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."