Grace Harlowe's Overland Riders Among the Kentucky Mountaineers Part 2

Wash rolled his eyes from side to side and twisted his head as if to smooth out the wrinkles in his neck muscles.

"Speak up. Don't be afraid. Nothing can harm you. What was it?" urged Grace.

"De--de debbil him--him speak--him heyeh. Him speak to Wash right outer de air," gasped the boy.

"There! I knew something terrible would happen from your awful work on that harmonica," declared Emma Dean. "I'm not at all surprised, Wash."

Grace shook her head at Emma.

"You imagined all of that, Wash," she said. "What did you think you heard him say?"

"Him say--right outer de air, 'Was.h.!.+ Remembah, dis am de sebbenth yeah.'

Den Ah tuk a frenzy spell."

"What do you mean by the seventh year?" questioned Miss Briggs.

"Ah doan know. It's de hoodoo, Miss. Somet'n sure gwine happen to dis n.i.g.g.ah."

"Nonsense!" retorted Nora sharply.

"If you don't brace up and behave yourself, something surely will happen to you," warned Lieutenant Wingate.

"I believe the boy really did hear something," declared Grace as she gazed at the trembling lad before her. "Tom, please look there where he was sitting, will you?"

Tom Gray rose and started to obey her request. At this juncture the bushes parted, and a man, faintly outlined in the light from the campfire, stepped into view.

Wash saw him and, uttering another yell, made a break, but Hippy, on the watch for this very thing, caught and held him.

"Behave yourself or I'll let the fellow have you," he warned.

Tom hesitated, then stepped forward to meet the stranger. He saw a man apparently of early middle age, smooth-shaven, wearing long iron-gray hair that hung below his sombrero, the locks curling slightly at the bottom. The eyes that regarded Tom were keen and twinkling, full of good nature and humor.

"Well, sir, who are you?" demanded Grace's husband.

"Who am I? You will be surprised when I tell you. I'm the original Mystery Man. Spectacles, notions and trinkets are my specialty. I make the near blind see and dull the glare of the sun for those who do see."

"Glad to meet you. Come in, won't you?" invited Tom.

"That's what I'm here for. I've invited myself to have a snack with you-all."

Grace said they had just eaten, but that they would prepare something for their caller if he could wait. The stranger said he could and would wait, so Anne and Nora set about making coffee and frying bacon, Was.h.i.+ngton being still in too great a fright to do anything useful.

"I'll introduce myself again," resumed the caller. "I'm Jeremiah Long, and that's the long and short of it. Who are you?"

Grace introduced the members of her party, telling Long that they were riding for their health and amus.e.m.e.nt. Emma added that they were on their way in search of a fortune on Lieutenant Wingate's tract of mountain land, and would have said more had not Grace given her a warning look.

"Are you the voice from the wilderness?" demanded Hippy scowlingly.

The stranger threw back his head and laughed.

"I confess it. I am the 'seventh year' man. Couldn't resist the temptation to give the pickaninny a scare. Oh, thank you," he added as Nora handed a heaping plate of food to him and a tin cup full of steaming coffee.

"You are a peddler. Is that it?" questioned Emma.

"Heavens, no! I'm a promoter. I promote the well-being of these good mountain folks by giving them sight and by furnis.h.i.+ng them with nick-nacks to delight the eye. If you-all are troubled with poor sight I'll be happy to fit you with gla.s.ses warranted to make you see double.

More coffee, if you please. This is the real article. I think I'll have to make this camp my headquarters."

"This camp will be some miles from here by this time to-morrow," Grace Harlowe informed him.

"So will I. So will I. No bother at all about that. Wash, come here!"

Was.h.i.+ngton would not budge, so Hippy led him over to the caller.

"Scared you, didn't I, eh? Mebby it is the seventh year, but don't let that bother you. Here! Here's a new harmonica for you. It will make more noise than the one you lost when I whispered in your ear out yonder. Go on now, and behave yourself," he added, giving Wash a playful push.

"What can I do for you, folks?"

"I suppose you know this country well?" questioned Grace.

Long shrugged his shoulders.

"Sometimes I think I do, then I discover that I don't," he replied soberly. "No one knows it. I know the people, on the surface, and know my way around."

"Perhaps you know something about the moons.h.i.+ners and the feudists?"

suggested Nora.

Jeremiah Long gave her a quick glance of inquiry.

"Take a word of advice from the Mystery Man. The less you know about anything up here in these hills the better off you are in the end. Some folks have made the mistake of knowing too much for their own good, and some of them are here yet, but they ain't saying anything."

Grace thanked him and agreed that his advice was good, at the same time speculating in her own mind over their guest. She was not wholly satisfied that he was what he pretended to be, but what he was in reality, she could not even guess.

In the meantime, Was.h.i.+ngton, lost in admiration of his new possession, was drawing harmony, and some discord, from it and rolling his eyes soulfully. In the ecstasy of the moment he had forgotten his recent fright. Tom and the Mystery Man were engaged in conversation, Hippy now and then interjecting a question, for the topic under discussion was the tract of land owned by Hippy, though not since Emma's remark had any reference been made to Hippy's owners.h.i.+p of it. The guest's talk was largely about the lay of the land there and its possibilities.

"I'll see you folks if you are going there," he promised finally. "I shall be in that section of the range about three weeks from now, and maybe I can do you some good."

"Thank you," smiled Grace. "We shall be pleased to see you then or at any other time. Mr. Gray leaves to-morrow morning for the c.u.mberlands where he has business, and we hope to join him, or rather to have him join us, in about that time. I think--"

"Hulloa the camp!" shouted a voice from the bushes on the opposite side of the camp from that by which Mr. Long had entered.

"Hulloa yourself!" bellowed Hippy Wingate. "Come in. The door's wide open."

An instant later a man stepped into the camp, a rifle slung under one arm, a revolver hanging from his belt in its holster. He was tall, gaunt and raw-boned, a typical Kentucky mountaineer, and, as he stood there surveying the Overland Riders from beneath his broad-brimmed hat, not a word was spoken on either side. The mountaineer was studying the members of the Overland party, and the Overland Riders were regarding him inquiringly.

"Why, where is--" began Emma Dean, but a gesture from Grace checked her.

Not so with Was.h.i.+ngton Was.h.i.+ngton, however.

"Whar dat man?" he cried, referring to their first visitor.

A quick glance about the camp revealed to the amazed Overlanders that Jeremiah Long, the Mystery Man, had suddenly and mysteriously disappeared. No one had seen or heard him go. He had simply melted away.