The Call of the Cumberlands Part 17

"I guess I wouldn't try to say."

"I reckon," replied the mountaineer, "I won't try, neither."

"Do you find it anything like the thing expected?" No New Yorker can allow a stranger to be unimpressed with that sky-line.

"I didn't have no notion what to expect." Samson's voice was matter-of- fact. "I 'lowed I'd jest wait and see."

He followed Lescott out to the foot of Twenty-third Street, and stepped with him into the tonneau of the painter's waiting car. Lescott lived with his family up-town, for it happened that, had his canvases possessed no value whatever, he would still have been in a position to drive his motor, and follow his impulses about the world. Lescott himself had found it necessary to overcome family opposition when he had determined to follow the career of painting. His people had been in finance, and they had expected him to take the position to which he logically fell heir in activities that center about Wall Street. He, too, had at first been regarded as recreant to traditions. For that reason, he felt a full sympathy with Samson. The painter's place in the social world--although he preferred his other world of Art--was so secure that he was free from any petty embarra.s.sment in standing sponsor for a wild man from the hills. If he did not take the boy to his home, it was because he understood that a life which must be not only full of early embarra.s.sment, but positively revolutionary, should be approached by easy stages. Consequently, the car turned down Fifth Avenue, pa.s.sed under the arch, and drew up before a door just off Washington Square, where the landscape painter had a studio suite.

There were sleeping-rooms and such accessories as seemed to the boy unheard-of luxury, though Lescott regarded the place as a makeshift annex to his home establishment.

"You'd better take your time in selecting permanent quarters," was his careless fashion of explaining to Samson. "It's just as well not to hurry. You are to stay here with me, as long as you will."

"I'm obleeged ter ye," replied the boy, to whose training in open- doored hospitality the invitation seemed only natural. The evening meal was brought in from a neighboring hotel, and the two men dined before an open fire, Samson eating in mountain silence, while his host chatted and asked questions. The place was quiet for New York, but to Samson it seemed an insufferable pandemonium. He found himself longing for the velvet-soft quiet of the nightfalls he had known.

"Samson," suggested the painter, when the dinner things had been carried out and they were alone, "you are here for two purposes: first to study painting; second, to educate and equip yourself for coming conditions. It's going to take work, more work, and then some more work."

"I hain't skeered of work."

"I believe that. Also, you must keep out of trouble. You've got to ride your fighting instinct with a strong curb."

"I don't 'low to let n.o.body run over me." The statement was not argumentative; only an announcement of a principle which was not subject to modification.

"All right, but until you learn the ropes, let me advise you."

The boy gazed into the fire for a few moments of silence.

"I gives ye my hand on thet," he promised.

At eleven o'clock the painter, having shown his guest over the premises, said good-night, and went up-town to his own house. Samson lay a long while awake, with many disquieting reflections. Before his closed eyes rose insistently the picture of a smoky cabin with a puncheon floor and of a girl upon whose cheeks and temples flickered orange and vermilion lights. To his ears came the roar of elevated trains, and, since a fog had risen over the Hudson, the endless night- splitting screams of brazen-throated ferry whistles. He tossed on a mattress which seemed hard and comfortless, and longed for a feather-bed.

"Good-night, Sally," he almost groaned. "I wisht I was back thar whar I belongs." ... And Sally, more than a thousand miles away, was shivering on the top of a stile with a white, grief-torn little face, wishing that, too.

Meanwhile Lescott, letting himself into a house overlooking the Park, was hailed by a chorus of voices from the dining-room. He turned and went in to join a gay group just back from the opera. As he thoughtfully mixed himself a highball, they bombarded him with questions.

"Why didn't you bring your barbarian with you?" demanded a dark-eyed girl, who looked very much as Lescott himself might have looked had he been a girl--and very young and lovely. The painter always thought of his sister as the family's _edition de luxe_. Now, she flashed on him an affectionate smile, and added: "We have been waiting to see him.

Must we go to bed disappointed?"

George stood looking down on them, and tinkled the ice in his gla.s.s.

"He wasn't brought on for purposes of exhibition, Drennie," he smiled.

"I was afraid, if he came in here in the fashion of his arrival--carrying his saddlebags--you ultra-civilized folk might have laughed."

A roar of laughter at the picture vindicated Lescott's a.s.sumption.

"No! Now, actually with saddlebags?" echoed a young fellow with a likeable face which was for the moment incredulously amused. "That goes d.i.c.k Whittington one better. You do make some rare discoveries, George.

We celebrate you."

"Thanks, Horton," commented the painter, dryly. "When you New Yorkers have learned what these barbarians already know, the control of your over-sensitized risibles and a courtesy deeper than your shirt-fronts --maybe I'll let you have a look. Meantime, I'm much too fond of all of you to risk letting you laugh at my barbarian."

