The Call of the Cumberlands

by Charles Neville Buck

CHAPTER VII

From time to time that day, neighbors had ridden up to Spicer South's stile, and drawn rein for gossip. These men brought bulletins as to the progress of the hounds, and near sundown, as a postscript to their information, a volley of gunshot signals sounded from a mountain top. No word was spoken, but in common accord the kinsmen rose from their chairs, and drifted toward their leaning rifles.

"They're a-comin' hyar," said the head of the house, curtly. "Samson ought ter be home. Whar's Tam'-rack?"

No one had noticed his absence until that moment, nor was he to be found. A few minutes later, Samson's figure swung into sight, and his uncle met him at the fence.

"Samson, I've done asked ye all the questions I'm a-goin' ter ask ye," he said, "but them dawgs is makin' fer this house. They've jest been sighted a mile below."

Samson nodded.

"Now"—Spicer South's face hardened—"I owns down thar ter the road. No man kin cross that fence withouten I choose ter give him leave. Ef ye wants ter go indoors an' stay thar, ye kin do hit—an' no dawg ner no man hain't a-goin' ter ask ye no questions. But, ef ye sees fit ter face hit out, I'd love ter prove ter these hyar men thet us Souths don't break our word. We done agreed ter this truce. I'd like ter invite 'em in, an' let them damn dawgs sniff round the feet of every man in my house—an' then, when they're plumb teetotally damn satisfied, I'd like ter tell 'em all ter go ter hell. Thet's the way I feels, but I'm a-goin' ter do jest what ye says."

Lescott did not overhear the conversation in full, but he saw the old man's face work with suppressed passion, and he caught Samson's louder reply.

"When them folks gets hyar, Uncle Spicer, I'm a-goin' ter be a-settin' right out thar in front. I'm plumb willin' ter invite 'em in." Then, the two men turned toward the house.

Already the other clansmen had disappeared noiselessly through the door or around the angles of the walls. The painter found himself alone in a scene of utter quiet, unmarred by any note that was not peaceful. He had seen many situations charged with suspense and danger, and he now realized how thoroughly freighted was the atmosphere about Spicer South's cabin with the possibilities of bloodshed. The moments seemed to drag interminably. In the expressionless faces that so quietly vanished; in the absolutely calm and businesslike fashion in which, with no spoken order, every man fell immediately into his place of readiness and concealment, he read an ominous portent that sent a current of apprehension through his arteries. Into his mind flashed all the historical stories he had heard of the vendetta life of these wooded slopes, and he wondered if he was to see another chapter enacted in the next few minutes, while the June sun and soft shadows drowsed so quietly across the valley.

While he waited, Spicer South's sister, the prematurely aged crone, appeared in the kitchen door with the clay pipe between her teeth, and raised a shading hand to gaze off up the road. She, too, understood the tenseness of the situation as her grim, but unflinching, features showed; yet even in her feminine eyes was no shrinking and on her face, inured to fear, was no tell-tale signal beyond a heightened pallor.

Spicer South looked up at her, and jerked his head toward the house.

"Git inside, M'lindy," he ordered, curtly, and without a word she, too, turned and disappeared.

But there was another figure, unseen, its very presence unsuspected, watching from near by with a pounding heart and small fingers clutching in wild terror at a palpitant breast. In this country, where human creatures seemed to share with the "varmints" the faculty of moving unseen and unheard, the figure had come stealthily to watch—and pray.

When Samson had heard that signal of the gunshots from a distant peak, he had risen from the rock where he sat with Sally. He had said nothing of the issue he must go to meet; nothing of the enemies who had brought dogs, confident that they would make their run straight to his lair. That subject had not been mentioned between them since he had driven Tamarack away that afternoon, and reassured her. He had only risen casually, as though his action had no connection with the signal of the rifles, and said:

"Reckon I'll be a-goin'."

And Sally had said nothing either, except good-by, and had turned her face toward her own side of the ridge, but, as soon as he had passed out of sight, she had wheeled and followed noiselessly, slipping from rhododendron clump to laurel thicket as stealthily as though she were herself the object of an enemy's attack. She knew that Samson would have sent her back, and she knew that a crisis was at hand, and that she could not support the suspense of awaiting the news. She must see for herself.

