To her own people, these steep hillsides and "coves" and valleys were
a matter of course. In their stony soil, they labored by day: and in
their shadows slept when work was done. Yet, someone had discovered
that they held a picturesque and rugged beauty; that they were not
merely steep fields where the plough was useless and the hoe must be
used. She must tell Samson: Samson, whom she held in an artless
exaltation of hero-worship; Samson, who was so "smart" that he thought
about things beyond her understanding; Samson, who could not only read
and write, but speculate on problematical matters.
Suddenly she came to her feet with a swift-darting impulse of alarm.
Her ear had caught a sound. She cast searching glances about her, but
the tangle was empty of humanity. The water still murmured over the
rocks undisturbed. There was no sign of human presence, other than
herself, that her eyes could discover--and yet to her ears came the
sound again, and this time more distinctly. It was the sound of a man's
voice, and it was moaning as if in pain. She rose and searched vainly
through the bushes of the hillside where the rock ran out from the
woods. She lifted her skirts and splashed her bare feet in the shallow
creek water, wading persistently up and down. Her shyness was
forgotten. The groan was a groan of a human creature in distress, and
she must find and succor the person from whom it came.
Certain sounds are baffling as to direction. A voice from overhead or
broken by echoing obstacles does not readily betray its source. Finally
she stood up and listened once more intently--her attitude full of
tense earnestness.
"I'm shore a fool," she announced, half-aloud. "I'm shore a plumb
fool." Then she turned and disappeared in the deep cleft between the
gigantic bowlder upon which she had been sitting and another--small
only by comparison. There, ten feet down, in a narrow alley littered
with ragged stones, lay the crumpled body of a man. It lay with the
left arm doubled under it, and from a gash in the forehead trickled a
thin stream of blood. Also, it was the body of such a man as she had
not seen before.