Lescott had come to the mountains anticipating a visit of two weeks. His accident had resolved him to shorten it to the nearest day upon which he felt capable of making the trip out to the railroad. Yet, June had ended; July had burned the slopes from emerald to russet-green; August had brought purple tops to the ironweed, and still he found himself lingering. And this was true although he recognized a growing sentiment of disapproval for himself. He knew indubitably that he stood charged with the offense for which Socrates was invited to drink the hemlock: "corrupting the morals of the youth, and teaching strange gods." Feeling the virtue of his teaching, he was unwilling as Socrates to abandon the field. In Samson he thought he recognized twin gifts: a spark of a genius too rare to be allowed to flicker out, and a potentiality for constructive work among his own people, which needed for its perfecting only education and experience. Having aroused a soul's restiveness in the boy, he felt a direct responsibility for it and him, to which he added a deep personal regard. Though the kinsmen looked upon him as an undesirable citizen, bringing teachings which they despised, the hospitality of old Spicer South continued unbroken and a guarantee of security on Misery.
"Samson," he suggested one day when they were alone, "I want you to come East. You say that gun is your tool, and that each man must stick to his own. You are in part right, in part wrong. A mail uses any tool better for understanding other tools. You have the right to use your brains and talents to the full."
The boy's face was somber in the intensity of his mental struggle, and his answer had that sullen ring which was not really sullenness at all, but self-repression.
"I reckon a feller's biggest right is to stand by his kinfolks. Unc'Spicer's gittin' old. He's done been good ter me. He needs me here."
"I appreciate that. He will be older later. You can go now, and come back to him when he needs you more. If what I urged meant disloyalty to your people, I would cut out my tongue before I argued for it. You must believe me in that. I want you to be in the fullest sense your people's leader. I want you to be not only their Samson—but their Moses."
The boy looked up and nodded. The mountaineer is not given to demonstration. He rarely shakes hands, and he does not indulge in superlatives of affection. He loved and admired this man from the outside world, who seemed to him to epitomize wisdom, but his code did not permit him to say so.
"I reckon ye aims ter be friendly, all right," was his conservative response.
The painter went on earnestly:
"I realize that I am urging things of which your people disapprove, but it is only because they misunderstand that they do disapprove. They are too close, Samson, to see the purple that mountains have when they are far away. I want you to go where you can see the purple. If you are the sort of man I think, you won't be beguiled. You won't lose your loyalty. You won't be ashamed of your people."
"I reckon I wouldn't be ashamed," said the youth. "I reckon there hain't no better folks nowhar."
"I'm sure of it. There are going to be sweeping changes in these mountains. Conditions here have stood as immutably changeless as the hills themselves for a hundred years. That day is at its twilight. I tell you, I know what I'm talking about. The State of Kentucky is looking this way. The State must develop, and it is here alone that it can develop. In the Bluegrass, the possibilities for change are exhausted. Their fields lie fallow, their woodlands are being stripped. Tobacco has tainted the land. It has shouldered out the timber, and is turning forest to prairie. A land of fertile loam is vying with cheap soil that can send almost equal crops to market. There is no more timber to be cut, and when the timber goes the climate changes. In these hills lie the sleeping sources of wealth. Here are virgin forests and almost inexhaustible coal veins. Capital is turning from an orange squeezed dry, and casting about for fresher food. Capital has seen your hills. Capital is inevitable, relentless, omnipotent. Where it comes, it makes its laws. Conditions that have existed undisturbed will vanish. The law of the feud, which militia and courts have not been able to abate, will vanish before Capital's breath like the mists when the sun strikes them. Unless you learn to ride the waves which will presently sweep over your country, you and your people will go under. You may not realize it, but that is true. It is written."
The boy had listened intently, but at the end he smiled, and in his expression was something of the soldier who scents battle, not without welcome.
"I reckon if these here fellers air a-comin' up here ter run things, an' drownd out my folks, hit's a right good reason fer me ter stay here —an' holp my folks."
"By staying here, you can't help them. It won't be work for guns, but for brains. By going away and coming back armed with knowledge, you can save them. You will know how to play the game."
"I reckon they won't git our land, ner our timber, ner our coal, without we wants ter sell hit. I reckon ef they tries thet, guns will come in handy. Things has stood here like they is now, fer a hundred years. I reckon we kin keep 'em that-away fer a spell longer." But it was evident that Samson was arguing against his own belief; that he was trying to bolster up his resolution and impeached loyalty, and that at heart he was sick to be up and going to a world which did not despise "eddication." After a little, he waved his hand vaguely toward "down below."
"Ef I went down thar," he questioned suddenly and irrelevantly, "wouldI hev' ter cut my ha'r?"
"My dear boy," laughed Lescott, "I can introduce you in New York studios to many distinguished gentlemen who would feel that their heads had been shorn if they let their locks get as short as yours. In New York, you might stroll along Broadway garbed in turban and aburnousewithout greatly exciting anybody. I think my own hair is as long as yours."
"Because," doggedly declared the mountaineer, "I wouldn't allow nobody ter make me cut my ha'r."
"Why?" questioned Lescott, amused at the stubborn inflection.
"I don't hardly know why—" He paused, then admitted with a glare as though defying criticism: "Sally likes hit that-away—an' I won't let nobody dictate ter me, that's all."
The leaven was working, and one night Samson announced to his Uncle from the doorstep that he was "studyin' erbout goin' away fer a spell, an' seein' the world."
The old man laid down his pipe. He cast a reproachful glance at the painter, which said clearly, though without words:
"I have opened my home to you and offered you what I had, yet in my old age you take away my mainstay." For a time, he sat silent, but his shoulders hunched forward with a sag which they had not held a moment before. His seamed face appeared to age visibly and in the moment. He ran one bony hand through his gray mane of hair.
"I 'lowed you was a-studyin' erbout thet, Samson," he said, at last. "I've done ther best fer ye I knowed. I kinder 'lowed thet from now on ye'd do the same fer me. I'm gittin' along in years right smart…."
"Uncle Spicer," interrupted the boy, "I reckon ye knows thet any time ye needed me I'd come back."
The old man's face hardened.
"Ef ye goes," he said, almost sharply, "I won't never send fer ye. Any time ye ever wants ter come back, ye knows ther way. Thar'll be room an' victuals fer ye hyar."
"I reckon I mout be a heap more useful ef I knowed more."
"I've heered fellers say that afore. Hit hain't never turned out thet way with them what has left the mountings. Mebby they gets more useful, but they don't git useful ter us. Either they don't come back at all, or mebby they comes back full of newfangled notions—an' ashamed of their kinfoiks. Thet's the way, I've noticed, hit gen'ally turns out."
Samson scorned to deny that such might be the case with him, and was silent. After a time, the old man went on again in a weary voice, as he bent down to loosen his brogans and kick them noisily off on to the floor:
"The Souths hev done looked to ye a good deal, Samson. They 'lowed they could depend on ye. Ye hain't quite twenty-one yet, an' I reckon I could refuse ter let ye sell yer prop'ty. But thar hain't no use tryin' ter hold a feller when he wants ter quit. Ye don't 'low ter go right away, do ye?"
"I hain't plumb made up my mind ter go at all," said the boy, shamefacedly. "But, ef I does go, I hain't a-goin' yit. I hain't spoke ter nobody but you about hit yit."
