Hollman's Mammoth Department Store passed into new hands, and trafficked only in merchandise, and the town was open to the men and women of Misery as well as those of Crippleshin.
These things Samson had explained in his letters to the Lescotts and Horton. Men from down below could still find trouble in the wink of an eye, by seeking it, for under all transformation the nature of the individual remained much the same; but, without seeking to give offense, they could ride as securely through the hills as through the streets of a policed city—and meet a readier hospitality.
And, when these things were discussed and the two men prepared to cross the Mason-and-Dixon line and visit the Cumberlands, Adrienne promptly and definitely announced that she would accompany her brother. No argument was effective to dissuade her, and after all Lescott, who had been there, saw no good reason why she should not go with him. He had brought Samson North. He had made a hazardous experiment which subsequent events had more than vindicated, and yet, in one respect, he feared that there had been failure. He had promised Sally that her lover would return to her with undeflected loyalty. Had he done so? Lescott had been glad that his sister should have undertaken the part of Samson's molding, which only a woman's hand could accomplish, and he had been glad of the strong friendship that had grown between them. But, if that friendship had come to mean something more sentimental, his experiment had been successful at the cost of unsuccess. He had said little, but watched much, and he had known that, after receiving a certain letter from Samson South, his sister had seemed strangely quiet and distressed. These four young persons had snarled their lives in perplexity. They could definitely find themselves and permanently adjust themselves, only by meeting on common ground. Perhaps, Samson had shone in an exaggerated high-light of fascination by the strong contrast into which New York had thrown him. Wilfred Horton had the right to be seen also in contrast with mountain life, and then only could the girl decide for all time and irrevocably. The painter learns something of confused values.
Horton himself had seen small reason for a growth of hope in these months, but he, like Lescott, felt that the matter must come to issue, and he was not of that type which shrinks from putting to the touch a question of vital consequence. He knew that her happiness as well as his own was in the balance. He was not embittered or deluded, as a narrower man might have been, into the fallacy that her treatment of him denoted fickleness. Adrienne was merely running the boundary line that separates deep friendship from love, a boundary which is often confusing. When she had finally staked out the disputed frontier, it would never again be questioned. But on which side he would find himself, he did not know.
At Hixon, they found that deceptive air of serenity which made the history of less than three months ago seem paradoxical and fantastically unreal. Only about the court-house square where numerous small holes in frame walls told of fusillades, and in the interior of the building itself where the woodwork was scarred and torn, and the plaster freshly patched, did they find grimly reminiscent evidence.
Samson had not met them at the town, because he wished their first impressions of his people to reach them uninfluenced by his escort. It was a form of the mountain pride—an honest resolve to soften nothing, and make no apologies. But they found arrangements made for horses and saddlebags, and the girl discovered that for her had been provided a mount as evenly gaited as any in her own stables.
When she and her two companions came out to the hotel porch to start, they found a guide waiting, who said he was instructed to take them as far as the ridge, where the Sheriff himself would be waiting, and the cavalcade struck into the hills. Men at whose houses they paused to ask a dipper of water, or to make an inquiry, gravely advised that they "had better light, and stay all night." In the coloring forests, squirrels scampered and scurried out of sight, and here and there on the tall slopes they saw shy-looking children regarding them with inquisitive eyes.
The guide led them silently, gazing in frank amazement, though deferential politeness, at this girl in corduroys, who rode cross- saddle, and rode so well. Yet, it was evident that he would have preferred talking had not diffidence restrained him. He was a young man and rather handsome in a shaggy, unkempt way. Across one cheek ran a long scar still red, and the girl, looking into his clear, intelligent eyes, wondered what that scar stood for. Adrienne had the power of melting masculine diffidence, and her smile as she rode at his side, and asked, "What is your name?" brought an answering smile to his grim lips.
"Joe Hollman, ma'am," he answered; and the girl gave an involuntary start. The two men who caught the name closed up the gap between the horses, with suddenly piqued interest.
"Hollman!" exclaimed the girl. "Then, you—" She stopped and flushed.
"I beg your pardon," she said, quickly.