The Blackfoot optimist. [volume] (Blackfoot, Idaho) 1907-1918, 1914-12-31

mics has no other passable rift. 10
gether, and as comrades, they had
made their homes and founded their
race. What original grievance had
sprung up between their descendants
none Of the present generation knew
perhaps it was farm line or disputed
title to pig. The primary incident
was lost in the limbo of the past; but
for fifty years. with occasional inter-
walls of truce. lives had been snuffed
out in the fiercely burning hate of
these men whose ancestors had been
comrades.
Old Spicer South and his nephew
Samson were the direct lineal descen.
dants Of the manner of Misery. Their
kinsmen dwelt about them: the Souths,
the Jaspers. the Spicers, the Wileys.
the Millers and McCagers. Other fam
lilies, related only by marriage and
close association, were, in feud align
ment, none the less "Souths" And
over beyond the ridge, where the
springs and brooks flowed the other
way to feed Crippleshin, dwelt the
Hollmans the Purvises, the Asberries.
the Hollises and the Daltons-men
equally strong in their vindictive
fealty to the code of the vendetta.
BY mountain standards old Spicer
South was rich. His lands had been
claimed when tracts could be had for
the taking, and, though he had to make
his cross mark when there was a con.
tract to be signed, his instructive mind
was shrewd and far seeing. The tinkle
of his cowbells was heard for a long
distance along the creek bottoms. His
hillside fields were the richest and his
coves the most fertile In that country.
Some day, when railroad should bur-
row through his section, bringing the
development of coal and timber at the
head OF the rails, sleeping fortune
would yawn and awake to enrich him.
There were black outcroppings along
the cliffs, which he knew ran deep in
veins of bituminous wealth. But to
that time he looked with foreboding
for he had been raised to the stand
ards of his forefathers and saw in the
coming of new regime curtailment
of personal liberty. For new-fangled
ideas he held only the aversion of
deep-rooted prejudice. He hoped that
he might I've out his days and pass
before the foreigner held his land and
the law became power stronger than
the individual or the clan. The law
was his enemy, because it said to him,
"Thou shalt not" when he sought to
take the yellow corn which bruising
labor had coaxed from scattered rock
strewn fields to his own mash vat and
still. 1t meant, also, tyrannous
power usually seized and administered
by enemies, which undertook to forbid
the personal settlement OF personal
| quarrels. Hut his eyes, which could
not read print, could read the signs
of the times. He foresaw the inev-
he had given up the worm and mash
vat, and no longer sought to make or
sell illicit liquor That was a conces-
sion to the federal power, which could
no longer be successfully fought. State
power was still largely a weapon in
factional hands, and in his country
| the Hollmans were the office holders.
To the Hollmans he could make no
concessions. In Samson, born to be
| the fighting man, reared to be the
fighting man. equipped by nature with
| deep hatreds and tigerish courage,
there had cropped out from time to
time the restless spirit of the philos-
opher and hunger for knowledge.
That was a matter in which the old
man found his bitterest and most Sc
cret apprehension.
| 1t was at this house that George
Lescott, distinguished landscape paint
er of New York and the world at large,
arrived in the twilight.
Whatever enemy might have to be
met tomorrow, old Spicer South rec
ognized as a more immediate call
upon his attention the wounded guest
Of today. One of the kinsmen proved
to have a rude working knowledge of
bone setting. and before the half hour
had passed Lescott's wrist was in a
spl1nt, and his injuries as we'll tended
as possible, which proved to be quite
we'll enough.
| While Spicer South and his cousins
had been sustaining themselves or
building up completeness by tilling
their soil the leaders Of the other fac
ton were basing larger fortunes on
the profits of merchandise and trade.
So, although Spicer South could nei-
Their read nor write, his chief enemy,
Micah HOLMAN, was to outward seem
ing an urbane and fairly equipped man
of affairs. Judged by their heads, the
clansmen were rougher and more illit.
crate on Misery, and in closer touch
with civilization on Crippleshin. A
deeper scrutiny showed this seeming
to be one Of the strange anomalies of
the mountains.
Micah Holman had established him.
self at HiyOn that shack tOwn which