Lescott felt reluctant to meet his host's eyes at breakfast the next morning, dreading their reproach, but, if Spicer South harbored resentment, he meant to conceal it, after the stoic's code. There was no hinted constraint of cordiality. Lescott felt, however, that in Samson's mind was working the leaven of that unspoken accusation of disloyalty. He resolved to make a final play, and seek to enlist Sally in his cause. If Sally's hero-worship could be made to take the form of ambition for Samson, she might be brought to relinquish him for a time, and urge his going that he might return strengthened. Yet, Sally's devotion was so instinctive and so artless that it would take compelling argument to convince her of any need of change. It was Samson as he was whom she adored. Any alteration was to be distrusted. Still, Lescott set out one afternoon on his doubtful mission. He was more versed in mountain ways than he had been. His own ears could now distinguish between the bell that hung at the neck of Sally's brindle heifer and those of old Spicer's cows. He went down to the creek at the hour when he knew Sally, also, would be making her way thither with her milk-pail, and intercepted her coming. As she approached, she was singing, and the man watched her from the distance. He was a landscape painter and not a master ofgenreor portrait. Yet, he wished that he might, before going, paint Sally. She was really, after all, a part of the landscape, as much a thing of nature and the hills as the hollyhocks that had come along the picket-fences. She swayed as gracefully and thoughtlessly to her movements as do strong and pliant stems under the breeze's kiss. Artfulness she had not; nor has the flower: only the joy and fragrance of a brief bloom. It was that thought which just now struck the painter most forcibly. It was shameful that this girl and boy should go on to the hard and unlighted life that inevitably awaited them, if neither had the opportunity of development. She would be at forty a later edition of the Widow Miller. He had seen the widow. Sally's charm must be as ephemeral under the life of illiterate drudgery and perennial child-bearing as her mother's had been. Her shoulders, now so gloriously straight and strong, would sag, and her bosom shrink, and her face harden and take on that drawn misery of constant anxiety. But, if Samson went and came back with some conception of cherishing his wife—yes, the effort was worth making. Yet, as the girl came down the slope, gaily singing a very melancholy song, the painter broke off in his reflections, and his thoughts veered. If Samson left, would he ever return? Might not the old man after all be right? When he had seen other women and tasted other allurements would he, like Ulysses, still hold his barren Ithaca above the gilded invitation of Calypso? History has only one Ulysses. Sally's voice was lilting like a bird's as she walked happily. The song was one of those old ballads that have been held intact since the stock learned to sing them in the heather of the Scotch highlands before there was an America.
"'She's pizened me, mother, make my bed soon,Fer I'm sick at my heart and I fain would lay doon.'"
The man rose and went to meet her.
"Miss Sally," he began, uncertainly, "I want to talk to you."
She was always very grave and diffident with Lescott. He was a strange new type to her, and, though she had begun with a predilection in his favor, she had since then come to hold him in adverse prejudice. Before his arrival, Samson had been all hers. She had not missed in her lover the gallantries that she and her women had never known. At evening, when the supper dishes were washed and she sat in the honeysuckle fragrance of the young night with the whippoorwills calling, she had been accustomed to hear a particular whippoorwill-note call, much like the real ones, yet distinct to her waiting ears. She was wont to rise and go to the stile to meet him. She had known that every day she would, seemingly by chance, meet Samson somewhere along the creek, or on the big bowlder at the rift, or hoeing on the sloping cornfield. These things had been enough. But, of late, his interests had been divided. This painter had claimed many of his hours and many of his thoughts. There was in her heart an unconfessed jealousy of the foreigner. Now, she scrutinized him solemnly, and nodded.
"Won't you sit down?" he invited, and the girl dropped cross-legged on a mossy rock, and waited. To-day, she wore a blue print dress, instead of the red one. It was always a matter of amazement to the man that in such an environment she was not only wildly beautiful, but invariably the pink of neatness. She could climb a tree or a mountain, or emerge from a sweltering blackberry patch, seemingly as fresh and unruffled as she had been at the start. The man stood uncomfortably looking at her, and was momentarily at a loss for words with which to commence.
"What was ye a-goin' ter tell me?" she asked.
"Miss Sally," he began, "I've discovered something about Samson."
Her blue eyes flashed ominously.
"Ye can't tell me nothin' 'bout Samson," she declared, "withouten hit's somethin' nice."
"It's something very nice," the man reassured her.
"Then, ye needn't tell me, because I already knows hit," came her prompt and confident announcement.
Lescott shook his head, dubiously.
"Samson is a genius," he said.
"What's thet?"
"He has great gifts—great abilities to become a figure in the world."
She nodded her head, in prompt and full corroboration.
"I reckon Samson'll be the biggest man in the mountings some day."
"He ought to be more than that."
Suspicion at once cast a cloud across the violet serenity of her eyes.
"What does ye mean?" she demanded.
"I mean"—the painter paused a moment, and then said bluntly—"I mean that I want to take him back with me to New York."
The girl sprang to her feet with her chin defiantly high and her brown hands clenched into tight little fists. Her bosom heaved convulsively, and her eyes blazed through tears of anger. Her face was pale.
"Ye hain't!" she cried, in a paroxysm of fear and wrath. "Ye hain't a- goin' ter do no sich—no sich of a damn thing!" She stamped her foot, and her whole girlish body, drawn into rigid uprightness, was a-quiver with the incarnate spirit of the woman defending her home and institutions. For a moment after that, she could not speak, but her determined eyes blazed a declaration of war. It was as though he had posed her as the Spirit of the Cumberlands.
He waited until she should be calmer. It was useless to attempt stemming her momentary torrent of rage. It was like one of the sudden and magnificent tempests that often swept these hills, a brief visit of the furies. One must seek shelter and wait. It would end as suddenly as it had come. At last, he spoke, very softly.
"You don't understand me, Miss Sally. I'm not trying to take Samson away from you. If a man should lose a girl like you, he couldn't gain enough in the world to make up for it. All I want is that he shall have the chance to make the best of his life."
"I reckon Samson don't need no fotched-on help ter make folks acknowledge him."
"Every man needs his chance. He can be a great painter—but that's the least part of it. He can come back equipped for anything that life offers. Here, he is wasted."
"Ye mean"—she put the question with a hurt quaver in her voice—"ye mean we all hain't good enough fer Samson?"
"No. I only mean that Samson wants to grow—and he needs space and new scenes in which to grow. I want to take him where he can see more of the world—not only a little section of the world. Surely, you are not distrustful of Samson's loyalty? I want him to go with me for a while, and see life."
"Don't ye say hit!" The defiance in her voice was being pathetically tangled up with the tears. She was speaking in a transport of grief. "Don't ye say hit. Take anybody else—take 'em all down thar, but leave us Samson. We needs him hyar. We've jest got ter have Samson hyar."
She faced him still with quivering lips, but in another moment, with a sudden sob, she dropped to the rock, and buried her face in her crossed arms. Her slender body shook under a harrowing convulsion of unhappiness. Lescott felt as though he had struck her; as though he had ruthlessly blighted the irresponsible joyousness which had a few minutes before sung from her lips with the blitheness of a mocking- bird. He went over and softly laid a hand on her shoulder.
"Miss Sally—" he began.
She suddenly turned on him a tear-stained, infuriated face, stormy with blazing eyes and wet cheeks and trembling lips.
