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Inside was emptiness, except for the other body, which had crumpled forward and face down across the counter. A glance showed that Jesse Purvy would no more fight back the coming of death. He was quite unarmed. Behind his spent body ranged shelves of general merchandise. Boxes of sardines, and cans of peaches were lined in homely array above him.
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.
The fact that he was responsible for only one and that in self-defense would not matter. They would prefer to believe that he had invaded the store and killed Purvy, and that Hollis had fallen in his master's defense at the threshold. Samson went out, still meeting no one, and continued his journey.
After the fierce outburst of bloodshed, quiet had settled, and it was tacitly understood that, unless the Hollman forces had some coup in mind which they were secreting, this peace would last until the soldiers were withdrawn. "When the world's a-lookin'," commented Judge Hollman, "hit's a right good idea to crawl under a log an' lay still." Purvy had been too famous a feudist to pass unsung.
"What we wants is a man. We hain't got no use fer no traitors thet's too almighty damn busy doin' fancy work ter stand by their kith an' kin." "That's a lie!" said the girl, scornfully. "There's just one man living that's smart enough to match Jesse Purvy an' that one man is Samson. Samson's got the right to lead the Souths, and he's going to do it ef he wants to."
At other times, it was like riding in a huge caldron of pitch. When he passed into that stretch of country at whose heart Jesse Purvy dwelt, he raised his voice in song. His singing was very bad, and the ballad lacked tune, but it served its purpose of saving him from the suspicion of furtiveness.
Inside, at the middle of the store, Jesse Purvy shifted his head against his daughter's knee, and said, as one stating an expected event: "Well, they've got me." An ordinary mountaineer would have been carried home to die in the darkness of a dirty and windowless shack. The long-suffering star of Jesse Purvy ordained otherwise.
When, a short time later, Tamarack left the country to become a railroad brakeman, Jesse Purvy passed the word that his men must, until further orders, desist from violence. The word had crept about that Samson, too, was going away, and, if this were true, Jesse felt that his future would be more secure than his past. Purvy believed Samson guilty, despite the exoneration of the hounds.
His Honor read it at recess, and hastened across to Hollman's Mammoth Department Store. There, in council with his masters, he asked instructions. "SIR: I arrived in this county yesterday, and am prepared, if called as a witness, to give to the Grand Jury full and true particulars of the murder of Jesse Purvy and the killing of Aaron Hollis.
But the years of strain were telling on Jesse Purvy. The robust, full- blooded face was showing deep lines; his flesh was growing flaccid; his glance tinged with quick apprehension. He told his intimates that he realized "they'd get him," yet he sought to prolong his term of escape.
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