And now, while the stage was setting itself, the girl crouched trembling a little way up the hillside, at the foot of a titanic poplar. About her rose gray, moss-covered rocks and the fronds of clinging ferns. At her feet bloomed wild flowers for which she knew no names except those with which she had herself christened them, "sunsetty flowers" whose yellow petals suggested to her imagination the western skies, and "fairy cups and saucers."

She was not trembling for herself, though, if a fusillade broke out below, the masking screen of leafage would not protect her from the pelting of stray bullets. Her small face was pallid, and her blue eyes wide-stretched and terrified. With a catch in her throat, she shifted from her crouching attitude to a kneeling posture, and clasped her hands desperately, and raised her face, while her lips moved in prayer. She did not pray aloud, for even in her torment of fear for the boy she loved, her mountain caution made her noiseless—and the God to whom she prayed could hear her equally well in silence.

"Oh, God," pleaded the girl, brokenly, "I reckon ye knows thet them Hollmans is atter Samson, an' I reckons ye knows he hain't committed no sin. I reckon ye knows, since ye knows all things, thet hit'll kill me ef I loses him, an' though I hain't nobody but jest Sally Miller, an' ye air Almighty God, I wants ye ter hear my prayin', an' pertect him."

Fifteen minutes later, Lescott, standing at the fence, saw a strange cavalcade round the bend of the road. Several travel-stained men were leading mules, and holding two tawny and impatient dogs in leash. In their number, the artist recognized his host of two nights ago.

They halted at a distance, and in their faces the artist read dismay, for, while the dogs were yelping confidently and tugging at their cords, young Samson South—who should, by their prejudiced convictions, be hiding out in some secret stronghold—sat at the top step of the stile, smoking his pipe, and regarded them with a lack-luster absence of interest. Such a calm reception was uncanny. The trailers felt sure that in a moment more the dogs would fall into accusing excitement. Logically, these men should be waiting to receive them behind barricaded doors. There must be some hidden significance. Possibly, it was an invitation to walk into ambuscade. No doubt, unseen rifles covered their approach, and the shooting of Purvy was only the inaugural step to a bloody and open outbreak of the war. After a whispered conference, the Lexington man came forward alone. Old Spicer South had been looking on from the door, and was now strolling out to meet the envoy, unarmed.

And the envoy, as he came, held his hands unnecessarily far away from his sides, and walked with an ostentatious show of peace.

"Evenin', stranger," hailed the old man. "Come right in."

"Mr. South," began the dog-owner, with some embarrassment, "I have been employed to furnish a pair of bloodhounds to the family of Jesse Purvy, who has been shot."

"I heerd tell thet Purvy was shot," said the head of the Souths in an affable tone, which betrayed no deeper note of interest than neighborhood gossip might have elicited.

"I have no personal interest in the matter," went on the stranger, hastily, as one bent on making his attitude clear, "except to supply the dogs and manage them. I do not in any way direct their course; I merely follow."

"Ye can't hardly fo'ce a dawg." Old Spicer sagely nodded his head as he made the remark. "A dawg jest natcher'ly follers his own nose."

"Exactly—and they have followed their noses here." The Lexington man found the embarrassment of his position growing as the colloquy proceeded. "I want to ask you whether, if these dogs want to cross your fence, I have your permission to let them?"

The cabin in the yard was utterly quiet. There was no hint of the seven or eight men who rested on their arms behind its half-open door. The master of the house crossed the stile, the low sun shining on his shock of gray hair, and stood before the man-hunter. He spoke so that his voice carried to the waiting group in the road.

"Ye're plumb welcome ter turn them dawgs loose, an' let 'em ramble, stranger. Nobody hain't a-goin' ter hurt 'em. I sees some fellers out thar with ye thet mustn't cross my fence. Ef they does"—the voice rang menacingly—"hit'll mean that they're a-bustin' the truce—an' they won't never go out ag'in. But you air safe in hyar. I gives yer my hand on thet. Ye're welcome, an' yore dawgs is welcome. I hain't got nothin' 'gainst dawgs thet comes on four legs, but I shore bars the two-legged kind."

