The Call of the Cumberlands by Charles Neville Buck

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"So, brother-to-be," he continued, "you have my permission to run
along down-town, and feed your savage."

"Beg pardon, sir!" The Lescott butler leaned close to the painter's
ear, and spoke with a note of apology as though deploring the necessity
of broaching such a subject. "But will you kindly speak with the
Macdougal Street Police Station?"

"With the what?" Lescott turned in surprise, while Horton surrendered
himself to unrestrained and boisterous laughter.

"The barbarian!" he exclaimed. "I call that snappy work. Twelve hours
in New York, and a run-in with the police! I've noticed," he added, as
the painter hurriedly quitted the room, "that, when you take the bad
man out of his own cock-pit, he rarely lasts as far as the second round."

"It occurs to me, Wilfred," suggested Adrienne, with the hint of
warning in her voice, "that you may be just a trifle overdoing your
attitude of amusement as to this barbarian. George is fond of him, and
believes in him, and George is quite often right in his judgment."

"George," added Mrs. Lescott, "had a broken arm down there in the
mountains, and these people were kind to him in many ways. I wish I
could see Mr. South, and thank him."

Lescott's manner over the telephone was indicating to a surprised desk
sergeant a decidedly greater interest than had been anticipated, and,
after a brief and pointed conversation in that quarter, he called
another number. It was a private number, not included in the telephone
book and communicated with the residence of an attorney who would not
have permitted the generality of clients to disturb him in advance of
office hours.

A realization that the "gun-lugger" had friends "higher up" percolated
at the station-house in another hour, when a limousine halted at the
door, and a legal celebrity, whose ways were not the ways of police
stations or magistrates' courts, stepped to the curb.

"I am waiting to meet Mr. Lescott," announced the Honorable Mr.
Wickliffe, curtly.

When a continuance of the case had been secured, and bond given, the
famous lawyer and Samson lunched together at the studio as Lescott's
guests, and, after the legal luminary had thawed the boy's native
reserve and wrung from him his story, he was interested enough to use
all his eloquence and logic in his efforts to show the mountaineer what
inherent necessities of justice lay back of seemingly restrictive laws.

"You simply 'got in bad' through your failure to understand conditions
here," laughed the lawyer. "I guess we can pull you through, but in
future you'll have to submit to some guidance, my boy."

And Samson, rather to Lescott's surprise, nodded his head with only a
ghost of resentment. From friends, he was willing to learn.

Lescott had been afraid that this initial experience would have an
extinguishing effect on Samson's ambitions. He half-expected to hear
the dogged announcement, "I reckon I'll go back home. I don't b'long
hyar nohow." But no such remark came.

One night, they sat in the cafe of an old French hostelry where, in
the polyglot chatter of three languages, one hears much shop talk of
art and literature. Between the mirrored walls, Samson was for the
first time glimpsing the shallow sparkle of Bohemia. The orchestra was
playing an appealing waltz. Among the diners were women gowned as he
had never seen women gowned before. They sat with men, and met the
challenge of ardent glances with dreamy eyes. They hummed an
accompaniment to the air, and sometimes loudly and publicly quarreled.
But Samson looked on as taciturn and unmoved as though he had never
dined elsewhere. And yet, his eyes were busy, for suddenly he laid down
his knife, and picked up his fork.

"Hit 'pears like I've got a passel of things ter l'arn," he said,
earnestly. "I reckon I mout as well begin by l'arnin' how ter eat." He
had heretofore regarded a fork only as a skewer with which to hold meat
in the cutting.

Lescott laughed.

"Most rules of social usage," he explained, "go back to the test of
efficiency. It is considered good form to eat with the fork,
principally because it is more efficient,"

The boy nodded.

"All right," he acquiesced. "You l'arn me all them things, an' I'll be
obleeged ter ye. Things is diff'rent in diff'rent places. I reckon the
Souths hes a right ter behave es good es anybody."

When a man, whose youth and courage are at their zenith, and whose
brain is tuned to concert pitch, is thrown neck and crop out of squalid
isolation into the melting pot of Manhattan, puzzling problems of
readjustment must follow. Samson's half-starved mind was reaching out
squid-like tentacles in every direction. He was saying little, seeing
much, not yet coordinating or tabulating, but grimly bolting every
morsel of enlightenment. Later, he would digest; now, he only gorged.
Before he could hope to benefit by the advanced instruction of the life
-classes, he must toil and sweat over the primer stages of drawing.
Several months were spent laboring with charcoal and paper over plaster
casts in Lescott's studio, and Lescott himself played instructor. When
the skylight darkened with the coming of evening, the boy whose
mountain nature cried out for exercise went for long tramps that
carried him over many miles of city pavements, and after that, when the
gas was lit, he turned, still insatiably hungry, to volumes of history,
and algebra, and facts. So gluttonous was his protégé's application
that the painter felt called on to remonstrate against the danger of
overwork. But Samson only laughed; that was one of the things he had
learned to do since he left the mountains.

