_ Samson, throwing things hurriedly into his bag, heard a knock on his
door. He opened it, and outside in the hall stood Adrienne. Her face
was pale, and she leaned a little on the hand which rested against the
white jamb.
"What does it mean?" she asked.
He came over.
"It means, Drennie," he said, "that you may make a pet of a leopard cub,
but there will come a day when something of the jungle comes out in him
--and he must go. My uncle has been shot, and the feud is on--I've been
sent for."
He paused, and she half-whispered in an appealing voice:
"Don't go."
"You don't mean that," he said, quietly. "If it were you, you would
go. Whether I get back here or not"--he hesitated--"my gratitude will
be with you--always." He broke off, and said suddenly: "Drennie, I
don't want to say good-by to you. I can't."
"It's not necessary yet," she answered. "I'm going to drive you to New
York."
"No!" he exclaimed. "It's too far, and I've got to go fast----"
"That's why I'm going," she promptly assured him. "I'm the only fool
on these premises that can get all the speed out of a car that's in her
engine--and the constables are good to me. I just came up here to--" she
hesitated, then added--"to see you alone for a moment, and to say that
teacher has never had such a bright little pupil, in her life--and--"
the flippancy with which she was masking her feeling broke and she
added, in a shaken voice as she thrust out her hand, man-fashion--"and
to say, God keep you, boy."
He seized the hand in both his own, and gripped it hard. He tried to
speak, but only shook his head with a rueful smile.
"I'll be waiting at the door with the car," she told him, as she left.
Horton, too, came in to volunteer assistance.
"Wilfred," said Samson, feelingly, 'there isn't any man I'd rather
have at my back, in a stand-up fight. But this isn't exactly that sort.
Where I'm going, a fellow has got to be invisible. No, you can't help,
now. Come down later. We'll organize Horton, South and Co."
"South, Horton and Co.," corrected Wilfred; "native sons first."
At that moment, Adrienne believed she had decided the long-mooted
question. Of course, she had not. It was merely the stress of the
moment; exaggerating the importance of one she was losing at the
expense of the one who was left. Still, as she sat in the car waiting,
her world seemed slipping into chaos under her feet, and, when Samson
had taken his place at her side, the machine leaped forward into a
reckless plunge of speed.
Samson stopped at his studio, and threw open an old closet where, from
a littered pile of discarded background draperies, canvases and
stretchers, he fished out a buried and dust-covered pair of saddlebags.
They had long lain there forgotten, but they held the rusty clothes in
which he had left Misery. He threw them over his arm and dropped them
at Adrienne's feet, as he handed her the studio keys.
"Will you please have George look after things, and make the necessary
excuses to my sitters? He'll find a list of posing appointments in the
desk."
The girl nodded.
"What are those?" she asked, gazing at the great leather pockets as at
some relic unearthed from Pompeian excavations.
"Saddlebags, Drennie," he said, "and in them are homespun and jeans.
One can't lead his 'fluttered folk and wild' in a cutaway coat."
Shortly they were at the station, and the man, standing at the side of
the machine, took her hand.
"It's not good-by, you know," he said, smiling. "Just _auf
Wiedersehen_."
She nodded and smiled, too, but, as she smiled, she shivered, and
turned the car slowly. There was no need to hurry, now.
Samson had caught the fastest west-bound express on the schedule. In
thirty-six hours, he would be at Hixon. There were many things which
his brain must attack and digest in these hours. He must arrange his
plan of action to its minutest detail, because he would have as little
time for reflection, once he had reached his own country, as a wildcat
flung into a pack of hounds.
From the railroad station to his home, he must make his way--most
probably fight his way--through thirty miles of hostile territory where
all the trails were watched. And yet, for the time, all that seemed too
remotely unreal to hold his thoughts. He was seeing the coolly waving
curtains of flowered chintz that stirred in the windows of his room at
the Lescott house and the crimson ramblers that nodded against the sky.
He was hearing a knock on the door, and seeing, as it opened, the
figure of Adrienne Lescott and the look that had been in her eyes.
He took out Sally's letter, and read it once more. He read it
mechanically and as a piece of news that had brought evil tidings.
