Old Spicer South would ten years ago have put a bandage on his wound and gone about his business, but now he tossed under his patchwork quilt, and Brother Spencer expressed grave doubts for his recovery. With his counsel unavailable Wile McCager, by common consent, assumed something like the powers of a regent and took upon himself the duties to which Samson should have succeeded.
That a Hollman should have been able to elude the pickets and penetrate the heart of South territory to Spicer South's cabin, was both astounding and alarming. The war was on without question now, and there must be council. Wile McCager had sent out a summons for the family heads to meet that afternoon at his mill. It was Saturday—"mill day"—and in accordance with ancient custom the lanes would be more traveled than usual.
Those men who came by the wagon road afforded no unusual spectacle, for behind each saddle sagged a sack of grain. Their faces bore no stamp of unwonted excitement, but every man balanced a rifle across his pommel. None the less, their purpose was grim, and their talk when they had gathered was to the point.
Old McCager, himself sorely perplexed, voiced the sentiment that the others had been too courteous to express. With Spicer South bed-ridden and Samson a renegade, they had no adequate leader. McCager was a solid man of intrepid courage and honesty, but grinding grist was his avocation, not strategy and tactics. The enemy had such masters of intrigue as Purvy and Judge Hollman.
Then, a lean sorrel mare came jogging into view, switching her fly- bitten tail, and on the mare's back, urging him with a long, leafy switch, sat a woman. Behind her sagged the two loaded ends of a corn- sack. She rode like the mountain women, facing much to the side, yet unlike them. Her arms did not flap. She did not bump gawkily up and down in her saddle. Her blue calico dress caught the sun at a distance, but her blue sunbonnet shaded and masked her face. She was lithe and slim, and her violet eyes were profoundly serious, and her lips were as resolutely set as Joan of Arc's might have been, for Sally Miller had come only ostensibly to have her corn ground to meal. She had really come to speak for the absent chief, and she knew that she would be met with derision. The years had sobered the girl, but her beauty had increased, though it was now of a chastened type, which gave her a strange and rather exalted refinement of expression.
Wile McCager came to the mill door, as she rode up, and lifted the sack from her horse.
"Howdy, Sally?" he greeted.
"Tol'able, thank ye," said Sally. "I'm goin' ter get off."
As she entered the great half-lighted room, where the mill stones creaked on their cumbersome shafts, the hum of discussion sank to silence. The place was brown with age and dirt, and powdered with a coarse dusting of meal. The girl nodded to the mountaineers gathered in conclave, then, turning to the miller she announced:
"I'm going to send for Samson."
The statement was at first met with dead silence, then came a rumble of indignant dissent, but for that the girl was prepared, as she was prepared for the contemptuous laughter which followed.
"I reckon if Samson was here," she said, dryly, "you all wouldn't think it was quite so funny."
Old Caleb Wiley spat through his bristling beard, and his voice was a quavering rumble.
"What we wants is a man. We hain't got no use fer no traitors thet's too almighty damn busy doin' fancy work ter stand by their kith an' kin."
"That's a lie!" said the girl, scornfully. "There's just one man living that's smart enough to match Jesse Purvy—an' that one man is Samson. Samson's got the right to lead the Souths, and he's going to do it—ef he wants to."
"Sally," Wile McCager spoke, soothingly, "don't go gittin' mad. Caleb talks hasty. We knows ye used ter be Samson's gal, an' we hain't aimin' ter hurt yore feelin's. But Samson's done left the mountings. I reckon ef he wanted ter come back, he'd a-come afore now. Let him stay whar he's at."
"Whar is he at?" demanded old Caleb Wiley, in a truculent voice.
"That's his business," Sally flashed back, "but I know. All I want to tell you is this. Don't you make a move till I have time to get word to him. I tell you, he's got to have his say."
"I reckon we hain't a-goin' ter wait," sneered Caleb, "fer a feller thet won't let hit be known whar he's a-sojournin' at. Ef ye air so shore of him, why won't ye tell us whar he is now?"
"That's my business, too." Sally's voice was resolute. "I've got a letter here—it'll take two days to get to Samson. It'll take him two or three days more to get here. You've got to wait a week."
"Sally," the temporary chieftain spoke still in a patient, humoring sort of voice, as to a tempestuous child, "thar hain't no place ter mail a letter nigher then Hixon. No South can't ride inter Hixon, an' ride out again. The mail-carrier won't be down this way fer two days yit."
"I'm not askin' any South to ride into Hixon. I recollect another time when Samson was the only one that would do that," she answered, still scornfully. "I didn't come here to ask favors. I came to give orders— for him. A train leaves soon in the morning. My letter's goin' on that train."
"Who's goin' ter take hit ter town fer ye?"
"I'm goin' to take it for myself." Her reply was given as a matter of course.
"That wouldn't hardly be safe, Sally," the miller demurred; "this hain't no time fer a gal ter be galavantin' around by herself in the night time. Hit's a-comin' up ter storm, an' ye've got thirty miles ter ride, an' thirty-five back ter yore house."
"I'm not scared," she replied. "I'm goin' an' I'm warnin' you now, if you do anything that Samson don't like, you'll have to answer to him, when he comes." She turned, walking very erect and dauntless to her sorrel mare, and disappeared at a gallop.
"I reckon," said Wile McCager, breaking the silence at last, "hit don't make no great dif'rence. He won't hardly come, nohow." Then, he added: "But thet boy is smart."
* * * * *
Samson's return from Europe, after a year's study, was in the nature of a moderate triumph. With the art sponsorship of George Lescott, and the social sponsorship of Adrienne, he found that orders for portraits, from those who could pay munificently, seemed to seek him. He was tasting the novelty of being lionized.
That summer, Mrs. Lescott opened her house on Long Island early, and the life there was full of the sort of gaiety that comes to pleasant places when young men in flannels and girls in soft summery gowns and tanned cheeks are playing wholesomely, and singing tunefully, and making love—not too seriously.
Samson, tremendously busy these days in a new studio of his own, had run over for a week. Horton was, of course, of the party, and George Lescott was doing the honors as host. Besides these, all of whom regarded themselves as members of the family, there was a group of even younger folk, and the broad halls and terraces and tennis courts rang all day long with their laughter, and the floors trembled at night under the rhythmical tread of their dancing.
Off across the lawns and woodlands stretched the blue, sail-flecked waters of the Sound, and on the next hill rose the tile roofs and cream -white walls of the country club.
One evening, Adrienne left the dancers for the pergola, where she took refuge under a mass of honeysuckle.
Samson South followed her. She saw him coming, and smiled. She was contrasting this Samson, loosely clad in flannels, with the Samson she had first seen rising awkwardly to greet her in the studio.
"You should have stayed inside and made yourself agreeable to the girls," Adrienne reproved him, as he came up. "What's the use of making a lion of you, if you won't roar for the visitors?"
