“Hot,” observed the sheriff, crowding the bowl of his pipe and thrusting the tobacco down with his broad thumb. The mountaineer folded his arms over the muzzle of his rifle and leaned upon it heavily. “Yas,” he responded, “warmish,” It was the full measure of salutation, and the full measure of introduction to all matters, important or unimportant, on the watershed of the Alleghanies. In the mountains no man hurried with his speech. There was time to be fully understood, and time to answer fully; then what one did afterwards, one was not so likely to regret. In the flat lands men are not so wise, perhaps. The sheriff struck a match on his saddle skirt, lighted his pipe, and puffed a cloud of blue smoke rings out over the placid ears of the “murky dun.” Presently he took the pipe stem from between his teeth and looked down at the solitary proprietor of Jim's Ford. “Spitler,” he drawled, “what 's in the bundle?” “Ye kin look,” responded the mountaineer with prodigious unconcern. The sheriff replaced his pipe and lapsed into silence for a moment. Then he said: “Where did you find it, Spitler?” “I reckin ye saw,” replied the scion of the house of Hamrick. The guardian of order looked up at the blue sky over the top of his nose glasses. Then he looked down. “Spitler,”--he said softly. The mountaineer interrupted. “Sheriff,” he growled, “old Spitler Hamrick don't stand no shammackin' round the bush. Smoky hell! He aint never stood it. Things air goin' to be like this: ye kin mosey' down here and git this bundle, air ye kin ride on. But ye can't set on you hoss and jaw. Smoky hell! Ye can't set on you hoss and jaw.” There was no circumlocution, no trick of equivocation, no shadow of obscurity in the speech of the denizen of Hell's Gap He used words for the purpose of expressing exactly what he believed to be true, and for no other purpose. This the sheriff knew, and others had learned and remembered by certain long glistening scars, covered afterward with the red flannel of their hunting shirts. White Carter removed his knee from the pommel of his saddle and slipped down to the ground. Here he paused for a moment, knocked the ashes from his pipe and replaced it in his pocket. Then he clambered down the steep bank to the river. The proprietor of Jim's Ford looked on with mighty indifference. The sheriff took up the bundle without a word, returned to his horse, and unbuckling the “throat latch” of his bridle, strapped the bundle to the horn of his saddle. Then he placed his right foot in the stirrup and turned to the mountaineer. “Spitler,” he drawled, “we found a dead man in Tug the other day. I think this is his coat.” The mountaineer looked up from the muzzle of his Winchester. “Were there lead in him?” he asked. The sheriff flung his leg over the saddle and gathered up his bridle from the horse's neck. “No bullet holes,” he answered. “Then,” said the giant Hamrick, “he were not killed in the hills.” IV