The Call of the Cumberlands

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.