The Call of the Cumberlands Part 41

His face was weary, and his eyes wore the deep disgust and fatigue that come from the necessity of performing a hard duty.

"You are under arrest," he added quietly, but his composure broke as he stormed. "Now, by G.o.d, I've got to take you back and let them murder you, and you're the one man who might have been useful to the State."

CHAPTER XXIX

The Governor had been more influenced by watching the two as they talked than by what he had heard.

"It seems to me, gentlemen," he suggested quietly, "that you are both overlooking my presence." He turned to Callomb.

"Your coming, Sid, unless it was prearranged between the two of you (which, since I know you, I know was not the case) has shed more light on this matter than the testimony of a dozen witnesses. After all, I'm still the Governor."

The militiaman seemed to have forgotten the existence of his distinguished kinsman, and, at the voice, his eyes came away from the face of the man he had not wanted to capture, and he shook his head.

"You are merely the head of the executive branch," he said. "You are as helpless here as I am. Neither of us can interfere with the judicial gentry, though we may know that they stink to high heaven with the stench of blood. After a conviction, you can pardon, but a pardon won't help the dead. I don't see that you can do much of anything, Crit."

"I don't know yet what I can do, but I can tell you I'm going to do something," said the Governor. "You can just begin watching me. In the meantime, I believe I am Commander-in-Chief of the State troops."

"And I am Captain of F Company, but all I can do is to obey the orders of a bunch of Borgias."

"As your superior officer," smiled the Governor, "I can give you orders. I'm going to give you one now. Mr. South has applied to me for a pardon in advance of trial. Technically, I have the power to grant that request. Morally, I doubt my right. Certainly, I shall not do it without a very thorough sifting of evidence and grave consideration of the necessities of the case--as well as the danger of the precedent.

However, I am considering it, and for the present you will parole your prisoner in my custody. Mr. South, you will not leave Frankfort without my permission. You will take every precaution to conceal your actual ident.i.ty. You will treat as utterly confidential all that has transpired here--and, above all, you will not let newspaper men discover you. Those are my orders. Report here tomorrow afternoon, and remember that you are my prisoner."

Samson bowed, and left the two cousins together, where shortly they were joined by the Attorney General. That evening, the three dined at the executive mansion, and sat until midnight in the Governor's private office, still deep in discussion. During the long session, Callomb opened the bulky volume of the Kentucky Statutes, and laid his finger on Section 2673.

"There's the rub," he protested, reading aloud: "'The military shall be at all times, and in all cases, in strict subordination to the civil power.'"

The Governor glanced down to the next paragraph, and read in part: "'The Governor may direct the commanding officer of the military force to report to any one of the following-named officers of the district in which the said force is employed: Mayor of a city, sheriff, jailer or marshal.'"

"Which list," stormed Callomb, "is the honor roll of the a.s.sa.s.sins."

"At all events"--the Governor had derived from Callomb much information as to Samson South which the mountaineer himself had modestly withheld--"South gets his pardon. That is only a step. I wish I could make him satrap over his province, and provide him with troops to rule it. Unfortunately, our form of government has its drawbacks."

"It might be possible," ventured the Attorney General, "to impeach the Sheriff, and appoint this or some other suitable man to fill the vacancy until the next election."

"The Legislature doesn't meet until next winter," objected Callomb.

"There is one chance. The Sheriff down there is a sick man. Let us hope he may die."

One day, the Hixon conclave met in the room over Hollman's Mammoth Department Store, and with much profanity read a communication from Frankfort, announcing the pardon of Samson South. In that episode, they foresaw the beginning of the end for their dynasty. The outside world was looking on, and their regime could not survive the spotlight of law -loving scrutiny.

"The fust thing," declared Judge Hollman, curtly, "is to get rid of these d.a.m.ned soldiers. We'll attend to our own business later, and we don't want them watchin' us. Just now, we want to lie mighty quiet for a spell--teetotally quiet until I pa.s.s the word."

Samson had won back the confidence of his tribe, and enlisted the faith of the State administration. He had been authorized to organize a local militia company, and to drill them, provided he could stand answerable for their conduct. The younger Souths took gleefully to that idea. The mountain boy makes a good soldier, once he has grasped the idea of discipline. For ten weeks, they drilled daily in squads and weekly in platoons. Then, the fortuitous came to pa.s.s. Sheriff Forbin died, leaving behind him an unexpired term of two years, and Samson was summoned hastily to Frankfort. He returned, bearing his commission as High Sheriff, though, when that news reached Hixon, there were few men who envied him his post, and none who cared to bet that he would live to take his oath of office.

That August court day was a memorable one in Hixon. Samson South was coming to town to take up his duties. Every one recognized it as the day of final issue, and one that could hardly pa.s.s without bloodshed.

The Hollmans, standing in their last trench, saw only the blunt question of Hollman-South supremacy. For years, the feud had flared and slept and broken again into eruption, but never before had a South sought to throw his outposts of power across the waters of Crippleshin, and into the county seat. That the present South came bearing commission as an officer of the law only made his effrontery the more unendurable.

