The Call of the Cumberlands

C >> Charles Neville Buck >> The Call of the Cumberlands

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The sun rose on the morning after Lescott arrived, the mists lifted,
and the cabin of the Widow Miller stood revealed. Against its corners
several hogs scraped their bristled backs with satisfied grunts. A
noisy rooster cocked his head inquiringly sidewise before the open
door, and, hopping up to the sill, invaded the main room. A towsled
-headed boy made his way to the barn to feed the cattle, and a red patch
of color, as bright and tuneful as a Kentucky cardinal, appeared at the
door between the morning-glory vines. The red patch of color was Sally.

She made her way, carrying a bucket, to the spring, where she knelt
down and gazed at her own image in the water. Her grave lips broke into
a smile, as the reflected face, framed in its mass of reflected red
hair, gazed back at her. Then, the smile broke into a laugh.

"Hello, Sally Miller!" she gaily accosted her picture-self. "How air
ye this mornin', Sally Miller?"

She plunged her face deep in the cool spring, and raised it to shake
back her hair, until the water flew from its masses. She laughed again,
because it was another day, and because she was alive. She waded about
for a while where the spring joined the creek, and delightedly watched
the schools of tiny, almost transparent, minnows that darted away at
her coming. Then, standing on a rock, she paused with her head bent,
and listened until her ears caught the faint tinkle of a cowbell, which
she recognized. Nodding her head joyously, she went off into the woods,
to emerge at the end of a half-hour later, carrying a pail of milk, and
smiling joyously again--because it was almost breakfast time.

But, before going home, she set down her bucket by the stream, and,
with a quick glance toward the house to make sure that she was not
observed, climbed through the brush, and was lost to view. She followed
a path that her own feet had made, and after a steep course upward,
came upon a bald face of rock, which stood out storm-battered where a
rift went through the backbone of the ridge. This point of vantage
commanded the other valley. From its edge, a white oak, dwarfed, but
patriarchal, leaned out over an abrupt drop. No more sweeping or
splendid view could be had within miles, but it was not for any reason
so general that Sally had made her pilgrimage. Down below, across the
treetops, were a roof and a chimney from which a thread of smoke rose
in an attenuated shaft. That was Spicer South's house, and Samson's
home. The girl leaned against the gnarled bowl of the white oak, and
waved toward the roof and chimney. She cupped her hands, and raised
them to her lips like one who means to shout across a great distance,
then she whispered so low that only she herself could hear:

"Hello, Samson South!"

She stood for a space looking down, and forgot to laugh, while her
eyes grew religiously and softly deep, then, turning, she ran down the
slope. She had performed her morning devotions.

That day at the house of Spicer South was an off day. The kinsmen who
had stopped for the night stayed on through the morning. Nothing was
said of the possibility of trouble. The men talked crops, and tossed
horseshoes in the yard; but no one went to work in the fields, and all
remained within easy call. Only young Tamarack Spicer, a raw-boned
nephew, wore a sullen face, and made a great show of cleaning his rifle
and pistol. He even went out in the morning, and practised at target
-shooting, and Lescott, who was still very pale and weak, but able to
wander about at will, gained the impression that in young Tamarack he
was seeing the true type of the mountain "bad-man." Tamarack seemed
willing to feed that idea, and admitted apart to Lescott that, while he
obeyed the dictates of the truce, he found them galling, and was
straining at his leash.

"I don't take nothin' offen nobody," he sullenly confided. "The
Hollmans gives me my half the road."

Shortly after dinner, he disappeared, and, when the afternoon was well
advanced, Samson, too, with his rifle on his arm, strolled toward the
stile. Old Spicer South glanced up, and removed his pipe from his mouth
to inquire:

"Whar be ye a-goin'?"

"I hain't a-goin' fur," was the non-committal response.

"Meybe hit mout be a good idea ter stay round clost fer a spell." The
old man made the suggestion casually, and the boy replied in the same
fashion.

"I hain't a-goin' ter be outen sight."

He sauntered down the road, but, when he had passed out of vision, he
turned sharply into the woods, and began climbing. His steps carried
him to the rift in the ridge where the white oak stood sentinel over
the watch-tower of rock. As he came over the edge from one side, his
bare feet making no sound, he saw Sally sitting there, with her hands
resting on the moss and her eyes deeply troubled. She was gazing
fixedly ahead, and her lips were trembling. At once Samson's face grew
black. Some one had been making Sally unhappy. Then, he saw beyond her
a standing figure, which the tree trunk had hitherto concealed. It was
the loose-knitted figure of young Tamarack Spicer.