"Don't touch me," she cried; "don't ye dare ter touch me! I hain't nothin' but a gal—but I reckon I could 'most tear ye ter pieces. Ye're jest a pizen snake, anyhow!" Then, she pointed a tremulous finger off up the road. "Git away from hyar," she commanded. "I don't never want ter see ye again. Ye're tryin' ter steal everything I loves. Git away, I tells ye!—git away—begone!"
"Think it over," urged Lescott, quietly. "See if your heart doesn't say I am Samson's friend—and yours." He turned, and began making his way over the rocks; but, before he had gone far, he sat down to reflect upon the situation. Certainly, he was not augmenting his popularity. A half-hour later, he heard a rustle, and, turning, saw Sally standing not far off. She was hesitating at the edge of the underbrush, and Lescott read in her eyes the effort it was costing her to come forward and apologize. Her cheeks were still pale and her eyes wet, but the tempest of her anger had spent itself, and in the girl who stood penitently, one hand nervously clutching a branch of rhododendron, one foot twisting in the moss, Lescott was seeing an altogether new Sally. There was a renunciation in her eyes that in contrast with the child- like curve of her lips, and slim girlishness of her figure, seemed entirely pathetic.
As she stood there, trying to come forward with a pitiful effort at composure and a twisted smile, Lescott wanted to go and meet her. But he knew her shyness, and realized that the kindest thing would be to pretend that he had not seen her at all. So, he covertly watched her, while he assumed to sit in moody unconsciousness of her nearness.
Little by little, and step by step, she edged over to him, halting often and looking about with the impulse to slip out of sight, but always bracing herself and drawing a little nearer. Finally, he knew that she was standing almost directly over him, and yet it was a moment or two more before her voice, sweetly penitent, announced her arrival.
"I reckon—I reckon I've got ter ask yore pardon," she said, slowly and with labored utterance. He looked up to see her standing with her head drooping and her fingers nervously pulling a flower to pieces.
"I reckon I hain't a plumb fool. I knows thet Samson's got a right ter eddication. Anyhow, I knows he wants hit."
"Education," said the man, "isn't going to change Samson, except to make him finer than he is—and more capable."
She shook her head. "I hain't got no eddication," she answered. "Hit's a-goin' ter make him too good fer me. I reckon hit's a-goin' ter jest about kill me…. Ye hain't never seed these here mountings in the winter time, when thar hain't nothin' green, an' thar hain't no birds a-singin', an' thar hain't nothin' but rain an' snow an' fog an' misery. They're a-goin' ter be like thet all the time fer me, atter Samson's gone away." She choked back something like a sob before she went on. "Yes, stranger, hit's a-goin' ter pretty nigh kill me, but—" Her lips twisted themselves into the pathetic smile again, and her chin came stiffly up. "But," she added, determinedly, "thet don't make no difference, nohow."
Yet, when Samson that evening gave his whippoorwill call at the Widow Miller's cabin, he found a dejected and miserable girl sitting on the stile, with her chin propped in her two hands and her eyes full of somberness and foreboding.
"What's the matter, Sally?" questioned he, anxiously. "Hes that low-down Tamarack Spicer been round here tellin' ye some more stories ter pester ye?"
She shook her head in silence. Usually, she bore the brunt of their conversations, Samson merely agreeing with, or overruling, her in lordly brevities. The boy climbed up and sat beside her.
"Thar's a-goin' ter be a dancin' party over ter Wile McCager's mill come Saturday," he insinuatingly suggested. "I reckon ye'll go over thar with me, won't ye, Sally?"
He waited for her usual delighted assent, but Sally only told him absently and without enthusiasm that she would "study about it." At last, however, her restraint broke, and, looking up, she abruptly demanded:
"Air ye a-goin' away, Samson?"
"Who's been a-talkin' ter ye?" demanded the boy, angrily.
For a moment, the girl sat silent. Silver mists were softening under a rising moon. The katydids were prophesying with strident music the six weeks' warning of frost. Myriads of stars were soft and low-hanging. Finally, she spoke in a grave voice:
"Hit hain't nothin' ter git mad about, Samson. The artist man 'lowed as how ye had a right ter go down thar, an' git an eddication." She made a weary gesture toward the great beyond.
"He hadn't ought to of told ye, Sally. If I'd been plumb sartin in my mind, I'd a-told ye myself—not but what I knows," he hastily amended, "thet he meant hit friendly."
"Air ye a-goin'?"
"I'm studyin' about hit."
He awaited objection, but none came. Then, with a piquing of his masculine vanity, he demanded:
"Hain't ye a-keerin', Sally, whether I goes, or not?"
The girl grew rigid. Her fingers on the crumbling plank of the stile's top tightened and gripped hard. The moonlit landscape seemed to whirl in a dizzy circle. Her face did not betray her, nor her voice, though she had to gulp down a rising lump in her throat before she could answer calmly.
"I thinks ye had ought ter go, Samson."
The boy was astonished. He had avoided the subject for fear of her opposition—and tears.
Then, slowly, she went on as though repeating a lesson painstakingly conned:
"There hain't nothin' in these here hills fer ye, Samson. Down thar, ye'll see lots of things thet's new—an' civilized an' beautiful! Ye'll see lots of gals thet kin read an' write, gals dressed up in all kinds of fancy fixin's." Her glib words ran out and ended in a sort of inward gasp.
Compliment came hardly and awkwardly to Samson's lips. He reached for the girl's hand, and whispered:
"I reckon I won't see no gals thet's as purty as you be, Sally. I reckon ye knows, whether I goes or stays, we're a-goin' ter git married."
She drew her hand away, and laughed, a little bitterly. In the last day, she had ceased to be a child, and become a woman with all the soul-aching possibilities of a woman's intuitions.
"Samson," she said, "I hain't askin' ye ter make me no promises. When ye sees them other gals—gals thet kin read an' write—I reckon mebby ye'll think diff'rent. I can't hardly spell out printin' in the fust reader."
Her lover's voice was scornful of the imagined dangers, as a recruit may be of the battle terrors—before he has been under fire. He slipped his arm about her and drew her over to him.
"Honey," he said, "ye needn't fret about thet. Readin' an' writin' can't make no difference fer a woman. Hit's mighty important fer a man, but you're a gal."
"You're a-goin' ter think diff'rent atter awhile," she insisted. "When ye goes, I hain't a-goin' ter be expectin' ye ter come back … But" —the resolution in her voice for a moment quavered as she added—"but God knows I'm a-goin' ter be hopin'!"
"Sally!" The boy rose, and paced up and down in the road. "Air ye goin' ter be ag'inst me, too? Don't ye see that I wants ter have a chanst? Can't ye trust me? I'm jest a-tryin' to amount to something. I'm plumb tired of bein' ornery an' no 'count."
She nodded.
"I've done told ye," she said, wearily, "thet I thinks ye ought ter do hit."
He stood there in the road looking down at her and the twisted smile that lifted only one corner of her lips, while the other drooped. The moonlight caught her eyes; eyes that were trying, like the lips, to smile, but that were really looking away into the future, which she saw stripped of companionship and love, and gray with the ashiness of wretched desolation. And, while he was seeing the light of the simulated cheeriness die out in her face, she was seeing the strange, exalted glow, of which she was more than half-afraid, kindle in his pupils. It was as though she were giving up the living fire out of her own heart to set ablaze the ambition and anticipation in his own.
