THE CALL OF THE CUMBERLANDS



heart a new note of color, for her calico dress was like
the red cornucopias of the trumpet-flower, and her
eyes were blue like little scraps of sky. Her heavy,
brown-red hair fell down over her shoulders in loose
profusion. The coarse dress was freshly briar-torn,
and in many places patched; and it hung to the lithe
curves of her body in a fashion which told that she wore
little else. She had no hat, but the same spirit of child-
like whimsey that caused her eyes to dance as she
answered the partridge's call had led her to fashion for
her own crowning a headgear of laurel leaves and wild
roses. As she stood with the toes of one bare foot
twisting in the gratefully cool moss, she laughed with
the sheer exhilaration of life and youth, and started out
on the table top of the huge rock. But there she
halted suddenly with a startled exclamation, and drew
instinctively back. What she saw might well have
astonished her, for it was a thing she had never seen
before and of which she had never heard. Now she
paused in indecision between going forward toward
exploration and retreating from new and unexplained
phenomena. In her quick instinctive movements was
something like the irresolution of the fawn whose nos-
trils have dilated to a sense of possible danger. Finally,
reassured by the silence, she slipped across the broad
face of the flat rock for a distance of twenty-five feet,
and paused again to listen.
  At the far edge lay a pair of saddlebags, such as
form the only practical equipment for mountain
travelers. They were ordinary saddlebags, made from
the undressed hide of a brindle cow, and they were
fat with tight packing. A pair of saddlebags lying



3