"In course," Spicer was saying, "we don't 'low Samson shot Jesse
Purvy, but them Hollmans'll 'spicion him, an' I heered just now, thet
them dawgs was trackin' straight up hyar from the mouth of Misery.
They'll git hyar against sundown."

Samson leaped violently forward. With one hand, he roughly seized his
cousin's shoulder, and wheeled him about.

"Shet up!" he commanded. "What damn fool stuff hev ye been tellin'
Sally?"

For an instant, the two clansmen stood fronting each other. Samson's
face was set and wrathful. Tamarack's was surly and snarling. "Hain't I
got a license ter tell Sally the news?" he demanded.

"Nobody hain't got no license," retorted the younger man in the quiet
of cold anger, "ter tell Sally nothin' thet'll fret her."

"She air bound ter know, hit all pretty soon. Them dawgs----"

"Didn't I tell ye ter shet up?" Samson clenched his fists, and took a
step forward. "Ef ye opens yore mouth again, I'm a-goin' ter smash hit.
Now, git!"

Tamarack Spicer's face blackened, and his teeth showed. His right hand
swept to his left arm-pit. Outwardly he seemed weaponless, but Samson
knew that concealed beneath the hickory shirt was a holster, worn
mountain fashion.

"What air ye a-reachin' atter, Tam'rack?" he inquired, his lips
twisting in amusement.

"Thet's my business."

"Well, get hit out--or git out yeself, afore I throws ye offen the
clift."

Sally showed no symptoms of alarm. Her confidence in her hero was
absolute. The boy lifted his hand, and pointed off down the path.
Slowly and with incoherent muttering, Spicer took himself away. Then
only did Sally rise. She came over, and laid a hand on Samson's
shoulder. In her blue eyes, the tears were welling.

"Samson," she whispered, "ef they're atter ye, come ter my house. I
kin hide ye out. Why didn't ye tell me Jesse Purvy'd done been shot?"

"Hit tain't nothin' ter fret about, Sally," he assured her. He spoke
awkwardly, for he had been trained to regard emotion as unmanly. "Thar
hain't no danger."

She gazed searchingly into his eyes, and then, with a short sob, threw
her arms around him, and buried her face on his shoulder.

"Ef anything happens ter ye, Samson," she said, brokenly, "hit'll jest
kill me. I couldn't live withouten ye, Samson. I jest couldn't do hit!"

The boy took her in his arms, and pressed her close. His eyes were
gazing off over her bent head, and his lips twitched. He drew his
features into a scowl, because that was the only expression with which
he could safeguard his feelings. His voice was husky.

"I reckon, Sally," he said, "I couldn't live withouten you, neither."

The party of men who had started at morning from Jesse Purvy's store
had spent a hard day. The roads followed creek-beds, crossing and
recrossing waterways in a fashion that gave the bloodhounds a hundred
baffling difficulties. Often, their noses lost the trail, which had at
first been so surely taken. Often, they circled and whined, and halted
in perplexity, but each time they came to a point where, at the end,
one of them again raised his muzzle skyward, and gave voice.

Toward evening, they were working up Misery along a course less
broken. The party halted for a moment's rest, and, as the bottle was
passed, the man from Lexington, who had brought the dogs and stayed to
conduct the chase, put a question:

"What do you call this creek?"

"Hit's Misery."

"Does anybody live on Misery that--er--that you might suspect?"

The Hollmans laughed.

"This creek is settled with Souths thicker'n hops."

The Lexington man looked up. He knew what the name of South meant to a
Hollman.

"Is there any special South, who might have a particular grudge?"

"The Souths don't need no partic'lar grudge, but thar's young Samson
South. He's a wildcat."

"He lives this way?"

"These dogs air a-makin' a bee-line fer his house." Jim Hollman was
speaking. Then he added: "I've done been told that Samson denies doin'
the shootin', an' claims he kin prove an alibi."

The Lexington man lighted his pipe, and poured a drink of red whiskey
into a flask cup.

"He'd be apt to say that," he commented, coolly. "These dogs haven't
any prejudice in the matter. I'll stake my life on their telling the
truth."

An hour later, the group halted again. The master of hounds mopped his
forehead.

"Are we still going toward Samson South's house?" he inquired.

"We're about a quarter from hit now, an' we hain't never varied from
the straight road."

"Will they be apt to give us trouble?"

Jim Hollman smiled.

"I hain't never heered of no South submittin' ter arrest by a Hollman."

The trailers examined their firearms, and loosened their holster-
flaps. The dogs went forward at a trot.

