had things to hide from strangers, to be quite so frank with him in her
revelation of the byways of the wilderness?

Between the mountain-dwellers and the people of the lowlands never
could exist real confidence or friendship. From her babyhood she had
been taught to feel suspicion of all strangers: that was, indeed, first
article in the creed of all folk mountain-born. Why had she so freely
dropped her mantle of reserve before _this_ stranger? That he had saved
her from the bush-fire was excuse for her own gratitude, but was it
valid reason for exposing her best friends to danger at his hands, if
they proved treacherous? The revenuers, she had been informed, were men
of devilish craft, unscrupulous cunning. Might not this youth with the
fine clothes, the splendid manner, the great learning, the soft voice,
the quick resource and the undoubted bravery, very well be one of them?

She had once heard a mountain preacher draw a picture of the devil,
which made him most attractive and in the same way that this youth was
most attractive. Certain of the sympathies of his rough hearers, the man
had painted Beelzebub with broad, rough, verbal strokes, as a bluegrass
gentleman intent on the destruction of the honor, independence, liberty
of mountaineers. The mountaineer has never and will never understand
what right the government of state or nation has to interfere with
whatsoe'er he does on his own land with his own corn in his own still.
Just why he has no right to manufacture whiskey without paying taxes on
the product he really fails to comprehend. He regards the "revenuer" as
the representative of acute and cruel injustice and oppression. When he
"draws a bead" on one he does it with no such thoughts as common
murderers must know when they shoot down their enemies. He does not
think such killings are crude murder, any more than he regards feud
killings as assassinations.