Then, suddenly, another aspect of it struck him--an aspect to which the
shock of its reception had until this tardy moment blinded him. The
letter was perfectly grammatical and penned in a hand of copy-book
roundness and evenness. The address, the body of the missive, and the
signature, were all in one chirography. She would not have intrusted
the writing of this letter to any one else.
Sally had learned to write!
Moreover, at the end were the words "with love." It was all plain now.
Sally had never repudiated him. She was declaring herself true to her
mission and her love. All that heartbreak through which he had gone had
been due to his own misconception, and in that misconception he had
drawn into himself and had stopped writing to her. Even his occasional
letters had for two years ceased to brighten her heart-strangling
isolation--and she was still waiting.... She had sent no word of appeal
until the moment had come of which she had promised to inform him.
Sally, abandoned and alone, had been fighting her way up--that she
might stand on his level.
"Good God!" groaned the man, in abjectly bitter self-contempt. His
hand went involuntarily to his cropped head, and dropped with a gesture
of self-doubting. He looked down at his tan shoes and silk socks. He
rolled back his shirtsleeve and contemplated the forearm that had once
been as brown and tough as leather. It was now the arm of a city man,
except for the burning of one outdoor week. He was returning at the
eleventh hour--stripped of the faith of his kinsmen, half-stripped of
his faith in himself. If he were to realize the constructive dreams of
which he had last night so confidently prattled to Adrienne, he must
lead his people from under the blighting shadow of the feud.
Yet, if he was to lead them at all, he must first regain their shaken
confidence, and to do that he must go, at their head, through this mire
of war to vindication. Only a fighting South could hope to be heard in
behalf of peace. His eventual regeneration belonged to some to-morrow.
To-day held the need of such work as that of the first Samson--to slay.
He must reappear before his kinsmen as much as possible the boy who
had left them--not the fop with newfangled affectations. His eyes fell
upon the saddlebags on the floor of the Pullman, and he smiled
satirically. He would like to step from the train at Hixon and walk
brazenly through the town in those old clothes, challenging every
hostile glance. If they shot him down on the streets, as they certainly
would do, it would end his questioning and his anguish of dilemma. He
would welcome that, but it would, after all, be shirking the issue.
He must get out of Hixon and into his own country unrecognized. The
lean boy of four years ago was the somewhat filled out man now. The one
concession that he had made to Paris life was the wearing of a closely
cropped mustache. That he still wore--had worn it chiefly because he
liked to hear Adrienne's humorous denunciation of it. He knew that, in
his present guise and dress, he had an excellent chance of walking
through the streets of Hixon as a stranger. And, after leaving Hixon,
there was a mission to be performed at Jesse Purvy's store. As he
thought of that mission a grim glint came to his pupils.
All journeys end, and as Samson passed through the tawdry cars of the
local train near Hixon he saw several faces which he recognized, but
they either eyed him in inexpressive silence, or gave him the greeting
of the "furriner."
Then the whistle shrieked for the trestle over the Middle Fork, and at
only a short distance rose the cupola of the brick court-house and the
scattered roofs of the town. Scattered over the green slopes by the
river bank lay the white spread of a tented company street, and, as he
looked out, he saw uniformed figures moving to and fro, and caught the
ring of a bugle call. So the militia was on deck; things must be bad,
he reflected. He stood on the platform and looked down as the engine
roared along the trestle. There were two gatling guns. One pointed its
muzzle toward the town, and the other scowled up at the face of the
mountain. Sentries paced their beats. Men in undershirts lay dozing
outside tent flaps. It was all a picture of disciplined readiness, and
yet Samson knew that soldiers made of painted tin would be equally
effective. These military forces must remain subservient to local civil
authorities, and the local civil authorities obeyed the nod of Judge
Hollman and Jesse Purvy.
As Samson crossed the toll-bridge to the town proper he passed two
brown-shirted militiamen, lounging on the rail of the middle span. They
grinned at him, and, recognizing the outsider from his clothes, one of
them commented:
"Ain't this the hell of a town?"
"It's going to be," replied Samson, enigmatically, as he went on.
Still unrecognized, he hired a horse at the livery stable, and for two
hours rode in silence, save for the easy creaking of his stirrup
leathers and the soft thud of hoofs.
The silence soothed him. The brooding hills lulled his spirit as a
crooning song lulls a fretful child. Mile after mile unrolled forgotten
vistas. Something deep in himself murmured:
"Home!"
