The shadows of the great dead trees in the midst of the Settlement were at their minimum in the vertical vividness of the noontide. They bore scant resemblance to those memorials of gigantic growths which towered, stark and white, so high to the intensely blue sky; instead, they were like some dark and leafless underbrush clustering about the sapless trunks. The sandy stretch of the clearing reflected the sunlight with a deeply yellow glare, its poverty of soil illustrated by frequent clumps of the woolly mullein-weeds. The Indian corn and the sparse grass were crudely green in the enclosures about the grey, weather-beaten log-houses, which stood distinct against the dark, restful tones of the forest filling the background. The mountains with each remove wore every changing disguise of distance: shading from sombre green to a dull purple; then overlaid with a dubious blue; next showing a true and turquoise richness; still farther, a delicate transient hue that has no name; and so away to the vantage-ground of illusions, where the ideal poises upon the horizon, and the fact and the fantasy are undistinguishably blended. The intermediate valleys appeared in fragmentary glimpses here and there; sometimes there was only the verdure of the tree-tops; one was cleft by a canary-coloured streak which betokened a harvested wheat-field; in another blazed a sapphire circle, where the vertical sun burned in the waters of a blue salt 'lick.'

The landscape was still—very still; not the idle floating of a cloud, not the vague shifting of a shadow, not the flutter of a wing. But the Settlement on the crags above had known within its experience no similar commotion. There were many horses hitched to the fences, some girded with blankets in lieu of saddles. Clumsy waggons stood among the stumps in the clearing, with the oxen unyoked and their provender spread before them on the ground. Although the log-cabins gave evidence of hospitable proceedings within, family parties were seated in some of the vehicles, munching the dinner providently brought with them. All the dogs in the Great Smoky, except perhaps a very few incapacitated by extreme age or extreme youth, were humble participants in the outing, having trotted under the waggons many miles from their mountain homes, and now lay with lolling tongues among the wheels. About the store lounged a number of men, mostly the stolid, impassive mountaineers. A few, however, although in the customary jeans, bore the evidence of more worldly prosperity and a higher culture; and there were two or three resplendent in the 'b'iled shirt and store clothes' of civilization, albeit the first was without collar or cravat, and the latter showed antique cut and reverend age. These were candidates—talkative, full of anecdote, quick to respond, easily flattered, and flattering to the last degree. They were especially jocose and friendly with each other, but amid the fraternal guffaws and interchanges of 'chaws o' terbacco' many quips were bandied, barbed with ridicule; many good stories recounted, charged with uncomplimentary deductions; many jokes cracked, discovering the kernel of slander or detraction in the merry shell. The mountaineers looked on, devoid of envy, and despite their stolidity with an understanding of the conversational masquerade. Beneath this motley verbal garb was a grave and eager aspiration for public favour, and it was a matter of no small import when a voter would languidly glance at another with a silent laugh, slowly shake his head with a not-to-be-convinced gesture, and spit profusely on the ground.

In and out of the store dawdled a ceaseless procession of free and enlightened citizens; always emerging with an aspect of increased satisfaction, wiping their mouths with big bandanna handkerchiefs, and sometimes with the more primitive expedient of a horny hand. Nathan Hoodendin sat in front of the door, keeping store after his usual fashion, except that the melancholy wheeze 'Jer'miah' rose more frequently upon the air. Jer'miah's duties consisted chiefly in serving out whisky and apple-jack, and the little drudge stuck to his work with an earnest pertinacity, for which the privilege of draining the very few drops left in the bottom of the glass after each dram seemed hardly an adequate reward.

The speeches, which were made in the open air, the candidate mounted on a stump in front of the store, were all much alike—the same self-laudatory meekness, the same inflamed party spirit, the same jocose allusions to opponents,—each ending, 'Gentlemen, if I am elected to office I will serve you to the best of my skill and ability. Gentlemen, I thank you for your attention.' The crowd, close about, stood listening with great intentness, each wearing the impartial pondering aspect of an umpire.

On the extreme outskirts of the audience, however, there was an unprecedented lapse of attention; a few of the men, seated on stumps or on the waggon-tongues, now and then whispering together, and casting excited glances towards the blacksmith's shop. Sometimes one would rise, approach it stealthily, stoop down, and peer in at the low window. The glare outside made the interior seem doubly dark, and a moment or two was needed to distinguish the anvil, the fireless hearth, the sooty hood. A vague glimmer fell through a crevice in the clapboard roof upon a shock of yellow hair and gleaming eyes, two sullen points of light in the midst of the deep shadows. None of the mountaineers had ever seen a wild beast caged, but Rick Tyler's look of fierce and surly despair, of defiance, of all vain and vengeful impulses, as he sat bound hand and foot in the forge, was hardly more human. The faces multiplied at the window,—stolid, or morbidly curious, awe-struck, or with a grinning display of long tobacco-stained teeth. Many of them were well known to Rick Tyler, and if ever he had liked them he hated them now.