"I've been roaring," laughed the man. "I've just been explaining to Miss Willoughby that we only eat the people we kill in Kentucky on certain days of solemn observance and sacrifice. I wanted to be agreeable to you, Drennie, for a while."
The girl shook her head sternly, but she smiled and made a place for him at her side. She wondered what form his being agreeable to her would take.
"I wonder if the man or woman lives," mused Samson, "to whom the fragrance of honeysuckle doesn't bring back some old memory that is as strong—and sweet—as itself."
The girl did not at once answer him. The breeze was stirring the hair on her temples and neck. The moon was weaving a lace pattern on the ground, and filtering its silver light through the vines. At last, she asked:
"Do you ever find yourself homesick, Samson, these days?"
The man answered with a short laugh. Then, his words came softly, and not his own words, but those of one more eloquent:
"'Who hath desired the Sea? Her excellent loneliness rather"'Than the forecourts of kings, and her uttermost pitsthan the streets where men gather…."'His Sea that his being fulfills?"'So and no otherwise—"so and no otherwise hillmendesire their hills.'"
"And yet," she said, and a trace of the argumentative stole into her voice, "you haven't gone back."
"No." There was a note of self-reproach in his voice. "But soon I shall go. At least, for a time. I've been thinking a great deal lately about 'my fluttered folk and wild.' I'm just beginning to understand my relation to them, and my duty."
"Your duty is no more to go back there and throw away your life," she found herself instantly contending, "than it is the duty of the young eagle, who has learned to fly, to go back to the nest where he was hatched."
"But, Drennie," he said, gently, "suppose the young eagle is the only one that knows how to fly—and suppose he could teach the others? Don't you see? I've only seen it myself for a little while."
"What is it that—that you see now?"
"I must go back, not to relapse, but to come to be a constructive force. I must carry some of the outside world to Misery. I must take to them, because I am one of them, gifts that they would reject from other hands."
"Will they accept them even from you?"
"Drennie, you once said that, if I grew ashamed of my people, ashamed even of their boorish manners, their ignorance, their crudity, you would have no use for me."
"I still say that," she answered.
"Well, I'm not ashamed of them. I went through that, but it's over."
She sat silent for a while, then cried suddenly:
"I don't want you to go!" The moment she had said it, she caught herself with a nervous little laugh, and added a postscript of whimsical nonsense to disarm her utterance of its telltale feeling. "Why, I'm just getting you civilized, yourself. It took years to get your hair cut."
He ran his palm over his smoothly trimmed head, and laughed.
"Delilah, Oh, Delilah!" he said. "I was resolute, but you have shorn me."
"Don't!" she exclaimed. "Don't call me that!"
"Then, Drennie, dear," he answered, lightly, "don't dissuade me from the most decent resolve I have lately made."
From the house came the strains of an alluring waltz. For a little time, they listened without speech, then the girl said very gravely:
"You won't—you won't still feel bound to kill your enemies, will you,Samson?"
The man's face hardened.
"I believe I'd rather not talk about that. I shall have to win back the confidence I have lost. I shall have to take a place at the head of my clan by proving myself a man—and a man by their own standards. It is only at their head that I can lead them. If the lives of a few assassins have to be forfeited, I sha'n't hesitate at that. I shall stake my own against them fairly. The end is worth it."
The girl breathed deeply, then she heard Samson's voice again:
"Drennie, I want you to understand, that if I succeed it is your success. You took me raw and unfashioned, and you have made me. There is no way of thanking you."
"There is a way," she contradicted. "You can thank me by feeling just that way about it."
"Then, I do thank you."
She sat looking up at him, her eyes wide and questioning.
"Exactly what do you feel, Samson," she asked. "I mean about me?"
He leaned a little toward her, and the fragrance and subtle beauty of her stole into his veins and brain, in a sudden intoxication. His hand went out to seize hers. This beauty which would last and not wither into a hag's ugliness with the first breath of age—as mountain beauty does—was hypnotizing him. Then, he straightened and stood looking down.
"Don't ask me that, please," he said, in a carefully controlled voice."I don't even want to ask myself. My God, Drennie, don't you see thatI'm afraid to answer that?"
She rose from her seat, and stood for just an instant rather unsteadily before him, then she laughed.
"Samson, Samson!" she challenged. "The moon is making us as foolish as children. Old friend, we are growing silly. Let's go in, and be perfectly good hostesses and social lions."
Slowly, Samson South came to his feet. His voice was in the dead-level pitch which Wilfred had once before heard. His eyes were as clear and hard as transparent flint.
"I'm sorry to be of trouble, George," he said, quietly. "But you must get me to New York at once—by motor. I must take a train South to- night."
"No bad news, I hope," suggested Lescott.
For an instant, Samson forgot his four years of veneer. The century of prenatal barbarism broke out fiercely. He was seeing things far away— and forgetting things near by. His eyes blazed and his fingers twitched.
"Hell, no!" he exclaimed. "The war's on, and my hands are freed!"
For an instant, as no one spoke, he stood breathing heavily, then, wheeling, rushed toward the house as though just across its threshold lay the fight into which lie was aching to hurl himself.
The next afternoon, Adrienne and Samson were sitting with a gaily chattering group at the side lines of the tennis courts.
"When you go back to the mountains, Samson," Wilfred was suggesting, "we might form a partnership. 'South, Horton and Co., development of coal and timber.' There are millions in it."
"Five years ago, I should have met you with a Winchester rifle," laughed the Kentuckian. "Now I shall not."
"I'll go with you, Horton, and make a sketch or two," volunteeredGeorge Lescott, who just then arrived from town. "And, by the way,Samson, here's a letter that came for you just as I left the studio."
The mountaineer took the envelope with a Hixon postmark, and for an instant gazed at it with a puzzled expression. It was addressed in a feminine hand, which he did not recognize. It was careful, but perfect, writing, such as one sees in a school copybook. With an apology he tore the covering, and read the letter. Adrienne, glancing at his face, saw it suddenly pale and grow as set and hard as marble.
Samson's eyes were dwelling with only partial comprehension on the script. This is what he read:
"DEAR SAMSON: The war is on again. Tamarack Spicer has killed Jim Asberry, and the Hollmans have killed Tamarack. Uncle Spicer is shot, but he may get well. There is nobody to lead the Souths. I am trying to hold them down until I hear from you. Don't come if you don't want to—but the gun is ready. With love,
Samson, throwing things hurriedly into his bag, heard a knock on his door. He opened it, and outside in the hall stood Adrienne. Her face was pale, and she leaned a little on the hand which rested against the white jamb.
"What does it mean?" she asked.
He came over.
"It means, Drennie," he said, "that you may make a pet of a leopard cub, but there will come a day when something of the jungle comes out in him —and he must go. My uncle has been shot, and the feud is on—I've been sent for."
He paused, and she half-whispered in an appealing voice:
"Don't go."
