The Call of the Cumberlands

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 pass 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 assemble 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 shaggier, 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 massed 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.