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He walked briskly along the path through the sassafras and sumach bushes, on which the rain-drops still clung. He was presently brushing them off in showers, for he had begun to run. It occurred to him that this was no time to seem even a trifle remiss in his work at the tanyard.
The latter received a good offer for the tanyard, and, upon an estate next to his own coming shortly afterwards into the market, he purchased it, and thus the Upmead estates became as extensive as they had been before the time of his ancestor, who had so seriously diminished them during the reign of Elizabeth.
Sarah's mien of professional reserve melted. "Do I know Dave Cowan?" she challenged. "Do I know him? I'd know his hide in a tanyard." "That would seem sufficient," remarked Gideon. "A harum-scarum good-for-nothing no harm in him. A great talker make you think black is white if you listen. Don't stay here much in and out, no one knows where to. Says the Center is slow. What do you think of that?
As he came crashing through the underbrush into view of the tanyard, he noticed instantly that it did not wear its usual simple, industrial aspect. A group of excited men were standing in front of the shed, one of them gesticulating wildly. And running toward the bars came Tim Griggs, panting and white- faced, and exclaiming incoherently at the sight of Birt.
Andy Byers replied with stalwart independence to his employer. "I hev laid off ter attend. Ef ye want ennybody ter bide with the tanyard, an' keer fur this hyar pit, ye kin do it yerse'f, or else Birt kin. I hev laid off ter attend." Andy Byers was a man of moods. His shaggy eyebrows to-day overshadowed eyes sombre and austere. He seemed, if possible, a little slower than was his wont.
For when Birt Dicey went "yerrands" on the mule through the woods to the Settlement, Tennessee often rode on the pommel of his saddle. She followed in the furrow when he ploughed. She was as familiar an object at the tanyard as the bark-mill itself. When he wielded the axe, she perched on one end of the woodpile.
"Hain't Nate come yit?" he ventured. The tanner suddenly put into the conversation. "War it Nate Griggs ez ye war aimin' ter trade with ter take yer place wunst in a while in the tanyard?" Birt assented. "An' he 'lowed he'd be hyar ter-day by sun-up. Rufe brung that word from him yestiddy."
"Old Safety was tickled to death at first when he put off this refuse on her at a price not much more than double what they would have brought in a tanyard, which was all they'd ever be good for except bone fertilizer, mebbe; but he was sick unto death when he found they was just what she wanted, the skinnier the better and he could have got anything he asked for 'em.
"Waal," put in Rufe, hastening to explain this discrepancy in the spectre, "I hearn you-uns a-sayin' that mornin', fore ye set out from the tanyard, ez she war mighty nigh dead an' would be gone 'fore night. An' ez he hed tole me he'd skeer the wits out'n me, I 'lowed ez I could show him ez his wits warn't ez tough ez mine.
"Ye see," he continued, "one day when his uncle Tim war over hyar ter the tanyard, I gin him one o' my game deedies; an' ez soon ez he got home he showed 'em all that thar deedie powerful, spryest poultry ye ever see!" Rufe smiled ecstatically as only a chicken fancier can. "An' Pig-wigs war plumb DE-stracted fur a deedie too. An' he run all the way over hyar ter git me ter gin him one.
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