CHAPTER VII

From time to time that day, neighbors had ridden up to Spicer South's
stile, and drawn rein for gossip. These men brought bulletins as to the
progress of the hounds, and near sundown, as a postscript to their
information, a volley of gunshot signals sounded from a mountain top.
No word was spoken, but in common accord the kinsmen rose from their
chairs, and drifted toward their leaning rifles.

"They're a-comin' hyar," said the head of the house, curtly. "Samson
ought ter be home. Whar's Tam'-rack?"

No one had noticed his absence until that moment, nor was he to be
found. A few minutes later, Samson's figure swung into sight, and his
uncle met him at the fence.

"Samson, I've done asked ye all the questions I'm a-goin' ter ask ye,"
he said, "but them dawgs is makin' fer this house. They've jest been
sighted a mile below."

Samson nodded.

"Now"--Spicer South's face hardened--"I owns down thar ter the road.
No man kin cross that fence withouten I choose ter give him leave. Ef
ye wants ter go indoors an' stay thar, ye kin do hit--an' no dawg ner
no man hain't a-goin' ter ask ye no questions. But, ef ye sees fit ter
face hit out, I'd love ter prove ter these hyar men thet us Souths
don't break our word. We done agreed ter this truce. I'd like ter
invite 'em in, an' let them damn dawgs sniff round the feet of every
man in my house--an' then, when they're plumb teetotally damn
satisfied, I'd like ter tell 'em all ter go ter hell. Thet's the way I
feels, but I'm a-goin' ter do jest what ye says."

Lescott did not overhear the conversation in full, but he saw the old
man's face work with suppressed passion, and he caught Samson's louder
reply.

"When them folks gets hyar, Uncle Spicer, I'm a-goin' ter be a-settin'
right out thar in front. I'm plumb willin' ter invite 'em in." Then,
the two men turned toward the house.

Already the other clansmen had disappeared noiselessly through the
door or around the angles of the walls. The painter found himself alone
in a scene of utter quiet, unmarred by any note that was not peaceful.
He had seen many situations charged with suspense and danger, and he
now realized how thoroughly freighted was the atmosphere about Spicer
South's cabin with the possibilities of bloodshed. The moments seemed
to drag interminably. In the expressionless faces that so quietly
vanished; in the absolutely calm and businesslike fashion in which,
with no spoken order, every man fell immediately into his place of
readiness and concealment, he read an ominous portent that sent a
current of apprehension through his arteries. Into his mind flashed all
the historical stories he had heard of the vendetta life of these
wooded slopes, and he wondered if he was to see another chapter enacted
in the next few minutes, while the June sun and soft shadows drowsed so
quietly across the valley.

While he waited, Spicer South's sister, the prematurely aged crone,
appeared in the kitchen door with the clay pipe between her teeth, and
raised a shading hand to gaze off up the road. She, too, understood the
tenseness of the situation as her grim, but unflinching, features
showed; yet even in her feminine eyes was no shrinking and on her face,
inured to fear, was no tell-tale signal beyond a heightened pallor.

Spicer South looked up at her, and jerked his head toward the house.

"Git inside, M'lindy," he ordered, curtly, and without a word she,
too, turned and disappeared.

But there was another figure, unseen, its very presence unsuspected,
watching from near by with a pounding heart and small fingers clutching
in wild terror at a palpitant breast. In this country, where human
creatures seemed to share with the "varmints" the faculty of moving
unseen and unheard, the figure had come stealthily to watch--and pray.

When Samson had heard that signal of the gunshots from a distant peak,
he had risen from the rock where he sat with Sally. He had said nothing
of the issue he must go to meet; nothing of the enemies who had brought
dogs, confident that they would make their run straight to his lair.
That subject had not been mentioned between them since he had driven
Tamarack away that afternoon, and reassured her. He had only risen
casually, as though his action had no connection with the signal of the
rifles, and said:

"Reckon I'll be a-goin'."

And Sally had said nothing either, except good-by, and had turned her
face toward her own side of the ridge, but, as soon as he had passed
out of sight, she had wheeled and followed noiselessly, slipping from
rhododendron clump to laurel thicket as stealthily as though she were
herself the object of an enemy's attack. She knew that Samson would
have sent her back, and she knew that a crisis was at hand, and that
she could not support the suspense of awaiting the news. She must see
for herself.

And now, while the stage was setting itself, the girl crouched
trembling a little way up the hillside, at the foot of a titanic
poplar. About her rose gray, moss-covered rocks and the fronds of
clinging ferns. At her feet bloomed wild flowers for which she knew no
names except those with which she had herself christened them,
"sunsetty flowers" whose yellow petals suggested to her imagination the
western skies, and "fairy cups and saucers."