"You don't mean that," he said, quietly. "If it were you, you would go. Whether I get back here or not"—he hesitated—"my gratitude will be with you—always." He broke off, and said suddenly: "Drennie, I don't want to say good-by to you. I can't."
"It's not necessary yet," she answered. "I'm going to drive you to NewYork."
"No!" he exclaimed. "It's too far, and I've got to go fast——"
"That's why I'm going," she promptly assured him. "I'm the only fool on these premises that can get all the speed out of a car that's in her engine—and the constables are good to me. I just came up here to—" she hesitated, then added—"to see you alone for a moment, and to say that teacher has never had such a bright little pupil, in her life—and—" the flippancy with which she was masking her feeling broke and she added, in a shaken voice as she thrust out her hand, man-fashion—"and to say, God keep you, boy."
He seized the hand in both his own, and gripped it hard. He tried to speak, but only shook his head with a rueful smile.
"I'll be waiting at the door with the car," she told him, as she left.
Horton, too, came in to volunteer assistance.
"Wilfred," said Samson, feelingly, 'there isn't any man I'd rather have at my back, in a stand-up fight. But this isn't exactly that sort. Where I'm going, a fellow has got to be invisible. No, you can't help, now. Come down later. We'll organize Horton, South and Co."
"South, Horton and Co.," corrected Wilfred; "native sons first."
At that moment, Adrienne believed she had decided the long-mooted question. Of course, she had not. It was merely the stress of the moment; exaggerating the importance of one she was losing at the expense of the one who was left. Still, as she sat in the car waiting, her world seemed slipping into chaos under her feet, and, when Samson had taken his place at her side, the machine leaped forward into a reckless plunge of speed.
Samson stopped at his studio, and threw open an old closet where, from a littered pile of discarded background draperies, canvases and stretchers, he fished out a buried and dust-covered pair of saddlebags. They had long lain there forgotten, but they held the rusty clothes in which he had left Misery. He threw them over his arm and dropped them at Adrienne's feet, as he handed her the studio keys.
"Will you please have George look after things, and make the necessary excuses to my sitters? He'll find a list of posing appointments in the desk."
The girl nodded.
"What are those?" she asked, gazing at the great leather pockets as at some relic unearthed from Pompeian excavations.
"Saddlebags, Drennie," he said, "and in them are homespun and jeans.One can't lead his 'fluttered folk and wild' in a cutaway coat."
Shortly they were at the station, and the man, standing at the side of the machine, took her hand.
"It's not good-by, you know," he said, smiling. "JustaufWiedersehen."
She nodded and smiled, too, but, as she smiled, she shivered, and turned the car slowly. There was no need to hurry, now.
Samson had caught the fastest west-bound express on the schedule. In thirty-six hours, he would be at Hixon. There were many things which his brain must attack and digest in these hours. He must arrange his plan of action to its minutest detail, because he would have as little time for reflection, once he had reached his own country, as a wildcat flung into a pack of hounds.
From the railroad station to his home, he must make his way—most probably fight his way—through thirty miles of hostile territory where all the trails were watched. And yet, for the time, all that seemed too remotely unreal to hold his thoughts. He was seeing the coolly waving curtains of flowered chintz that stirred in the windows of his room at the Lescott house and the crimson ramblers that nodded against the sky. He was hearing a knock on the door, and seeing, as it opened, the figure of Adrienne Lescott and the look that had been in her eyes.
He took out Sally's letter, and read it once more. He read it mechanically and as a piece of news that had brought evil tidings. Then, suddenly, another aspect of it struck him—an aspect to which the shock of its reception had until this tardy moment blinded him. The letter was perfectly grammatical and penned in a hand of copy-book roundness and evenness. The address, the body of the missive, and the signature, were all in one chirography. She would not have intrusted the writing of this letter to any one else.
Sally had learned to write!
Moreover, at the end were the words "with love." It was all plain now. Sally had never repudiated him. She was declaring herself true to her mission and her love. All that heartbreak through which he had gone had been due to his own misconception, and in that misconception he had drawn into himself and had stopped writing to her. Even his occasional letters had for two years ceased to brighten her heart-strangling isolation—and she was still waiting…. She had sent no word of appeal until the moment had come of which she had promised to inform him. Sally, abandoned and alone, had been fighting her way up—that she might stand on his level.
"Good God!" groaned the man, in abjectly bitter self-contempt. His hand went involuntarily to his cropped head, and dropped with a gesture of self-doubting. He looked down at his tan shoes and silk socks. He rolled back his shirtsleeve and contemplated the forearm that had once been as brown and tough as leather. It was now the arm of a city man, except for the burning of one outdoor week. He was returning at the eleventh hour—stripped of the faith of his kinsmen, half-stripped of his faith in himself. If he were to realize the constructive dreams of which he had last night so confidently prattled to Adrienne, he must lead his people from under the blighting shadow of the feud.
Yet, if he was to lead them at all, he must first regain their shaken confidence, and to do that he must go, at their head, through this mire of war to vindication. Only a fighting South could hope to be heard in behalf of peace. His eventual regeneration belonged to some to-morrow. To-day held the need of such work as that of the first Samson—to slay.
He must reappear before his kinsmen as much as possible the boy who had left them—not the fop with newfangled affectations. His eyes fell upon the saddlebags on the floor of the Pullman, and he smiled satirically. He would like to step from the train at Hixon and walk brazenly through the town in those old clothes, challenging every hostile glance. If they shot him down on the streets, as they certainly would do, it would end his questioning and his anguish of dilemma. He would welcome that, but it would, after all, be shirking the issue.
He must get out of Hixon and into his own country unrecognized. The lean boy of four years ago was the somewhat filled out man now. The one concession that he had made to Paris life was the wearing of a closely cropped mustache. That he still wore—had worn it chiefly because he liked to hear Adrienne's humorous denunciation of it. He knew that, in his present guise and dress, he had an excellent chance of walking through the streets of Hixon as a stranger. And, after leaving Hixon, there was a mission to be performed at Jesse Purvy's store. As he thought of that mission a grim glint came to his pupils.
All journeys end, and as Samson passed through the tawdry cars of the local train near Hixon he saw several faces which he recognized, but they either eyed him in inexpressive silence, or gave him the greeting of the "furriner."
Then the whistle shrieked for the trestle over the Middle Fork, and at only a short distance rose the cupola of the brick court-house and the scattered roofs of the town. Scattered over the green slopes by the river bank lay the white spread of a tented company street, and, as he looked out, he saw uniformed figures moving to and fro, and caught the ring of a bugle call. So the militia was on deck; things must be bad, he reflected. He stood on the platform and looked down as the engine roared along the trestle. There were two gatling guns. One pointed its muzzle toward the town, and the other scowled up at the face of the mountain. Sentries paced their beats. Men in undershirts lay dozing outside tent flaps. It was all a picture of disciplined readiness, and yet Samson knew that soldiers made of painted tin would be equally effective. These military forces must remain subservient to local civil authorities, and the local civil authorities obeyed the nod of Judge Hollman and Jesse Purvy.
