That August court day was a memorable one in Hixon. Samson South was
coming to town to take up his duties. Every one recognized it as the
day of final issue, and one that could hardly pass without bloodshed.
The Hollmans, standing in their last trench, saw only the blunt
question of Hollman-South supremacy. For years, the feud had flared and
slept and broken again into eruption, but never before had a South
sought to throw his outposts of power across the waters of Crippleshin,
and into the county seat. That the present South came bearing
commission as an officer of the law only made his effrontery the more
unendurable.
Samson had not called for outside troops. The drilling and
disciplining of his own company had progressed in silence along the
waters of Misery. They were a slouching, unmilitary band of uniformed
vagabonds, but they were longing to fight, and Callomb had been with
them, tirelessly whipping them into rudimentary shape. After all, they
were as much partisans as they had been before they were issued State
rifles. The battle, if it came, would be as factional as the fight of
twenty-five years ago, when the Hollmans held the store and the Souths
the court-house. But back of all that lay one essential difference, and
it was this difference that had urged the Governor to stretch the forms
of law and put such dangerous power into the hands of one man. That
difference was the man himself. He was to take drastic steps, but he
was to take them under the forms of law, and the State Executive
believed that, having gone through worse to better, he would maintain
the improved condition.
Early that morning, men began to assemble along the streets of Hixon;
and to congregate into sullen clumps with set faces that denoted a
grim, unsmiling determination. Not only the Hollmans from the town and
immediate neighborhood were there, but their shaggier, fiercer brethren
from remote creeks and coves, who came only at urgent call, and did not
come without intent of vindicating their presence. Old Jake Hollman,
from "over yon" on the headwaters of Dryhole Creek, brought his son and
fourteen-year-old grandson, and all of them carried Winchesters. Long
before the hour for the court-house bell to sound the call which would
bring matters to a crisis, women disappeared from the streets, and
front shutters and doors closed themselves. At last, the Souths began
to ride in by half-dozens, and to hitch their horses at the racks.
They, also, fell into groups well apart. 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. The Souths, now
coming in a solid stream, flowed with equal unanimity to McEwer's
Hotel, near the square, and disappeared inside. Besides their rifles,
they carried saddlebags, but not one of the uniforms which some of
these bags contained, nor one of the cartridge belts, had yet been
exposed to view.