"Now," went on Callomb, "we understand each other. We are working for the same end, and, by God! I've had one experience in making arrests at the order of that Court. I don't want it to happen again."
"I suppose," said Samson, "you know that while I am entirely willing to face any fair court of justice, I don't propose to walk into a packed jury, whose only object is to get me where I can be made way with. Callomb, I hope we won't have to fight each other. What do you suggest?"
"If the Court orders the militia to make an arrest, the militia has no option. In the long run, resistance would only alienate the sympathy of the world at large. There is just one thing to be done, South. It's a thing I don't like to suggest, and a thing which, if we were not fighting the devil with fire, it would be traitorous for me to suggest." He paused, then added emphatically: "When my detail arrives here, which will probably be in three or four days, you must not be here. You must not be in any place where we can find you."
For a little while, Samson looked at the other man with a slow smile of amusement, but soon it died, and his face grew hard and determined.
"I'm obliged to you, Callomb," he said, seriously. "It was more than I had the right to expect—this warning. I understand the cost of giving it. But it's no use. I can't cut and run. No, by God, you wouldn't do it! You can't ask me to do it."
"By God, you can and will!" Callomb spoke with determination. "This isn't a time for quibbling. You've got work to do. We both have work to do. We can't stand on a matter of vainglorious pride, and let big issues of humanity go to pot. We haven't the right to spend men's lives in fighting each other, when we are the only two men in this entanglement who are in perfect accord—and honest."
The mountaineer spent some minutes in silent self-debate. The working of his face under the play of alternating doubt, resolution, hatred and insurgency, told the militiaman what a struggle was progressing. At last, Samson's eyes cleared with an expression of discovered solution.
"All right, Callomb," he said, briefly, "you won't find me!" He smiled, as he added: "Make as thorough a search as your duty demands. It needn't be perfunctory or superficial. Every South cabin will stand open to you. I shall be extremely busy, to ends which you will approve. I can't tell you what I shall be doing, because to do that, I should have to tell where I mean to be."
In two days, the Grand Jury, with much secrecy, returned a true bill, and a day later a considerable detachment of infantry started on a dusty hike up Misery. Furtive and inscrutable Hollman eyes along the way watched them from cabin-doors, and counted them. They meant also to count them coming back, and they did not expect the totals to tally.
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