She was not trembling for herself, though, if a fusillade broke out
below, the masking screen of leafage would not protect her from the
pelting of stray bullets. Her small face was pallid, and her blue eyes
wide-stretched and terrified. With a catch in her throat, she shifted
from her crouching attitude to a kneeling posture, and clasped her
hands desperately, and raised her face, while her lips moved in prayer.
She did not pray aloud, for even in her torment of fear for the boy she
loved, her mountain caution made her noiseless--and the God to whom she
prayed could hear her equally well in silence.

"Oh, God," pleaded the girl, brokenly, "I reckon ye knows thet them
Hollmans is atter Samson, an' I reckons ye knows he hain't committed no
sin. I reckon ye knows, since ye knows all things, thet hit'll kill me
ef I loses him, an' though I hain't nobody but jest Sally Miller, an'
ye air Almighty God, I wants ye ter hear my prayin', an' pertect him."

Fifteen minutes later, Lescott, standing at the fence, saw a strange
cavalcade round the bend of the road. Several travel-stained men were
leading mules, and holding two tawny and impatient dogs in leash. In
their number, the artist recognized his host of two nights ago.

They halted at a distance, and in their faces the artist read dismay,
for, while the dogs were yelping confidently and tugging at their
cords, young Samson South--who should, by their prejudiced convictions,
be hiding out in some secret stronghold--sat at the top step of the
stile, smoking his pipe, and regarded them with a lack-luster absence
of interest. Such a calm reception was uncanny. The trailers felt sure
that in a moment more the dogs would fall into accusing excitement.
Logically, these men should be waiting to receive them behind
barricaded doors. There must be some hidden significance. Possibly, it
was an invitation to walk into ambuscade. No doubt, unseen rifles
covered their approach, and the shooting of Purvy was only the
inaugural step to a bloody and open outbreak of the war. After a
whispered conference, the Lexington man came forward alone. Old Spicer
South had been looking on from the door, and was now strolling out to
meet the envoy, unarmed.

And the envoy, as he came, held his hands unnecessarily far away from
his sides, and walked with an ostentatious show of peace.

"Evenin', stranger," hailed the old man. "Come right in."

"Mr. South," began the dog-owner, with some embarrassment, "I have
been employed to furnish a pair of bloodhounds to the family of Jesse
Purvy, who has been shot."

"I heerd tell thet Purvy was shot," said the head of the Souths in an
affable tone, which betrayed no deeper note of interest than
neighborhood gossip might have elicited.

"I have no personal interest in the matter," went on the stranger,
hastily, as one bent on making his attitude clear, "except to supply
the dogs and manage them. I do not in any way direct their course; I
merely follow."

"Ye can't hardly fo'ce a dawg." Old Spicer sagely nodded his head as
he made the remark. "A dawg jest natcher'ly follers his own nose."

"Exactly--and they have followed their noses here." The Lexington man
found the embarrassment of his position growing as the colloquy
proceeded. "I want to ask you whether, if these dogs want to cross your
fence, I have your permission to let them?"

The cabin in the yard was utterly quiet. There was no hint of the
seven or eight men who rested on their arms behind its half-open door.
The master of the house crossed the stile, the low sun shining on his
shock of gray hair, and stood before the man-hunter. He spoke so that
his voice carried to the waiting group in the road.

"Ye're plumb welcome ter turn them dawgs loose, an' let 'em ramble,
stranger. Nobody hain't a-goin' ter hurt 'em. I sees some fellers out
thar with ye thet mustn't cross my fence. Ef they does"--the voice rang
menacingly--"hit'll mean that they're a-bustin' the truce--an' they
won't never go out ag'in. But you air safe in hyar. I gives yer my hand
on thet. Ye're welcome, an' yore dawgs is welcome. I hain't got nothin'
'gainst dawgs thet comes on four legs, but I shore bars the two-legged
kind."

There was a murmur of astonishment from the road. Disregarding it,
Spicer South turned his face toward the house.

"You boys kin come out," he shouted, "an' leave yore guns inside."

The leashes were slipped from the dogs. They leaped forward, and made
directly for Samson, who sat as unmoving as a lifeless image on the top
step of the stile. Up on the hillside the fingernails of Sally Miller's
clenched hands cut into the flesh, and the breath stopped between her
parted and bloodless lips. There was a half-moment of terrific
suspense, then the beasts clambered by the seated figure, passing on
each side and circled aimlessly about the yard--their quest unended.
They sniffed indifferently about the trouser legs of the men who
sauntered indolently out of the door. They trotted into the house and
out again, and mingled with the mongrel home pack that snarled and
growled hostility for this invasion. Then, they came once more to the
stile. As they climbed out, Samson South reached up and stroked a tawny
head, and the bloodhound paused a moment to wag its tail in friendship,
before it jumped down to the road, and trotted gingerly onward.

