Dwellers in the Hills

It was a hungry, bareheaded youngster that rode up at sundown to Roy's tavern. The yellow mud clinging to my clothes had dried in cakes, and as my hat was on the other side of the Valley River, my head, as described by Ump, was a "middlin' fair brush heap."

Adam Roy gaped in astonishment when I called him to the door to ask about a field for the cattle.

"Law! Quiller," he cried, "where in the name o' fathers have you been a-wallerin'?"

"We went swimming in the Valley," I answered.

"Mercy sakes!" said the tavern-keeper, "you must a mired down. You've got mud enough on you to daub a chimney, an' your head looks like a chaff-pen on a windy mornin'. What did you go swimmin' for?"

"Hobson's choice," said I.

"Was the ferry washed out?" he asked.

"It was out," I said. "How it got out is a heifer of another drove."

"An' did you swim the cattle?" The man leaned out of the door.

I pointed my finger to the drove coming down the road. "There they are," said I. "Do you see any wings on them?"

"Lord love me!" cried the tavern-keeper, "I'd never put cattle in the Valley when it was up, unless I wanted to see their tails a stickin' out o' the drift-wood. Why didn't you wait until they fixed the ferry? What was your hurry?"

"No matter about that hurry," said I. "Just now we have another hurry that is a trifle more urgent. We want a field for the cattle, and corn and clover hay and plenty of bedding for the horses, and something hot for supper. We are all as hungry as Job's turkey."

"One thing at a time, Quiller," said the man, spreading his hands. "Turn the cattle into the north boundary an' come along to the house."

I went back up the road, threw down the bars to the pasture, and counted the cattle as they went strolling in. The Polled-Angus muleys seemed none the worse for their long swim, and they began to crop the brown grass the moment they were out in the field.

Jud and the Cardinal came up after the first hundred, and took a place by El Mahdi.

I think I know now the joy of the miser counting his gold pieces at midnight in his cellar, looking at each yellow eagle lovingly, and passing his finger over the milled rim of each new-minted coin, while the tallow candle melts down on the bench beside him.

I could close my eyes and see a black mass going down in the yellow water, with here and there a bullock drifting exhausted in the eddy, or heaps of bloated bodies piled up on a sandbar of the Valley River. And there, with my eyes wide open, was the drove spreading out along the hillside as it passed in between the two chestnut bar-posts.