The Call of the Cumberlands

As they assaulted him, en masse, he seized a chair, and swung

it flail-like about his head. For a few moments, there was a crashing

of glass and china, and a clatter of furniture and a chaos of struggle.

At its center, he stood wielding his impromptu weapon, and, when two of

his assailants had fallen under its sweeping blows, and Farbish stood

weakly supporting himself against the table and gasping for the breath

which had been choked out of him, the mountaineer hurled aside his

chair, and plunged for the sole remaining man. They closed in a clinch.

The last antagonist was a boxer, and when he saw the Kentuckian advance

toward him empty-handed, he smiled and accepted the gauge of battle. In

weight and reach and practice, he knew that he had the advantage, and,

now that it was man to man, he realized that there was no danger of

interference from Horton. But Samson knew nothing of boxing. He had

learned his fighting tactics in the rough-and-tumble school of the

mountains; the school of "fist and skull," of fighting with hands and

head and teeth, and as the Easterner squared off he found himself

caught in a flying tackle and went to the floor locked in an embrace

that carried down with it chairs and furniture. As he struggled and

rolled, pitting his gymnasium training against the unaccustomed assault

of cyclonic fury, he felt the strong fingers of two hands close about

his throat and lost consciousness.

Samson South rose, and stood for a moment panting in a scene of

wreckage and disorder. The table was littered with shivered glasses and

decanters and chinaware. The furniture was scattered and overturned.

Farbish was weakly leaning to one side in the seat to which he had made

his way. The men who had gone down under the heavy blows of the chair

lay quietly where they had fallen.

Wilfred Horton stood waiting. The whole affair had transpired with

such celerity and speed that he had hardly understood it, and had taken

no part. But, as he met the gaze of the disordered figure across the

wreckage of a dinner-table, he realized that now, with the

preliminaries settled, he who had struck Samson in the face must give

satisfaction for the blow. Horton was sober, as cold sober as though he

had jumped into ice-water, and though he was not in the least afraid,

he was mortified, and, had apology at such a time been possible, would

have made it. He knew that he had misjudged his man; he saw the

outlines of the plot as plainly as Samson had seen them, though more

tardily.