There was a stir outside, a clamour of many voices. The 'speaking' was over. Footsteps sounded close to the door of the blacksmith's shop. The sheriff was about to enter, and the crowd pressed eagerly forward to catch a glimpse of the prisoner. Arriving this morning, the sheriff had been glad to combine his electioneering interests with his official duty. The opportunity of canvassing among the assemblage gave him, he thought, an ample excuse for remaining a few hours longer at the Settlement than was necessary; and when he heard of the impending diversion of the gander-pulling he was convinced that his horse required still more rest before starting with his prisoner for Shaftesville jail.

He went briskly into the forge, carrying a pair of clanking handcuffs. He busied himself in exchanging these for the cord with which the young fellow's wrists were bound. It had been drawn brutally tight, and the flesh was swollen and raw. 'It seems ter me, ez 'twas the blacksmith that nabbed ye, he might hev done better for ye than this, by a darned sight,' he said in an undertone.

He had not been reluctant at first that the crowd should come in, but he appreciated unnecessary harshness as an appeal for sympathy, and he called out to his deputy, who had accompanied him on his mission, to clear the room.

'We're goin' ter keep him shet up fur an hour or so, an' start down the mounting in the cool o' the evenin',' he explained; 'so ef ye want ter view him the winder is yer chance.'

The forge was cleared at last, the broad light vanishing with the closing of the great barn-like doors. Rick heard the lowered voices of the sheriff and deputy gravely consulting without, as they secured the fastenings with a padlock which they had brought with them in view of emergencies. They had taken the precaution, too, to nail strips of board at close intervals across the shutterless windows; more, perhaps, to prevent the intrusion of the curious without than the escape of the manacled prisoner. The section of the landscape glimpsed through the bars—the far blue mountains and a cluster of garnet pokeberries, with a leaf or two of the bush growing close by the wall—sprang into abnormal brilliancy at the end of the dark vista of the interior. It was a duskier brown within for that fragment of vivid colour and dazzling clearness in the window. Naught else could be seen, except a diagonal view of the porch of one of the log-cabins, and the corn-field beyond.

Curiosity was not yet sated; now and then a face peered in, as Rick sat bound securely, the cords still about his limbs and feet and the clanking handcuffs on his wrists. These inquisitive apparitions at the window grew fewer as the time went by, and presently ceased altogether. The bustle outside increased: it drowned the drowsy drone of the cicada; it filled the mountain solitudes with a trivial incongruity. Often sounded there the sudden tramp of a horse and a loud guffaw. Rick knew that they were making ready for the gander-pulling, which unique sport had been selected by the long-headed mountain politicians as likely to insure the largest assemblage possible from the surrounding region to hear the candidates prefer their claims.

Electioneering topics were not suspended even while the younger men were saddling and bridling their horses for the proposed festivity. As Micajah Green strolled across the clearing and joined a group of elderly spectators who in their chairs sat tilted against the walls of the store, which began to afford some shade, he found that his own prospects were under discussion.

'They tell me, 'Cajah,' said Nathan Hoodendin, who had hardly budged that day, his conversational activity, however, atoning for his physical inertia, 'ez ye air bound ter eend this 'lection with yer finger in yer mouth.'

'Don't know why,' said Micajah Green, with a sharp, sudden effect as of an angry bark, and lapsing from the smiling mien which he was wont to conserve as a candidate.

'Waal, word hev been brung hyar ter the Settlemint ez this prophet o' ourn in the Big Smoky, he say ye ain't goin' ter be re'lected.'

The sheriff laughed scornfully, snapping his fingers as he stood before the group, and whirled airily on his boot-heel.

Nevertheless, he was visibly annoyed. He knew the strength of a fantastic superstition among ignorant people, and their disposition to verify rather than to disprove. There were voters in the Big Smoky liable to be controlled by a morbid impulse to make the prophet's word true. It was an unexpected and unmeasured adverse influence, and he chafed under the realization.

'An' what sets Pa'son Kelsey agin me?' he demanded.

