Call of the Cumberlands | Page 7

and recognized her greeting only in casual
fashion, it was because such was the requirement of his stoic code. And
to the girl who had been so slow of utterance and diffident with the
stranger, words now came fast and fluently as she told her story of the
man who lay hurt at the foot of the rock.
"Hit hain't long now tell sundown," she urged. "Hurry, Samson, an' git
yore mule. I've done give him my promise ter fotch ye right straight
back."
Samson took off his hat, and tossed the heavy lock upward from his
forehead. His brow wrinkled with doubts.
"What sort of lookin' feller air he?"
While Sally sketched a description, the young man's doubt grew graver.
"This hain't no fit time ter be takin' in folks what we hain't acquainted
with," he objected. In the mountains, any time is the time to take in
strangers unless there are secrets to be guarded from outside eyes.
"Why hain't it?" demanded the girl. "He's hurt. We kain't leave him
layin' thar, kin we?"
Suddenly, her eyes caught sight of the rifle leaning near-by, and
straightway they filled with apprehension. Her militant love would

have turned to hate for Samson, should he have proved recreant to the
mission of reprisal in which he was biding his time, yet the coming of
the day when the truce must end haunted her thoughts. Heretofore, that
day had always been to her remotely vague--a thing belonging to the
future. Now, with a sudden and appalling menace, it seemed to loom
across the present. She came close, and her voice sank with her sinking
heart.
"What air hit?" she tensely demanded. "What air hit, Samson? What fer
hev ye fetched yer gun ter the field?"
The boy laughed. "Oh, hit ain't nothin' pertic'ler," he reassured. "Hit
hain't nothin' fer a gal ter fret herself erbout, only I kinder suspicions
strangers jest now."
"Air the truce busted?" She put the question in a tense, deep-breathed
whisper, and the boy replied casually, almost indifferently.
"No, Sally, hit hain't jest ter say busted, but 'pears like hit's right smart
cracked. I reckon, though," he added in half-disgust, "nothin' won't
come of hit."
Somewhat reassured, she bethought herself again of her mission.
"This here furriner hain't got no harm in him, Samson," she pleaded.
"He 'pears ter be more like a gal than a man. He's real puny. He's got
white skin and a bow of ribbon on his neck--an' he paints pictchers."
The boy's face had been hardening with contempt as the description
advanced, but at the last words a glow came to his eyes, and he
demanded almost breathlessly:
"Paints pictchers? How do ye know that?"
"I seen 'em. He was paintin' one when he fell offen the rock and busted
his arm. It's shore es beautiful es--" she broke off, then added with a
sudden peal of laughter--"es er pictcher."

The young man slipped down from the fence, and reached for the rifle.
The hoe he left where it stood.
"I'll git the nag," he announced briefly, and swung off without further
parley toward the curling spiral of smoke that marked a cabin a quarter
of a mile below. Ten minutes later, his bare feet swung against the ribs
of a gray mule, and his rifle lay balanced across the unsaddled withers.
Sally sat mountain fashion behind him, facing straight to the side.
So they came along the creek bed and into the sight of the man who
still sat propped against the mossy rock. As Lescott looked up, he
closed the case of his watch, and put it back into his pocket with a
smile.
"Snappy work, that!" he called out. "Just thirty-three minutes. I didn't
believe it could be done."
Samson's face was mask-like, but, as he surveyed the foreigner, only
the ingrained dictates of the country's hospitable code kept out of his
eyes a gleam of scorn for this frail member of a sex which should be
stalwart.
"Howdy?" he said. Then he added suspiciously: "What mout yer
business be in these parts, stranger?"
Lescott gave the odyssey of his wanderings, since he had rented a mule
at Hixon and ridden through the country, sketching where the mood
prompted and sleeping wherever he found a hospitable roof at the
coming of the evening.
"Ye come from over on Crippleshin?" The boy flashed the question
with a sudden hardening of the voice, and, when he was affirmatively
answered, his eyes contracted and bored searchingly into the stranger's
face.
"Where'd ye put up last night?"
"Red Bill Hollman's house, at the mouth of Meeting House Fork; do

you know the place?"
Samson's reply was curt.
"I knows hit all right."
There was a moment's pause--rather an awkward pause. Lescott's mind
began piecing together fragments of