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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.
After M. Hollman and I had played a duet, she expressed a desire to hear me play alone. As I attempted to lift the lid of the piano, she stepped forward to help me raise it before the maids of honor could intervene.
Hollman threw the letter down on his desk with a burst of blasphemy: "Have him come?" he echoed. "Hell and damnation, no! What do we want him to come here and spill the milk for? When we get ready, we'll indict him. Then, let your damned soldiers go after him as a criminal, not a witness. After that, we'll continue this case until these outsiders go away, and we can operate to suit ourselves.
It now dawned on him that he was crossing the boundary and coming as the late guest of a Hollman to ask the hospitality of a South. "I didn't know whose house it was," he hastened to explain, "until I was benighted, and asked for lodging. They were very kind to me. I'd never seen them before. I'm a stranger hereabouts." Samson only nodded.
"Yore cousin, Bud Spicer, was eddicated. He 'lowed in public thet Micah Hollman an' Jesse Purvy was runnin' a murder partnership. Somebody called him ter the door of his house in the night-time ter borry a lantern an' shot him ter death." "What of hit?" "Thar's jist this much of hit. Hit don't seem ter pay the South family ter go a-runnin' attar newfangled idees.
I am willing to come under escort of my own kinsmen, or of the militiamen, as the Court may advise. "The requirement of any bodyguard, I deplore, but in meeting my legal obligations, I do not regard it as necessary or proper to walk into a trap. "Respectfully, SAMSON SOUTH." Smithers looked perplexedly at Judge Hollman. "Shall I have him come?" he inquired.
McCager was a solid man of intrepid courage and honesty, but grinding grist was his avocation, not strategy and tactics. The enemy had such masters of intrigue as Purvy and Judge Hollman. Then, a lean sorrel mare came jogging into view, switching her fly- bitten tail, and on the mare's back, urging him with a long, leafy switch, sat a woman. Behind her sagged the two loaded ends of a corn- sack.
For the moment, he was beaten. He looked up, and from the road one of the hounds raised its voice and gave cry. That baying afforded an excuse for leaving, and Jim Hollman seized upon it. "Go on," he growled. "Let's see what them damned curs hes ter say now." Mounting, they kicked their mules into a jog. From the men inside the fence came no note of derision; no hint of triumph.
When the railroad came to Hixon, it found in Judge Hollman a "public- spirited citizen." Incidentally, the timber that it hauled and the coal that its flat cars carried down to the Bluegrass went largely to his consignees. He had so astutely anticipated coming events that, when the first scouts of capital sought options, they found themselves constantly referred to Judge Hollman.
He himself, he declared, believed that the best assets of any community were tenets of peace and brotherhood. Any mountain man or foreigner who came to town was sure of a welcome from Judge Micah Hollman, who added to his title of storekeeper that of magistrate.
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