As Samson crossed the toll-bridge to the town proper he passed two brown-shirted militiamen, lounging on the rail of the middle span. They grinned at him, and, recognizing the outsider from his clothes, one of them commented:
"Ain't this the hell of a town?"
"It's going to be," replied Samson, enigmatically, as he went on.
Still unrecognized, he hired a horse at the livery stable, and for two hours rode in silence, save for the easy creaking of his stirrup leathers and the soft thud of hoofs.
The silence soothed him. The brooding hills lulled his spirit as a crooning song lulls a fretful child. Mile after mile unrolled forgotten vistas. Something deep in himself murmured:
"Home!"
It was late afternoon when he saw ahead of him the orchard of Purvy's place, and read on the store wall, a little more weather-stained, but otherwise unchanged:
"Jesse Purvy, General Merchandise."
The porch of the store was empty, and as Samson flung himself from his saddle there was no one to greet him. This was surprising, since, ordinarily, two or three of Purvy's personal guardsmen loafed at the front to watch the road. Just now the guard should logically be doubled. Samson still wore his Eastern clothes—for he wanted to go through that door unknown. As Samson South he could not cross its threshold either way. But when he stepped up on to the rough porch flooring no one challenged his advance. The yard and orchard were quiet from their front fence to the grisly stockade at the rear, and, wondering at these things, the young man stood for a moment looking about at the afternoon peace before he announced himself.
Yet Samson had not come to the stronghold of his enemy for the purpose of assassination. There had been another object in his mind—an utterly mad idea, it is true, yet so bold of conception that it held a ghost of promise. He had meant to go into Jesse Purvy's store and chat artlessly, like some inquisitive "furriner." He would ask questions which by their very impertinence might be forgiven on the score of a stranger's folly. But, most of all, he wanted to drop the casual information, which he should assume to have heard on the train, that Samson South was returning, and to mark, on the assassin leader, the effect of the news. In his new code it was necessary to give at least the rattler's warning before he struck, and he meant to strike. If he were recognized, well—he shrugged his shoulders.
But as he stood on the outside, wiping the perspiration from his forehead, for the ride had been warm, he heard voices within. They were loud and angry voices. It occurred to him that by remaining where he was he might gain more information than by hurrying in.
"I've done been your executioner fer twenty years," complained a voice, which Samson at once recognized as that of Aaron Hollis, the most trusted of Purvy's personal guards. "I hain't never laid down on ye yet. Me an' Jim Asberry killed old Henry South. We laid fer his boy, an' would 'a' got him ef ye'd only said ther word. I went inter Hixon, an' killed Tam'rack Spicer, with soldiers all round me. There hain't no other damn fool in these mountings would 'a' took such a long chance es thet. I'm tired of hit. They're a-goin' ter git me, an' I wants ter leave, an' you won't come clean with the price of a railroad ticket to Oklahoma. Now, damn yore stingy soul, I gits that ticket or I gits you!"
"Aaron, ye can't scare me into doin' nothin' I ain't aimin' to do." The old baron of the vendetta spoke in a cold, stoical voice. "I tell ye I ain't quite through with ye yet. In due an' proper time I'll see that ye get yer ticket." Then he added, with conciliating softness: "We've been friends a long while. Let's talk this thing over before we fall out."
"Thar hain't nothin' ter talk over," stormed Aaron. "Ye're jest tryin' ter kill time till the boys gits hyar, and then I reckon ye 'lows ter have me kilt like yer've had me kill them others. Hit hain't no use. I've done sent 'em away. When they gits back hyar, either you'll be in hell, or I'll be on my way outen the mountings."
Samson stood rigid. Here was the confession of one murderer, with no denial from the other. The truce was of. Why should he wait? Cataracts seemed to thunder in his brain, and yet he stood there, his hand in his coat-pocket, clutching the grip of a magazine pistol. Samson South the old, and Samson South the new, were writhing in the life-and-death grapple of two codes. Then, before decision came, he heard a sharp report inside, and the heavy fall of a body to the floor.
A wildly excited figure came plunging through the door, and Samson's left hand swept out, and seized its shoulder in a sudden vise grip.
"Do you know me?" he inquired, as the mountaineer pulled away and crouched back with startled surprise and vicious frenzy.
"No, damn ye! Git outen my road!" Aaron thrust his cocked rifle close against the stranger's face. From its muzzle came the acrid stench of freshly burned powder. "Git outen my road afore I kills ye!"
"My name is Samson South."
Before the astounded finger on the rifle trigger could be crooked, Samson's pistol spoke from the pocket, and, as though in echo, the rifle blazed, a little too late and a shade too high, over his head, as the dead man's arms went up.
Except for those two reports there was no sound. Samson stood still, anticipating an uproar of alarm. Now, he should doubtless have to pay with his life for both the deaths which would inevitably and logically be attributed to his agency. But, strangely enough, no clamor arose. The shot inside had been muffled, and those outside, broken by the intervening store, did not arouse the house. Purvy's bodyguard had been sent away by Hollis on a false alarm. Only the "womenfolks" and children remained indoors, and they were drowning with a piano any sounds that might have come from without. That piano was the chief emblem of Purvy's wealth. It represented the acme of "having things hung up"; that ancient and expressive phrase, which had come down from days when the pioneers' worldly condition was gauged by the hams hanging in the smokehouse and the peppers, tobacco and herbs strung high against the rafters.
Now, Samson South stood looking down, uninterrupted, on what had been Aaron Hollis as it lay motionless at his feet. There was a powder- burned hole in the butternut shirt, and only a slender thread of blood trickled into the dirt-grimed cracks between the planks. The body was twisted sidewise, in one of those grotesque attitudes with which a sudden summons so frequently robs the greatest phenomenon of all its rightful dignity. The sun was gilding the roadside clods, and burnishing the greens of the treetops. The breeze was harping sleepily among the branches, and several geese stalked pompously along the creek's edge. On the top of the stockade a gray squirrel, sole witness to the tragedy, rose on his haunches, flirted his brush, and then, in a sudden leap of alarm, disappeared.
Samson turned to the darkened doorway. Inside was emptiness, except for the other body, which had crumpled forward and face down across the counter. A glance showed that Jesse Purvy would no more fight back the coming of death. He was quite unarmed. Behind his spent body ranged shelves of general merchandise. Boxes of sardines, and cans of peaches were lined in homely array above him. His lifeless hand rested as though flung out in an oratorical gesture on a bolt of blue calico.
Samson paused only for a momentary survey. His score was clean. He would not again have to agonize over the dilemma of old ethics and new. To-morrow, the word would spread like wildfire along Misery and Crippleshin, that Samson South was back, and that his coming had been signalized by these two deaths. The fact that he was responsible for only one—and that in self-defense—would not matter. They would prefer to believe that he had invaded the store and killed Purvy, and that Hollis had fallen in his master's defense at the threshold. Samson went out, still meeting no one, and continued his journey.