There was a murmur of astonishment from the road. Disregarding it,
Spicer South turned his face toward the house.

"You boys kin come out," he shouted, "an' leave yore guns inside."

The leashes were slipped from the dogs. They leaped forward, and made directly for Samson, who sat as unmoving as a lifeless image on the top step of the stile. Up on the hillside the fingernails of Sally Miller's clenched hands cut into the flesh, and the breath stopped between her parted and bloodless lips. There was a half-moment of terrific suspense, then the beasts clambered by the seated figure, passing on each side and circled aimlessly about the yard—their quest unended. They sniffed indifferently about the trouser legs of the men who sauntered indolently out of the door. They trotted into the house and out again, and mingled with the mongrel home pack that snarled and growled hostility for this invasion. Then, they came once more to the stile. As they climbed out, Samson South reached up and stroked a tawny head, and the bloodhound paused a moment to wag its tail in friendship, before it jumped down to the road, and trotted gingerly onward.

"I'm obliged to you, sir," said the man from the Bluegrass, with a voice of immense relief.

The moment of suspense seemed past, and, in the relief of the averted clash, the master of hounds forgot that his dogs stood branded as false trailers. But, when he rejoined the group in the road, he found himself looking into surly visages, and the features of Jim Hollman in particular were black in their scowl of smoldering wrath.

"Why didn't ye axe him," growled the kinsman of the man who had been shot, "whar the other feller's at?"

"What other fellow?" echoed the Lexington man.

Jim Hollman's voice rose truculently, and his words drifted, as he meant them to, across to the ears of the clansmen who stood in the yard of Spicer South.

"Them dawgs of your'n come up Misery a-hellin'. They hain't never turned aside, an', onless they're plumb ornery no-'count curs thet don't know their business, they come for some reason. They seemed mighty interested in gittin' hyar. Axe them fellers in thar who's been hyar thet hain't hyar now? Who is ther feller thet got out afore we come hyar."

At this veiled charge of deceit, the faces of the Souths again blackened, and the men near the door of the house drifted in to drift presently out again, swinging discarded Winchesters at their sides. It seemed that, after all, the incident was not closed. The man from Lexington, finding himself face to face with a new difficulty, turned and argued in a low voice with the Hollman leader. But Jim Hollman, whose eyes were fixed on Samson, refused to talk in a modulated tone, and he shouted his reply:

"I hain't got nothin' ter whisper about," he proclaimed. "Go axe 'em who hit war thet got away from hyar."

Old Spicer South stood leaning on his fence, and his rugged countenance stiffened. He started to speak, but Samson rose from the stile, and said, in a composed voice:

"Let me talk ter this feller, Unc' Spicer." The old man nodded, and
Samson beckoned to the owner of the dogs.

"We hain't got nothin' ter say ter them fellers with ye," he announced, briefly. "We hain't axin' 'em no questions, an' we hain't answerin' none. Ye done come hyar with dawgs, an' we hain't stopped ye. We've done answered all the questions them dawgs hes axed. We done treated you an' yore houn's plumb friendly. Es fer them other men, we hain't got nothin' ter say ter 'em. They done come hyar because they hoped they could git me in trouble. They done failed. Thet road belongs ter the county. They got a license ter travel hit, but this strip right hyar hain't ther healthiest section they kin find. I reckon ye'd better advise 'em ter move on."

The Lexington man went back. For a minute or two, Jim Hollman sat scowling down in indecision from his saddle. Then, he admitted to himself that he had done all he could do without becoming the aggressor. For the moment, he was beaten. He looked up, and from the road one of the hounds raised its voice and gave cry. That baying afforded an excuse for leaving, and Jim Hollman seized upon it.

"Go on," he growled. "Let's see what them damned curs hes ter say now."

