way Down In Lonesome Cove Part 6

His tone was so natural, his manner so unsuspecting, that a new doubt began to stir in Luke Todd's mind.

"What ails ye ter keep the mare down hyar, Tobe?" he asked, suddenly.

"Tears like ter me ez that be powerful comical."

"Kase," said Tobe, reasonably, "some durned horse-thieves kem arter her one night. I fired at t'em. I hain't hearn on 'em sence. An' so I jes hid the mare."

Todd was puzzled. He s.h.i.+fted his pipe in his mouth. Finally he said: "Some folks 'lowed ez ye hed no right ter take up that mare, bein' ez ye war the ranger."

Tobe Gryce whirled round abruptly. "What war I a-goin' ter do, then?

Feed the critter fur nuthin till the triflin' scamp ez owned her kem arter her? I couldn't work her 'thout takin' her up an' hevin her appraised. Thar's a law agin sech. An' I couldn't git somebody ter toll her off an' take her up. That ain't fair. What ought I ter hev done?"

"Wa'al," said Luke, drifting into argument, "the town-folks 'low ez ye hev got nuthin ter prove it by, the stray-book an' records bein' burnt.

The town-folks 'low ez ye can't prove by writin' an' sech ez ye ever tried ter find the owner." "The town-folks air fairly sodden in foolishness," exclaimed the ranger, indignantly.

He drew from his ample pocket a roll of ragged newspapers, and pointed with his great thumb at a paragraph. And Luke Todd read by the light of the lantern the advertis.e.m.e.nt and description of the estray printed according to law in the nearest newspaper.

The newspaper was so infrequent a factor in the lives of the mountain gossips that this refutation of their theory had never occurred to them.

The sheet was trembling in Luke Todd's hand; his eyes filled. The cavern with its black distances, its walls close at hand sparkling with delicate points of whitest light; the yellow flare of the lantern; the grotesque shadows on the ground; the fair little girl with her golden hair; the sleek black mare; the burly figure of the ranger--all the scene swayed before him. He remembered the gracious vision that had saluted him; he shuddered at the crime from which he was rescued. Pity him because he knew naught of the science of optics; of the bewildering effects of a sudden burst of light upon the delicate mechanism of the eye; of the vagaries of illusion.

"Tobe," he said, in a solemn voice--all the echoes were bated to awed whispers--"I hev been gin ter view a vision this night, bein' 'twar Chris-mus Eve. An' now I want ter shake hands on it fur peace."

Then he told the whole story, regardless of the ranger's demonstrations, albeit they were sometimes violent enough. Tobe sprang up with a snort of rage, his eyes flas.h.i.+ng, his thick tongue stumbling with the curses crowding upon it, when he realized the suspicions rife against him at the county town. But he stood with his clinched hand slowly relaxing, and with the vague expression which one wears who looks into the past, as he listened to the recital of Eugenia's pilgrimage in the snowy wintry dawn. "Mighty few folks hev got a wife ez set store by 'em like that," Luke remarked, impersonally.

The ranger's rejoinder seemed irrelevant.

"'Genie be a-goin' ter see a powerful differ arter this," he said, and fell to musing.

Snow, fatigue, and futility destroyed the ardor of the lynching party after a time, and they dispersed to their homes. Little was said of this expedition afterward, and it became quite impossible to find a man who would admit having joined it. For the story went the rounds of the mountain that there had been a mistake as to unfair dealing on the part of the ranger, and Luke Todd was quite content to accept from the county treasury half the sum of the mare's apprais.e.m.e.nt--with the deduction of the stipulated per cent.--which Tobe Gryce had paid, the receipt for which he produced.

The gossips complained, however, that after all this was settled according to law, Tobe wouldn't keep the mare, and insisted that Luke should return to him the money he had paid into the treasury, half her value, "bein' so brigaty he wouldn't own Luke Todd's beast. An' Luke agreed ter so do; but he didn't want ter be outdone, so fur the keep o'

the filly he gin the Cunnel a heifer. An' Tobe war mighty nigh tickled ter death fur the Cunnel ter hev a cow o' her own."

And now when December skies darken above Lonesome Cove, and the snow in dizzying whirls sifts softly down, and the gaunt brown leafless heights are clothed with white as with a garment, and the wind whistles and shouts shrilly, and above the great crag loom the distant mountains, and below are glimpsed the long stretches of the valley, the two men remember the vision that illumined the cavernous solitudes that night, and bless the gracious power that sent salvation 'way down to Lonesome Cove, and cherish peace and good-will for the sake of a little Child that lay in a manger.