The Call of the Cumberlands

Callomb spent the night at the house of Spicer South. He met and

talked with a number of the kinsmen, and, if he read in the eyes of

some of them a smoldering and unforgiving remembrance of his unkept

pledge, at least they repressed all expression of censure.

With Spicer South and Samson, the Captain talked long into the night.

He made many jottings in a notebook. He, with Samson abetting him,

pointed out to the older and more stubborn man the necessity of a new

regime in the mountains, under which the individual could walk in

greater personal safety. As for the younger South, the officer felt,

when he rode away the next morning, that he had discovered the one man

who combined with the courage and honesty that many of his clansmen

shared the mental equipment and local influence to prove a constructive

leader.

When he returned to the Bluegrass, he meant to have a long and

unofficial talk with his relative, the Governor.

He rode back to the ridge with a strong bodyguard. Upon this Samson

had insisted. He had learned of Callomb's hasty and unwise denunciation

of Smithers, and he knew that Smithers had lost no time in relating it

to his masters. Callomb would be safe enough in Hollman country,

because the faction which had called for troops could not afford to let

him be killed within their own precincts. But, if Callomb could be shot

down in his uniform, under circumstances which seemed to bear the

earmarks of South authorship, it would arouse in the State at large a

tidal wave of resentment against the Souths, which they could never

hope to stem. And so, lest one of Hollman's hired assassins should

succeed in slipping across the ridge and waylaying him, Samson

conducted him to the frontier of the ridge.

On reaching Hixon, Callomb apologized to Judge Smithers for his recent

outburst of temper. Now that he understood the hand that gentleman was

playing, he wished to be strategic and in a position of seeming accord.

He must match craft against craft. He did not intimate that he knew of

Samson's letter, and rather encouraged the idea that he had been

received on Misery with surly and grudging hospitality.

Smithers, presuming that the Souths still burned with anger over the

shooting of Tamarack, swallowed that bait, and was beguiled.

The Grand Jury trooped each day to the court-house and transacted its

business. The petty juries went and came, occupied with several minor

homicide cases. The Captain, from a chair, which Judge Smithers had

ordered placed beside him on the bench, was looking on and intently

studying. One morning, Smithers confided to him that in a day or two

more the Grand Jury would bring in a true bill against Samson South,

charging him with murder. The officer did not show surprise. He merely

nodded.