"I'm obliged to you, sir," said the man from the Bluegrass, with a
voice of immense relief.

The moment of suspense seemed past, and, in the relief of the averted
clash, the master of hounds forgot that his dogs stood branded as false
trailers. But, when he rejoined the group in the road, he found himself
looking into surly visages, and the features of Jim Hollman in
particular were black in their scowl of smoldering wrath.

"Why didn't ye axe him," growled the kinsman of the man who had been
shot, "whar the other feller's at?"

"What other fellow?" echoed the Lexington man.

Jim Hollman's voice rose truculently, and his words drifted, as he
meant them to, across to the ears of the clansmen who stood in the yard
of Spicer South.

"Them dawgs of your'n come up Misery a-hellin'. They hain't never
turned aside, an', onless they're plumb ornery no-'count curs thet
don't know their business, they come for some reason. They seemed
mighty interested in gittin' hyar. Axe them fellers in thar who's been
hyar thet hain't hyar now? Who is ther feller thet got out afore we
come hyar."

At this veiled charge of deceit, the faces of the Souths again
blackened, and the men near the door of the house drifted in to drift
presently out again, swinging discarded Winchesters at their sides. It
seemed that, after all, the incident was not closed. The man from
Lexington, finding himself face to face with a new difficulty, turned
and argued in a low voice with the Hollman leader. But Jim Hollman,
whose eyes were fixed on Samson, refused to talk in a modulated tone,
and he shouted his reply:

"I hain't got nothin' ter whisper about," he proclaimed. "Go axe 'em
who hit war thet got away from hyar."

Old Spicer South stood leaning on his fence, and his rugged
countenance stiffened. He started to speak, but Samson rose from the
stile, and said, in a composed voice:

"Let me talk ter this feller, Unc' Spicer." The old man nodded, and
Samson beckoned to the owner of the dogs.

"We hain't got nothin' ter say ter them fellers with ye," he
announced, briefly. "We hain't axin' 'em no questions, an' we hain't
answerin' none. Ye done come hyar with dawgs, an' we hain't stopped ye.
We've done answered all the questions them dawgs hes axed. We done
treated you an' yore houn's plumb friendly. Es fer them other men, we
hain't got nothin' ter say ter 'em. They done come hyar because they
hoped they could git me in trouble. They done failed. Thet road belongs
ter the county. They got a license ter travel hit, but this strip right
hyar hain't ther healthiest section they kin find. I reckon ye'd better
advise 'em ter move on."

The Lexington man went back. For a minute or two, Jim Hollman sat
scowling down in indecision from his saddle. Then, he admitted to
himself that he had done all he could do without becoming the
aggressor. For the moment, he was beaten. He looked up, and from the
road one of the hounds raised its voice and gave cry. That baying
afforded an excuse for leaving, and Jim Hollman seized upon it.

"Go on," he growled. "Let's see what them damned curs hes ter say now."

Mounting, they kicked their mules into a jog. From the men inside the
fence came no note of derision; no hint of triumph. They stood looking
out with expressionless, mask-like faces until their enemies had passed
out of sight around the shoulder of the mountain. The Souths had met
and fronted an accusation made after the enemy's own choice and method.
A jury of two hounds had acquitted them. It was not only because the
dogs had refused to recognize in Samson a suspicious character that the
enemy rode on grudgingly convinced, but, also, because the family,
which had invariably met hostility with hostility, had so willingly
courted the acid test of guilt or innocence.

Samson, passing around the corner of the house, caught a flash of red
up among the green clumps of the mountainside, and, pausing to gaze at
it, saw it disappear into the thicket of brush. He knew then that Sally
had followed him, and why she had done it, and, framing a stern rebuke
for the foolhardiness of the venture, he plunged up the acclivity in
pursuit. But, as he made his way cautiously, he heard around the
shoulder of a mass of piled-up sandstone a shaken sobbing, and,
slipping toward it, found the girl bent over with her face in her
hands, her slander body convulsively heaving with the weeping of
reaction, and murmuring half-incoherent prayers of thanksgiving for his
deliverance.

"Sally!" he exclaimed, hurrying over and dropping to his knees beside
her. "Sally, thar hain't nothin' ter fret about, little gal. Hit's all
right."

She started up at the sound of his voice, and then, pillowing her head
on his shoulder, wept tears of happiness. He sought for words, but no
words came, and his lips and eyes, unused to soft expressions, drew
themselves once more into the hard mask with which he screened his
heart's moods.

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