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Updated: June 9, 2025
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.
Slowly, in a matter-of-fact tone, he began a story without decoration of verbiage straightforward and tense in its simplicity. As the painter listened, he began to understand; the gall that had crept into this lad's blood before his weaning became comprehensible.... Killing Hollmans was not murder.... It was duty.
A man supposedly close to the Hollmans, but in reality an informer for the Souths, had seen him led into the jail-yard by a posse of a half-dozen men, and had seen the iron-barred doors close on him. That was all, except that the Hollman forces were gathering in Hixon, and, if the Souths went there en masse, a pitched battle must be the inevitable result.
It had shown the inefficiency of his efforts, and had brought on a carnival of blood-letting, when he had come here to safeguard against that danger. In some fashion, he must make amends. He realized, too, and it rankled deeply, that his men were not being genuinely used to serve the State, but as instruments of the Hollmans, and he had seen enough to distrust the Hollmans.
"Why wasn't yer hyar when them dawgs come by? Why was ye the only South thet runned away, when they was smellin' round fer Jesse Purvy's assassin?" "I didn't run away." Tamarack's blood-shot eyes flared wickedly. "I knowed thet ef I stayed 'round hyar with them damned Hollmans stickin' their noses inter our business, I'd hurt somebody. So, I went over inter the next county fer a spell.
He slipped back to his horse, mounted and rode fast to the house of Spicer South, demanding asylum. The next day came word that, if Tamarack Spicer would surrender and stand trial, in a court dominated by the Hollmans, the truce would continue. Otherwise, the "war was on." The Souths flung back this message: "Come and git him."
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.
The party halted for a moment's rest, and, as the bottle was passed, the man from Lexington, who had brought the dogs and stayed to conduct the chase, put a question: "What do you call this creek?" "Hit's Misery." "Does anybody live on Misery that er that you might suspect?" The Hollmans laughed. "This creek is settled with Souths thicker'n hops." The Lexington man looked up.
They had power and inclination to go out and get men, but there was no man to get. The Hollmans had used the soldiers as far as they wished; they had made them pull the chestnuts out of the fire and Tamarack Spicer out of his stronghold. They now refused to swear out additional warrants. A detail had rushed into Hollman's store an instant after the shot which killed Tamarack was fired.
Don't be no blame fool," dissuaded Wile McCager. "Hixon's plumb full of them Hollmans, an' they're likely ter be full of licker hit's Saturday. Hit's apt ter be shore death fer ye ter try ter ride through Main Street ef ye gits thet fur. Ye dassent do hit." "I dast do anything!" asserted the boy, with a flash of sudden anger. "Some liar 'lowed awhile ago thet I was a coward. All right, mebby I be.
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