A STORY OF THE TENNESSEE MOUNTAINS THAT TAKES YOU INTO THE HEARTS AND LIVES OF BIG-HEARTED, QUICK-TEMPERED CLANSMEN; INTO A BITTER FEUD, AND INTO THE WAR THAT STARTED WHEN LITTLE BUCK WOLFE BROUGHT HIS LOGGING RAILROAD INTO WOLFE'S BASIN
I
The county's prisoners were passing the gate where Alice Fair and Arnold Mason were standing. They were going jailward, their hands and faces sweat-stained and begrimed from long hours at hard labor. The rattle of picks and shovels and irons drowned out entirely the sounds their weary feet made on the pavement. Arnold Mason saw only the pitiful lack of spirit in their downcast eyes. It touched deeply the sympathetic heart of this man who was of mountain blood, but to whom the Masons had given a city home. He had that tender and magnificent understanding of human sorrows that is so rare except in those who themselves have suffered.
But there was one of the passers-by who walked with his head proudly erect. He was very tall, rawboned and sunburned, and in his dead-black eyes shone the light of an anguish deep and sullen. His great right hand gripped the handle of the pick he carried over his shoulder as though it would crush the wood. He turned his pale, hard face toward the pair of lovers at the gate. Arnold Mason and the girl he hoped to marry saw that three parallel lines, three bow-shaded scars, stood out on his right cheek like streaks of white paint.
They were the marks of a wildcat's claws, put there years before. And it was by those marks, chiefly, that young Mason recognized the man as his own mother's son and her first born.
"Oliver!" he exclaimed.
The big mountaineer centered his gaze upon his youngest brother. To him, also, recognition had dawned. A queer smile parted his beard and mustaches and showed a flash of strong, white teeth.
"Hello thar, Little Buck Wolfe!" he cried sharply. "Leadin' a high life now, hain't ye?"
Mason stood there, as silent and as motionless as a stone, and watched the clanking line of prisoners until friendly trees along the street blotted out the sight. When he faced Alice Fair, he noted a decided change in her manner.
"He called you 'Little Buck Wolfe,'" she observed coldly. "Was that your other name?"