"I reckon," he drawled, "that as long as I'm at work, I kin keep out
of trouble. Seems like that's the only way I kin do it."

* * * * *

A sloop-rigged boat with a crew of two was dancing before a brisk
breeze through blue Bermuda waters. Off to the right, Hamilton rose
sheer and colorful from the bay. At the tiller sat the white-clad
figure of Adrienne Lescott. Puffs of wind that whipped the tautly
bellying sheets lashed her dark hair about her face. Her lips, vividly
red like poppy-petals, were just now curved into an amused smile, which
made them even more than ordinarily kissable and tantalizing. Her
companion was neglecting his nominal duty of tending the sheet to watch
her.

"Wilfred," she teased, "your contrast is quite startling--and, in a
way, effective. From head to foot, you are spotless white--but your
scowl is absolutely 'the blackest black that our eyes endure.' And,"
she added, in an injured voice, "I'm sure I've been very nice to you."

"I have not yet begun to scowl," he assured her, and proceeded to show
what superlatives of saturnine expression he held in reserve. "See
here, Drennie, I know perfectly well that I'm a sheer imbecile to
reveal the fact that you've made me mad. It pleases you too perfectly.
It makes you happier than is good for you, but----"

"It's a terrible thing to make me happy, isn't it?" she inquired,
sweetly.

"Unspeakably so, when you derive happiness from the torture of your
fellow-man."

"My brother-man," she amiably corrected him.

"Good Lord!" he groaned in desperation. "I ought to turn cave man, and
seize you by the hair--and drag you to the nearest minister--or
prophet, or whoever could marry us. Then, after the ceremony, I ought
to drag you to my own grotto, and beat you."

"Would I have to wear my wedding ring in my nose?" She put the
question with the manner of one much interested in acquiring useful
information.

"Drennie, for the nine-hundred-thousandth time; simply, in the
interests of harmony and to break the deadlock, will you marry me?"

"Not this afternoon," she smiled. "Watch for the boom! I'm going to
bring her round."

The young man promptly ducked his head, and played out the line, as
the boat dipped her masthead waterward, and came about on the other
tack. When the sails were again drumming under the fingers of the wind,
she added:

"Besides, I'm not sure that harmony is what I want."

"You know you'll have to marry me in the end. Why not now?" he
persisted, doggedly. "We are simply wasting our youth, dear."

His tone had become so calamitous that the girl could not restrain a
peal of very musical laughter.

"Am I so very funny?" he inquired, with dignity.

"You are, when you are so very tragic," she assured him.

He realized that his temper was merely a challenge to her teasing, and
he wisely fell back into his customary attitude of unruffled insouciance.

"Drennie, you have held me off since we were children. I believe I
first announced my intention of marrying you when you were twelve. That
intention remains unaltered. More: it is unalterable and inevitable. My
reasons for wanting to needn't be rehearsed. It would take too long. I
regard you as possessed of an alert and remarkable mind--one worthy of
companionship with my own." Despite the frivolous badinage of his words
and the humorous smile of his lips, his eyes hinted at an underlying
intensity. "With no desire to flatter or spoil you, I find your
personal aspect pleasing enough to satisfy me. And then, while a man
should avoid emotionalism, I am in love with you." He moved over to a
place in the sternsheets, and his face became intensely earnest. He
dropped his hand over hers as it lay on the tiller shaft. "God knows,
dear," he exclaimed, "how much I love you!"

Her eyes, after holding his for a moment, fell to the hand which still
imprisoned her own. She shook her head, not in anger, but with a manner
of gentle denial, until he released her fingers and stepped back.

"You are a dear, Wilfred," she comforted, "and I couldn't manage to
get on without you, but you aren't marriageable--at least, not yet."

"Why not?" he argued. "I've stood back and twirled my thumbs all
through your _début_ winter. I've been Patience without the
comfort of a pedestal. Now, will you give me three minutes to show you
that you are not acting fairly, or nicely at all?"

