The story of Keedon Bluffs — Story, Setting & Ideas

ertain young neighbor, who had indeed a good and willing pair of ears, and much readiness and adaptability of assent. Very pliable, withal, was “Skimpy” Sawyer—by the nickname “Skimpy” he was familiarly known, a tribute to his extreme spareness. He was peculiarly thin, and wiry, and loose-jointed. He had a good-natured freckled face, paler for the contrast with a crop of red hair; a twinkling and beguiling brown eye; great nimbleness of limb; and many comical twists of countenance at command.

He accompanied Ike blithely enough to Keedon Bluffs, one afternoon, to look at the cannon-ball on the ledge. A bridle-path, almost a road it might have seemed—for the woods, bereft of undergrowth by the annual conflagrations, gave it space—wound along the side of the mountain near the verge of the cliffs. The river, all scarlet, and silver, and glinting blue, was swirling far down in the chasm beneath them; the sheer sandstone bank rose opposite, solid as a wall; and beyond, the cove—its woods, and cabins, and roads, and fences, bounded by the interlacing mountains—lay spread out like an open map.

Peaceful enough it was to-day, as the boys stood on the Bluffs. There were wings, homeward bound, hurrying through the air, instead of shells with fuses burning bright against the sunset sky. No bugle sang. The river was murmuring low a plaintive minor lay that one might hear forever and never tire. Scanty shrubs of dogwood and sour-wood flaunted, red and orange, from the rifts of the great crags; here and there were fissures, irregularly shaped, and dark, save that upon the upper arch of each a ceaseless silvery light shimmered, reflected from the water. On one of the many ledges the cannon-ball lay unstirred.

“Skimpy, I b’lieve I could actially climb down this hyar bluff an’ coon it roun’ that thar ledge an’ git that ball,” said Ike, balancing himself dangerously over the precipice.

So far did it overhang the river at this point that he was startled by seeing a hat and face suddenly looking up at him from the depths below, and it was a moment before he realized that the hat and face were his own, mirrored in a dark pool.

“Ye couldn’t climb up ag’in with it in yer paw,” retorted Skimpy.

“Naw,” Ike admitted. “But ennyhow I’d like ter climb down thar an’ see what’s in them hollows. I b’lieve I could git inter one o’ ’em.”

Skimpy had taken a handful of pebbles and was skipping them down the river. He turned so suddenly that the one in his hand flew wide of the mark and nearly tipped his friend’s hat off his head.

“What air ye a-hankerin’ ter git in one o’ them holes fur?” he demanded, surprised, “so ez ye can’t git out ag’in? ’Pears-like ter me they’d be a mighty tight fit on sech a big corn-fed shoat ez ye air. An’ then I’d hev ter climb down thar an’ break my neck, I reckon, ter pull ye out by the heels.”

“I wouldn’t git in ’thout thar ’peared ter be plenty o’ elbow room,” Ike qualified.

“Who’s that?” said Skimpy, suddenly.

So absorbed had they been that until this moment they were not aware of a slow approach along the road behind them. The sight of a stranger was unusual, but so little curiosity do the mountaineers manifest in unknown passers-by that if the man’s manner had had no appeal to the boys, they would hardly have lifted their eyes; they would not even have stared after his back was turned.

But the stranger was about to hail them. He had already lifted his hand with an awkward wave of salutation. Still he fixed his eyes upon them and did not speak as he slouched toward them, and the two boys were impressed with the conviction that he had heard every word that they had been saying.

He was a tall, dawdling fellow of forty, perhaps, carrying a rifle on his shoulder, and dressed in an old brown jeans suit, ill-mended and patched here and there, and with some rents not patched at all. His hair, long and brown, streaked with gray, hung down to his collar beneath his old broad-brimmed wool hat. His face was lined and cadaverous, his features were sharp and shrewd. His eyes, bright, small, dark, and somehow not reassuring, expressed a sort of anxiety and anger that the boys could not comprehend.