It was late afternoon when he saw ahead of him the orchard of Purvy's
place, and read on the store wall, a little more weather-stained, but
otherwise unchanged:
"Jesse Purvy, General Merchandise."
The porch of the store was empty, and as Samson flung himself from his
saddle there was no one to greet him. This was surprising, since,
ordinarily, two or three of Purvy's personal guardsmen loafed at the
front to watch the road. Just now the guard should logically be
doubled. Samson still wore his Eastern clothes--for he wanted to go
through that door unknown. As Samson South he could not cross its
threshold either way. But when he stepped up on to the rough porch
flooring no one challenged his advance. The yard and orchard were quiet
from their front fence to the grisly stockade at the rear, and,
wondering at these things, the young man stood for a moment looking
about at the afternoon peace before he announced himself.
Yet Samson had not come to the stronghold of his enemy for the purpose
of assassination. There had been another object in his mind--an utterly
mad idea, it is true, yet so bold of conception that it held a ghost of
promise. He had meant to go into Jesse Purvy's store and chat
artlessly, like some inquisitive "furriner." He would ask questions
which by their very impertinence might be forgiven on the score of a
stranger's folly. But, most of all, he wanted to drop the casual
information, which he should assume to have heard on the train, that
Samson South was returning, and to mark, on the assassin leader, the
effect of the news. In his new code it was necessary to give at least
the rattler's warning before he struck, and he meant to strike. If he
were recognized, well--he shrugged his shoulders.
But as he stood on the outside, wiping the perspiration from his
forehead, for the ride had been warm, he heard voices within. They were
loud and angry voices. It occurred to him that by remaining where he
was he might gain more information than by hurrying in.
"I've done been your executioner fer twenty years," complained a
voice, which Samson at once recognized as that of Aaron Hollis, the
most trusted of Purvy's personal guards. "I hain't never laid down on
ye yet. Me an' Jim Asberry killed old Henry South. We laid fer his boy,
an' would 'a' got him ef ye'd only said ther word. I went inter Hixon,
an' killed Tam'rack Spicer, with soldiers all round me. There hain't no
other damn fool in these mountings would 'a' took such a long chance es
thet. I'm tired of hit. They're a-goin' ter git me, an' I wants ter
leave, an' you won't come clean with the price of a railroad ticket to
Oklahoma. Now, damn yore stingy soul, I gits that ticket or I gits you!"
"Aaron, ye can't scare me into doin' nothin' I ain't aimin' to do."
The old baron of the vendetta spoke in a cold, stoical voice. "I tell
ye I ain't quite through with ye yet. In due an' proper time I'll see
that ye get yer ticket." Then he added, with conciliating softness:
"We've been friends a long while. Let's talk this thing over before we
fall out."
"Thar hain't nothin' ter talk over," stormed Aaron. "Ye're jest tryin'
ter kill time till the boys gits hyar, and then I reckon ye 'lows ter
have me kilt like yer've had me kill them others. Hit hain't no use.
I've done sent 'em away. When they gits back hyar, either you'll be in
hell, or I'll be on my way outen the mountings."
Samson stood rigid. Here was the confession of one murderer, with no
denial from the other. The truce was of. Why should he wait? Cataracts
seemed to thunder in his brain, and yet he stood there, his hand in his
coat-pocket, clutching the grip of a magazine pistol. Samson South the
old, and Samson South the new, were writhing in the life-and-death
grapple of two codes. Then, before decision came, he heard a sharp
report inside, and the heavy fall of a body to the floor.
A wildly excited figure came plunging through the door, and Samson's
left hand swept out, and seized its shoulder in a sudden vise grip.
"Do you know me?" he inquired, as the mountaineer pulled away and
crouched back with startled surprise and vicious frenzy.
"No, damn ye! Git outen my road!" Aaron thrust his cocked rifle close
against the stranger's face. From its muzzle came the acrid stench of
freshly burned powder. "Git outen my road afore I kills ye!"
"My name is Samson South."
Before the astounded finger on the rifle trigger could be crooked,
Samson's pistol spoke from the pocket, and, as though in echo, the
rifle blazed, a little too late and a shade too high, over his head, as
the dead man's arms went up. _