"Duck!" warned the girl, and once more they fell silent in the sheer
physical delight of two healthy young animals, clean-blooded and sport-
loving, as the tall jib swept down; the "high side" swept up, and the
boat hung for an exhilarating moment on the verge of capsizing. As it
righted itself again, like the craft of a daring airman banking the
pylons, the girl gave him a bright nod. "Now, go ahead," she acceded,
"you have three minutes to put yourself in nomination as the exemplar
of your age and times."

CHAPTER XV

The young man settled back, and stuffed tobacco into a battered pipe.
Then, with a lightness of tone which was assumed as a defense against
her mischievous teasing, he began:

"Very well, Drennie. When you were twelve, which is at best an
unimpressive age for the female of the species, I was eighteen, and all
the world knows that at eighteen a man is very mature and important.
You wore pigtails then, and it took a prophet's eye to foresee how
wonderfully you were going to emerge from your chrysalis."

The idolatry of his eyes told how wonderful she seemed to him now.

"Yet, I fell in love with you, and I said to myself, 'I'll wait for
her.' However, I didn't want to wait eternally. For eight years, I have
danced willing attendance--following you through nursery, younger-set
and _débutante_ stages. In short, with no wish to trumpet too
loudly my own virtues, I've been your _Fidus Achates_." His voice
dropped from its pitch of antic whimsey, and became for a moment grave,
as he added: "And, because of my love for you, I've lived a life almost
as clean as your own."

"One's _Fidus Achates_, if I remember anything of my Latin, which
I don't"--the girl spoke in that voice which the man loved best,
because it had left off bantering, and become grave with such softness
and depth of timbre as might have trembled in the reed pipes of a
Sylvan Pan--"is one's really-truly friend. Everything that you claim
for yourself is admitted--and many other things that you haven't
claimed. Now, suppose you give me three minutes to make an accusation
on other charges. They're not very grave faults, perhaps, by the
standards of your world and mine, but to me, personally, they seem
important."

Wilfred nodded, and said, gravely:

"I am waiting."

"In the first place, you are one of those men whose fortunes are
listed in the top schedule--the swollen fortunes. Socialists would put
you in the predatory class."

"Drennie," he groaned, "do you keep your heaven locked behind a gate
of the Needle's Eye? It's not my fault that I'm rich. It was wished on
me. If you are serious, I'm willing to become poor as Job's turkey.
Show me the way to strip myself, and I'll stand shortly before you
begging alms."

"To what end?" she questioned. "Poverty would be quite inconvenient. I
shouldn't care for it. But hasn't it ever occurred to you that the man
who wears the strongest and brightest mail, and who by his own
confession is possessed of an alert brain, ought occasionally to be
seen in the lists?"

"In short, your charge is that I am a shirker--and, since it's the
same thing, a coward?"

Adrienne did not at once answer him, but she straightened out for an
uninterrupted run before the wind, and by the tiny moss-green flecks,
which moments of great seriousness brought to the depths of her eyes,
he knew that she meant to speak the unveiled truth.

"Besides your own holdings in a lot of railways and things, you handle
your mother's and sisters' property, don't you?"

He nodded.

"In a fashion, I do. I sign the necessary papers when the lawyers call
me up, and ask me to come down-town."

"You are a director in the Metropole Trust Company?"

"Guilty."

"In the Consolidated Seacoast?"

"I believe so."

"In a half-dozen other things equally important?"

"Good Lord, Drennie, how can I answer all those questions off-hand? I
don't carry a note-book in my yachting flannels."

Her voice was so serious that he wondered if it were not, also, a
little contemptuous.

"Do you have to consult a note-book to answer those questions?"

"Those directorate jobs are purely honorary," he defended. "If I
butted in with fool suggestions, they'd quite properly kick me out."

"With your friends, who are also share-holders, you could assume
control of the _Morning Intelligence_, couldn't you?"

"I guess I could assume control, but what would I do with it?"

"Do you know the reputation of that newspaper?"

"I guess it's all right. It's conservative and newsy. I read it every
morning when I'm in town. It fits in very nicely between the grapefruit
and the bacon-and-eggs."

"It is, also, powerful," she added, "and is said to be absolutely
servile to corporate interests."

"Drennie, you talk like an anarchist. You are rich yourself, you know."

"And, against each of those other concerns, various charges have been
made."

"Well, what do you want me to do?"

"It's not what I want you to do," she informed him; "it's what I'd
like to see you want to do."

"Name it! I'll want to do it forthwith."