That glow in Samson's eyes she feared and shrank from, as she might have flinched before the blaze of insanity. It was a thing which her mountain superstition could not understand, a thing not wholly normal; a manifestation that came to the stoic face and transformed it, when the eyes of the brain and heart were seeing things which she herself could not see. It was the proclamation of the part of Samson which she could not comprehend, as though he were looking into a spirit world of weird and abnormal things. It was the light of an enthusiasm such as his love for her could not bring to his eyes—and it told her that the strongest and deepest part of Samson did not belong to her. Now, as the young man stood there before her, and her little world of hope and happiness seemed crumbling into ruins, and she was steeling her soul to sacrifice herself and let him go, he was thinking, not of what it was costing her in heart-break, but seeing visions of all the great world held for him beyond the barriers of the mountains. The light in his eyes seemed to flaunt the victory of the enthusiasms that had nothing to do with her.
Samson came forward, and held out his arms. But Sally drew away with a little shudder, and crouched at the end of the stile.
"What's ther matter, Sally?" he demanded in surprise, and, as he bent toward her, his eyes lost the strange light she feared, and she laughed a little nervous laugh, and rose from her seat.
"Nothin' hain't ther matter—now," she said, stanchly.
Lescott and Samson discussed the matter frequently. At times, the boy was obstinate in his determination to remain; at other times, he gave way to the yearnings for change and opportunity. But the lure of the palette and brush possessed him beyond resistance and his taciturnity melted, when in the painter's company, to a roughly poetic form of expression.
"Thet sunrise," he announced one morning, setting down his milk-pail to gaze at the east, "is jest like the sparkle in a gal's eyes when she's tickled at somethin' ye've said about her. An,' when the sun sets, hit's like the whole world was a woman blushin'."
The dance on Saturday was to be something more portentous than a mere frolic. It would be a clan gathering to which the South adherents would come riding up and down Misery and its tributaries from "nigh abouts" and "over yon." From forenoon until after midnight, shuffle, jig and fiddling would hold high, if rough, carnival. But, while the younger folk abandoned themselves to these diversions, the grayer heads would gather in more serious conclave. Jesse Purvy had once more beaten back death, and his mind had probably been devising, during those bed-ridden days and nights, plans of reprisal. According to current report, Purvy had announced that his would-be assassin dwelt on Misery, and was "marked down." So, there were obvious exigencies which the Souths must prepare to meet. In particular, the clan must thrash out to definite understanding the demoralizing report that Samson South, their logical leader, meant to abandon them, at a crisis when war-clouds were thickening.
The painter had finally resolved to cut the Gordian knot, and leave the mountains. He had trained on Samson to the last piece all his artillery of argument. The case was now submitted with the suggestion that the boy take three months to consider, and that, if he decided affirmatively, he should notify Lescott in advance of his coming. He proposed sending Samson a small library of carefully picked books, which the mountaineer eagerly agreed to devour in the interval.
Lescott consented, however, to remain over Saturday, and go to the dance, since he was curious to observe what pressure was brought to bear on the boy, and to have himself a final word of argument after the kinsmen had spoken.
Saturday morning came after a night of torrential rain, which had left the mountains steaming under a reek of fog and pitching clouds. Hillside streams ran freshets, and creek-bed roads were foaming and boiling into waterfalls. Sheep and cattle huddled forlornly under their shelters of shelving rock, and only the geese seemed happy.
Far down the dripping shoulders of the mountains trailed ragged streamers of vapor. Here and there along the lower slopes hung puffs of smoky mist as though silent shells were bursting from unseen artillery over a vast theater of combat.
But, as the morning wore on, the sun fought its way to view in a scrap of overhead blue. A freshening breeze plunged into the reek, and sent it scurrying in broken cloud ranks and shredded tatters. The steamy heat gave way under a dissipating sweep of coolness, until the skies smiled down on the hills and the hills smiled back. From log cabins and plank houses up and down Misery and its tributaries, men and women began their hegira toward the mill. Some came on foot, carrying their shoes in their hands, but those were only near-by dwellers. Others made saddle journeys of ten or fifteen, or even twenty, miles, and the beasts that carried a single burden were few. Lescott rode in the wake of Samson, who had Sally on a pillow at his back, and along the seven miles of journey he studied the strange procession. It was, for the most part, a solemn cavalcade, for these are folk who "take their pleasures sadly." Possibly, some of the sun-bonneted, strangely-garbed women were reflecting on the possibilities which mountain-dances often develop into tragic actualities. Possibly, others were having their enjoyment discounted by the necessity of "dressing up" and wearing shoes.
Sometimes, a slowly ambling mule bore an entire family; the father managing the reins with one hand and holding a baby with the other, while his rifle lay balanced across his pommel and his wife sat solemnly behind him on a sheepskin or pillion. Many of the men rode side-saddles, and sacks bulky at each end hinted of such baggage as is carried in jugs. Lescott realized from the frank curiosity with which he was regarded that he had been a topic of discussion, and that he was now being "sized up." He was the false prophet who was weaving a spell over Samson! Once, he heard a sneering voice from the wayside comment as he rode by.
"He looks like a damned parson."
Glancing back, he saw a tow-headed youth glowering at him out of pinkish albino eyes. The way lay in part along the creek-bed, where wagons had ground the disintegrating rock into deep ruts as smooth as walls of concrete. Then, it traversed a country of palisading cliffs and immensity of forest, park-like and splendid. Strangely picturesque suspension bridges with rough stairways at their ends spanned waters too deep for fording. Frame houses showed along the banks of the creek —grown here to a river—unplaned and unpainted of wall, but brightly touched with window-and door-frames of bright yellow or green or blue. This was the territory where the Souths held dominance, and it was pouring out its people.
They came before noon to the mouth of Dryhole Creek, and the house of Wile McCager. Already, the picket fence was lined with tethered horses and mules, and a canvas-covered wagon came creeping in behind its yoke of oxen. Men stood clustered in the road, and at the entrance a woman, nursing her baby at her breast, welcomed and gossiped with the arrivals.
The house of Wile McCager loaned itself to entertainment. It was not of logs, but of undressed lumber, and boasted a front porch and two front rooms entered by twin doors facing on a triangular alcove. In the recess between these portals stood a washstand, surmounted by a china basin and pitcher—a declaration of affluence. From the interior of the house came the sounds of fiddling, though these strains of "Turkey in the Straw" were only by way of prelude. Lescott felt, though he could not say just what concrete thing told him, that under the shallow note of merry-making brooded the major theme of a troublesome problem. The seriousness was below the surface, but insistently depressing. He saw, too, that he himself was mixed up with it in a fashion, which might become dangerous, when a few jugs of white liquor had been emptied.
It would be some time yet before the crowd warmed up. Now, they only stood about and talked, and to Lescott they gave a gravely polite greeting, beneath which was discernible an undercurrent of hostility.
