“Now will you!  And a jug of whiskey too, and build a new house for Chub’s mother—­and the corn, and the ’tatoes.”

“All! you shall have all we promise.”

“Come! come! saftly! put your feet down saftly, for Guy’s got great white owls that watch for him, and they hoot from the old tree when the horses are coming.  Saftly! saftly!”

There is an idiocy that does not lack the vulgar faculty of mere shrewdness—­that can calculate selfishly, and plan coolly—­in short, can show itself cunning, whenever it has a motive.  Find the motive for the insane and the idiotic, always, if you would see them exercise the full extent of their little remaining wits.

Chub Williams had a sagacity of this sort.  His selfishness was appealed to, and all his faculties were on the alert.  He gave directions for the progress of the party—­after his own manner, it is true—­but with sufficient promptness and intelligence to satisfy them that they might rely upon him.  Having reached a certain lonely spot among the hills, contiguous to the crag, or series of crags, called the Wolf’s Neck, Chub made the party all dismount, and hide their horses in a thicket into which they found it no easy matter to penetrate.  This done, he led them out again, cautiously moving along under cover, but near the margin of the road.  He stept as lightly himself as a squirrel, taking care, before throwing his weight upon his foot, to feel that there was no rotting branch or bough beneath, the breaking of which might occasion noise.

“Saftly! saftly!” he would say in a whisper, turning back to the party, when he found them treading hurriedly and heavily upon the brush.  Sometimes, again, he ran ahead of all of them, and for a few moments would be lost to sight; but he usually returned, as quickly and quietly as he went, and would either lead them forward on the same route with confidence, or alter it according to his discoveries.  He was literally feeling his way; the instincts and experience of the practised scout finding no sort of obstacle in the deficiency of his reasoning powers.

His processes did not argue any doubts of his course; only a choice of direction—­such as would promise more ease and equal security.  Some of his changes of movement, he tried to explain, in his own fashion, when he came back to guide them on other paths.

“Saftly back—­saftly now, this way.  Guy’s in his dark house in the rock, but there’s a many rooms, and ’t mout be, we’re a walking jest now, over his head.  Then he mout hear, you see, and Guy’s got ears like the great owl.  He kin hear mighty far in the night, and see too; and you mustn’t step into his holes.  There’s heap of holes in Guy’s dark house.  Saftly, now—­and here away.”

Briefly, the rocky avenues were numerous in the Wolf’s Neck, and some of them ran near the surface.  There were sinks upon the surface also, covered with brush and clay, into which the unthinking wayfarer might stumble, perhaps into the very cavern where the outlaw at that moment housed himself.  The group around the idiot did not fail to comprehend the reasons for all his caution.  They confided to his skill implicitly; having, of themselves, but small knowledge of the wild precincts into which they desired to penetrate.