The Call of the Cumberlands

by Charles Neville Buck

That was the first public accusation against the bland capitalist, and it carried its own prompt warning against repetition. The Judge's High Sheriff and chief ally retired from office, and went abroad only with a bodyguard. Jesse Purvy had built his store at a cross roads twenty-five miles from the railroad. Like Hollman, he had won a reputation for open -handed charity, and was liked—and hated. His friends were legion. His enemies were so numerous that he apprehended violence not only from the Souths, but also from others who nursed grudges in no way related to the line of feud cleavage. The Hollman-Purvy combination had retained enough of its old power to escape the law's retribution and to hold its dictatorship, but the efforts of John South had not been altogether bootless. He had ripped away two masks, and their erstwhile wearers could no longer hold their old semblance of law-abiding philanthropists. Jesse Purvy's home was the show place of the country side. To the traveler's eye, which had grown accustomed to hovel life and squalor, it offered a reminder of the richer Bluegrass. Its walls were weather-boarded and painted, and its roof two stories high. Commodious verandahs looked out over pleasant orchards, and in the same enclosure stood the two frame buildings of his store—for he, too, combined merchandise with baronial powers. But back of the place rose the mountainside, on which Purvy never looked without dread. Twice, its impenetrable thickets had spat at him. Twice, he had recovered from wounds that would have taken a less-charmed life. And in grisly reminder of the terror which clouded the peace of his days stood the eight-foot log stockade at the rear of the place which the proprietor had built to shield his daily journeys between house and store. But Jesse Purvy was not deluded by his escapes. He knew that he was "marked down." For years, he had seen men die by his own plotting, and he himself must in the end follow by a similar road. Rumor had it that he wore a shirt of mail, certain it is that he walked in the expectancy of death.

"Why don't you leave the mountains?" strangers had asked; and to each of them Purvy had replied with a shrug of his shoulders and a short laugh: "This is where I belong."

But the years of strain were telling on Jesse Purvy. The robust, full- blooded face was showing deep lines; his flesh was growing flaccid; his glance tinged with quick apprehension. He told his intimates that he realized "they'd get him," yet he sought to prolong his term of escape.

The creek purled peacefully by the stile; the apple and peach trees blossomed and bore fruit at their appointed time, but the householder, when he walked between his back door and the back door of the store, hugged his stockade, and hurried his steps.

Yesterday morning, Jesse Purvy had risen early as usual, and, after a satisfying breakfast, had gone to his store to arrange for the day's business. One or two of his henchmen, seeming loafers, but in reality a bodyguard, were lounging within call. A married daughter was chatting with her father while her young baby played among the barrels and cracker boxes.

The daughter went to a rear window, and gazed up at the mountain. The cloudless skies were still in hiding behind a curtain of mist. The woman was idly watching the vanishing fog wraiths, and her father came over to her side. Then, the baby cried, and she stepped back. Purvy himself remained at the window. It was a thing he did not often do. It left him exposed, but the most cautiously guarded life has its moments of relaxed vigilance. He stood there possibly thirty seconds, then a sharp fusillade of clear reports barked out and was shattered by the hills into a long reverberation. With a hand clasped to his chest, Purvy turned, walked to the middle of the floor, and fell.

The henchmen rushed to the open sash. They leaped out, and plunged up the mountain, tempting the assassin's fire, but the assassin was satisfied. The mountain was again as quiet as it had been at dawn. Its impenetrable mask of green was blank and unresponsive. Somewhere in the cool of the dewy treetops a squirrel barked. Here and there, the birds saluted the sparkle and freshness of June. Inside, at the middle of the store, Jesse Purvy shifted his head against his daughter's knee, and said, as one stating an expected event:

"Well, they've got me."

An ordinary mountaineer would have been carried home to die in the darkness of a dirty and windowless shack. The long-suffering star of Jesse Purvy ordained otherwise. He might go under or he might once more beat his way back and out of the quicksands of death. At all events, he would fight for life to the last gasp.

Twenty miles away in the core of the wilderness, removed from a railroad by a score of semi-perpendicular miles, a fanatic had once decided to found a school. The fact that the establishment in this place of such a school as his mind pictured was sheer madness and impossibility did not in the least deter him. It was a thing that could not be done, and it was a thing that he had done none the less.