'He ain't in no ways sot agin you-uns ez I knows on,' discriminated Nathan Hoodendin, studious impartiality expressed among the graven wrinkles of his face. 'Not ez it war sot agin ye; but ye jes' 'lows ez that air the fac'. Ye ain't goin' ter be 'lected agin.'

'The pa'son hev got a gredge agin the old man, hyar,' said the deputy. He was a stalwart fellow of about twenty-five years of age. He had sandy hair and moustache, a broad freckled face, light grey eyes, and a thin-lipped, defiant mouth. He bore himself with an air of bravado which conveyed as many degrees of insult as one felt disposed to take up. 'He lit out on me fust—I war with Amos Jeemes thar,—an' the pa'son put us out'n the meet'n'-house. He did! He don't want no sorter sher'ff's in the Big Smoky. An' he called Gid Fletcher, the blacksmith, "Judas" fur arrestin' that lot o' bacon yander in the shop, when he kem hyar ter the Settlemint fur powder, ter keep him able to resis' the law! Who sold Rick Tyler that powder, Mister Hoodendin?' he added, turning his eyes on the proprietor of the store.

Old Hoodendin hesitated. 'Jer'miah,' he wheezed feebly.

His anxious eyes gleamed from out their perplexed wrinkles like a ray of sunlight twinkling through a spider-web.

There was an interchange of glances between the sheriff and his deputy, and the admonished subordinate continued:

''Twar jes' the boy, eh; an' I reckon he war afeard o' Rick's shootin'-irons an' sech.'

''Twar Jer'miah,' repeated the storekeeper, his discreet eyes upon the bosom of his blue-checked homespun shirt.

'Waal, the pa'son, ez I war sayin', he called the blacksmith "Judas" fur capturing the malefactor, an' the gov'nor's reward "blood-money,"' continued the deputy, expertly electioneering, since his own tenure was on the uncertain continuance of the sheriff in office. 'An' now he's goin' round the kentry prophesyin' as 'Cajah Green ain't goin' ter be 'lected. Waal, thar war false prophets 'fore his time, an' will be agin, I'm thinkin'.'

There was a sudden clamour upon the air; a vibrant, childish voice, and then a great horse-laugh. An old crone had come out of one of the cabins and was standing by the fence, holding out to Gid Fletcher, who seemed master of ceremonies, a large white gander. The fowl's physiognomy was thrown into bold prominence by a thorough greasing of the head and neck. His wings flapped, he hissed fiercely, he dolorously squawked. A little girl was running frantically by the side of the old woman, clutching at her skirt and vociferously claiming the 'gaynder.' Hers it was, since 'Mam gin me the las' aig when the grey goose laid her ladder out, an' it war sot under the old Dominicky hen ez kem off'n her nest through settin' three weeks, like a hen will do. An' then 'twar put under old Top-knot, an' 'twar the fust aig hatched out'n old Top-knot's settin'.'

This unique pedigree, shrieked out with a shrill distinctness, mixed with the lament of the prescient bird, had a ludicrous effect. Fletcher took the gander with a guffaw, the old crone chuckled, and the young men laughed as they mounted their horses.

The blacksmith hardly knew which part he preferred to play. The element of domination in his character gave a peculiar relish to the rÔle of umpire; yet with his pride in his deftness and strength it cost him a pang to forego the competition in which he felt himself an assured victor. He armed himself with a whip of many thongs, and took his stand beneath a branch of one of the trees, from which the gander was suspended by his big feet, head downward. Aghast at his disagreeable situation, his wild eyes stared about; his great wings flapped drearily; his long neck protruded with its peculiar motion, unaware of the clutch it invited. What a pity so funny a thing can suffer!