Dusk was falling, when he hitched his horse in a clump of timber, and, lifting his saddlebags, began climbing to a cabin that sat far back in a thicketed cove. He was now well within South territory, and the need of masquerade had ended.
The cabin had not, for years, been occupied. Its rooftree was leaning askew under rotting shingles. The doorstep was ivy-covered, and the stones of the hearth were broken. But it lay well hidden, and would serve his purposes.
Shortly, a candle flickered inside, before a small hand mirror. Scissors and safety razor were for a while busy. The man who entered in impeccable clothes emerged fifteen minutes later—transformed. There appeared under the rising June crescent, a smooth-faced native, clad in stained store-clothes, with rough woolen socks showing at his brogan tops, and a battered felt hat drawn over his face. No one who had known the Samson South of four years ago would fail to recognize him now. And the strangest part, he told himself, was that he felt the old Samson. He no longer doubted his courage. He had come home, and his conscience was once more clear.
The mountain roads and the mountain sides themselves were sweetly silent. Moon mist engulfed the flats in a lake of dreams, and, as the livery-stable horse halted to pant at the top of the final ridge, he could see below him his destination.
The smaller knobs rose like little islands out of the vapor, and yonder, catching the moonlight like scraps of gray paper, were two roofs: that of his uncle's house—and that of the Widow Miller.
At a point where a hand-bridge crossed the skirting creek, the boy dismounted. Ahead of him lay the stile where he had said good-by to Sally. The place was dark, and the chimney smokeless, but, as he came nearer, holding the shadows of the trees, he saw one sliver of light at the bottom of a solid shutter; the shutter of Sally's room. Yet, for a while, Samson stopped there, looking and making no sound. He stood at his Rubicon—and behind him lay all the glitter and culture of that other world, a world that had been good to him.
That was to Samson South one of those pregnant and portentous moments with which life sometimes punctuates its turning points. At such times, all the set and solidified strata that go into the building of a man's nature may be uptossed and rearranged. So, the layers of a mountain chain and a continent that have for centuries remained steadfast may break and alter under the stirring of earthquake or volcano, dropping heights under water and throwing new ranges above the sea.
There was passing before his eyes as he stood there, pausing, a panorama much vaster than any he had been able to conceive when last he stood there. He was seeing in review the old life and the new, lurid with contrasts, and, as the pictures of things thousands of miles away rose before his eyes as clearly as the serried backbone of the ridges, he was comparing and settling for all time the actual values and proportions of the things in his life.
He saw the streets of Paris and New York, brilliant under their strings of opalescent lights; theChamps Elyséesran in its smooth, tree-trimmed parquetry from thePlace de Concordeto theArc de Triomphe, and the chatter and music of its cafés rang in his ears. The ivory spaces of Rome, from the Pincian Hill where his fancy saw almond trees in bloom to thePiazza Venezia, spread their eternal story before his imagination. He saw 'buses and hansoms slirring through the mud and fog of London and the endlesspot- pourriof Manhattan. All the things that the outside world had to offer; all that had ever stirred his pulses to a worship of the beautiful, the harmonious, the excellent, rose in exact value. Then, he saw again the sunrise as it would be to-morrow morning over these ragged hills. He saw the mists rise and grow wisp-like, and the disc of the sun gain color, and all the miracles of cannoning tempest and caressing calm—and, though he had come back to fight, a wonderful peace settled over him, for he knew that, if he must choose these, his native hills, or all the rest, he would forego all the rest.
And Sally—would she be changed? His heart was hammering wildly now. Sally had remained loyal. It was a miracle, but it was the one thing that counted. He was going to her, and nothing else mattered. All the questions of dilemma were answered. He was Samson South come back to his own—to Sally, and the rifle. Nothing had changed! The same trees raised the same crests against the same sky. For every one of them, he felt a throb of deep emotion. Best of all, he himself had not changed in any cardinal respect, though he had come through changes and perplexities.
He lifted his head, and sent out a long, clear whippoorwill call, which quavered on the night much like the other calls in the black hills around him. After a moment, he went nearer, in the shadow of a poplar, and repeated the call.
Then, the cabin-door opened. Its jamb framed a patch of yellow candlelight, and, at the center, a slender silhouetted figure, in a fluttering, eager attitude of uncertainty. The figure turned slightly to one side, and, as it did so, the man saw clasped in her right hand the rifle, which had been his mission, bequeathed to her in trust. He saw, too, the delicate outline of her profile, with anxiously parted lips and a red halo about her soft hair. He watched the eager heave of her breast, and the spasmodic clutching of the gun to her heart. For four years, he had not given that familiar signal. Possibly, it had lost some of its characteristic quality, for she still seemed in doubt. She hesitated, and the man, invisible in the shadow, once more imitated the bird-note, but this time it was so low and soft that it seemed the voice of a whispering whippoorwill.
Then, with a sudden glad little cry, she came running with her old fleet grace down to the road.
Samson had vaulted the stile, and stood in the full moonlight. As he saw her coming he stretched out his arms and his voice broke from his throat in a half-hoarse, passionate cry:
"Sally!"
It was the only word he could have spoken just then, but it was all that was necessary. It told her everything. It was an outburst from a heart too full of emotion to grope after speech, the cry of a man for the One Woman who alone can call forth an inflection more eloquent than phrases and poetry. And, as she came into his outstretched arms as straight and direct as a homing pigeon, they closed about her in a convulsive grip that held her straining to him, almost crushing her in the tempest of his emotion.
For a time, there was no speech, but to each of them it seemed that their tumultuous heart-beating must sound above the night music, and the telegraphy of heart-beats tells enough. Later, they would talk, but now, with a gloriously wild sense of being together, with a mutual intoxication of joy because all that they had dreamed was true, and all that they had feared was untrue, they stood there under the skies clasping each other—with the rifle between their breasts. Then as he held her close, he wondered that a shadow of doubt could ever have existed. He wondered if, except in some nightmare of hallucination, it had ever existed.
The flutter of her heart was like that of a rapturous bird, and the play of her breath on his face like the fragrance of the elder blossoms.
These were their stars twinkling overhead. These were their hills, and their moon was smiling on their tryst.
He had gone and seen the world that lured him: he had met its difficulties, and faced its puzzles. He had even felt his feet wandering at the last from the path that led back to her, and now, with her lithe figure close held in his embrace, and her red-brown hair brushing his temples, he marveled how such an instant of doubt could have existed. He knew only that the silver of the moon and the kiss of the breeze and the clasp of her soft arms about his neck were all parts of one great miracle. And she, who had waited and almost despaired, not taking count of what she had suffered, felt her knees grow weak, and her head grow dizzy with sheer happiness, and wondered if it were not too marvelous to be true. And, looking very steadfastly into his eyes, she saw there the gleam that once had frightened her; the gleam that spoke of something stronger and more compelling than his love. It no longer frightened her, but made her soul sing, though it was more intense than it had ever been before, for now she knew that it was She herself who brought it to his pupils—and that nothing would ever be stronger.
