Hunting is their most
congenial business, or, if the occasion offers, a little amateur
detection. In tracking a criminal, following a particular horse
along a beaten highway, and drawing inductions from a hair or a
footprint, one of those somnolent, grinning Hodges will suddenly
display activity of body and finesse of mind. By their names ye
may know them, the women figuring as Loveina, Larsenia, Serena,
Leanna, Orreana; the men answering to Alvin, Alva, or Orion,
pronounced Orrion, with the accent on the first. Whether they are
indeed a race, or whether this is the form of degeneracy common to
all back-woodsmen, they are at least known by a generic byword, as
Poor Whites or Low-downers.
I will not say that the Hanson family was Poor White, because the
name savours of offence; but I may go as far as this--they were, in
many points, not unsimilar to the people usually so-cared. Rufe
himself combined two of the qualifications, for he was both a
hunter and an amateur detective. It was he who pursued Russel and
Dollar, the robbers of the Lake Port stage, and captured them the
very morning after the exploit, while they were still sleeping in a
hayfield. Russel, a drunken Scotch carpenter, was even an
acquaintance of his own, and he expressed much grave commiseration
for his fate. In all that he said and did, Rufe was grave.
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