"I think, when you are one of a handful of the richest men in New
York; when, for instance, you could dictate the policy of a great
newspaper, yet know it only as the course that follows your grapefruit,
you are a shirker and a drone, and are not playing the game." Her hand
tightened on the tiller. "I think, if I were a man riding on to the
polo field, I'd either try like the devil to drive the ball down
between the posts, or I'd come inside, and take off my boots and
colors. I wouldn't hover in lady-like futility around the edge of the
scrimmage."

She knew that to Horton, who played polo like a fiend incarnate, the
figure would be effective, and she whipped out her words with something
very close to scorn.

"Duck your head!" she commanded shortly. "I'm coming about."

Possibly, she had thrown more of herself into her philippic than she
had realized. Possibly, some of her emphasis imparted itself to her
touch on the tiller, and jerked the sloop too violently into a sudden
puff as it careened. At all events, the boat swung sidewise, trembled
for an instant like a wounded gull, and then slapped its spread of
canvas prone upon the water with a vicious report.

"Jump!" yelled the man, and, as he shouted, the girl disappeared over-
side, perilously near the sheet. He knew the danger of coming up under
a wet sail, and, diving from the high side, he swam with racing strokes
toward the point where she had gone down. When Adrienne's head did not
reappear, his alarm grew, and he plunged under water where the shadow
of the overturned boat made everything cloudy and obscure to his wide-
open eyes. He stroked his way back and forth through the purple fog
that he found down there, until his lungs seemed on the point of
bursting. Then, he paused at the surface, shaking the water from his
face, and gazing anxiously about. The dark head was not visible, and
once more, with a fury of growing terror, he plunged downward, and
began searching the shadows. This time, he remained until his chest was
aching with an absolute torture. If she had swallowed water under that
canvas barrier this attempt would be the last that could avail. Then,
just as it seemed that he was spending the last fraction of the last
ounce of endurance, his aching eyes made out a vague shape, also
swimming, and his hand touched another hand. She was safe, and together
they came out of the opaqueness into water as translucent as sapphires,
and rose to the surface.

"Where were you?" she inquired.

"I was looking for you--under the sail," he panted.

Adrienne laughed.

"I'm quite all right," she assured him. "I came up under the boat at
first, but I got out easily enough, and went back to look for you."

They swam together to the capsized hull, and the girl thrust up one
strong, slender hand to the stem, while with the other she wiped the
water from her smiling eyes. The man also laid hold on the support, and
hung there, filling his cramped lungs. Then, for just an instant, his
hand closed over hers.

"There's my hand on it, Drennie," he said. "We start back to New York
to-morrow, don't we? Well, when I get there, I put on overalls, and go
to work. When I propose next, I'll have something to show."

A motor-boat had seen their plight, and was racing madly to their
rescue, with a yard-high swirl of water thrown up from its nose and a
fusillade of explosions trailing in its wake.

* * * * *

Christmas came to Misery wrapped in a drab mantle of desolation. The
mountains were like gigantic cones of raw and sticky chocolate, except
where the snow lay patched upon their cheerless slopes. The skies were
low and leaden, and across their gray stretches a spirit of squalid
melancholy rode with the tarnished sun. Windowless cabins, with tight-
closed doors, became cavernous dens untouched by the cleansing power of
daylight. In their vitiated atmosphere, their humanity grew stolidly
sullen. Nowhere was a hint of the season's cheer. The mountains knew
only of such celebration as snuggling close to the jug of moonshine,
and drinking out the day. Mountain children, who had never heard of
Kris Kingle, knew of an ancient tradition that at Christmas midnight
the cattle in the barns and fields knelt down, as they had knelt around
the manger, and that along the ragged slopes of the hills the elder
bushes ceased to rattle dead stalks, and burst into white sprays of
momentary bloom.

Christmas itself was a week distant, and, at the cabin of the Widow
Miller, Sally was sitting alone before the logs. She laid down the
slate and spelling-book, over which her forehead had been strenuously
puckered, and gazed somewhat mournfully into the blaze. Sally had a
secret. It was a secret which she based on a faint hope. If Samson
should come back to Misery, he would come back full of new notions. No
man had ever yet returned from that outside world unaltered. No man
ever would. A terrible premonition said he would not come at all, but,
if he did--if he did--she must know how to read and write. Maybe, when
she had learned a little more, she might even go to school for a term
or two. She had not confided her secret. The widow would not have
understood. The book and slate came out of their dusty cranny in the
logs beside the fireplace only when the widow had withdrawn to her bed,
and the freckled boy was dreaming of being old enough to kill Hollmans.

