Old Spicer South would ten years ago have put a bandage on his wound
and gone about his business, but now he tossed under his patchwork
quilt, and Brother Spencer expressed grave doubts for his recovery.
With his counsel unavailable Wile McCager, by common consent, assumed
something like the powers of a regent and took upon himself the duties
to which Samson should have succeeded.
That a Hollman should have been able to elude the pickets and
penetrate the heart of South territory to Spicer South's cabin, was
both astounding and alarming. The war was on without question now, and
there must be council. Wile McCager had sent out a summons for the
family heads to meet that afternoon at his mill. It was Saturday--"mill
day"--and in accordance with ancient custom the lanes would be more
traveled than usual.
Those men who came by the wagon road afforded no unusual spectacle,
for behind each saddle sagged a sack of grain. 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. 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. She rode like the mountain women, facing much to the side, yet
unlike them. Her arms did not flap. She did not bump gawkily up and
down in her saddle. Her blue calico dress caught the sun at a distance,
but her blue sunbonnet shaded and masked her face. She was lithe and
slim, and her violet eyes were profoundly serious, and her lips were as
resolutely set as Joan of Arc's might have been, for Sally Miller had
come only ostensibly to have her corn ground to meal. She had really
come to speak for the absent chief, and she knew that she would be met
with derision. 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.