As the day advanced, the painter began picking out the more influential clansmen, by the fashion in which they fell together into groups, and took themselves off to the mill by the racing creek for discussion. While the young persons danced and "sparked" within, and the more truculent lads escaped to the road to pass the jug, and forecast with youthful war-fever "cleanin' out the Hollmans," the elders were deep in ways and means. If the truce could be preserved for its unexpired period of three years, it was, of course, best. In that event, crops could be cultivated, and lives saved. But, if Jesse Purvy chose to regard his shooting as a breach of terms, and struck, he would strike hard, and, in that event, best defense lay in striking first. Samson would soon be twenty-one. That he would take his place as head of the clan had until now never been questioned—and he was talking of desertion. For that, a pink-skinned foreigner, who wore a woman's bow of ribbon at his collar, was to blame. The question of loyalty must be squarely put up to Samson, and it must be done to-day. His answer must be definite and unequivocal. As a guest of Spicer South, Lescott was entitled to that consideration which is accorded ambassadors.
None the less, the vital affairs of the clan could not be balked by consideration for a stranger, who, in the opinion of the majority, should be driven from the country as an insidious mischief-maker. Ostensibly, the truce still held, but at no time since its signing had matters been so freighted with the menace of a gathering storm. The attitude of each faction was that of several men standing quiet with guns trained on one another's breasts. Each hesitated to fire, knowing that to pull the trigger meant to die himself, yet fearing that another trigger might at any moment be drawn. Purvy dared not have Samson shot out of hand, because he feared that the Souths would claim his life in return, yet he feared to let Samson live. On the other hand, if Purvy fell, no South could balance his death, except Spicer or Samson. Any situation that might put conditions to a moment of issue would either prove that the truce was being observed, or open the war—and yet each faction was guarding against such an event as too fraught with danger. One thing was certain. By persuasion or force, Lescott must leave, and Samson must show himself to be the youth he had been thought, or the confessed and repudiated renegade. Those questions, to-day must answer. It was a difficult situation, and promised an eventful entertainment. Whatever conclusion was reached as to the artist's future, he was, until the verdict came in, a visitor, and, unless liquor inflamed some reckless trouble-hunter, that fact would not be forgotten. Possibly, it was as well that Tamarack Spicer had not arrived.
Lescott himself realized the situation in part, as he stood at the door of the house watching the scene inside.
There was, of course, no round dancing—only the shuffle and jig—with champions contending for the honor of their sections. A young woman from Deer Lick and a girl from the head of Dryhill had been matched for the "hoe-down," and had the floor to themselves. The walls were crowded with partisan onlookers, who applauded and cheered their favorite.
The bows scraped faster and louder; the clapping hands beat more tumultuously, until their madtempowas like the clatter of musketry; the dancers threw themselves deliriously into the madly quickening step. It was a riotous saturnalia of flying feet and twinkling ankles. Onlookers shouted and screamed encouragement. It seemed that the girls must fall in exhaustion, yet each kept on, resolved to be still on the floor when the other had abandoned it in defeat—that being the test of victory. At last, the girl from Dryhill reeled, and was caught by half-a-dozen arms. Her adversary, holding the floor undisputed, slowed down, and someone stopped the fiddler. Sally turned from the crowded wall, and began looking about for Samson. He was not there. Lescott had seen him leave the house a few moments before, and started over to intercept the girl, as she came out to the porch.
In the group about the door, he passed a youth with tow-white hair and very pink cheeks. The boy was the earliest to succumb to the temptation of the moonshine jug, a temptation which would later claim others. He was reeling crazily, and his albino eyes were now red and inflamed. Lescott remembered him.
"Thet's ther damned furriner thet's done turned Samson inter a gal," proclaimed the youth, in a thick voice.
The painter paused, and looked back. The boy was reaching under his coat with hands that had become clumsy and unresponsive.
"Let me git at him," he shouted, with a wild whoop and a dash toward the painter.
Lescott said nothing, but Sally had heard, and stepped swiftly between.
"You've got ter git past me fust, Buddy," she said, quietly. "I reckon ye'd better run on home, an' git yore mammy ter put ye ter bed."
Several soberer men closed around the boy, and, after disarming him, led him away grumbling and muttering, while Wile McCager made apologies to the guest.
"Jimmy's jest a peevish child," he explained. "A drop or two of licker makes him skittish. I hopes ye'll look over hit."
Jimmy's outbreak was interesting to Lescott chiefly as an indication of what might follow. He noted how the voices were growing louder and shriller, and how the jug was circulating faster. A boisterous note was making itself heard through the good humor and laughter, and the "furriner" remembered that these minds, when inflamed, are more prone to take the tangent of violence than that of mirth. Unwilling to introduce discord by his presence, and involve Samson in quarrels on his account, he suggested riding back to Misery, but the boy's face clouded at the suggestion.
"Ef they kain't be civil ter my friends," he said, shortly, "they've got ter account ter me. You stay right hyar, and I'll stay clost to you. I done come hyar to-day ter tell 'em that they mustn't meddle in my business."
A short while later, Wile McCager invited Samson to come out to the mill, and the boy nodded to Lescott an invitation to accompany him. The host shook his head.
"We kinder 'lowed ter talk over some fam'ly matters with ye, Samson," he demurred. "I reckon Mr. Lescott'll excuse ye fer a spell."
"Anything ye've got ter talk ter me about, George Lescott kin hear," said the youth, defiantly. "I hain't got no secrets." He was heir to his father's leadership, and his father had been unquestioned. He meant to stand uncompromisingly on his prerogatives.
For an instant, the old miller's keen eyes hardened obstinately. After Spicer and Samson South, he was the most influential and trusted of the South leaders—and Samson was still a boy. His ruggedly chiseled features were kindly, but robustly resolute, and, when he was angered, few men cared to face him. For an instant, a stinging rebuke seemed to hover on his lips, then he turned with a curt jerk of his large head.
"All right. Suit yourselves. I've done warned ye both. We 'lows ter talk plain."
The mill, dating back to pioneer days, sat by its race with its shaft now idle. About it, the white-boled sycamores crowded among the huge rocks, and the water poured tumultuously over the dam. The walls of mortised logs were chinked with rock and clay. At its porch, two discarded millstones served in lieu of steps. Over the door were fastened a spreading pair of stag-antlers. It looked to Lescott, as he approached, like a scrap of landscape torn from some medieval picture, and the men about its door seemed medieval, too; bearded and gaunt, hard-thewed and sullen.
All of them who stood waiting were men of middle age, or beyond. A number were gray-haired, but they were all of cadet branches. Many of them, like Wile McCager himself, did not bear the name of South, and Samson was the eldest son of the eldest son. They sat on meal-whitened bins and dusty timbers and piled-up sacks. Several crouched on the ground, squatting on their heels, and, as the conference proceeded, they drank moonshine whiskey, and spat solemnly at the floor cracks.
"Hevn't ye noticed a right-smart change in Samson?" inquired old Caleb Wiley of a neighbor, in his octogenarian quaver. "The boy hes done got es quiet an' pious es a missionary."
The other nodded under his battered black felt hat, and beat a tattoo with the end of his long hickory staff.
"He hain't drunk a half-pint of licker to-day," he querulously replied.
"Why in heck don't we run this here pink-faced conjure-doctor outen the mountings?" demanded Caleb, who had drunk more than a half-pint. "He's a-castin' spells over the boy. He's a-practisin' of deviltries."
"We're a-goin' ter see about thet right now," was the response. "We don't 'low to let hit run on no further."
"Samson," began old Wile McCager, clearing his throat and taking up his duty as spokesman, "we're all your kinfolks here, an' we aimed ter ask ye about this here report thet yer 'lowin' ter leave the mountings?"