But they had much to say to each other, and, finally, Samson broke the silence:
"Did ye think I wasn't a-comin' back, Sally?" he questioned, softly. At that moment, he had no realization that his tongue had ever fashioned smoother phrases. And she, too, who had been making war on crude idioms, forgot, as she answered:
"Ye done said ye was comin'." Then, she added a happy lie: "I knowed plumb shore ye'd do hit."
After a while, she drew away, and said, slowly:
"Samson, I've done kept the old rifle-gun ready fer ye. Ye said ye'd need it bad when ye come back, an' I've took care of it."
She stood there holding it, and her voice dropped almost to a whisper as she added:
"It's been a lot of comfort to me sometimes, because it was your'n. I knew if ye stopped keerin' fer me, ye wouldn't let me keep it—an' as long as I had it, I—" She broke off, and the fingers of one hand touched the weapon caressingly.
The man knew many things now that he had not known when he said good- by. He recognized in the very gesture with which she stroked the old walnut stock the pathetic heart-hunger of a nature which had been denied the fulfillment of its strength, and which had been bestowing on an inanimate object something that might almost have been the stirring of the mother instinct for a child. Now, thank God, her life should never lack anything that a flood-tide of love could bring to it. He bent his head in a mute sort of reverence.
After a long while, they found time for the less-wonderful things.
"I got your letter," he said, seriously, "and I came at once." As he began to speak of concrete facts, he dropped again into ordinary English, and did not know that he had changed his manner of speech.
For an instant, Sally looked up into his face, then with a sudden laugh, she informed him:
"I can say, 'isn't,' instead of, 'hain't,' too. How did you like my writing?"
He held her off at arms' length, and looked at her pridefully, but under his gaze her eyes fell, and her face flushed with a sudden diffidence and a new shyness of realization. She wore a calico dress, but at her throat was a soft little bow of ribbon. She was no longer the totally unself-conscious wood-nymph, though as natural and instinctive as in the other days. Suddenly, she drew away from him a little, and her hands went slowly to her breast, and rested there. She was fronting a great crisis, but, in the first flush of joy, she had forgotten it. She had spent lonely nights struggling for rudiments; she had sought and fought to refashion herself, so that, if he came, he need not be ashamed of her. And now he had come, and, with a terrible clarity and distinctness, she realized how pitifully little she had been able to accomplish. Would she pass muster? She stood there before him, frightened, self-conscious and palpitating, then her voice came in a whisper:
"Samson, dear, I'm not holdin' you to any promise. Those things we said were a long time back. Maybe we'd better forget 'em now, and begin all over again."
But, again, he crushed her in his arms, and his voice rose triumphantly:
"Sally, I have no promises to take back, and you have made none thatI'm ever going to let you take back—not while life lasts!"
Her laugh was the delicious music of happiness. "I don't want to take them back," she said. Then, suddenly, she added, importantly: "I wear shoes and stockings now, and I've been to school a little. I'm awfully— awfully ignorant, Samson, but I've started, and I reckon you can teach me."
His voice choked. Then, her hands strayed up, and clasped themselves about his head.
"Oh, Samson," she cried, as though someone had struck her, "you've cut yore ha'r."
"It will grow again," he laughed. But he wished that he had not had to make that excuse. Then, being honest, he told her all about Adrienne Lescott—even about how, after he believed that he had been outcast by his uncle and herself, he had had his moments of doubt. Now that it was all so clear, now that there could never be doubt, he wanted the woman who had been so true a friend to know the girl whom he loved. He loved them both, but was in love with only one. He wanted to present to Sally the friend who had made him, and to the friend who had made him the Sally of whom he was proud. He wanted to tell Adrienne that now he could answer her question—that each of them meant to the other exactly the same thing: they were friends of the rarer sort, who had for a little time been in danger of mistaking their comradeship for passion.
As they talked, sitting on the stile, Sally held the rifle across her knees. Except for their own voices and the soft chorus of night sounds, the hills were wrapped in silence—a silence as soft as velvet. Suddenly, in a pause, there came to the girl's ears the cracking of a twig in the woods. With the old instinctive training of the mountains, she leaped noiselessly down, and for an instant stood listening with intent ears. Then, in a low, tense whisper, as she thrust the gun into the man's hands, she cautioned:
"Git out of sight. Maybe they've done found out ye've come back—maybe they're trailin' ye!"
With an instant shock, she remembered what mission had brought him back, and what was his peril; and he, too, for whom the happiness of the moment had swallowed up other things, came back to a recognition of facts. Dropping into the old woodcraft, he melted out of sight into the shadow, thrusting the girl behind him, and crouched against the fence, throwing the rifle forward, and peering into the shadows. As he stood there, balancing the gun once more in his hands, old instincts began to stir, old battle hunger to rise, and old realizations of primitive things to assault him. Then, when they had waited with bated breath until they were both reassured, he rose and swung the stock to his shoulder several times. With something like a sigh of contentment, he said, half to himself:
"Hit feels mighty natural ter throw this old rifle-gun up. I reckon maybe I kin still shoot hit."
"I learned some things down there at school, Samson," said the girl, slowly, "and I wish—I wish you didn't have to use it."
"Jim Asberry is dead," said the man, gravely.
"Yes," she echoed, "Jim Asberry's dead." She stopped there. Yet, her sigh completed the sentence as though she had added, "but he was only one of several. Your vow went farther."
After a moment's pause, Samson added:
"Jesse Purvy's dead."
The girl drew back, with a frightened gasp. She knew what this meant, or thought she did.
"Jesse Purvy!" she repeated. "Oh, Samson, did ye—?" She broke off, and covered her face with her hands.
"No, Sally," he told her. "I didn't have to." He recited the day's occurrences, and they sat together on the stile, until the moon had sunk to the ridge top.
* * * * *
Captain Sidney Callomb, who had been despatched in command of a militia company to quell the trouble in the mountains, should have been a soldier by profession. All his enthusiasms were martial. His precision was military. His cool eye held a note of command which made itself obeyed. He had a rare gift of handling men, which made them ready to execute the impossible. But the elder Callomb had trained his son to succeed him at the head of a railroad system, and the young man had philosophically undertaken to satisfy his military ambitions with State Guard shoulder-straps.
The deepest sorrow and mortification he had ever known was that which came to him when Tamarack Spicer, his prisoner of war and a man who had been surrendered on the strength of his personal guarantee, had been assassinated before his eyes. That the manner of this killing had been so outrageously treacherous that it could hardly have been guarded against, failed to bring him solace. It had shown the inefficiency of his efforts, and had brought on a carnival of blood-letting, when he had come here to safeguard against that danger. In some fashion, he must make amends. He realized, too, and it rankled deeply, that his men were not being genuinely used to serve the State, but as instruments of the Hollmans, and he had seen enough to distrust the Hollmans. Here, in Hixon, he was seeing things from only one angle. He meant to learn something more impartial.
