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The Call of the Cumberlands by Charles Neville Buck

C >> Charles Neville Buck >> The Call of the Cumberlands




"To meet and guide you," replied a pleasant voice. "My name is Samson
South."

The militiaman stared. This man whose countenance was calmly
thoughtful scarcely comported with the descriptions he had heard of the
"Wildcat of the Mountains"; the man who had come home straight as a
storm-petrel at the first note of tempest, and marked his coming with
double murder. Callomb had been too busy to read newspapers of late. He
had heard only that Samson had "been away."

While he wondered, Samson went on:

"I'm glad you came. If it had been possible I would have come to you."
As he told of the letter he had written the Judge, volunteering to
present himself as a witness, the officer's wonder grew.

"They said that you had been away," suggested Callomb. "If it's not an
impertinent question, what part of the mountains have you been visiting?"

Samson laughed.

"Not any part of the mountains," he said. "I've been living chiefly in
New York--and for a time in Paris."

Callomb drew his horse to a dead halt.

"In the name of God," he incredulously asked, "what manner of man are
you?"

"I hope," came the instant reply, "it may be summed up by saying that
I'm exactly the opposite of the man you've had described for you back
there at Hixon."

"I knew it," exclaimed the soldier, "I knew that I was being fed on
lies! That's why I came. I wanted to get the straight of it, and I felt
that the solution lay over here."

They rode the rest of the way in deep conversation. Samson outlined
his ambitions for his people. He told, too, of the scene that had been
enacted at Purvy's store. Callomb listened with absorption, feeling
that the narrative bore axiomatic truth on its face.

At last he inquired:

"Did you succeed up there--as a painter?"

"That's a long road," Samson told him, "but I think I had a fair
start. I was getting commissions when I left."

"Then, I am to understand"--the officer met the steady gray eyes and
put the question like a cross-examiner bullying a witness--"I am to
understand that you deliberately put behind you a career to come down
here and herd these fence-jumping sheep?"

"Hardly that," deprecated the head of the Souths. "They sent for me--
that's all. Of course, I had to come."

"Why?"

"Because they had sent. They are my people."

The officer leaned in his saddle.

"South," he said, "would you mind shaking hands with me? Some day, I
want to brag about it to my grandchildren."




CHAPTER XXVIII


Callomb spent the night at the house of Spicer South. He met and
talked with a number of the kinsmen, and, if he read in the eyes of
some of them a smoldering and unforgiving remembrance of his unkept
pledge, at least they repressed all expression of censure.

With Spicer South and Samson, the Captain talked long into the night.
He made many jottings in a notebook. He, with Samson abetting him,
pointed out to the older and more stubborn man the necessity of a new
regime in the mountains, under which the individual could walk in
greater personal safety. As for the younger South, the officer felt,
when he rode away the next morning, that he had discovered the one man
who combined with the courage and honesty that many of his clansmen
shared the mental equipment and local influence to prove a constructive
leader.

When he returned to the Bluegrass, he meant to have a long and
unofficial talk with his relative, the Governor.

He rode back to the ridge with a strong bodyguard. Upon this Samson
had insisted. He had learned of Callomb's hasty and unwise denunciation
of Smithers, and he knew that Smithers had lost no time in relating it
to his masters. Callomb would be safe enough in Hollman country,
because the faction which had called for troops could not afford to let
him be killed within their own precincts. But, if Callomb could be shot
down in his uniform, under circumstances which seemed to bear the
earmarks of South authorship, it would arouse in the State at large a
tidal wave of resentment against the Souths, which they could never
hope to stem. And so, lest one of Hollman's hired assassins should
succeed in slipping across the ridge and waylaying him, Samson
conducted him to the frontier of the ridge.

On reaching Hixon, Callomb apologized to Judge Smithers for his recent
outburst of temper. Now that he understood the hand that gentleman was
playing, he wished to be strategic and in a position of seeming accord.
He must match craft against craft. He did not intimate that he knew of
Samson's letter, and rather encouraged the idea that he had been
received on Misery with surly and grudging hospitality.

