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; the _Champs Elysées_ ran in its
smooth, tree-trimmed parquetry from the _Place de Concorde_ to the
_Arc 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 the _Piazza Venezia_, spread
their eternal story before his imagination. He saw 'buses and hansoms
slirring through the mud and fog of London and the endless _pot-
pourri_ of 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 that
I'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.