The Call of the Cumberlands

by Charles Neville Buck

CHAPTER XIII

The boy from Misery rode slowly toward Hixon. At times, the moon struggled out and made the shadows black along the way. At other times, it was like riding in a huge caldron of pitch. When he passed into that stretch of country at whose heart Jesse Purvy dwelt, he raised his voice in song. His singing was very bad, and the ballad lacked tune, but it served its purpose of saving him from the suspicion of furtiveness. Though the front of the house was blank, behind its heavy shutters he knew that his coming might be noted, and night-riding at this particular spot might be misconstrued in the absence of frank warning.

The correctness of his inference brought a brief smile to his lips when he crossed the creek that skirted the orchard, and heard a stable door creak softly behind him. He was to be followed again—and watched, but he did not look back or pause to listen for the hoofbeats of his unsolicited escort. On the soft mud of the road, he would hardly have heard them, had he bent his ear and drawn rein. He rode at a walk, for his train would not leave until five o'clock in the morning. There was time in plenty.

It was cold and depressing as he trudged the empty streets from the livery stable to the railroad station, carrying his saddlebags over his arm. His last farewell had been taken when he left the old mule behind in the rickety livery stable. It had been unemotional, too, but the ragged creature had raised its stubborn head, and rubbed its soft nose against his shoulder as though in realization of the parting—and unwilling realization. He had roughly laid his hand for a moment on the muzzle, and turned on his heel.

He was all unconscious that he presented a figure which would seem ludicrous in the great world to which he had looked with such eagerness. The lamps burned murkily about the railroad station, and a heavy fog cloaked the hills. At last he heard the whistle and saw the blazing headlight, and a minute later he had pushed his way into the smoking-car and dropped his saddlebags on the seat beside him. Then, for the first time, he saw and recognized his watchers. Purvy meant to have Samson shadowed as far as Lexington, and his movements from that point definitely reported. Jim Asberry and Aaron Hollis were the chosen spies. He did not speak to the two enemies who took seats across the car, but his face hardened, and his brows came together in a black scowl.

"When I gits back," he promised himself, "you'll be one of the fust folks I'll look fer, Jim Asberry, damn ye! All I hopes is thet nobody else don't git ye fust. Ye b'longs ter me."

He was not quite certain yet that Jim Asberry had murdered his father, but he knew that Asberry was one of the coterie of "killers" who took their blood hire from Purvy, and he knew that Asberry had sworn to "git" him. To sit in the same car with these men and to force himself to withhold his hand, was a hard bullet for Samson South to chew, but he had bided his time thus far, and he would bide it to the end. When that end came, it would also be the end for Purvy and Asberry. He disliked Hollis, too, but with a less definite and intense hatred. Samson wished that one of the henchmen would make a move toward attack. He made no concealment of his own readiness. He removed both overcoat and coat, leaving exposed to view the heavy revolver which was strapped under his left arm. He even unbuttoned the leather flap of the holster, and then being cleared for action, sat glowering across the aisle, with his eyes not on the faces but upon the hands of the two Purvy spies.

The wrench of partings, the long raw ride and dis-spiriting gloom of the darkness before dawn had taken out of the boy's mind all the sparkle of anticipation and left only melancholy and hate. He felt for the moment that, had these men attacked him and thrown him back into the life he was leaving, back into the war without fault on his part, he would be glad. The fierce activity of fighting would be welcome to his mood. He longed for the appeasement of a thoroughly satisfied vengeance. But the two watchers across the car were not ordered to fight and so they made no move. They did not seem to see Samson. They did not appear to have noticed his inviting readiness for combat. They did not remove their coats. At Lexington, where he had several hours to wait, Samson bought a "snack" at a restaurant near the station and then strolled about the adjacent streets, still carrying his saddlebags, for he knew nothing of the workings of check-rooms. When he returned to the depot with his open wallet in his hand, and asked for a ticket to New York, the agent looked up and his lips unguardedly broke into a smile of amusement. It was a good-humored smile, but Samson saw that it was inspired by some sort of joke, and he divined that the joke was—himself!

"What's the matter?" he inquired very quietly, though his chin stiffened. "Don't ye sell tickets ter New York?"

The man behind the grilled wicket read a spirit as swift to resent ridicule as that of d'Artagnan had been when he rode his orange-colored nag into the streets of Paris. His face sobered, and his manner became attentive. He was wondering what complications lay ahead of this raw creature whose crudity of appearance was so at odds with the compelling quality of his eyes.

