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.—Concerning Hawk Rufe
CHAPTER V.—The Waggon-maker
CHAPTER VI.—The Maid and the Intruders
CHAPTER VII.—The Master Builders
CHAPTER VIII.—Some Remarks of Saint Paul
CHAPTER IX.—Christian the Blacksmith
CHAPTER X.—On the Choosing of Enemies
CHAPTER XI.—The Wardens of the River
CHAPTER XII.—The Uses of the Moon
CHAPTER XIII.—The Six Hundred
CHAPTER XIV.—Relating To the First Liars
CHAPTER XV.—When Providence Is Pagan
CHAPTER XVI.—Through the Big Water
CHAPTER XVII.—Along the Hickory Ridges
CHAPTER XVIII.—By the Light of a Lantern
CHAPTER XIX.—The Orbit of the Dwarfs
CHAPTER XX.—On the Art of Going To Ruin
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