Smithers, presuming that the Souths still burned with anger over the
shooting of Tamarack, swallowed that bait, and was beguiled.

The Grand Jury trooped each day to the court-house and transacted its
business. The petty juries went and came, occupied with several minor
homicide cases. The Captain, from a chair, which Judge Smithers had
ordered placed beside him on the bench, was looking on and intently
studying. One morning, Smithers confided to him that in a day or two
more the Grand Jury would bring in a true bill against Samson South,
charging him with murder. The officer did not show surprise. He merely
nodded.

"I suppose I'll be called on to go and get him?" "I'm afraid we'll
have to ask you to do that." "What caused the change of heart? I
thought Purvy's people didn't want it done." It was Callomb's first
allusion, except for his apology, to their former altercation.

For an instant only, Smithers was a little confused.

"To be quite frank with you, Callomb," he said, "I got to thinking
over the matter in the light of your own viewpoint, and, after due
deliberation, I came to see that to the State at large it might bear
the same appearance. So, I had the Grand Jury take the matter up. We
must stamp out such lawlessness as Samson South stands for. He is the
more dangerous because he has brains."

Callomb nodded, but, at noon, he slipped out on a pretense of sight-
seeing, and rode by a somewhat circuitous route to the ridge. At
nightfall, he came to the house of the clan head.

"South," he said to Samson, when he had led him aside, "they didn't
want to hear what you had to tell the Grand Jury, but they are going
ahead to indict you on manufactured evidence."

Samson was for a moment thoughtful, then he nodded.

"That's about what I was expecting."

"Now," went on Callomb, "we understand each other. We are working for
the same end, and, by God! I've had one experience in making arrests at
the order of that Court. I don't want it to happen again."

"I suppose," said Samson, "you know that while I am entirely willing
to face any fair court of justice, I don't propose to walk into a
packed jury, whose only object is to get me where I can be made way
with. Callomb, I hope we won't have to fight each other. What do you
suggest?"

"If the Court orders the militia to make an arrest, the militia has no
option. In the long run, resistance would only alienate the sympathy of
the world at large. There is just one thing to be done, South. It's a
thing I don't like to suggest, and a thing which, if we were not
fighting the devil with fire, it would be traitorous for me to
suggest." He paused, then added emphatically: "When my detail arrives
here, which will probably be in three or four days, you must not be
here. You must not be in any place where we can find you."

For a little while, Samson looked at the other man with a slow smile
of amusement, but soon it died, and his face grew hard and determined.

"I'm obliged to you, Callomb," he said, seriously. "It was more than I
had the right to expect--this warning. I understand the cost of giving
it. But it's no use. I can't cut and run. No, by God, you wouldn't do
it! You can't ask me to do it."

"By God, you can and will!" Callomb spoke with determination. "This
isn't a time for quibbling. You've got work to do. We both have work to
do. We can't stand on a matter of vainglorious pride, and let big
issues of humanity go to pot. We haven't the right to spend men's lives
in fighting each other, when we are the only two men in this
entanglement who are in perfect accord--and honest."

The mountaineer spent some minutes in silent self-debate. The working
of his face under the play of alternating doubt, resolution, hatred and
insurgency, told the militiaman what a struggle was progressing. At
last, Samson's eyes cleared with an expression of discovered solution.

"All right, Callomb," he said, briefly, "you won't find me!" He
smiled, as he added: "Make as thorough a search as your duty demands.
It needn't be perfunctory or superficial. Every South cabin will stand
open to you. I shall be extremely busy, to ends which you will approve.
I can't tell you what I shall be doing, because to do that, I should
have to tell where I mean to be."

In two days, the Grand Jury, with much secrecy, returned a true bill,
and a day later a considerable detachment of infantry started on a
dusty hike up Misery. Furtive and inscrutable Hollman eyes along the
way watched them from cabin-doors, and counted them. They meant also to
count them coming back, and they did not expect the totals to tally.