Mounting, they kicked their mules into a jog. From the men inside the fence came no note of derision; no hint of triumph. They stood looking out with expressionless, mask-like faces until their enemies had passed out of sight around the shoulder of the mountain. The Souths had met and fronted an accusation made after the enemy's own choice and method. A jury of two hounds had acquitted them. It was not only because the dogs had refused to recognize in Samson a suspicious character that the enemy rode on grudgingly convinced, but, also, because the family, which had invariably met hostility with hostility, had so willingly courted the acid test of guilt or innocence.

Samson, passing around the corner of the house, caught a flash of red up among the green clumps of the mountainside, and, pausing to gaze at it, saw it disappear into the thicket of brush. He knew then that Sally had followed him, and why she had done it, and, framing a stern rebuke for the foolhardiness of the venture, he plunged up the acclivity in pursuit. But, as he made his way cautiously, he heard around the shoulder of a mass of piled-up sandstone a shaken sobbing, and, slipping toward it, found the girl bent over with her face in her hands, her slander body convulsively heaving with the weeping of reaction, and murmuring half-incoherent prayers of thanksgiving for his deliverance.

"Sally!" he exclaimed, hurrying over and dropping to his knees beside her. "Sally, thar hain't nothin' ter fret about, little gal. Hit's all right."

She started up at the sound of his voice, and then, pillowing her head on his shoulder, wept tears of happiness. He sought for words, but no words came, and his lips and eyes, unused to soft expressions, drew themselves once more into the hard mask with which he screened his heart's moods.

Days passed uneventfully after that. The kinsmen dispersed to their scattered coves and cabins. Now and again came a rumor that Jesse Purvy was dying, but always hard on its heels came another to the effect that the obdurate fighter had rallied, though the doctors held out small encouragement of recovery.

One day Lescott, whose bandaged arm gave him much pain, but who was able to get about, was strolling not far from the house with Samson. They were following a narrow trail along the mountainside, and, at a sound no louder than the falling of a walnut, the boy halted and laid a silencing hand on the painter's shoulder. Then followed an unspoken command in his companion's eyes. Lescott sank down behind a rock, cloaked with glistening rhododendron leafage, where Samson had already crouched, and become immovable and noiseless. They had been there only a short time when they saw another figure slipping quietly from tree to tree below them.

For a time, the mountain boy watched the figure, and the painter saw his lips draw into a straight line, and his eyes narrow with a glint of tense hate. Yet, a moment later, with a nod to follow, the boy unexpectedly rose into view, and his features were absolutely expressionless.

"Mornin', Jim," he called.

The slinking stranger whirled with a start, and an instinctive motion as though to bring his rifle to his shoulder. But, seeing Samson's peaceable manner, he smiled, and his own demeanor became friendly.

"Mornin', Samson."

"Kinder stranger in this country, hain't ye, Jim?" drawled the boy who lived there, and the question brought a sullen flush to the other's cheekbones.

"Jest a-passin' through," he vouchsafed.

"I reckon ye'd find the wagon road more handy," suggested Samson.
"Some folks might 'spicion ye fer stealin' long through the timber."

The skulking traveler decided to lie plausibly. He laughed mendaciously. "That's the reason, Samson. I was kinder skeered ter go through this country in the open."

Samson met his eye steadily, and said slowly:

"I reckon, Jim, hit moughtn't be half es risky fer ye ter walk upstandin' along Misery, es ter go a-crouchin'. Ye thinks ye've been a shadderin' me. I knows jest whar ye've been all the time. Ye lies when ye talks 'bout passin' through. Ye've done been spyin' hyar, ever since Jesse Purvy got shot, an' all thet time ye've done been watched yeself. I reckon hit'll be healthier fer ye ter do yore spyin' from t'other side of the ridge. I reckon yer allowin' ter git me ef Purvy dies, but we're watchin' ye."

Jim Asberry's face darkened, but he said nothing. There was nothing to say. He was discovered in the enemy's country, and must accept the enemy's terms.

"This hyar time, I lets ye go back," said Samson, "fer the reason thet I'm tryin' like all hell ter keep this truce. But ye must stay on yore side, or else ride the roads open. How is Purvy terday?"

"He's mighty porely," replied the other, in a sullen voice.

