Stores opened, but only for a desultory pretense of business. Horsemen
led their mounts away from the more public racks, and tethered them to
back fences and willow branches in the shelter of the river banks,
where stray bullets would not find them.
The dawn that morning had still been gray when Samson South and
Captain Callomb had passed the Miller cabin. Callomb had ridden slowly
on around the turn of the road, and waited a quarter of a mile away. He
was to command the militia that day, if the High Sheriff should call
upon him. Samson went in and knocked, and instantly to the cabin door
came Sally's slender, fluttering figure. She put both arms about him,
and her eyes, as she looked into his face, were terrified, but tearless.
"I'm frightened, Samson," she whispered. "God knows I'm going to be
praying all this day."
"Sally," he said, softly, "I'm coming back to you--but, if I don't"--
he held her very close--"Uncle Spicer has my will. The farm is full of
coal, and days are coming when roads will take it out, and every ridge
will glow with coke furnaces. That farm will make you rich, if we win
to-day's fight."
"Don't!" she cried, with a sudden gasp. "Don't talk like that."
"I must," he said, gently. "I want you to make me a promise, Sally."
"It's made," she declared.
"If, by any chance I should not come back, I want you to hold Uncle
Spicer and old Wile McCager to their pledge. They must not privately
avenge me. They must still stand for the law. I want you, and this is
most important of all, to leave these mountains----"
Her hands tightened on his shoulders.
"Not that, Samson," she pleaded; "not these mountains where we've been
together."
"You promised. I want you to go to the Lescotts in New York. In a
year, you can come back--if you want to; but you must promise that."
"I promise," she reluctantly yielded.
It was half-past nine o'clock when Samson South and Sidney Callomb
rode side by side into Hixon from the east. A dozen of the older
Souths, who had not become soldiers, met them there, and, with no word,
separated to close about them in a circle of protection. As Callomb's
eyes swept the almost deserted streets, so silent that the strident
switching of a freight train could be heard down at the edge of town,
he shook his head. As he met the sullen glances of the gathering in the
court-house yard, he turned to Samson.