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Updated: May 13, 2025
"We're all hyar," screamed old Caleb's high, broken voice. "Let's go an' take him out." Samson's anger had died. He turned, and held a whispered conversation with McCager, and, at its end, the host of the day announced briefly: "Samson's got somethin' ter say ter ye. So long as he's willin' ter stand by us, I reckon we're willin' ter listen ter Henry South's boy."
The years had sobered the girl, but her beauty had increased, though it was now of a chastened type, which gave her a strange and rather exalted refinement of expression. Wile McCager came to the mill door, as she rode up, and lifted the sack from her horse. "Howdy, Sally?" he greeted. "Tol'able, thank ye," said Sally. "I'm goin' ter get off."
It was over. The question was answered. The Hollmans regarded the truce as still effective. The fact that they were permitting him to ride out alive was a wordless assurance of that. Incidentally, he stood vindicated in the eyes of his own people. When Samson reached the mill it was ten o'clock. The men were soberer than they had been in the afternoon. McCager had seen to that.
There was a moment's silence, then Wile McCager put another question: "Ef ye're plumb sot on gittin' larnin' why don't ye git hit right hyar in these mountings?" Samson laughed derisively. "Who'll I git hit from?" he caustically inquired. "Ef the mountain won't come ter Mohamet, Mohamet's got ter go ter the mountain, I reckon." The figure was one they did not understand.
"Sally," Wile McCager spoke, soothingly, "don't go gittin' mad. Caleb talks hasty. We knows ye used ter be Samson's gal, an' we hain't aimin' ter hurt yore feelin's. But Samson's done left the mountings. I reckon ef he wanted ter come back, he'd a-come afore now. Let him stay whar he's at." "Whar is he at?" demanded old Caleb Wiley, in a truculent voice.
Several soberer men closed around the boy, and, after disarming him, led him away grumbling and muttering, while Wile McCager made apologies to the guest. "Jimmy's jest a peevish child," he explained. "A drop or two of licker makes him skittish. I hopes ye'll look over hit." Jimmy's outbreak was interesting to Lescott chiefly as an indication of what might follow.
Don't tell her whar I'm a-goin'." He turned to the others. "I reckon I've got yore promise thet Mr. Lescott hain't a-goin' ter be bothered afore I gits back?" Wile McCager promptly gave the assurance. "I gives ye my hand on hit." "I seed Jim Asberry loafin' round jest beyond ther ridge, es I rid over hyar," volunteered the man who had brought the message. "Go slow now, Samson.
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.
Their faces bore no stamp of unwonted excitement, but every man balanced a rifle across his pommel. None the less, their purpose was grim, and their talk when they had gathered was to the point. Old McCager, himself sorely perplexed, voiced the sentiment that the others had been too courteous to express. With Spicer South bed-ridden and Samson a renegade, they had no adequate leader.
Then, too, except for cropped hair and a white skin, he had come back as he had gone, in homespun and hickory. There was nothing highfalutin in his manners. In short, the impression was good. "I reckon now that ye're back, Samson," suggested McCager, "an' seein' how yore Uncle Spicer is gettin' along all right, I'll jest let the two of ye run things. I've done had enough."
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