birds were singing sweetly down the ravine. overhead a patch of blue sky gleamed and burned with the true empyrean glow. far away, down in the valley by the little river, a breakfast horn was blown with many a mellow flourish and a cool gentle breeze with dew on its wings fanned miss crabb’s sallow cheeks and rustled tolliver’s tawny beard. at the sound of the horn mose sprang to his feet and[62] loped away with the bit of ribbon fluttering from his mouth.
