The Hays free press. [volume] (Hays, Kan.) 1908-1924, 1915-03-20
CHAPTER XVII.

Before the mountain roads were
mired with the coming of the rains,
and while the air held its sparkle Of
autumnal usefulness, Samson South
wrote to MILFORD Horton that if he
still meant to come to the hills for his
inspection of coal md timber the time
was ripe. Soon men would appear
bearing transit and chain, drawing a
line which a railroad was to follow to
Misery and across it to the heart of
untouched forests and coal-felds. With
that wave Of innovation would come
the spectators. Besides, Samson's
fingers were itching to be out in the
hills with a palette and sheaf of
brushes in the society of George Les
colt
For while after the battle at Hixon
the county had Iai1 in a torpid paraly-
sis of dread. Many illiterate feudists
on each side remembered the directing
and exposed figure of Samson South
seen through eddies of gun smoke, and
believed him immune from death.
With Purvy dead and Holman the vic
tim of his own hand, the backbone of
the murder syndicate was broken. It's
heart had ceased to beat. Those HolI-
man survivors who bore the potentiali-
ties for leadership had not only signed
pledges of peace, but were afraid to
break them; and the triumphant
Souths, instead of Wanting their vic
tory, had subscribed to the doctrine of
order and declared the war over
Souths who broke the law were as
| Tod Toll
boys were drilling as militiamen and
wonder of wonders !-inviting the
sons Of the enemy to join them OF
course, these things changed gradual
| ~, but the beginnings Of them were
most noticeable in the first few
months, just as a newly painted and
renovated house is more conspicuous
than one that has long been respecta-
bic.
Hollman's Mammoth Department
! Store passed into new hands, and traf-
licked only in merchandise, and the
town was open to the men and women
of Misery as well as those Of Cripple
shin.
These things Samson had explained
in his letters to the Lescotts and Hor-
| ton. Men from down below could still
| find trouble in the wink of an eye, by
seeking it, for under all transformation
| the nature &C the individual remained
much the same; but, without seeking
to give offense, they could ride as Sc
curely through the hills as through the
streets Of a policed city-and meet a
reader hospitality.
And, when these things were dis
/ r.,
cross the Mason-and-Dixon line and
visit the Cumberlands, Adrienne
promptly and definitely announced
that she would accompany her brother.
No argument was effective to dissuade
her, and after all, Lescott, who had
been there, saw no good reason why
she should not go with him.
At Hixon, they found that receptive
air of serenity which made the history
of less than three months ago seem
paradoxical and Enthusiastically unreal.
Only about the courthouse square
where numerous small holes IN frame
walls told of fusillades, and in the in.
terror of the building itself where the
| woodwork was SCARED and torn, and
the plaster freshly patched, did they
find grimly reminiscent evidence.
Samson had not met them at the
town, because he wished their first i'm
pressions of his people to reach them
unin1uenced by his escort 1t was a
form of the mountain pride-an hon
est resolve to soften nothing, and make
no apologies. But they found arrange
ments made for horses and saddlebags,
and the girl discovered that for her
had been provided mount as evenly
gated as any in her own stables.
When she and her two companions
| came out to the hotel porch to start,
they found a guide waiting, who said
he was instructed to take them as far
as the ridge, where the sheriff himself
! would be waiting, and the cavalcade