The Call of the Cumberlands

Old Spicer South would ten years ago have put a bandage on his wound

and gone about his business, but now he tossed under his patchwork

quilt, and Brother Spencer expressed grave doubts for his recovery.

With his counsel unavailable Wile McCager, by common consent, assumed

something like the powers of a regent and took upon himself the duties

to which Samson should have succeeded.

That a Hollman should have been able to elude the pickets and

penetrate the heart of South territory to Spicer South's cabin, was

both astounding and alarming. The war was on without question now, and

there must be council. Wile McCager had sent out a summons for the

family heads to meet that afternoon at his mill. It was Saturday--"mill

day"--and in accordance with ancient custom the lanes would be more

traveled than usual.

Those men who came by the wagon road afforded no unusual spectacle,

for behind each saddle sagged a sack of grain. Their faces bore no

stamp of unwonted excitement, but every man balanced a rifle across his

pommel. None the less, their purpose was grim, and their talk when they

had gathered was to the point.

Old McCager, himself sorely perplexed, voiced the sentiment that the

others had been too courteous to express. With Spicer South bed-ridden

and Samson a renegade, they had no adequate leader. McCager was a solid

man of intrepid courage and honesty, but grinding grist was his

avocation, not strategy and tactics. The enemy had such masters of

intrigue as Purvy and Judge Hollman.

Then, a lean sorrel mare came jogging into view, switching her fly-

bitten tail, and on the mare's back, urging him with a long, leafy

switch, sat a woman. Behind her sagged the two loaded ends of a corn-

sack. She rode like the mountain women, facing much to the side, yet

unlike them. Her arms did not flap. She did not bump gawkily up and

down in her saddle. Her blue calico dress caught the sun at a distance,

but her blue sunbonnet shaded and masked her face. She was lithe and

slim, and her violet eyes were profoundly serious, and her lips were as

resolutely set as Joan of Arc's might have been, for Sally Miller had

come only ostensibly to have her corn ground to meal. She had really

come to speak for the absent chief, and she knew that she would be met

with derision. The years had sobered the girl, but her beauty had

increased, though it was now of a chastened type, which gave her a

strange and rather exalted refinement of expression.