* * * * *

Back of an iron spiked fence, and a dusty sunburned lawn, the barrack
-like facades of the old Administration Building and Kentucky State
Capitol frowned on the street and railroad track. About it, on two
sides of the Kentucky River, sprawled the town of Frankfort; sleepy,
more or less disheveled at the center, and stretching to shaded
environs of Colonial houses set in lawns of rich bluegrass, amid the
shade of forest trees. Circling the town in an embrace of quiet beauty
rose the Kentucky River hills.

Turning in to the gate of the State House enclosure, a man, who seemed
to be an Easterner by the cut of his clothes, walked slowly up the
brick walk, and passed around the fountain at the front of the Capitol.
He smiled to himself as his wandering eyes caught the distant walls and
roofs of the State Prison on the hillside. His steps carried him direct
to the main entrance of the Administration Building, and, having paused
a moment in the rotunda, he entered the Secretary's office of the
Executive suite, and asked for an interview with the Governor. The
Secretary, whose duties were in part playing Cerberus at that
threshold, made his customary swift, though unobtrusive, survey of the
applicant for audience, and saw nothing to excite suspicion.

"Have you an appointment?" he asked.

The visitor shook his head. Scribbling a brief note on a slip of
paper, he enclosed it in an envelope and handed it to his questioner.

"You must pardon my seeming mysteriousness," he said, "but, if you
will let me send in that note, I think the Governor will see me."

Once more the Secretary studied his man with a slightly puzzled air,
then nodded and went through the door that gave admission to the
Executive's office.

His Excellency opened the envelope, and his face showed an expression
of surprise. He raised his brows questioningly.

"Rough-looking sort?" he inquired. "Mountaineer?"

"No, sir. New Yorker would be my guess. Is there anything suspicious?"

"I guess not." The Governor laughed. "Rather extraordinary note, but
send him in."

Through his eastern window, the Governor gazed off across the hills of
South Frankfort, to the ribbon of river that came down from the
troublesome hills. Then, hearing a movement at his back, he turned, and
his eyes took in a well-dressed figure with confidence-inspiring
features.

He picked up the slip from his desk, and, for a moment, stood
comparing the name and the message with the man who had sent them in.
There seemed to be in his mind some irreconcilable contradiction
between the two. With a slightly frowning seriousness, the Executive
suggested:

"This note says that you are Samson South, and that you want to see me
with reference to a pardon. Whose pardon is it, Mr. South?"

"My own, sir."

The Governor raised his brows, slightly.

"Your pardon for what? The newspapers do not even report that you have
yet been indicted." He shaded the word "yet" with a slight emphasis.

"I think I have been indicted within the past day or two. I'm not sure
myself."

The Governor continued to stare. The impression he had formed of the
"Wildcat" from press dispatches was warring with the pleasing personal
presence of this visitor. Then, his forehead wrinkled under his black
hair, and his lips drew themselves sternly.

"You have come to me too soon, sir," he said curtly. "The pardoning
power is a thing to be most cautiously used at all times, and certainly
never until the courts have acted. A case not yet adjudicated cannot
address itself to executive clemency."

Samson nodded.

"Quite true," he admitted. "If I announced that I had come on the
matter of a pardon, it was largely that I had to state some business
and that seemed the briefest way of putting it."

"Then, there is something else?"

"Yes. If it were only a plea for clemency, I should expect the matter
to be chiefly important to myself. In point of fact, I hope to make it
equally interesting to you. Whether you give me a pardon in a fashion
which violates all precedent, or whether I surrender myself, and go
back to a trial which will be merely a form of assassination, rests
entirely with you, sir. You will not find me insistent."

"If," said the Governor, with a trace of warning in his voice, "your
preamble is simply a device to pique my interest with its unheard-of
novelty, I may as well confess that so far it has succeeded."

"In that case, sir," responded Samson, gravely, "I have scored a
point. If, when I am through, you find that I have been employing a
subterfuge, I, fancy a touch of that bell under your finger will give
you the means of summoning an officer. I am ready to turn myself over."