The gaping crowd at the store, on the cabin porches, on the fences, watched the competitors with wide-eyed, wide-mouthed delight. There were gallant figures amongst them, shown to advantage on young horses whose spirit was not yet quelled by the plough. They filed slowly around the prescribed space once, twice; then each made the circuit alone at a break-neck gallop. As the first horseman rode swiftly along the crest of the precipice, his head high against the blue sky, the stride of the steed covering mountain and valley, he had the miraculous effect of Prince Firouz Shah and the enchanted horse in their mysterious aËrial journeys. When he passed beneath the branch whence hung the frantic, fluttering bird, the blacksmith, standing sentinel with his whip of many thongs, laid it upon the flank of the horse, and despite the wild and sudden plunge the rider rose in his stirrups and clutched the greased neck of the swaying gander. Tough old fowl! The strong ligaments resisted. The first hardly hoped to pluck the head, and after his hasty, convulsive grasp his frightened horse carried him on almost over the bluff. The slippery neck refused to yield at the second pull, and the screams of the delighted spectators mingled with the shrieks of the gander. The mountain colt, a clay-bank, with a long black tail full of cockle-burrs, bearing the third man, reared violently under the surprise of the lash. As the rider changed the balance of his weight, rising in his stirrups to tug at the gander's neck, the colt pawed the air wildly with his fore feet, fell backward, and rolled upon the ground, almost over the hapless wight. The blacksmith was fain to support himself against the tree for laughter, and the hurrahing Settlement could not remember when it had enjoyed anything so much. The man gathered himself up sheepishly, and limped off; the colt being probably a mile away, running through the woods at the height of his speed.

The gander was in a panic by this time. If ever a fowl of that gender has hysterics, that gander exhibited the disease. He hissed; he flapped his wings; he squawked; he stared; he used every limited power of expression with which nature has gifted him. He was so funny one could hardly look at him.

As Amos James was about to take his turn, amid flattering cries of 'Amos'll pull his head!' 'Amos'll git his head!' a man who had suddenly appeared on horseback at the verge of the clearing, and had paused, contemplating the scene, rode swiftly forward to the tree.

'Ye can't pull out'n turn—ye can't pull out'n turn, pa'son!' cried half a dozen voices from the younger men. The elders stared in amaze that the preacher should demean his calling by engaging in this public sport.

Kelsey checked his pace before he reached the blacksmith, who, seeing that he was not going to pull, forbore to lay on the lash. The next moment he thought that Kelsey was going to pull; he had risen in his stirrups with uplifted arm.

'What be you-uns a-goin' ter do?' demanded Gid Fletcher, amazed.

'I'm a-goin' ter take this hyar critter down.'

His words thrilled through the settlement like a current of electricity. The next phrase was lost in a wild chorus of exclamations.

'Take the gaynder down?'

'What fur?'

'Hi Kelsey hev los' his mind; surely he hev!'

Then above the angry, undistinguishable tumult of remonstrance the preacher's voice rose clear and impressive:

'The pains o' the beastis He hev made teches the Lord in heaven; fur He marks the sparrow's fall, an' minds Himself o' the pitiful o' yearth!' He spoke with the authority appertaining to his calling. 'The spark o' life in this fow-el air kindled ez fraish ez yourn—fur hevin' a soul, ye don't ginerally prove it; an' hevin' no soul ter save, this gaynder hain't yearned the torments o' hell, an' I'm a-goin' ter take the critter down.'

''Tain't yer gaynder!' conclusively argued the blacksmith, applying the swage of his own conviction.

'He air my gaynder!' shrieked out a childish voice. 'Take him down—take him down!'

This objection to the time-honoured sport seemed hardly less eccentric than an exhibition of insanity. To apply a dignified axiom of humanity to that fluttering, long-suffering tumult of anguish familiarly known as the 'gaynder' was regarded as ludicrously inappropriate. To refer to the Lord and the typical sparrow in this connection seemed almost blasphemy. Nevertheless, with the rural reverence for spiritual authority and the superior moral perception of the clergy, the crowd wore a submissively balked aspect, and even the young men who had not yet had their tug at the fowl's neck succumbed, under the impression that the preacher's fiat had put a stop to the gander-pulling for this occasion.

As Kelsey once more lifted his hand to liberate the creator of the day's merriment, the blacksmith, his old grudge reinforced by a new one, gave the horse a cut with his whip. The animal plunged under the unexpected blow, and carried the rider beyond the tree. Reverence for the cloth had no longer a restraining influence on the young mountaineers. They burst into yells of laughter.

'Cl'ar out, pa'son!' they exclaimed delightedly. 'Ye hev hed yer pull. Cl'ar out!'

There was a guffaw among the elders about the store. A clamour of commenting voices rose from the cabin porches, where the feminine spectators stood. The gander squawked dolorously. The hubbub was increased by the sudden sharp yelping of hounds that had started game somewhere near at hand. Afterward, from time to time, canine snarls and yaps rose vociferously upon the air—unheeded, since the inherent interests of a gander-pulling were so enhanced by the addition of a moral discussion and the jeopardy of its conclusion.