Besides being on duty as an officer of militia, Callomb was a Kentuckian, interested in the problems of his Commonwealth, and, when he went back, he knew that his cousin, who occupied the executive mansion at Frankfort, would be interested in his suggestions. The Governor had asked him to report his impressions, and he meant to form them after analysis.
So, smarting under his impotency, Captain Callomb came out of his tent one morning, and strolled across the curved bridge to the town proper. He knew that the Grand Jury was convening, and he meant to sit as a spectator in the court-house and study proceedings when they were instructed.
But before he reached the court-house, where for a half-hour yet the cupola bell would not clang out its summons to veniremen and witnesses, he found fresh fuel for his wrath.
He was not a popular man with these clansmen, though involuntarily he had been useful in leading their victims to the slaughter. There was a scowl in his eyes that they did not like, and an arrogant hint of iron laws in the livery he wore, which their instincts distrusted.
Callomb saw without being told that over the town lay a sense of portentous tidings. Faces were more sullen than usual. Men fell into scowling knots and groups. A clerk at a store where he stopped for tobacco inquired as he made change:
"Heered the news, stranger?"
"What news?"
"This here 'Wildcat' Samson South come back yis-tiddy, an' last evenin' towards sundown, Jesse Purvy an' Aaron Hollis was shot dead."
For an instant, the soldier stood looking at the young clerk, his eyes kindling into a wrathful blaze. Then, he cursed under his breath. At the door, he turned on his heel:
"Where can Judge Smithers be found at this time of day?" he demanded.
The Honorable Asa Smithers was not the regular Judge of the Circuit which numbered Hixon among its county-seats. The elected incumbent was ill, and Smithers had been named as his pro-tem. successor. Callomb climbed to the second story of the frame bank building, and pounded loudly on a door, which bore the boldly typed shingle:
The temporary Judge admitted a visitor in uniform, whose countenance was stormy with indignant protest. The Judge himself was placid and smiling. The lawyer, who was for the time being exalted to the bench, hoped to ascend it more permanently by the votes of the Hollman faction, since only Hollman votes were counted. He was a young man of powerful physique with a face ruggedly strong and honest.
It was such an honest and fearless face that it was extremely valuable to its owner in concealing a crookedness as resourceful as that of a fox, and a moral cowardice which made him a spineless tool in evil hands. A shock of tumbled red hair over a fighting face added to the appearance of combative strength. The Honorable Asa was conventionally dressed, and his linen was white, but his collar was innocent of a necktie. Callomb stood for a moment inside the door, and, when he spoke, it was to demand crisply:
"Well, what are you going to do about it?"
"About what, Captain?" inquired the other, mildly.
"Is it possible you haven't heard? Since yesterday noon, two more murders have been added to the holocaust. You represent the courts of law. I represent the military arm of the State. Are we going to stand by and see this go on?"
The Judge shook his head, and his visage was sternly thoughtful and hypocritical. He did not mention that he had just come from conference with the Hollman leaders. He did not explain that the venire he had drawn from the jury drum had borne a singularly solid Hollman compaction.
"Until the Grand Jury acts, I don't see that we can take any steps."
"And," stormed Captain Callomb, "the Grand Jury will, like former Grand Juries, lie down in terror and inactivity. Either there are no courageous men in your county, or these panels are selected to avoid including them."
Judge Smithers' face darkened. If he was a moral coward, he was at least a coward crouching behind a seeming of fearlessness.
"Captain," he said, coolly, but with a dangerous hint of warning, "I don't see that your duties include contempt of court."
"No!" Callomb was now thoroughly angered, and his voice rose. "I am sent down here subject to your orders, and it seems you are also subject to orders. Here are two murders in a day, capping a climax of twenty years of bloodshed. You have information as to the arrival of a man known as a desperado with a grudge against the two dead men, yet you know of no steps to take. Give me the word, and I'll go out and bring that man, and any others you name, to your bar of justice—if it is a bar of justice! For God's sake, give me something else to do than to bring in prisoners to be shot down in cold blood."
The Judge sat balancing a pencil on his extended forefinger as though it were a scale of justice.
"You have been heated in your language, sir," he said, sternly, "but it is a heat arising from an indignation which I share. Consequently, I pass it over. I cannot instruct you to arrest Samson South before the Grand Jury has accused him. The law does not contemplate hasty or unadvised action. All men are innocent until proven guilty. If the Grand Jury wants South, I'll instruct you to go and get him. Until then, you may leave my part of the work to me."
His Honor rose from his chair.
"You can at least give this Grand Jury such instructions on murder as will point out their duty. You can assure them that the militia will protect them. Through your prosecutor, you can bring evidence to their attention, you——"
"If you will excuse me," interrupted His Honor, drily, "I'll judge of how I am to charge my Grand Jury. I have been in communication with the family of Mr. Purvy, and it is not their wish at the present time to bring this case before the panel."
Callomb laughed ironically.
"No, I could have told you that before you conferred with them. I could have told you that they prefer to be their own courts and executioners, except where they need you. They also preferred to have me get a man they couldn't take themselves, and then to assassinate him in my hands. Who in the hell do you work for, Judge-for-the-moment Smithers? Are you holding a job under the State of Kentucky, or under the Hollman faction of this feud? I am instructed to take my orders from you. Will you kindly tell me my master's real name?"
Smithers turned pale with anger, his fighting face grew as truculent as a bulldog's, while Callomb stood glaring back at him like a second bulldog, but the Judge knew that he was being honestly and fearlessly accused. He merely pointed to the door. The Captain turned on his heel, and stalked out of the place, and the Judge came down the steps, and crossed the street to the court-house. Five minutes later, he turned to the shirt-sleeved man who was leaning on the bench, and said in his most judicial voice:
"Mr. Sheriff, open court."
The next day the mail-carrier brought in a note for the temporaryJudge. His Honor read it at recess, and hastened across to Hollman'sMammoth Department Store. There, in council with his masters, he askedinstructions. This was the note:
"SIR: I arrived in this county yesterday, and am prepared, if called as a witness, to give to the Grand Jury full and true particulars of the murder of Jesse Purvy and the killing of Aaron Hollis. I am willing to come under escort of my own kinsmen, or of the militiamen, as the Court may advise.
"The requirement of any bodyguard, I deplore, but in meeting my legal obligations, I do not regard it as necessary or proper to walk into a trap.
"Respectfully, SAMSON SOUTH."
Smithers looked perplexedly at Judge Hollman.
"Shall I have him come?" he inquired.