Then, Samson launched into the story of his desires and the details of
conditions which outside influences had been powerless to remedy--
because they were outside influences. Some man of sufficient vigor and
comprehension, acting from the center of disturbance, must be armed
with the power to undertake the housecleaning, and for a while must do
work that would not be pretty. As far as he was personally concerned, a
pardon after trial would be a matter of purely academic interest. He
could not expect to survive a trial. He was at present able to hold the
Souths in leash. If the Governor was not of that mind, he was now ready
to surrender himself, and permit matters to take their course.

"And now, Mr. South?" suggested the Governor, after a half-hour of
absorbed listening. "There is one point you have overlooked. Since in
the end the whole thing comes back to the exercise of the pardoning
power, it is after all the crux of the situation. You may be able to
render such services as those for which you volunteer. Let us for the
moment assume that to be true. You have not yet told me a very
important thing. Did you or did you not kill Purvy and Hollis?"

"I killed Hollis," said Samson, as though he were answering a question
as to the time of day, "and I did not kill Purvy."

"Kindly," suggested the Governor, "give me the full particulars of
that affair."

The two were still closeted, when a second visitor called, and was
told that his Excellency could not be disturbed. The second visitor,
however, was so insistent that the secretary finally consented to take
in the card. After a glance at it, his chief ordered admission.

The door opened, and Captain Callomb entered.

He was now in civilian clothes, with portentous news written on his
face. He paused in annoyance at the sight of a second figure standing
with back turned at the window. Then Samson wheeled, and the two men
recognized each other. They had met before only when one was in olive
drab; the other in jeans and butternut. At recognition, Callomb's face
fell, and grew troubled.

"You here, South!" he exclaimed. "I thought you promised me that I
shouldn't find you. God knows I didn't want to meet you."

"Nor I you," Samson spoke slowly. "I supposed you'd be raking the
hills."

Neither of them was for the moment paying the least attention to the
Governor, who stood quietly looking on.

"I sent Merriwether out there," explained Callomb, impatiently. "I
wanted to come here before it was too late. God knows, South, I
wouldn't have had this meeting occur for anything under heaven. It
leaves me no choice. You are indicted on two counts, each charging you
with murder." The officer took a step toward the center of the room.
His face was weary, and his eyes wore the deep disgust and fatigue that
come from the necessity of performing a hard duty.

"You are under arrest," he added quietly, but his composure broke as
he stormed. "Now, by God, I've got to take you back and let them murder
you, and you're the one man who might have been useful to the State."




CHAPTER XXIX


The Governor had been more influenced by watching the two as they
talked than by what he had heard.

"It seems to me, gentlemen," he suggested quietly, "that you are both
overlooking my presence." He turned to Callomb.

"Your coming, Sid, unless it was prearranged between the two of you
(which, since I know you, I know was not the case) has shed more light
on this matter than the testimony of a dozen witnesses. After all, I'm
still the Governor."

The militiaman seemed to have forgotten the existence of his
distinguished kinsman, and, at the voice, his eyes came away from the
face of the man he had not wanted to capture, and he shook his head.

"You are merely the head of the executive branch," he said. "You are
as helpless here as I am. Neither of us can interfere with the judicial
gentry, though we may know that they stink to high heaven with the
stench of blood. After a conviction, you can pardon, but a pardon won't
help the dead. I don't see that you can do much of anything, Crit."

"I don't know yet what I can do, but I can tell you I'm going to do
something," said the Governor. "You can just begin watching me. In the
meantime, I believe I am Commander-in-Chief of the State troops."

"And I am Captain of F Company, but all I can do is to obey the orders
of a bunch of Borgias."

"As your superior officer," smiled the Governor, "I can give you
orders. I'm going to give you one now. Mr. South has applied to me for
a pardon in advance of trial. Technically, I have the power to grant
that request. Morally, I doubt my right. Certainly, I shall not do it
without a very thorough sifting of evidence and grave consideration of
the necessities of the case--as well as the danger of the precedent.
However, I am considering it, and for the present you will parole your
prisoner in my custody. Mr. South, you will not leave Frankfort without
my permission. You will take every precaution to conceal your actual
identity. You will treat as utterly confidential all that has
transpired here--and, above all, you will not let newspaper men
discover you. Those are my orders. Report here tomorrow afternoon, and
remember that you are my prisoner."

