Dwellers in the Hills

Melville Davisson Post

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• Publié par: issa
• Publié le: 08 décembre 2010
• Nombre de lectures: 18
• Langue: English

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Project Gutenberg's Dwellers in the Hills, by Melville Davisson Post This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net Title: Dwellers in the Hills Author: Melville Davisson Post Release Date: August 30, 2009 [EBook #29851] Language: English Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DWELLERS IN THE HILLS *** Produced by Peter Vachuska, Chuck Greif, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net Dwellers in the Hills By Melville Davisson Post Author of "Randolph Mason", "The Man of Last Resort," etc. G. P. Putnam's Sons New York and London The Knickerbocker Press 1901 Copyright, 1901 BY MELVILLE DAVISSON POST The Knickerbocker Press, New York TO MY MOTHER CONTENTS CHAPTER I.—THE OCTOBER LAND CHAPTER II.—THE PETTICOAT AND THE PRETENDER CHAPTER III.—THE PASSING OF AN ILLUSION CHAPTER IV.—C ONCERNING H AWK R UFE CHAPTER V.—THE WAGGON-MAKER CHAPTER VI.—THE MAID AND THE INTRUDERS CHAPTER VII.—THE MASTER BUILDERS CHAPTER VIII.—SOME R EMARKS OF SAINT PAUL CHAPTER IX.—C HRISTIAN THE BLACKSMITH CHAPTER X.—ON THE C HOOSING OF ENEMIES CHAPTER XI.—THE WARDENS OF THE R IVER CHAPTER XII.—THE U SES OF THE MOON CHAPTER XIII.—THE SIX H UNDRED CHAPTER XIV.—R ELATING TO THE FIRST LIARS CHAPTER XV.—WHEN PROVIDENCE IS PAGAN CHAPTER XVI.—THROUGH THE BIG WATER CHAPTER XVII.—ALONG THE H ICKORY R IDGES CHAPTER XVIII.—BY THE LIGHT OF A LANTERN CHAPTER XIX.—THE ORBIT OF THE D WARFS CHAPTER XX.—ON THE ART OF GOING TO R UIN CHAPTER XXI.—THE EXIT OF THE PRETENDER NEW FICTION By Melville D. Post Published by G. P. Putnam DWELLERS IN THE HILLS CHAPTER I THE OCTOBER LAND I sat on the ground with my youthful legs tucked under me, and the bridle rein of El Mahdi over my arm, while I hammered a copper rivet into my broken stirrup strap. A little farther down the ridge Jud was idly swinging his great driving whip in long, snaky coils, flicking now a dry branch, and now a red autumn leaf from the clay road. The slim buckskin lash would dart out hissing, writhe an instant on the hammered road-bed, and snap back with a sharp, clear report. The great sorrel was oblivious of this pastime of his master. The lash whistled narrowly by his red ears, but it never touched them. In the evening sunlight the Cardinal was a horse of bronze. Opposite me in the shadow of the tall hickory timber the man Ump, doubled like a finger, was feeling tenderly over the coffin joints and the steel blue hoofs of the Bay Eagle, blowing away the dust from the clinch of each shoe-nail and pressing the flat calks with his thumb. No mother ever explored with more loving care the mouth of her child for evidence of a coming tooth. Ump was on his never-ending quest for the loose shoe-nail. It was the serious business of his life. I think he loved this trim, nervous mare better than any other thing in the world. When he rode, perched like a monkey, with his thin legs held close to her sides, and his short, humped back doubled over, and his head with its long hair bobbing about as though his neck were loose-coupled somehow, he was eternally caressing her mighty withers, or feeling for the play of each iron tendon under her satin skin. And when we stopped, he glided down to finger her shoe-nails. Then he talked to the mare sometimes, as he was doing now. "There is a little ridge in the hoof, girl, but it won't crack; I know it won't crack." And, "This nail is too high. It is my fault. I was gabbin' when old Hornick drove it." On his feet, he looked like a clothes-pin with the face of the strangest old child. He might have been one left from the race of Dwarfs who, tradition said, lived in the Hills before we came. His mare was the mother of El Mahdi. I remember how Ump cried when the colt was born, and how he sat out in the rain, a miserable drenched rat, because his dear Bay Eagle was in the mysterious troubles of maternity, and because she must be very unhappy at being on the north side of the hill among the black hawthorn bushes, for that was a bad sign—the worst sign in the world —showing the devil would have his day with the colt now and then. I used, when I was little, to hear talk once in a while of some very wonderful person whom men called a "genius," and of what it was to be a genius. The word puzzled me a good deal, because I could not understand what was meant when it was explained to me. I used to ponder over it, and hope that some day I might see one, which would be quite as wonderful, I had no doubt, as seeing the man out of the moon. Then, when El Mahdi came into his horse estate and our lives began to run together, I would lie awake at night trying to study out what sort of horse it was that deliberately walked off the high banks along the road, or pitched me out into the deep blue-grass, or over into the sedge bushes, when it occurred to him that life was monotonous, tumbling me upside down like a girl, although I could stick in my brother's big saddle when the Black Abbot was having a bad day,—and everybody knew the Black Abbot was the worst horse in the Hills. Wondering about it, the suggestion came that perhaps El Mahdi was a "genius." Then I pressed the elders for further data on the word, and studied the horse in the light of what they told me. He fitted snug to the formula. He neither feared God, nor regarded man, so far as I could tell. He knew how to do things without learning, and he had no conscience. The explanation had arrived. El Mahdi was a genius. After that we got on better; he yielded a sort of constructive obedience, and I lorded it over him, swaggering like a king's governor. But deep down in my youthful bosom, I knew that this obedience was only pretended, and that he obeyed merely because he was indifferent. He stood by while I hammered the stirrup, with his iron grey head held high in the air, looking away over the hickory ridge across the blue hills, to the dim wavering face of the mountains.