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 pits
than the streets where men gather....
"'His Sea that his being fulfills?
"'So and no otherwise--"so and no otherwise hillmen
desire 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 that
I'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," volunteered
George 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,
SALLY."