"What of hit?" countered the boy.
"Hit looks mighty like the war's a-goin' ter be on ag'in pretty soon. Air ye a-goin' ter quit, or air ye a-goin' ter stick? Thet's what we wants ter know."
"I didn't make this here truce, an' I hain't a-goin' ter bust hit," said the boy, quietly. "When the war commences, I'll be hyar. Ef I hain't hyar in the meantime, hit hain't nobody's business. I hain't accountable ter no man but my pap, an' I reckon, whar he is, he knows whether I'm a-goin' ter keep my word."
There was a moment's silence, then Wile McCager put another question:
"Ef ye're plumb sot on gittin' larnin' why don't ye git hit right hyar in these mountings?"
Samson laughed derisively.
"Who'll I git hit from?" he caustically inquired. "Ef the mountain won't come ter Mohamet, Mohamet's got ter go ter the mountain, I reckon." The figure was one they did not understand. It was one Samson himself had only acquired of late. He was quoting George Lescott. But one thing there was which did not escape his hearers: the tone of contempt. Eyes of smoldering hate turned on the visitor at whose door they laid the blame.
Caleb Wiley rose unsteadily to his feet, his shaggy beard trembling with wrath and his voice quavering with senile indignation.
"Hev ye done got too damned good fer yore kin-folks, Samson South?" he shrilly demanded. "Hev ye done been follerin' atter this here puny witch-doctor twell ye can't keep a civil tongue in yer head fer yore elders? I'm in favor of runnin' this here furriner outen the country with tar an' feathers on him. Furthermore, I'm in favor of cleanin' out the Hollmans. I was jest a-sayin' ter Bill——"
"Never mind what ye war jest a-sayin'," interrupted the boy, flushing redly to his cheekbones, but controlling his voice. "Ye've done said enough a'ready. Ye're a right old man, Caleb, an' I reckon thet gives ye some license ter shoot off yore face, but ef any of them no-'count, shif'less boys of yores wants ter back up what ye says, I'm ready ter go out thar an' make 'em eat hit. I hain't a-goin' ter answer no more questions."
There was a commotion of argument, until "Black Dave" Jasper, a saturnine giant, whose hair was no blacker than his expression, rose, and a semblance of quiet greeted him as he spoke.
"Mebby, Samson, ye've got a right ter take the studs this a-way, an' ter refuse ter answer our questions, but we've got a right ter say who kin stay in this hyar country. Ef ye 'lows ter quit us, I reckon we kin quit you—and, if we quits ye, ye hain't nothin' more ter us then no other boy thet's gettin' too big fer his breeches. This furriner is a visitor here to-day, an' we don't 'low ter hurt him—but he's got ter go. We don't want him round hyar no longer." He turned to Lescott. "We're a-givin' ye fair warnin', stranger. Ye hain't our breed. Atter this, ye stays on Misery at yore own risk—an' hit's a-goin' ter be plumb risky. That thar's final."
"This man," blazed the boy, before Lescott could speak, "is a-visitin' me an' Unc' Spicer. When ye wants him ye kin come up thar an' git him. Every damned man of ye kin come. I hain't a-sayin' how many of ye'll go back. He was 'lowin' that he'd leave hyar ter-morrer mornin', but atter this I'm a-tellin' ye he hain't a-goin' ter do hit. He's a-goin' ter stay es long es he likes, an' nobody hain't a-goin' ter run him off." Samson took his stand before the painter, and swept the group with his eyes. "An' what's more," he added, "I'll tell ye another thing. I hadn't plumb made up my mind ter leave the mountings, but ye've done settled hit fer me. I'm a-goin'."
There was a low murmur of anger, and a voice cried out from the rear:
"Let him go. We hain't got no use fer damn cowards."
"Whoever said thet's a liar!" shouted the boy. Lescott, standing at his side, felt that the situation was more than parlous. But, before the storm could break, some one rushed in, and whispered to Wile McCager a message that caused him to raise both hands above his head, and thunder for attention.
"Men," he roared, "listen ter me! This here hain't no time fer squabblin' amongst ourselves. We're all Souths. Tamarack Spicer has done gone ter Hixon, an' got inter trouble. He's locked up in the jail-house."
"We're all hyar," screamed old Caleb's high, broken voice. "Let's go an' take him out."
Samson's anger had died. He turned, and held a whispered conversation with McCager, and, at its end, the host of the day announced briefly:
"Samson's got somethin' ter say ter ye. So long as he's willin' ter stand by us, I reckon we're willin' ter listen ter Henry South's boy."
"I hain't got no use for Tam'rack Spicer," said the boy, succinctly, "but I don't 'low ter let him lay in no jail-house, unlessen he's got a right ter be thar. What's he charged with?"
But no one knew that. A man supposedly close to the Hollmans, but in reality an informer for the Souths, had seen him led into the jail-yard by a posse of a half-dozen men, and had seen the iron-barred doors close on him. That was all, except that the Hollman forces were gathering in Hixon, and, if the Souths went thereen masse, a pitched battle must be the inevitable result. The first step was to gain accurate information and an answer to one vital question. Was Tamarack held as a feud victim, or was his arrest legitimate? How to learn that was the problem. To send a body of men was to invite bloodshed. To send a single inquirer was to deliver him over to the enemy.
"Air you men willin' ter take my word about Tamarack?" inquired Samson. But for the scene of a few minutes ago, it would have been an unnecessary question. There was a clamorous assent, and the boy turned to Lescott.
"I wants ye ter take Sally home with ye. Ye'd better start right away, afore she heers any of this talk. Hit would fret her. Tell her I've had ter go 'cross ther country a piece, ter see a sick man. Don't tell her whar I'm a-goin'." He turned to the others. "I reckon I've got yore promise thet Mr. Lescott hain't a-goin' ter be bothered afore I gits back?"
Wile McCager promptly gave the assurance.
"I gives ye my hand on hit."
"I seed Jim Asberry loafin' round jest beyond ther ridge, es I rid over hyar," volunteered the man who had brought the message.
"Go slow now, Samson. Don't be no blame fool," dissuaded Wile McCager. "Hixon's plumb full of them Hollmans, an' they're likely ter be full of licker—hit's Saturday. Hit's apt ter be shore death fer ye ter try ter ride through Main Street—ef ye gits thet fur. Ye dassent do hit."
"I dast do anything!" asserted the boy, with a flash of sudden anger. "Some liar 'lowed awhile ago thet I was a coward. All right, mebby I be. Unc' Wile, keep the boys hyar tell ye hears from me—an' keep 'em sober." He turned and made his way to the fence where his mule stood hitched.
When Samson crossed the ridge, and entered the Hollman country, Jim Asberry, watching from a hilltop point of vantage, rose and mounted the horse that stood hitched behind a near-by screen of rhododendron bushes and young cedars. Sometimes, he rode just one bend of the road in Samson's rear. Sometimes, he took short cuts, and watched his enemy pass. But always he held him under a vigilant eye. Finally, he reached a wayside store where a local telephone gave communication with Hollman's Mammoth Department Store.
"Jedge," he informed, "Samson South's done left the party et ther mill, an' he's a-ridin' towards town. Shall I git him?"
"Is he comin' by hisself?" inquired the storekeeper.
