Call of the Cumberlands | Page 6

It is doubtful whether his dreaming eyes were as conscious of what he
saw as of other things which his imagination saw beyond the haze of
the last far rim. Against the fence rested his abandoned hoe, and about
him a number of lean hounds scratched and dozed in the sun. Samson
South had little need of hounds; but, in another century, his people,
turning their backs on Virginia affluence to invite the hardships of
pioneer life, had brought with them certain of the cavaliers' instincts. A
hundred years in the stagnant back-waters of the world had brought to
their descendants a lapse into illiteracy and semi-squalor, but through it
all had fought that thin, insistent flame of instinct. Such a survival was
the boy's clinging to his hounds. Once, they had symbolized the spirit
of the nobility; the gentleman's fondness for his sport with horse and
dog and gun. Samson South did not know the origin of his fondness for
this remnant of a pack. He did not know that in the long ago his
forefathers had fought on red fields with Bruce and the Stuarts. He only
knew that through his crudities something indefinable, yet compelling,
was at war with his life, filling him with great and shapeless longings.
He at once loved and resented these ramparts of stone that hemmed in
his hermit race and world.
He was not, strictly speaking, a man. His age was perhaps twenty. He
sat loose-jointed and indolent on the top rail of the fence, his hands
hanging over his knees: his hoe forgotten. His feet were bare, and his

jeans breeches were supported by a single suspender strap. Pushed well
to the back of his head was a battered straw hat, of the sort rurally
known as the "ten-cent jimmy." Under its broken brim, a long lock of
black hair fell across his forehead. So much of his appearance was
typical of the Kentucky mountaineer. His face was strongly individual,
and belonged to no type. Black brows and lashes gave a distinctiveness
to gray eyes so clear as to be luminous. A high and splendidly molded
forehead and a squarely blocked chin were free of that degeneracy
which marks the wasting of an in-bred people. The nose was straight,
and the mouth firm yet mobile. It was the face of the instinctive
philosopher, tanned to a hickory brown. In a stature of medium size,
there was still a hint of power and catamount alertness. If his attitude
was at the moment indolent, it was such indolence as drowses between
bursts of white-hot activity; a fighting man's aversion to manual labor
which, like the hounds, harked back to other generations. Near-by,
propped against the rails, rested a repeating rifle, though the people
would have told you that the truce in the "South-Hollman war" had
been unbroken for two years, and that no clansman need in these
halcyon days go armed afield.
CHAPTER III
Sally clambered lightly over the fence, and started on the last stage of
her journey, the climb across the young corn rows. It was a field stood
on end, and the hoed ground was uneven; but with no seeming of
weariness her red dress flashed steadfastly across the green spears, and
her voice was raised to shout: "Hello, Samson!"
The young man looked up and waved a languid greeting. He did not
remove his hat or descend from his place of rest, and Sally, who
expected no such attention, came smilingly on. Samson was her hero. It
seemed quite appropriate that one should have to climb steep acclivities
to reach him. Her enamored eyes saw in the top rail of the fence a
throne, which she was content to address from the ground level. That
he was fond of her and meant some day to marry her she knew, and
counted herself the most favored of women. The young men of the
neighboring coves, too, knew it, and respected his proprietary rights. If

he treated her with indulgent tolerance instead of chivalry, he was
merely adopting the accepted attitude of the mountain man for the
mountain woman, not unlike that of the red warrior for his squaw.
Besides, Sally was still almost a child, and Samson, with his twenty
years, looked down from a rank of seniority. He was the legitimate
head of the Souths, and some day, when the present truce ended, would
be their war-leader with certain blood debts to pay. Since his father had
been killed by a rifle shot from ambush, he had never been permitted to
forget that, and, had he been left alone, he would still have needed no
other mentor than the rankle in his heart.
But, if Samson sternly smothered the glint of tenderness which, at sight
of her, rose to his eyes,