CHAPTER XIV

The first peep of daylight through the studio skylight found the mountain boy awake. Before the daylight came he had seen the stars through its panes. Lescott's servant, temporarily a.s.signed to the studio, was still sleeping when Samson dressed and went out. As he put on his clothes, he followed his custom of strapping the pistol-holster under his left armpit outside his shirt. He did it with no particular thought and from force of habit. His steps carried him first into Washington Square, at this cheerless hour empty except for a shivering and huddled figure on a bench and a rattling milk-cart. The boy wandered aimlessly until, an hour later, he found himself on Bleecker Street, as that thoroughfare began to awaken and take up its day's activity. The smaller shops that lie in the shadow of the elevated trestle were opening their doors. Samson had been reflecting on the amused glances he had inspired yesterday and, when he came to a store with a tawdry window display of haberdashery and ready-made clothing, he decided to go in and investigate.

Evidently, the garments he now wore gave him an appearance of poverty and meanness, which did not comport with the dignity of a South. Had any one else criticized his appearance his resentment would have blazed, but he could make voluntary admissions. The shopkeeper's curiosity was somewhat piqued by a manner of speech and appearance which, were, to him, new, and which he could not cla.s.sify. His first impression of the boy in the stained suit, slouch hat, and patched overcoat, was much the same as that which the Pullman porter had mentally summed up as, "Po' white trash"; but the Yiddish shopman could not place his prospective customer under any head or type with which he was familiar. He was neither "kike," "wop," "rough-neck," nor beggar, and, as the proprietor laid out his wares with unctuous solicitude, he was, also, studying his unresponsive and early visitor. When Samson, for the purpose of trying on a coat and vest, took off his own outer garments, and displayed, without apology or explanation, a huge and murderous-looking revolver, the merchant became nervously excited. Had Samson made gratifying purchases, he might have seen nothing, but it occurred to the mountaineer, just as he was counting money from a stuffed purse, that it would perhaps be wiser to wait and consult Lescott in matters of sartorial selection. So, with incisive bluntness, he countermanded his order--and made an enemy. The shopkeeper, standing at the door of his bas.e.m.e.nt establishment, combed his beard with his fingers, and thought regretfully of the fat wallet; and, a minute after, when two policemen came by, walking together, he awoke suddenly to his responsibilities as a citizen. He pointed to the figure now half a block away.

"Dat feller," he said, "chust vent out off my blace. He's got a young cannon strapped to his vish-bone. I don't know if he's chust a rube, or if maybe he's bad. Anyway, he's a gun-toter."

The two patrolmen only nodded, and sauntered on. They did not hurry, but neither did Samson. Pausing to gaze into a window filled with Italian sweetmeats, he felt a hand on his shoulder, and turned to find himself looking into two pairs of accusing eyes.

"What's your game?" shortly demanded one of the officers.

"What's ther matter?" countered Samson, as tartly as he had been questioned.

"Don't you know better than to tote a gun around this town?"

"I reckon thet's my business, hain't hit?"

The boy stepped back, and shook the offending hand from his shoulder.

His gorge was rising, but he controlled it, and turned on his heel, with the manner of one saying the final word.

"I reckon ye're a-barkin' up ther wrong tree."

"Not by a d.a.m.ned sight, we ain't!" One of the patrolmen seized and pinioned his arms, while the second threateningly lifted his club.

"Don't try to start anything, young feller," he warned. The street was awake now and the ever-curious crowd began to gather. The big officer at Samson's back held his arms locked and gave curt directions to his partner. "Go through him, Quinn."

Samson recognized that he was in the hands of the law, and a different sort of law from that which he had known on Misery. He made no effort to struggle, but looked very straight and unblinkingly into the eyes of the club-wielder.

"Don't ye hit me with thet thing," he said, quietly. "I warns ye."

The officer laughed as he ran his left hand over Samson's hips and chest, and brought out the offending weapon.

"I guess that's about all. We'll let you explain the rest of it to the judge. It's a trick on the Island for yours."

The Island meant nothing to Samson South, but the derisive laughter of the crowd, and the roughness with which the two bluecoats swung him around, and ordered him to march, set on edge every defiant nerve.

Still, he gazed directly into the faces of his captors, and inquired with a cruelly forced calm:

"Does ye 'low ter take me ter the jail-house?"

"Can that rube stuff. Get along, get along!" And the officers started him on his journey with a shove that sent him lurching and stumbling forward. Then, the curb of control slipped. The prisoner wheeled, his face distorted with pa.s.sion, and lashed out with his fist to the face of the biggest patrolman. It was a foolish and hopeless attack, as the boy realized, but in his code it was necessary. One must resent gratuitous insult whatever the odds, and he fought with such concentrated fury and swiftness, after his rude hill method of "fist and skull," driving in terrific blows with hands and head, that the crowd breathed deep with the delicious excitement of the combat--and regretted its brevity.

The amazed officers, for an instant handicapped by their surprise, since they were expecting to monopolize the brutality of the occasion, came to their senses, and had instant recourse to the comforting reinforcement of their locust clubs. The boy went down under a rat-tat of night sticks, which left him as groggy and easy to handle as a fainting woman.

"You got ter hand it ter dat guy," commented a sweater-clad onlooker, as they dragged Samson into a doorway to await the wagon. "He was goin'