"All right. Thet's another reason why hit hain't healthy fer ye over hyar."

The spy turned, and made his way over the mountain.

"Damn him!" muttered Samson, his face twitching, as the other was lost in the undergrowth. "Some day I'm a-goin' ter git him."

Tamarack Spicer did not at once reappear, and, when one of the Souths met another in the road, the customary dialogue would be: "Heered anything of Tamarack?" … "No, hev you?" … "No, nary a word."

As Lescott wandered through the hills, his unhurt right hand began crying out for action and a brush to nurse. As he watched, day after day, the unveiling of the monumental hills, and the transitions from hazy wraith-like whispers of hues, to strong, flaring riot of color, this fret of restlessness became actual pain. He was wasting wonderful opportunity and the creative instinct in him was clamoring.

One morning, when he came out just after sunrise to the tin wash basin at the well, the desire to paint was on him with compelling force. The hills ended near their bases like things bitten off. Beyond lay limitless streamers of mist, but, while he stood at gaze, the filmy veil began to lift and float higher. Trees and mountains grew taller. The sun, which showed first as a ghost-like disc of polished aluminum, struggled through orange and vermilion into a sphere of living flame. It was as though the Creator were breathing on a formless void to kindle it into a vital and splendid cosmos, and between the dawn's fog and the radiance of full day lay a dozen miracles. Through rifts in the streamers, patches of hillside and sky showed for an ethereal moment or two in tender and transparent coloration, like spirit-reflections of emerald and sapphire…. Lescott heard a voice at his side.

"When does ye 'low ter commence paintin'?"

It was Samson. For answer, the artist, with his unhurt hand, impatiently tapped his bandaged wrist.

"Ye still got yore right hand, hain't ye?" demanded the boy. The other laughed. It was a typical question. So long as one had the trigger finger left, one should not admit disqualification.

"You see, Samson," he explained, "this isn't precisely like handling a gun. One must hold the palette; mix the colors; wipe the brushes and do half a dozen equally necessary things. It requires at least two perfectly good hands. Many people don't find two enough."

"But hit only takes one ter do the paintin', don't hit?"

"Yes."

"Well"—the boy spoke diffidently but with enthusiasm—"between the two of us, we've got three hands. I reckon ye kin larn me how ter do them other things fer ye."

Lescott's surprise showed in his face, and the lad swept eagerly on.

"Mebby hit hain't none of my business, but, all day yestiddy an' the day befo', I was a-studyin' 'bout this here thing, an' I hustled up an' got thet corn weeded, an' now I'm through. Ef I kin help ye out, I thought mebby—" He paused, and looked appealingly at the artist.

Lescott whistled, and then his face lighted into contentment.

"To-day, Samson," he announced, "Lescott, South and Company get busy."

It was the first time he had seen Samson smile, and, although the expression was one of sheer delight, inherent somberness loaned it a touch of the wistful.

When, an hour later, the two set out, the mountain boy carried the paraphernalia, and the old man standing at the door watched them off with a half-quizzical, half-disapproving glance. To interfere with any act of courtesy to a guest was not to be thought of, but already the influence on Samson of this man from the other world was disquieting his uncle's thoughts. With his mother's milk, the boy had fed on hatred of his enemies. With his training, he had been reared to feudal animosities. Disaffection might ruin his usefulness. Besides the sketching outfit, Samson carried his rifle. He led the painter by slow stages, since the climb proved hard for a man still somewhat enfeebled, to the high rock which Sally visited each morning.

As the boy, with remarkable aptitude, learned how to adjust the easel and arrange the paraphernalia, Lescott sat drinking in through thirsty eyes the stretch of landscape he had determined to paint.

It was his custom to look long and studiously through closed lashes before he took up his brush. After that he began laying in his key tones and his fundamental sketching with an incredible swiftness, having already solved his problems of composition and analysis.

