The Call of the Cumberlands

Twenty miles away in the core of the wilderness, removed from a

railroad by a score of semi-perpendicular miles, a fanatic had once

decided to found a school. The fact that the establishment in this

place of such a school as his mind pictured was sheer madness and

impossibility did not in the least deter him. It was a thing that could

not be done, and it was a thing that he had done none the less.

Now a faculty of ten men, like himself holding degrees of Masters of

Dreams, taught such as cared to come such things as they cared to

learn. Substantial two-and three-storied buildings of square-hewn logs

lay grouped in a sort of Arts and Crafts village around a clean-clipped

campus. The Stagbone College property stretched twenty acres square at

the foot of a hill. The drone of its own saw-mill came across the

valley. In a book-lined library, wainscoted in natural woods of three

colors, the original fanatic often sat reflecting pleasurably on his

folly. Higher up the hillside stood a small, but model, hospital, with

a modern operating table and a case of surgical instruments, which, it

was said, the State could not surpass. These things had been the gifts

of friends who liked such a type of God-inspired madness. A "fotched-on"

trained nurse was in attendance. From time to time, eminent Bluegrass

surgeons came to Hixon by rail, rode twenty miles on mules, and held

clinics on the mountainside.

To this haven, Jesse Purvy, the murder lord, was borne in a litter

carried on the shoulders of his dependents. Here, as his steadfast

guardian star decreed, he found two prominent medical visitors, who

hurried him to the operating table. Later, he was removed to a white

bed, with the June sparkle in his eyes, pleasantly modulated through

drawn blinds, and the June rustle and bird chorus in his ears--and his

own thoughts in his brain.

Conscious, but in great pain, Purvy beckoned Jim Asberry and Aaron

Hollis, his chiefs of bodyguard, to his bedside, and waved the nurse

back out of hearing.

"If I don't get well," he said, feebly, "there's a job for you two

boys. I reckon you know what it is?"

They nodded, and Asberry whispered a name: "Samson South?"

"Yes," Purvy spoke in a weak whisper; but the old vindictiveness was

not smothered. "You got the old man, I reckon you can manage the cub.

If you don't, he'll get you both one day."

The two henchmen scowled.

"I'll git him to-morrer," growled Asberry. "Thar hain't no sort of use

in a-waitin'."