The Call of the Cumberlands

For a little while, Samson looked at the other man with a slow smile

of amusement, but soon it died, and his face grew hard and determined.

"I'm obliged to you, Callomb," he said, seriously. "It was more than I

had the right to expect--this warning. I understand the cost of giving

it. But it's no use. I can't cut and run. No, by God, you wouldn't do

it! You can't ask me to do it."

"By God, you can and will!" Callomb spoke with determination. "This

isn't a time for quibbling. You've got work to do. We both have work to

do. We can't stand on a matter of vainglorious pride, and let big

issues of humanity go to pot. We haven't the right to spend men's lives

in fighting each other, when we are the only two men in this

entanglement who are in perfect accord--and honest."

The mountaineer spent some minutes in silent self-debate. The working

of his face under the play of alternating doubt, resolution, hatred and

insurgency, told the militiaman what a struggle was progressing. At

last, Samson's eyes cleared with an expression of discovered solution.

"All right, Callomb," he said, briefly, "you won't find me!" He

smiled, as he added: "Make as thorough a search as your duty demands.

It needn't be perfunctory or superficial. Every South cabin will stand

open to you. I shall be extremely busy, to ends which you will approve.

I can't tell you what I shall be doing, because to do that, I should

have to tell where I mean to be."

In two days, the Grand Jury, with much secrecy, returned a true bill,

and a day later a considerable detachment of infantry started on a

dusty hike up Misery. Furtive and inscrutable Hollman eyes along the

way watched them from cabin-doors, and counted them. They meant also to

count them coming back, and they did not expect the totals to tally.

* * * * * Back of an iron spiked fence, and a dusty sunburned lawn, the barrack

-like facades of the old Administration Building and Kentucky State

Capitol frowned on the street and railroad track. About it, on two

sides of the Kentucky River, sprawled the town of Frankfort; sleepy,

more or less disheveled at the center, and stretching to shaded

environs of Colonial houses set in lawns of rich bluegrass, amid the

shade of forest trees. Circling the town in an embrace of quiet beauty

rose the Kentucky River hills.

Turning in to the gate of the State House enclosure, a man, who seemed

to be an Easterner by the cut of his clothes, walked slowly up the

brick walk, and passed around the fountain at the front of the Capitol.

He smiled to himself as his wandering eyes caught the distant walls and

roofs of the State Prison on the hillside. His steps carried him direct

to the main entrance of the Administration Building, and, having paused

a moment in the rotunda, he entered the Secretary's office of the

Executive suite, and asked for an interview with the Governor. The

Secretary, whose duties were in part playing Cerberus at that

threshold, made his customary swift, though unobtrusive, survey of the

applicant for audience, and saw nothing to excite suspicion.