Samson had not called for outside troops. The drilling and disciplining of his own company had progressed in silence along the waters of Misery. They were a slouching, unmilitary band of uniformed vagabonds, but they were longing to fight, and Callomb had been with them, tirelessly whipping them into rudimentary shape. After all, they were as much partisans as they had been before they were issued State rifles. The battle, if it came, would be as factional as the fight of twenty-five years ago, when the Hollmans held the store and the Souths the court-house. But back of all that lay one essential difference, and it was this difference that had urged the Governor to stretch the forms of law and put such dangerous power into the hands of one man. That difference was the man himself. He was to take drastic steps, but he was to take them under the forms of law, and the State Executive believed that, having gone through worse to better, he would maintain the improved condition.

Early that morning, men began to a.s.semble along the streets of Hixon; and to congregate into sullen clumps with set faces that denoted a grim, unsmiling determination. Not only the Hollmans from the town and immediate neighborhood were there, but their s.h.a.ggier, fiercer brethren from remote creeks and coves, who came only at urgent call, and did not come without intent of vindicating their presence. Old Jake Hollman, from "over yon" on the headwaters of Dryhole Creek, brought his son and fourteen-year-old grandson, and all of them carried Winchesters. Long before the hour for the court-house bell to sound the call which would bring matters to a crisis, women disappeared from the streets, and front shutters and doors closed themselves. At last, the Souths began to ride in by half-dozens, and to hitch their horses at the racks.

They, also, fell into groups well apart. The two factions eyed each other somberly, sometimes nodding or exchanging greetings, for the time had not yet come to fight. Slowly, however, the Hollmans began centering about the court-house. They swarmed in the yard, and entered the empty jail, and overran the halls and offices of the building itself. They took their places ma.s.sed at the windows. The Souths, now coming in a solid stream, flowed with equal unanimity to McEwer's Hotel, near the square, and disappeared inside. Besides their rifles, they carried saddlebags, but not one of the uniforms which some of these bags contained, nor one of the cartridge belts, had yet been exposed to view.

Stores opened, but only for a desultory pretense of business. Hors.e.m.e.n led their mounts away from the more public racks, and tethered them to back fences and willow branches in the shelter of the river banks, where stray bullets would not find them.

The dawn that morning had still been gray when Samson South and Captain Callomb had pa.s.sed the Miller cabin. Callomb had ridden slowly on around the turn of the road, and waited a quarter of a mile away. He was to command the militia that day, if the High Sheriff should call upon him. Samson went in and knocked, and instantly to the cabin door came Sally's slender, fluttering figure. She put both arms about him, and her eyes, as she looked into his face, were terrified, but tearless.

"I'm frightened, Samson," she whispered. "G.o.d knows I'm going to be praying all this day."

"Sally," he said, softly, "I'm coming back to you--but, if I don't"-- he held her very close--"Uncle Spicer has my will. The farm is full of coal, and days are coming when roads will take it out, and every ridge will glow with c.o.ke furnaces. That farm will make you rich, if we win to-day's fight."

"Don't!" she cried, with a sudden gasp. "Don't talk like that."

"I must," he said, gently. "I want you to make me a promise, Sally."

"It's made," she declared.

"If, by any chance I should not come back, I want you to hold Uncle Spicer and old Wile McCager to their pledge. They must not privately avenge me. They must still stand for the law. I want you, and this is most important of all, to leave these mountains----"

Her hands tightened on his shoulders.

"Not that, Samson," she pleaded; "not these mountains where we've been together."

"You promised. I want you to go to the Lescotts in New York. In a year, you can come back--if you want to; but you must promise that."

"I promise," she reluctantly yielded.

It was half-past nine o'clock when Samson South and Sidney Callomb rode side by side into Hixon from the east. A dozen of the older Souths, who had not become soldiers, met them there, and, with no word, separated to close about them in a circle of protection. As Callomb's eyes swept the almost deserted streets, so silent that the strident switching of a freight train could be heard down at the edge of town, he shook his head. As he met the sullen glances of the gathering in the court-house yard, he turned to Samson.

"They'll fight," he said, briefly.

Samson nodded.

"I don't understand the method," demurred the officer, with perplexity. "Why don't they shoot you at once. What are they waiting for?"

"They want to see," Samson a.s.sured him, "what tack I mean to take.

They want to let the thing play itself out, They're inquisitive--and they're cautious, because now they are bucking the State and the world."

Samson with his escort rode up to the court-house door, and dismounted. He was for the moment unarmed, and his men walked on each side of him, while the onlooking Hollmans stood back in surly silence to let him pa.s.s. In the office of the County Judge, Samson said briefly:

"I want to get my deputies sworn in."

"We've got plenty deputy sheriffs," was the quietly insolent rejoinder.

"Not now--we haven't any." Samson's voice was sharply incisive. "I'll name my own a.s.sistants."

"What's the matter with these boys?" The County Judge waved his hand toward two hold-over deputies.