"Yes."
"Well, jest let him come on. We can tend ter him hyar, ef necessary." So, Jim withheld his hand, and merely shadowed, sending bulletins, from time to time.
It was three o'clock when Samson started. It was near six when he reached the ribbon of road that loops down into town over the mountain. His mule was in a lather of sweat. He knew that he was being spied upon, and that word of his coming was traveling ahead of him. What he did not know was whether or not it suited Jesse Purvy's purpose that he should slide from his mule, dead, before he turned homeward. If Tamarack had been seized as a declaration of war, the chief South would certainly not be allowed to return. If the arrest had not been for feud reasons, he might escape. That was the question which would be answered with his life or death.
The boy kept his eyes straight to the front, fixed on the philosophical wagging of his mule's brown ears. Finally, he crossed the bridge that gave entrance to the town, as yet unharmed, and clattered at a trot between the shacks of the environs. He was entering the fortified stronghold of the enemy, and he was expected. As he rode along, doors closed to slits, and once or twice he caught the flash of sunlight on a steel barrel, but his eyes held to the front. Several traveling men, sitting on the porch of the hotel opposite the court- house, rose when they saw his mule, and went inside, closing the door behind them.
The "jail-house" was a small building of home-made brick, squatting at the rear of the court-house yard. Its barred windows were narrow with sills breast-high.
The court-house itself was shaded by large oaks and sycamores, and, as Samson drew near, he saw that some ten or twelve men, armed with rifles, separated from groups and disposed themselves behind the tree trunks and the stone coping of the well. None of them spoke, and Samson pretended that he had not seen them. He rode his mule at a walk, knowing that he was rifle-covered from a half-dozen windows. At the hitching rack directly beneath the county building, he flung his reins over a post, and, swinging his rifle at his side, passed casually along the brick walk to the jail. The men behind the trees edged around their covers as he went, keeping themselves protected, as squirrels creep around a trunk when a hunter is lurking below. Samson halted at the jail wall, and called the prisoner's name. A towsled head and surly face appeared at the barred window, and the boy went over and held converse from the outside.
"How in hell did ye git into town?" demanded the prisoner.
"I rid in," was the short reply. "How'd ye git in the jail-house?"
The captive was shamefaced.
"I got a leetle too much licker, an' I was shootin' out the lights last night," he confessed.