The next man in turn, Amos James, put his horse to a canter, and came in a cloud of yellow dust toward the objective point under the tree. In another moment there was almost a collision, for Kelsey had wheeled and ridden back so swiftly that he reined up under the bough where the fowl hung as Amos James, rising in his stirrups, dashed toward it. His horse shied, and carried him past, out of reach, while the blacksmith stepped precipitately toward the bole, exclaiming angrily:

'Don't ride me down, Hi Kelsey!'

He recovered his presence of mind and the use of his whip immediately, and laid a stinging lash upon the parson's horse, as once more the champion of the bird reached up to release it. The next instant Gid Fletcher recoiled suddenly; there was a significant gesture, a steely glimmer, and the blacksmith was gazing with petrified reluctance down the muzzle of a six-shooter. He dared not move a muscle as he stood, with that limited field of vision, and with more respectful acquiescence in the opinion of another man than he had ever before been brought to entertain. The horseman looked at his enemy in silence for a moment, the broad-brimmed hat shading his face, with its melancholy expression, its immobile features, and its flashing eyes.

'Drap that lash,' Kelsey said.

Gid Fletcher's grasp relaxed; then the parson with his left hand reached up and contrived to unloose the fluttering gander. He handed the bird down to the little girl, who had been fairly under the horse's heels at the tree since the first suggestion of its deliverance. She clutched it in great haste, wrapped her apron about it, and carrying it baby-wise, ran fleetly off, casting apprehensive glances over her shoulder.

So the gander was saved, but in its fright, its woe, and the frantic presage in whatever organ may serve it for mind, the fowl had a pretty fair case against the Settlement for exemplary damages.

The sport ended in great disaffection and a surly spirit. Several small grievances among the younger men promised to result in a disturbance of the peace. The blacksmith, held at bay only by the pistol, flared out furiously when relieved of that strong coercion. His pride was roused in that he should be publicly balked and terrorized.

'I'll remember this,' he said, shaking his fist in the prophet's face. 'I'll save the gredge agin ye.'

But he was pulled off by his brethren in the church, who thought it unwise to have a member in good standing again assault the apostle of peace.

Amos James—a tall, black-eyed fellow of twenty-three or four, with black hair, slightly powdered with flour, and a brown jeans suit, thus reminiscent also of the mill—sighed for the sport in which he had hoped to be victorious.

'Pa'son talked like the gaynder war his blood relation—own brothers, I'm a-thinkin',' he drawled disconsolately.

The sheriff was disposed to investigate prophecy.

'I've heard, pa'son,' he said, with a smile ill concealing his vexation, 'ye have foreseen I ain't goin' ter be lucky with this here 'lection; goin' ter come out o' the leetle eend o' the horn.'

The prophet, too, was perturbed and out of sorts. The sustaining grace of feeling a martyr was lacking in the event of to-day, in which he himself had wielded the coercive hand. He marked the covert aggressiveness of the sheriff's manner, and revolted at being held to account and forced to contest. He fixed his gleaming eyes upon the officer's face, but said nothing.

'I'm a-hustlin' off now,' said Micajah Green, 'an' ez I won't be up in the Big Smoky agin afore the 'lection, I lowed ez I'd find out what ails yer ter set sech a durned thing down as a fac'. Why ain't I goin' ter be 'lected?' he reiterated, his temper flaring in his face, his eyes fierce.

But for the dragging block and chain of his jeopardized prospects he could not have restrained himself from active insult. With his peculiar qualifications for making enemies, and the opportunities afforded by the difficult office he had filled for the past two years, he illustrated at this moment the justice of the prophecy. But his evident anxiety, his eagerness, even his fierce intolerance, had a touch of the pathetic to the man for whom earth held so little and heaven nothing. It seemed useless to suggest, to admonish, to argue.

'I say the word,' declared the prophet. 'I can't ondertake ter gin the reason.'

'Ye won't gin the reason?' said the sheriff, between his teeth.

'Naw,' said the prophet.

'An' I won't be 'lected, hey?'

'Ye won't be 'lected.'

The deputy touched the sheriff on the shoulder.

'I want ter see ye.'

'In a minute,' said the elder man impatiently.

'I want ter see ye.'

Something in the tone constrained attention. The sheriff turned, and looked into a changed face. He suffered himself to be led aside.

'Ye ain't goin' ter be 'lected,' said the deputy grimly, 'an' for a damned good reason. Look-a-thar!'

They had walked to the blacksmith's shop. The deputy motioned to him to look into the window.

'Damn ye, what is it?' demanded Micajah Green, mystified.

The other made no reply, and the officer stooped, and looked into the dusky interior.

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