Samson bowed, and left the two cousins together, where shortly they
were joined by the Attorney General. That evening, the three dined at
the executive mansion, and sat until midnight in the Governor's private
office, still deep in discussion. During the long session, Callomb
opened the bulky volume of the Kentucky Statutes, and laid his finger
on Section 2673.

"There's the rub," he protested, reading aloud: "'The military shall
be at all times, and in all cases, in strict subordination to the civil
power.'"

The Governor glanced down to the next paragraph, and read in part:
"'The Governor may direct the commanding officer of the military force
to report to any one of the following-named officers of the district in
which the said force is employed: Mayor of a city, sheriff, jailer or
marshal.'"

"Which list," stormed Callomb, "is the honor roll of the assassins."

"At all events"--the Governor had derived from Callomb much
information as to Samson South which the mountaineer himself had
modestly withheld--"South gets his pardon. That is only a step. I wish
I could make him satrap over his province, and provide him with troops
to rule it. Unfortunately, our form of government has its drawbacks."

"It might be possible," ventured the Attorney General, "to impeach the
Sheriff, and appoint this or some other suitable man to fill the
vacancy until the next election."

"The Legislature doesn't meet until next winter," objected Callomb.
"There is one chance. The Sheriff down there is a sick man. Let us hope
he may die."

One day, the Hixon conclave met in the room over Hollman's Mammoth
Department Store, and with much profanity read a communication from
Frankfort, announcing the pardon of Samson South. In that episode, they
foresaw the beginning of the end for their dynasty. The outside world
was looking on, and their regime could not survive the spotlight of law
-loving scrutiny.

"The fust thing," declared Judge Hollman, curtly, "is to get rid of
these damned soldiers. We'll attend to our own business later, and we
don't want them watchin' us. Just now, we want to lie mighty quiet for
a spell--teetotally quiet until I pass the word."

Samson had won back the confidence of his tribe, and enlisted the
faith of the State administration. He had been authorized to organize a
local militia company, and to drill them, provided he could stand
answerable for their conduct. The younger Souths took gleefully to that
idea. The mountain boy makes a good soldier, once he has grasped the
idea of discipline. For ten weeks, they drilled daily in squads and
weekly in platoons. Then, the fortuitous came to pass. Sheriff Forbin
died, leaving behind him an unexpired term of two years, and Samson was
summoned hastily to Frankfort. He returned, bearing his commission as
High Sheriff, though, when that news reached Hixon, there were few men
who envied him his post, and none who cared to bet that he would live
to take his oath of office.

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.

John Crace digests A Question of Upbringing by Anthony Powell

My English teacher is wearing a barrister's wig. He turns and points towards me as I sit trembling in the dock. "Members of the jury, I put it to you that this man, Tom Robinson, is innocent," he says, rather lugubriously. I want to protest. I want to shout that no, I am not Tom Robinson, but yes, I am innocent! But the words won't come out.

Then I wake up. It's another literary dream – one that's troubled me ever since I studied Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird for GCSE.

Most of the time I'm disappointed to leave my literary dreams, waking to realise that I'm not really ensconced with with the boozing Welsh pensioners from Kingsley Amis's The Old Devils or haven't really been thrashing Harry Potter's Quidditch team. I remember with fondness a skiing trip with William Shakespeare and the delightful discovery that Don DeLillo was serving drinks behind the bar in my local pub.

It's not all sunshine, though. Tom Wolfe once ruined a trip to New York, shouting at me across Fifth Avenue: "You're not even familiar with my work – get outta town, asshole!" But that's nothing on Howard Jacobson. I spent a summer discovering his novels during my waking hours and bumping into him in my sleep. I'd see him in a local restaurant and tell him how much I was enjoying his novels. "Oh right," he'd snap, "that old chestnut, huh?" When I met him for real last year he was, in fact, charm personified. I didn't tell him about the dreams.

But enough about my subconscious, what about yours? It's Friday: forget about work and tell me all about your literary dreams. Don't hold back – it's not like we'll read anything into it.

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