The cramped and distorted chirography on the slate was discouraging.
It was all proving very hard work. The girl gazed for a time at
something she saw in the embers, and then a faint smile came to her
lips. By next Christmas, she would surprise Samson with a letter. It
should be well written, and every "hain't" should be an "isn't." Of
course, until then Samson would not write to her, because he would not
know that she could read the letter--indeed, as yet the deciphering of
"hand-write" was beyond her abilities.

She rose and replaced the slate and primer. Then, she took tenderly
from its corner the rifle, which the boy had confided to her keeping,
and unwrapped its greasy covering. She drew the cartridges from chamber
and magazine, oiled the rifling, polished the lock, and reloaded the
piece.

"Thar now," she said, softly, "I reckon ther old rifle-gun's ready."

As she sat there alone in the shuck-bottomed chair, the corners of the
room wavered in huge shadows, and the smoke-blackened cavern of the
fireplace, glaring like a volcano pit, threw her face into relief. She
made a very lovely and pathetic picture. Her slender knees were drawn
close together, and from her slim waist she bent forward, nursing the
inanimate thing which she valued and tended, because Samson valued it.
Her violet eyes held the heart-touching wistfulness of utter
loneliness, and her lips drooped. This small girl, dreaming her dreams
of hope against hope, with the vast isolation of the hills about her,
was a little monument of unflinching loyalty and simple courage, and,
as she sat, she patted the rifle with as soft a touch as though she had
been dandling Samson's child--and her own--on her knee. There was no
speck of rust in the unused muzzle, no hitch in the easily sliding
mechanism of the breechblock. The hero's weapon was in readiness to his
hand, as the bow of Ulysses awaited the coming of the wanderer.

Then, with sudden interruption to her reflections, came a rattling on
the cabin door. She sat up and listened. Night visitors were rare at
the Widow Miller's. Sally waited, holding her breath, until the sound
was repeated.

"Who is hit?" she demanded in a low voice.

"Hit's me--Tam'rack!" came the reply, very low and cautious, and
somewhat shamefaced.

"What does ye want?"

"Let me in, Sally," whined the kinsman, desperately. "They're atter
me. They won't think to come hyar."

Sally had not seen her cousin since Samson had forbidden his coming to
the house. Since Samson's departure, the troublesome kinsman, too, had
been somewhere "down below," holding his railroad job. But the call for
protection was imperative. She set the gun out of sight against the
mantle-shelf, and, walking over unwillingly, opened the door.

The mud-spattered man came in, glancing about him half-furtively, and
went to the fireplace. There, he held his hands to the blaze.

"Hit's cold outdoors," he said.

"What manner of deviltry hev ye been into now, Tam'rack?" inquired the
girl. "Kain't ye never keep outen trouble?"

The self-confessed refugee did not at once reply. When he did, it was
to ask:

"Is the widder asleep?"

Sally saw from his blood-shot eyes that he had been drinking heavily.
She did not resume her seat, but stood holding him with her eyes. In
them, the man read contempt, and an angry flush mounted to his sallow
cheek-bones.

"I reckon ye knows," went on the girl in the same steady voice, "thet
Samson meant what he said when he warned ye ter stay away from hyar. I
reckon ye knows I wouldn't never hev opened thet door, ef hit wasn't
fer ye bein' in trouble."

The mountaineer straightened up, his eyes burning with the craftiness
of drink, and the smoldering of resentment.

"I reckon I knows thet. Thet's why I said they was atter me. I hain't
in no trouble, Sally. I jest come hyar ter see ye, thet's all."

Now, it was the girl's eyes that flashed anger. With quick steps, she
reached the door, and threw it open. Her hand trembled as she pointed
out into the night, and the gusty winter's breath caught and whipped
her calico skirts about her ankles.

"You kin go!" she ordered, passionately. "Don't ye never cross this
doorstep ag'in. Begone quick!"

But Tamarack only laughed with easy insolence.

"Sally," he drawled. "Thar's a-goin' ter be a dancin' party Christmas
night over ter the Forks. I 'lowed I'd like ter hev ye go over thar
with me."

Her voice was trembling with white-hot indignation.

"Didn't ye hear Samson say ye wasn't never ter speak ter me?"

"Ter hell with Samson!" he ripped out, furiously. "Nobody hain't
pesterin' 'bout him. I don't allow Samson, ner no other man, ter
dictate ter me who I keeps company with. I likes ye, Sally. Ye're the
purtiest gal in the mountings, an'----"

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