"Yes."
"Well, jest let him come on. We can tend ter him hyar, ef necessary." So, Jim withheld his hand, and merely shadowed, sending bulletins, from time to time.
It was three o'clock when Samson started. It was near six when he reached the ribbon of road that loops down into town over the mountain. His mule was in a lather of sweat. He knew that he was being spied upon, and that word of his coming was traveling ahead of him. What he did not know was whether or not it suited Jesse Purvy's purpose that he should slide from his mule, dead, before he turned homeward. If Tamarack had been seized as a declaration of war, the chief South would certainly not be allowed to return. If the arrest had not been for feud reasons, he might escape. That was the question which would be answered with his life or death.
The boy kept his eyes straight to the front, fixed on the philosophical wagging of his mule's brown ears. Finally, he crossed the bridge that gave entrance to the town, as yet unharmed, and clattered at a trot between the shacks of the environs. He was entering the fortified stronghold of the enemy, and he was expected. As he rode along, doors closed to slits, and once or twice he caught the flash of sunlight on a steel barrel, but his eyes held to the front. Several traveling men, sitting on the porch of the hotel opposite the court- house, rose when they saw his mule, and went inside, closing the door behind them.
The "jail-house" was a small building of home-made brick, squatting at the rear of the court-house yard. Its barred windows were narrow with sills breast-high.
The court-house itself was shaded by large oaks and sycamores, and, as Samson drew near, he saw that some ten or twelve men, armed with rifles, separated from groups and disposed themselves behind the tree trunks and the stone coping of the well. None of them spoke, and Samson pretended that he had not seen them. He rode his mule at a walk, knowing that he was rifle-covered from a half-dozen windows. At the hitching rack directly beneath the county building, he flung his reins over a post, and, swinging his rifle at his side, passed casually along the brick walk to the jail. The men behind the trees edged around their covers as he went, keeping themselves protected, as squirrels creep around a trunk when a hunter is lurking below. Samson halted at the jail wall, and called the prisoner's name. A towsled head and surly face appeared at the barred window, and the boy went over and held converse from the outside.
"How in hell did ye git into town?" demanded the prisoner.
"I rid in," was the short reply. "How'd ye git in the jail-house?"
The captive was shamefaced.
"I got a leetle too much licker, an' I was shootin' out the lights last night," he confessed.
"What business did ye have hyar in Hixon?"
"I jest slipped in ter see a gal."
Samson leaned closer, and lowered his voice.
"Does they know thet ye shot them shoots at Jesse Purvy?"
Tamarack turned pale.
"No," he stammered, "they believe you done hit."
Samson laughed. He was thinking of the rifles trained on him from a dozen invisible rests.
"How long air they a-goin' ter keep ye hyar?" he demanded.
"I kin git out to-morrer ef I pays the fine. Hit's ten dollars."
"An' ef ye don't pay the fine?"
"Hit's a dollar a day."
"I reckon ye don't 'low ter pay hit, do ye?"
"I 'lowed mebby ye mout pay hit fer me, Samson."
"Ye done 'lowed plumb wrong. I come hyar ter see ef ye needed help, but hit 'pears ter me they're lettin' ye off easy."
He turned on his heel, and went back to his mule. The men behind the trees began circling again. Samson mounted, and, with his chin well up, trotted back along the main street. It was over. The question was answered. The Hollmans regarded the truce as still effective. The fact that they were permitting him to ride out alive was a wordless assurance of that. Incidentally, he stood vindicated in the eyes of his own people.
When Samson reached the mill it was ten o'clock. The men were soberer than they had been in the afternoon. McCager had seen to that. The boy replaced his exhausted mule with a borrowed mount. At midnight, as he drew near the cabin of the Widow Miller, he gave a long, low whippoorwill call, and promptly, from the shadow of the stile, a small tired figure rose up to greet him. For hours that little figure had been sitting there, silent, wide-eyed and terrified, nursing her knees in locked fingers that pressed tightly into the flesh. She had not spoken. She had hardly moved. She had only gazed out, keeping the vigil with a white face that was beginning to wear the drawn, heart-eating anxiety of the mountain woman; the woman whose code demands that she stand loyally to her clan's hatreds; the woman who has none of the man's excitement in stalking human game, which is also stalking him; the woman who must only stay at home and imagine a thousand terrors —and wait.
A rooster was crowing, and the moon had set. Only the stars were left.
"Sally," the boy reproved, "hit's most mornin', an' ye must be plumb fagged out. Why hain't you in bed?"
"I 'lowed ye'd come by hyar," she told him simply, "and I waited fer ye. I knowed whar ye had went," she added, "an' I was skeered."
"How did ye know?"
"I heered thet Tam'rack was in the jail-house, an' somebody hed ter go ter Hixon. So, of course, I knowed hit would be you."
Lescott stayed on a week after that simply in deference to Samson's insistence. To leave at once might savor of flight under fire, but when the week was out the painter turned his horse's head toward town, and his train swept him back to the Bluegrass and the East. As he gazed out of his car windows at great shoulders of rock and giant trees, things he was leaving behind, he felt a sudden twinge of something akin to homesickness. He knew that he should miss these great humps of mountains and the ragged grandeur of the scenery. With the rich smoothness of the Bluegrass, a sense of flatness and heaviness came to his lungs. Level metal roads and loamy fields invited his eye. The tobacco stalks rose in profuse heaviness of sticky green; the hemp waved its feathery tops; and woodlands were clear of underbrush—the pauper counties were behind him.
A quiet of unbroken and deadly routine settled down on Misery. The conduct of the Souths in keeping hands off, and acknowledging the justice of Tamarack Spicer's jail sentence, had been their answer to the declaration of the Hollmans in letting Samson ride into and out of Hixon. The truce was established. When, a short time later, Tamarack left the country to become a railroad brakeman, Jesse Purvy passed the word that his men must, until further orders, desist from violence. The word had crept about that Samson, too, was going away, and, if this were true, Jesse felt that his future would be more secure than his past. Purvy believed Samson guilty, despite the exoneration of the hounds. Their use had been the idea of over-fervent relatives. He himself scoffed at their reliability.
"I wouldn't believe no dog on oath," he declared. Besides, he preferred to blame Samson, since he was the head of the tribe and because he himself knew what cause Samson had to hate him. Perhaps, even now, Samson meant to have vengeance before leaving. Possibly, even, this ostentatious care to regard the truce was simply a shrewdly planned sham meant to disarm his suspicion.
Until Samson went, if he did go, Jesse Purvy would redouble his caution. It would be a simple matter to have the boy shot to death, and end all question. Samson took no precautions to safeguard his life, but he had a safeguard none the less. Purvy felt sure that within a week after Samson fell, despite every care he might take, he, too, would fall. He was tired of being shot down. Purvy was growing old, and the fires of war were burning to embers in his veins. He was becoming more and more interested in other things. It dawned upon him that to be known as a friend of the poor held more allurement for gray-haired age than to be known as a master of assassins. It would be pleasant to sit undisturbed, and see his grandchildren grow up, and he recognized, with a sudden ferocity of repugnance, that he did not wish them to grow up as feud fighters. Purvy had not reformed, but, other things being equal, he would prefer to live and let live. He had reached that stage to which all successful villains come at some time, when he envied the placid contentment of respected virtues. Ordering Samson shot down was a last resort—one to be held in reserve until the end.