"Do you want a Pullman reservation?" he asked.

"What's thet?" The boy put the question with a steadiness of gaze that seemed to defy the agent to entertain even a subconsciously critical thought as to his ignorance.

The ticket man explained sleeping- and dining-cars. He had rather expected the boy to choose the day coach, but Samson merely said:

"I wants the best thar is." He counted out the additional money, and turned gravely from the window. The sleeping-car to which he was assigned was almost empty, but he felt upon him the interested gaze of those few eyes that were turned toward his entrance. He engaged every pair with a pair very clear and steady and undropping, until somehow each lip that had started to twist in amusement straightened, and the twinkle that rose at first glance sobered at second. He did not know why an old gentleman in a plaid traveling cap, who looked up from a magazine, turned his gaze out of the window with an expression of grave thoughtfulness. To himself, the old gentleman was irrelevantly quoting a line or two of verse:

"' … Unmade, unhandled, unmeet—
Ye pushed them raw to the battle, as ye picked them
raw from the street—'"

"Only," added the old gentleman under his breath, "this one hasn't even the training of the streets—but with those eyes he'll get somewhere."

The porter paused and asked to see Samson's ticket. Mentally, he observed:

"Po' white trash!" Then, he looked again, for the boy's eyes were discomfortingly on his fat, black face, and the porter straightway decided to be polite. Yet, for all his specious seeming of unconcern, Samson was waking to the fact that he was a scarecrow, and his sensitive pride made him cut his meals short in the dining-car, where he was kept busy beating down inquisitive eyes with his defiant gaze. He resolved after some thought upon a definite policy. It was a very old policy, but to him new—and a discovery. He would change nothing in himself that involved a surrender of code or conviction. But, wherever it could be done with honor, he would concede to custom. He had come to learn, not to give an exhibition of stubbornness. Whatever the outside world could offer with a recommendation to his good sense, that thing he would adopt and make his own.

It was late in the second afternoon when he stepped from the train at Jersey City, to be engulfed in an unimagined roar and congestion. Here, it was impossible to hold his own against the unconcealed laughter of the many, and he stood for an instant glaring about like a caged tiger, while three currents of humanity separated and flowed toward the three ferry exits. It was a moment of longing for the quiet of his ancient hills, where nothing more formidable than blood enemies existed to disquiet and perplex a man's philosophy. Those were things he understood—and even enemies at home did not laugh at a man's peculiarities. For the first time in his life, Samson felt a tremor of something like terror, terror of a great, vague thing, too vast and intangible to combat, and possessed of the measureless power of many hurricanes. Then, he saw the smiling face of Lescott, and Lescott's extended hand. Even Lescott, immaculately garbed and fur-coated, seemed almost a stranger, and the boy's feeling of intimacy froze to inward constraint and diffidence. But Lescott knew nothing of that. The stoic in Samson held true, masking his emotions.

"So you came," said the New Yorker, heartily, grasping the boy's hand. "Where's your luggage? We'll just pick that up, and make a dash for the ferry."

"Hyar hit is," replied Samson, who still carried his saddlebags. The painter's eyes twinkled, but the mirth was so frank and friendly that the boy, instead of glaring in defiance, grinned responsively.

"Right, oh!" laughed Lescott. "I thought maybe you'd brought a trunk, but it's the wise man who travels light."

"I reckon I'm pretty green," acknowledged the youth somewhat ruefully. "But I hain't been studyin' on what I looked like. I reckon thet don't make much difference."

"Not much," affirmed the other, with conviction. "Let the men with little souls spend their thought on that."

The artist watched his protégé narrowly as they took their places against the forward rail of the ferry-deck, and the boat stood out into the crashing water traffic of North River. What Samson saw must be absolutely bewildering. Ears attuned to hear a breaking twig must ache to this hoarse shrieking of whistles. To the west, in the evening's fading color, the sky-line of lower Manhattan bit the sky with its serried line of fangs.

Yet, Samson leaned on the rail without comment, and his face told nothing. Lescott waited for some expression, and, when none came, he casually suggested:

"Samson, that is considered rather an impressive panorama over there.
What do you think of it?"

"Ef somebody was ter ask ye ter describe the shape of a rainstorm, what would ye say?" countered the boy.

Lescott laughed.

"I guess I wouldn't try to say."

"I reckon," replied the mountaineer, "I won't try, neither."

"Do you find it anything like the thing expected?" No New Yorker can allow a stranger to be unimpressed with that sky-line.

