Twenty miles away in the core of the wilderness, removed from a
railroad by a score of semi-perpendicular miles, a fanatic had once
decided to found a school. The fact that the establishment in this
place of such a school as his mind pictured was sheer madness and
impossibility did not in the least deter him. It was a thing that could
not be done, and it was a thing that he had done none the less.
Now a faculty of ten men, like himself holding degrees of Masters of
Dreams, taught such as cared to come such things as they cared to
learn. Substantial two-and three-storied buildings of square-hewn logs
lay grouped in a sort of Arts and Crafts village around a clean-clipped
campus. The Stagbone College property stretched twenty acres square at
the foot of a hill. The drone of its own saw-mill came across the
valley. In a book-lined library, wainscoted in natural woods of three
colors, the original fanatic often sat reflecting pleasurably on his
folly. Higher up the hillside stood a small, but model, hospital, with
a modern operating table and a case of surgical instruments, which, it
was said, the State could not surpass. These things had been the gifts
of friends who liked such a type of God-inspired madness. A "fotched-on"
trained nurse was in attendance. From time to time, eminent Bluegrass
surgeons came to Hixon by rail, rode twenty miles on mules, and held
clinics on the mountainside.
To this haven, Jesse Purvy, the murder lord, was borne in a litter
carried on the shoulders of his dependents. Here, as his steadfast
guardian star decreed, he found two prominent medical visitors, who
hurried him to the operating table. Later, he was removed to a white
bed, with the June sparkle in his eyes, pleasantly modulated through
drawn blinds, and the June rustle and bird chorus in his ears--and his
own thoughts in his brain.
Conscious, but in great pain, Purvy beckoned Jim Asberry and Aaron
Hollis, his chiefs of bodyguard, to his bedside, and waved the nurse
back out of hearing.
"If I don't get well," he said, feebly, "there's a job for you two
boys. I reckon you know what it is?"
They nodded, and Asberry whispered a name: "Samson South?"
"Yes," Purvy spoke in a weak whisper; but the old vindictiveness was
not smothered. "You got the old man, I reckon you can manage the cub.
If you don't, he'll get you both one day."
The two henchmen scowled.
"I'll git him to-morrer," growled Asberry. "Thar hain't no sort of use
in a-waitin'."