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But when it was proved that the tramp-boy had stolen nothing, when all search for him was vain, and when prosperity faded from the place season by season and year by year, there were old folk who whispered that the gaudily-clothed child Miss Betty had found under the broom-bush had something more than common in him, and that whoever and whatever had offended the eerie creature, he had taken the luck of Lingborough with him when he went away.
Idling on for a more expansive moment at each cabin door, the conversation had usually shaped itself like this: "Two has already rid over the Ridge to-day Old Bernique and the tramp-boy. Old Bernique he's on the trail ag'in. The tramp-boy he's kim along so far with Old Bernique."
Piney laughed from the gay, melodious depths of his vagabond heart and Bruce laughed with him. "An' Unc' Bernique has he'ped me abaout that," explained the tramp-boy. He let his dancing eyes dart off to the west where the hills were shouldering into a thickening drift of grey. "Hi, look yonder!" he cried. "We got to cut and run to git to Poetical before that rain."
He was not very familiar with conditions in Canaan, but it occurred to him suddenly that even in Canaan there might be social gradations, and that the tramp-boy, rare little chap though he seemed to be, was probably miles away from the daughter of the promoter, Mr. Crittenton Madeira. "I retract, Piney," he added gravely. "Aw! not as I keer whut you say abaout her, or whut anybody says."
That is the tramp-boy yondaire. He is in the woods above the gulch there. He will have emerge' to the road presently. The yong scamp is musical, sair!" "Aye, hear that!" cried Steering appreciatively, "gloriously musical!" Out of the great green timber mounted the tenor notes, piercingly sweet, pure, true, like a bird-call: "A tater's good 'ith 'lasses." Bernique's horse was growing restless.
In saying this, or something very like it, the hill farmer who spoke had always seemed to want it definitely understood that the neighbourhood had its excitements, and seemed to argue that if the stranger knew anything he must know Old Bernique and the tramp-boy.
You couldn' pull me aouter Mizzourah with pothooks these days," declared the big man earnestly. "What's that the tramp-boy's sayin' naow?" The tramp-boy was making a trumpet of his hands. "All ready!" he shouted, with one of his high, musical yodels, "Le's start!"
The tramp-boy, on his face an unaccustomed appreciation of this larger side of the workaday world, stepped back inside the engine-room, laid his hand on a throttle, and at the signal, as if by magic, there was a whirr of slipping bands, a mighty throb, the renewed fashing of water down the jigs, a grinding, a pounding, a crunching, a gurgling; and a long, resonant shout went up again and again from the elastic throats of the exalted Canaanites; for the first mill of the Canaan Mining and Development Company was running!
"They say Miss Sally, Miz Steerin', that is, feels mighty broke up because her paw didn' live to see all that's a-goin' on this day." "Yass, reckin's haow that's true." "Howdy, Miz Dade, haow you come on?" "Huccome you to come, Asa?" "They say the Steerin's air goin' away to-night. Goin' back East on a visit." "Yass, that's true. The tramp-boy is goin' along. D'you know that?
But except for a little scatter, that he took to be the lift of a covey of quail somewhere off in the Gulch bushes, not a sound or sign came up to the bluff. Steering mourned for Piney. If the tramp-boy had not gone away, things might have been more bearable. But the lad's jealousy and his love for Steering were in battle royal now, and Piney kept far from his hero, on the misty hills.
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