Then, while he painted, the boy held the palette, his eyes riveted on the canvas, which was growing from a blank to a mirror of vistas—and the boy's pupils became deeply hungry. He was not only looking. He was seeing. His gaze took in the way the fingers held the brushes; the manner of mixing the pigments, the detail of method. Sometimes, when he saw a brush dab into a color whose use he did not at once understand, he would catch his breath anxiously, then nod silently to himself as the blending vindicated the choice. He did not know it, but his eye for color was as instinctively true as that of the master.

As the day wore on, they fell to talking, and the boy again found himself speaking of his fettered restiveness in the confinement of his life; of the wanderlust which stirred him, and of which he had been taught to feel ashamed.

During one of their periods of rest, there was a rustle in the branches of a hickory, and a gray shape flirted a bushy tail. Samson's hand slipped silently out, and the rifle came to his shoulder. In a moment it snapped, and a squirrel dropped through the leaves.

"Jove!" exclaimed Lescott, admiringly. "That was neat work. He was partly behind the limb—at a hundred yards."

"Hit warn't nothin'," said Samson, modestly. "Hit's a good gun." He brought back his quarry, and affectionately picked up the rifle. It was a repeating Winchester, carrying a long steel-jacketed bullet of special caliber, but it was of a pattern fifteen years old, and fitted with target sights.

"That gun," Samson explained, in a lowered and reverent voice, "was my pap's. I reckon there hain't enough money in the world ter buy hit off en me."

Slowly, in a matter-of-fact tone, he began a story without decoration of verbiage—straightforward and tense in its simplicity. As the painter listened, he began to understand; the gall that had crept into this lad's blood before his weaning became comprehensible…. Killing Hollmans was not murder…. It was duty. He seemed to see the smoke- blackened cabin and the mother of the boy sitting, with drawn face, in dread of the hours. He felt the racking nerve-tension of a life in which the father went forth each day leaving his family in fear that he would not return. Then, under the spell of the unvarnished recital, he seemed to witness the crisis when the man, who had dared repudiate the lawless law of individual reprisal, paid the price of his insurgency.

A solitary friend had come in advance to break the news. His face, when he awkwardly commenced to speak, made it unnecessary to put the story into words. Samson told how his mother had turned pallid, and stretched out her arm gropingly for support against the door-jamb. Then the man had found his voice with clumsy directness.

"They've got him."

The small boy had reached her in time to break her fall as she fainted, but, later, when they brought in the limp, unconscious man, she was awaiting them with regained composure. An expression came to her face at that moment, said the lad, which had never left it during the remaining two years of her life. For some hours, "old" Henry South, who in a less-wasting life would hardly have been middle-aged, had lingered. They were hours of conscious suffering, with no power to speak, but before he died he had beckoned his ten-year-old son to his bedside, and laid a hand on the dark, rumpled hair. The boy bent forward, his eyes tortured and tearless, and his little lips tight pressed. The old man patted the head, and made a feeble gesture toward the mother who was to be widowed. Samson had nodded.

"I'll take keer of her, pap," he had fervently sworn.

Then, Henry South had lifted a tremulous finger, and pointed to the wall above the hearth. There, upon a set of buck-antlers, hung the Winchester rifle. And, again, Samson had nodded, but this time he did not speak. That moment was to his mind the most sacred of his life; it had been a dedication to a purpose. The arms of the father had then and there been bequeathed to the son, and with the arms a mission for their use. After a brief pause, Samson told of the funeral. He had a remarkable way of visualizing in rough speech the desolate picture; the wailing mourners on the bleak hillside, with the November clouds hanging low and trailing their wet streamers. A "jolt-wagon" had carried the coffin in lieu of a hearse. Saddled mules stood tethered against the picket fence. The dogs that had followed their masters started a rabbit close by the open grave, and split the silence with their yelps as the first clod fell. He recalled, too, the bitter voice with which his mother had spoken to a kinsman as she turned from the ragged burying ground, where only the forlorn cedars were green. She was leaning on the boy's thin shoulders at the moment. He had felt her arm stiffen with her words, and, as her arm stiffened, his own positive nature stiffened with it.

"Henry believed in law and order. I did, too. But they wouldn't let us have it that way. From this day on, I'm a-goin' to raise my boy to kill Hollmans."