"I didn't have no notion what to expect." Samson's voice was matter-of- fact. "I 'lowed I'd jest wait and see."

He followed Lescott out to the foot of Twenty-third Street, and stepped with him into the tonneau of the painter's waiting car. Lescott lived with his family up-town, for it happened that, had his canvases possessed no value whatever, he would still have been in a position to drive his motor, and follow his impulses about the world. Lescott himself had found it necessary to overcome family opposition when he had determined to follow the career of painting. His people had been in finance, and they had expected him to take the position to which he logically fell heir in activities that center about Wall Street. He, too, had at first been regarded as recreant to traditions. For that reason, he felt a full sympathy with Samson. The painter's place in the social world—although he preferred his other world of Art—was so secure that he was free from any petty embarrassment in standing sponsor for a wild man from the hills. If he did not take the boy to his home, it was because he understood that a life which must be not only full of early embarrassment, but positively revolutionary, should be approached by easy stages. Consequently, the car turned down Fifth Avenue, passed under the arch, and drew up before a door just off Washington Square, where the landscape painter had a studio suite. There were sleeping-rooms and such accessories as seemed to the boy unheard-of luxury, though Lescott regarded the place as a makeshift annex to his home establishment.

"You'd better take your time in selecting permanent quarters," was his careless fashion of explaining to Samson. "It's just as well not to hurry. You are to stay here with me, as long as you will."

"I'm obleeged ter ye," replied the boy, to whose training in open- doored hospitality the invitation seemed only natural. The evening meal was brought in from a neighboring hotel, and the two men dined before an open fire, Samson eating in mountain silence, while his host chatted and asked questions. The place was quiet for New York, but to Samson it seemed an insufferable pandemonium. He found himself longing for the velvet-soft quiet of the nightfalls he had known.

"Samson," suggested the painter, when the dinner things had been carried out and they were alone, "you are here for two purposes: first to study painting; second, to educate and equip yourself for coming conditions. It's going to take work, more work, and then some more work."

"I hain't skeered of work."

"I believe that. Also, you must keep out of trouble. You've got to ride your fighting instinct with a strong curb."

"I don't 'low to let nobody run over me." The statement was not argumentative; only an announcement of a principle which was not subject to modification.

"All right, but until you learn the ropes, let me advise you."

The boy gazed into the fire for a few moments of silence.

"I gives ye my hand on thet," he promised.

At eleven o'clock the painter, having shown his guest over the premises, said good-night, and went up-town to his own house. Samson lay a long while awake, with many disquieting reflections. Before his closed eyes rose insistently the picture of a smoky cabin with a puncheon floor and of a girl upon whose cheeks and temples flickered orange and vermilion lights. To his ears came the roar of elevated trains, and, since a fog had risen over the Hudson, the endless night- splitting screams of brazen-throated ferry whistles. He tossed on a mattress which seemed hard and comfortless, and longed for a feather-bed.

"Good-night, Sally," he almost groaned. "I wisht I was back thar whar I belongs." … And Sally, more than a thousand miles away, was shivering on the top of a stile with a white, grief-torn little face, wishing that, too.

Meanwhile Lescott, letting himself into a house overlooking the Park, was hailed by a chorus of voices from the dining-room. He turned and went in to join a gay group just back from the opera. As he thoughtfully mixed himself a highball, they bombarded him with questions.

"Why didn't you bring your barbarian with you?" demanded a dark-eyed girl, who looked very much as Lescott himself might have looked had he been a girl—and very young and lovely. The painter always thought of his sister as the family's edition de luxe. Now, she flashed on him an affectionate smile, and added: "We have been waiting to see him. Must we go to bed disappointed?"

George stood looking down on them, and tinkled the ice in his glass.

"He wasn't brought on for purposes of exhibition, Drennie," he smiled. "I was afraid, if he came in here in the fashion of his arrival—carrying his saddlebags—you ultra-civilized folk might have laughed."

A roar of laughter at the picture vindicated Lescott's assumption.

"No! Now, actually with saddlebags?" echoed a young fellow with a
likeable face which was for the moment incredulously amused. "That goes
Dick Whittington one better. You do make some rare discoveries, George.
We celebrate you."

"Thanks, Horton," commented the painter, dryly. "When you New Yorkers have learned what these barbarians already know, the control of your over-sensitized risibles and a courtesy deeper than your shirt-fronts —maybe I'll let you have a look. Meantime, I'm much too fond of all of you to risk letting you laugh at my barbarian."