So, along Misery and Crippleshin, the men of the factions held their fire while the summer spent itself, and over the mountain slopes the leaves began to turn, and the mast to ripen.
Lescott had sent a box of books, and Samson had taken a team over to Hixon, and brought them back. It was a hard journey, attended with much plunging against the yokes and much straining of trace chains. Sally had gone with him. Samson was spending as much time as possible in her society now. The girl was saying little about his departure, but her eyes were reading, and without asking she knew that his going was inevitable. Many nights she cried herself to sleep, but, when he saw her, she was always the same blithe, bird-like creature that she had been before. She was philosophically sipping her honey while the sun shone.
Samson read some of the books aloud to Sally, who had a child's passion for stories, and who could not have spelled them out for herself. He read badly, but to her it was the flower of scholastic accomplishment, and her untrained brain, sponge-like in its acquisitiveness, soaked up many new words and phrases which fell again quaintly from her lips in talk. Lescott had spent a week picking out those books. He had wanted them to argue for him; to feed the boy's hunger for education, and give him some forecast of the life that awaited him. His choice had been an effort to achievemultum in parvo, but Samson devoured them all from title page tofinisline, and many of them he went back to, and digested again.
He wrestled long and gently with his uncle, struggling to win the old man's consent to his departure. But Spicer South's brain was no longer plastic. What had been good enough for the past was good enough for the future. He sought to take the most tolerant view, and to believe that Samson was acting on conviction and not on an ingrate's impulse, but that was the best he could do, and he added to himself that Samson's was an abnormal and perverted conviction. Nevertheless, he arranged affairs so that his nephew should be able to meet financial needs, and to go where he chose in a fashion befitting a South. The old man was intensely proud, and, if the boy were bent on wasting himself, he should waste like a family head, and not appear a pauper among strangers.
The autumn came, and the hills blazed out in their fanfare of splendid color. The broken skyline took on a wistful sweetness under the haze of "the Great Spirit's peace-pipe."
The sugar trees flamed their fullest crimson that fall. The poplars were clear amber and the hickories russet and the oaks a deep burgundy. Lean hogs began to fill and fatten with their banqueting on beechnuts and acorns. Scattered quail came together in the conclave of the covey, and changed their summer call for the "hover" whistle. Shortly, the rains would strip the trees, and leave them naked. Then, Misery would vindicate its christener. But, now, as if to compensate in a few carnival days of champagne sparkle and color, the mountain world was burning out its summer life on a pyre of transient splendor.
November came in bleakly, with a raw and devastating breath of fatality. The smile died from horizon to horizon, and for days cold rains beat and lashed the forests. And, toward the end of that month, came the day which Samson had set for his departure. He had harvested the corn, and put the farm in order. He had packed into his battered saddlebags what things were to go with him into his new life. The sun had set in a sickly bank of murky, red-lined clouds. His mule, which knew the road, and could make a night trip, stood saddled by the stile. A kinsman was to lead it back from Hixon when Samson had gone. The boy slowly put on his patched and mud-stained overcoat. His face was sullen and glowering. There was a lump in his throat, like the lump that had been there when he stood with his mother's arm about his shoulders, and watched the dogs chase a rabbit by his father's grave. Supper had been eaten in silence. Now that the hour of departure had come, he felt the guilt of the deserter. He realized how aged his uncle seemed, and how the old man hunched forward over the plate as they ate the last meal they should, for a long while, have together. It was only by sullen taciturnity that he could retain his composure.
At the threshold, with the saddlebags over his left forearm and the rifle in his hand, he paused. His uncle stood at his elbow and the boy put out his hand.
"Good-by, Unc' Spicer," was all he said. The old man, who had been his second father, shook hands. His face, too, was expressionless, but he felt that he was saying farewell to a soldier of genius who was abandoning the field. And he loved the boy with all the centered power of an isolated heart.
"Hadn't ye better take a lantern?" he questioned.
"No, I reckon I won't need none." And Samson went out, and mounted his mule.
A half-mile along the road, he halted and dismounted. There, in a small cove, surrounded by a tangle of briars and blackberry bushes, stood a small and dilapidated "meeting house" and churchyard, which he must visit. He made his way through the rough undergrowth to the unkempt half-acre, and halted before the leaning headstones which marked two graves. With a sudden emotion, he swept the back of his hand across his eyes. He did not remove his hat, but he stood in the drizzle of cold rain for a moment of silence, and then he said:
"Pap, I hain't fergot. I don't want ye ter think thet I've fergot."
Before he arrived at the Widow Miller's, the rain had stopped and the clouds had broken. Back of them was a discouraged moon, which sometimes showed its face for a fitful moment, only to disappear. The wind was noisily floundering through the treetops. Near the stile, Samson gave his whippoorwill call. It was, perhaps, not quite so clear or true as usual, but that did not matter. There were no other whippoorwills calling at this season to confuse signals. He crossed the stile, and with a word quieted Sally's dog as it rose to challenge him, and then went with him, licking his hand.
Sally opened the door, and smiled. She had spent the day nerving herself for this farewell, and at least until the moment of leave- taking she would be safe from tears. The Widow Miller and her son soon left them alone, and the boy and girl sat before the blazing logs.
For a time, an awkward silence fell between them. Sally had donned her best dress, and braided her red-brown hair. She sat with her chin in her palms, and the fire kissed her cheeks and temples into color. That picture and the look in her eyes remained with Samson for a long while, and there were times of doubt and perplexity when he closed his eyes and steadied himself by visualizing it all again in his heart. At last, the boy rose, and went over to the corner where he had placed his gun. He took it up, and laid it on the hearth between them.
"Sally," he said, "I wants ter tell ye some things thet I hain't never said ter nobody else. In the fust place, I wants ye ter keep this hyar gun fer me."
The girl's eyes widened with surprise.
"Hain't ye a-goin' ter take hit with ye, Samson?"
He shook his head.
"I hain't a-goin' ter need hit down below. Nobody don't use 'em down thar. I've got my pistol, an' I reckon thet will be enough."
"I'll take good keer of hit," she promised.
The boy took out of his pockets a box of cartridges and a small package tied in a greasy rag.
"Hit's loaded, Sally, an' hit's cleaned an' hit's greased. Hit's ready fer use."
Again, she nodded in silent assent, and the boy began speaking in a slow, careful voice, which gradually mounted into tense emotion.
"Sally, thet thar gun was my pap's. When he lay a-dyin', he gave hit ter me, an' he gave me a job ter do with hit. When I was a little feller, I used ter set up 'most all day, polishin' thet gun an' gittin' hit ready. I used ter go out in the woods, an' practise shootin' hit at things, tell I larned how ter handle hit. I reckon thar hain't many fellers round here thet kin beat me now." He paused, and the girl hastened to corroborate.
"Thar hain't none, Samson."
"There hain't nothin' in the world, Sally, thet I prizes like I does thet gun. Hit's got a job ter do … Thar hain't but one person in the world I'd trust hit with. Thet's you…. I wants ye ter keep hit fer me, an' ter keep hit ready…. They thinks round hyar I'm quittin', but I hain't. I'm a-comin' back, an', when I comes, I'll need this hyar thing—an' I'll need hit bad." He took up the rifle, and ran his hand caressingly along its lock and barrel.