Hollman threw the letter down on his desk with a burst of blasphemy:
"Have him come?" he echoed. "Hell and damnation, no! What do we want him to come here and spill the milk for? When we get ready, we'll indict him. Then, let your damned soldiers go after him—as a criminal, not a witness. After that, we'll continue this case until these outsiders go away, and we can operate to suit ourselves. We don't fall for Samson South's tricks. No, sir; you never got that letter! It miscarried. Do you hear? You never got it."
Smithers nodded grudging acquiescence. Most men would rather be independent officials than collar-wearers.
Out on Misery Samson South had gladdened the soul of his uncle with his return. The old man was mending, and, for a long time, the two had talked. The failing head of the clan looked vainly for signs of degeneration in his nephew, and, failing to find them, was happy.
"Hev ye decided, Samson," he inquired, "thet ye was right in yer notion 'bout goin' away?"
Samson sat reflectively for a while, then replied:
"We were both right, Uncle Spicer—and both wrong. This is my place, but if I'm to take up the leadership it must be in a different fashion. Changes are coming. We can't any longer stand still."
Spicer South lighted his pipe. He, too, in these last years, had seen in the distance the crest of the oncoming wave. He, too, recognized that, from within or without, there must be a regeneration. He did not welcome it, but, if it must come, he preferred that it come not at the hands of conquerors, but under the leadership of his own blood.
"I reckon there's right smart truth to that," he acknowledged. "I've been studyin' 'bout hit consid'able myself of late. Thar's been sev'ral fellers through the country talkin' coal an' timber an' railroads—an' sich like."
Sally went to mill that Saturday, and with her rode Samson. There, besides Wile McCager, he met Caleb Wiley and several others. At first, they received him sceptically, but they knew of the visit to Purvy's store, and they were willing to admit that in part at least he had erased the blot from his escutcheon. Then, too, except for cropped hair and a white skin, he had come back as he had gone, in homespun and hickory. There was nothing highfalutin in his manners. In short, the impression was good.
"I reckon now that ye're back, Samson," suggested McCager, "an' seein' how yore Uncle Spicer is gettin' along all right, I'll jest let the two of ye run things. I've done had enough." It was a simple fashion of resigning a regency, but effectual.
Old Caleb, however, still insurgent and unconvinced, brought in a minority report.
"We wants fightin' men," he grumbled, with the senile reiteration of his age, as he spat tobacco and beat a rat-tat on the mill floor with his long hickory staff. "We don't want no deserters."
"Samson ain't a deserter," defended Sally. "There isn't one of you fit to tie his shoes." Sally and old Spicer South alone knew of her lover's letter to the Circuit Judge, and they were pledged to secrecy.
"Never mind, Sally!" It was Samson himself who answered her. "I didn't come back because I care what men like old Caleb think. I came back because they needed me. The proof of a fighting man is his fighting, I reckon. I'm willing to let 'em judge me by what I'm going to do."
So, Samson slipped back, tentatively, at least, into his place as clan head, though for a time he found it a post without action. After the fierce outburst of bloodshed, quiet had settled, and it was tacitly understood that, unless the Hollman forces had some coup in mind which they were secreting, this peace would last until the soldiers were withdrawn.
"When the world's a-lookin'," commented Judge Hollman, "hit's a right good idea to crawl under a log—an' lay still."
Purvy had been too famous a feudist to pass unsung. Reporters came as far as Hixon, gathered there such news as the Hollmans chose to give them, and went back to write lurid stories and description, from hearsay, of the stockaded seat of tragedy. Nor did they overlook the dramatic coincidence of the return of "Wildcat" Samson South from civilization to savagery. They made no accusation, but they pointed an inference and a moral—as they thought. It was a sermon on the triumph of heredity over the advantages of environment. Adrienne read some of these saffron misrepresentations, and they distressed her.
* * * * *
Meanwhile, it came insistently to the ears of Captain Callomb that some plan was on foot, the intricacies of which he could not fathom, to manufacture a case against a number of the Souths, quite apart from their actual guilt, or likelihood of guilt. Once more, he would be called upon to go out and drag in men too well fortified to be taken by the posses and deputies of the Hollman civil machinery. At this news, he chafed bitterly, and, still rankling with a sense of shame at the loss of his first prisoner, he formed a plan of his own, which he revealed over his pipe to his First Lieutenant.
"There's a nigger in the woodpile, Merriwether," he said. "We are simply being used to do the dirty work up here, and I'm going to do a little probing of my own. I guess I'll turn the company over to you for a day or two."
"What idiocy are you contemplating now?" inquired the second in command.
"I'm going to ride over on Misery, and hear what the other side has to say. I've usually noticed that one side of any story is pretty good until the other's told."
"You mean you are going to go over there where the Souths are intrenched, where every road is guarded?" The Lieutenant spoke wrathfully and with violence. "Don't be an ass, Callomb. You went over there once before, and took a man away—and he's dead. You owe them a life, and they collect their dues. You will be supported by no warrant of arrest, and can't take a sufficient detail to protect you."
"No," said Callomb, quietly; "I go on my own responsibility and I go by myself."
"And," stormed Merriwether, "you'll never come back."
"I think," smiled Callomb, "I'll get back. I owe an old man over there an apology, and I want to see this desperado at first hand."
"It's sheer madness. I ought to take you down to this infernal crook of a Judge, and have you committed to a strait-jacket."
"If," said Callomb, "you are content to play the cats-paw to a bunch of assassins, I'm not. The mail-rider went out this morning, and he carried a letter to old Spicer South. I told him that I was coming unescorted and unarmed, and that my object was to talk with him. I asked him to give me a safe-conduct, at least until I reached his house, and stated my case. I treated him like an officer and a gentleman, and, unless I'm a poor judge of men, he's going to treat me that way."
The Lieutenant sought vainly to dissuade Callomb, but the next day the Captain rode forth, unaccompanied. Curious stares followed him, and Judge Smithers turned narrowing and unpleasant eyes after him, but at the point where the ridge separated the territory of the Hollmans from that of the Souths, he saw waiting in the road a mounted figure, sitting his horse straight, and clad in the rough habiliments of the mountaineer.
As Callomb rode up he saluted, and the mounted figure with perfect gravity and correctness returned that salute as one officer to another. The Captain was surprised. Where had this mountaineer with the steady eyes and the clean-cut jaw learned the niceties of military etiquette?
"I am Captain Callomb of F Company," said the officer. "I'm riding over to Spicer South's house. Did you come to meet me?"
"To meet and guide you," replied a pleasant voice. "My name is SamsonSouth."
The militiaman stared. This man whose countenance was calmly thoughtful scarcely comported with the descriptions he had heard of the "Wildcat of the Mountains"; the man who had come home straight as a storm-petrel at the first note of tempest, and marked his coming with double murder. Callomb had been too busy to read newspapers of late. He had heard only that Samson had "been away."
While he wondered, Samson went on:
"I'm glad you came. If it had been possible I would have come to you." As he told of the letter he had written the Judge, volunteering to present himself as a witness, the officer's wonder grew.