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Updated: July 26, 2025
"Think it over," urged Lescott, quietly. "See if your heart doesn't say I am Samson's friend and yours." He turned, and began making his way over the rocks; but, before he had gone far, he sat down to reflect upon the situation. Certainly, he was not augmenting his popularity. A half-hour later, he heard a rustle, and, turning, saw Sally standing not far off.
"I'll go with you, Horton, and make a sketch or two," volunteered George Lescott, who just then arrived from town. "And, by the way, Samson, here's a letter that came for you just as I left the studio." The mountaineer took the envelope with a Hixon postmark, and for an instant gazed at it with a puzzled expression. It was addressed in a feminine hand, which he did not recognize.
Now and again came a rumor that Jesse Purvy was dying, but always hard on its heels came another to the effect that the obdurate fighter had rallied, though the doctors held out small encouragement of recovery. One day Lescott, whose bandaged arm gave him much pain, but who was able to get about, was strolling not far from the house with Samson.
A short while later, Wile McCager invited Samson to come out to the mill, and the boy nodded to Lescott an invitation to accompany him. The host shook his head. "We kinder 'lowed ter talk over some fam'ly matters with ye, Samson," he demurred. "I reckon Mr. Lescott'll excuse ye fer a spell." "Anything ye've got ter talk ter me about, George Lescott kin hear," said the youth, defiantly.
Lescott gave the odyssey of his wanderings, since he had rented a mule at Hixon and ridden through the country, sketching where the mood prompted and sleeping wherever he found a hospitable roof at the coming of the evening. "Ye come from over on Crippleshin?"
Samson's hand slipped silently out, and the rifle came to his shoulder. In a moment it snapped, and a squirrel dropped through the leaves. "Jove!" exclaimed Lescott, admiringly. "That was neat work. He was partly behind the limb at a hundred yards." "Hit warn't nothin'," said Samson, modestly. "Hit's a good gun." He brought back his quarry, and affectionately picked up the rifle.
"No bad news, I hope," suggested Lescott. For an instant, Samson forgot his four years of veneer. The century of prenatal barbarism broke out fiercely. He was seeing things far away and forgetting things near by. His eyes blazed and his fingers twitched. "Hell, no!" he exclaimed. "The war's on, and my hands are freed!"
One afternoon, Lescott and Samson were alone on a cliff-protected shelf, and the painter had just blocked in with umber and neutral tint the crude sketch of his next picture. In the foreground was a steep wall, rising palisade-like from the water below. A kingly spruce-pine gave the near note for a perspective which went away across a valley of cornfields to heaping and distant mountains.
In the nex' place, ef ye did do hit, we hain't a-blamin' ye much. But I reckon them dawgs don't lie, an', ef they trails in hyar, ye'll need us. Thet's why we've done come." The boy slipped down from his mule, and helped Lescott to dismount.
"I reckon I'd like it, all right," he said, "and I'll bring you back some ducks, if I'm lucky." So, Lescott arranged the outfit, and Samson awaited the news of the coming flights. That same evening, Farbish dropped into the studio, explaining that he had been buying a picture at Collasso's, and had taken the opportunity to stop by and hand Samson a visitor's card to the Kenmore Club.
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