The Call of the Cumberlands Part 2

"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 rea.s.sured, 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 sh.o.r.e 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 s.e.x 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. .h.i.t all right."

There was a moment's pause--rather an awkward pause. Lescott's mind began piecing together fragments of conversation he had heard, until he had a.s.sembled a sort of mental jig-saw puzzle.

The South-Hollman feud had been mentioned by the more talkative of his informers, and carefully tabooed by others--notable among them his host of last night. It now dawned on him that he was crossing the boundary and coming as the late guest of a Hollman to ask the hospitality of a South.

"I didn't know whose house it was," he hastened to explain, "until I was benighted, and asked for lodging. They were very kind to me. I'd never seen them before. I'm a stranger hereabouts."

Samson only nodded. If the explanation failed to satisfy him, it at least seemed to do so.

"I reckon ye'd better let me holp ye up on thet old mule," he said; "hit's a-comin' on ter be night."

With the mountaineer's aid, Lescott clambered astride the mount, then he turned dubiously.

"I'm sorry to trouble you," he ventured, "but I have a paint box and some materials up there. If you'll bring them down here, I'll show you how to pack the easel, and, by the way," he anxiously added, "please handle that fresh canvas carefully--by the edge--it's not dry yet."

He had antic.i.p.ated impatient contempt for his artist's impedimenta, but to his surprise the mountain boy climbed the rock, and halted before the sketch with a face that slowly softened to an expression of amazed admiration. Finally, he took up the square of academy board with a tender care of which his rough hands would have seemed incapable, and stood stock still, presenting an anomalous figure in his rough clothes as his eyes grew almost idolatrous. Then, he brought the landscape over to its creator, and, though no word was spoken, there flashed between the eyes of the artist, whose signature gave to a canvas the value of a precious stone and the jeans-clad boy whose destiny was that of the vendetta, a subtle, wordless message. It was the countersign of brothers-in-blood who recognize in each other the bond of a mutual pa.s.sion.

The boy and the girl, under Lescott's direction, packed the outfit, and stored the canvas in the protecting top of the box. Then, while Sally turned and strode down creek in search of Lescott's lost mount, the two men rode up stream in silence. Finally. Samson spoke slowly and diffidently.

"Stranger," he ventured, "ef hit hain't askin' too much, will ye let me see ye paint one of them things?"

"Gladly," was the prompt reply.

Then, the boy added covertly:

"Don't say nothin' erbout hit ter none of these folks. They'd devil me."

The dusk was falling now, and the hollows choking with murk. Over the ridge, the evening star showed in a lonely point of pallor. The peaks, which in a broader light had held their majestic distances, seemed with the falling of night to draw in and huddle close in crowding herds of black ma.s.ses. The distant tinkling of a cow-bell came drifting down the breeze with a weird and fanciful softness.

"We're nigh home now," said Samson at the end of some minutes' silent plodding. "Hit's right beyond thet thar bend."

Then, they rounded a point of timber, and came upon a small party of men whose att.i.tudes even in the dimming light conveyed a subtle suggestion of portent. Some sat their horses, with one leg thrown across the pommel. Others stood in the road, and a bottle of white liquor was pa.s.sing in and out among them. At the distance they recognized the gray mule, though even the fact that it carried a double burden was not yet manifest.

"Thet you, Samson?" called an old man's voice, which was still very deep and powerful.

"h.e.l.lo, Unc' Spicer!" replied the boy.

Then, followed a silence unbroken until the mule reached the group, revealing that besides the boy another man--and a strange man--had joined their number.

"Evenin', stranger," they greeted him, gravely; then again they fell silent, and in their silence was evident constraint.

"This hyar man's a furriner," announced Samson, briefly. "He fell offen a rock, an' got hurt. I 'lowed I'd fotch him home ter stay all night."

The elderly man who had hailed the boy nodded, but with an evident annoyance. It seemed that to him the others deferred as to a commanding officer. The cortege remounted and rode slowly toward the house. At last, the elderly man came alongside the mule, and inquired:

"Samson, where was ye last night?"

"Thet's my business."

"Mebbe hit hain't." The old mountaineer spoke with no resentment, but deep gravity. "We've been powerful oneasy erbout ye. Hev ye heered the news?"

"What news?" The boy put the question non-committally.

"Jesse Purvy was shot soon this morning."

The boy vouchsafed no reply.

"The mail-rider done told hit.... Somebody shot five shoots from the laurel.... Purvy hain't died yit.... Some says as how his folks has sent ter Lexington fer bloodhounds."

The boy's eyes began to smolder hatefully.

"I reckon," he spoke slowly, "he didn't git shot none too soon."