The Green Forest tribune., 1915-01-01

faxed vigilance. He stood there pos sibly thirty seconds, then a sharp flu sillade of clear reports parked out and was shattered by the hills into long reverberation. With a hand clasped to his chest, Purvy turned, walked to the middle of the floor, and fell.
 The henchmen rushed to the open sash. They leaped out and plunged up the mountain, tempting the assas- sins fire, but the assassin was satis- fled. The mountain was again as quiet as it had been at dawn. Inside, at the middle of the store, Jesse Purvy shifted his head against his daugh- ter's knee and said, as one stating an expected event:
 Well, they've got me-"
 An ordinary mountaineer would have been carried home to die in the darkness of a dirty and windowless shack. The long-suffering star of Jesse Purvy ordained otherwise. He might go under or he might once more beat his way back and out of the quick sands of death At all events, he would fight for life to the last gasp.
 Twenty miles away in the core of the wilderness, removed from a rail- road by score of semi-perpendicula miles, a fanatic had once decided to found a school
 Now a faculty of ten men taught such as cared to come such things as they cared to learn. Higher up the hillside stood a small, but model hos pital, with a modern operating table and a case of surgical instruments, which, it was said, the state could not surpass.
 To this haven Jesse Purvy, the mur- der lord, was borne in a litter carried on the shoulders of his dependents. Here, as his steadfast guardian star decreed he found two prominent med ical visitors, who hurried him to the operating table. Later he was re- moved to white bed, with the June sparkle in his eyes, pleasantly modu- lated through drawn blinds, and the June rustic and bird chorus in his ears-and his own thoughts in his brain.
 Conscious, but in great pain, Purvy beckoned Jim Asberry and Aaron Hol- lis, his chiefs of bodyguard, to his bed side and waved the nurse back out of hearing,
 ''If I don't get well,' he said feebly, there's job for you two boys. reckon you know what it is?"
 They nodded, and Asberry whis- pered a name:
 Samson South?'
 Yes" Purvy spoke in a whisper; but the old vindictiveness was not smothered. You got the old man, 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 tomorrer," growled As berry. Thar haint no sort of use in a-waitin'"
 "No!" For an instant Purvy's voice rose out of it's weakness to it's old staccato tone of command, a tone which brought obedience. 'If I get we'll have other plans. Never mind what they are. That's my business. If don't die, leave him alone, until I give other orders.
 "If I get well and Samson South Is killed meanwhile I won't live long either. It would be my life for his Keep close to him. The minute you hear of my death-get him." He paused again, then supplemented You two will find something mighty interestin' in my will"
 It was afternoon when Purvy reached the hospital, and, at nightfall of the same day, there arrived at his stores entrance, on stumbling, hard ridden mules, several men, followed by two tawny hounds whose long ears Tapped over their lean jaws, and | whose eyes were listless and tired, but | whose black muzzles wrinkled and sniffed with that sensitive instinct 1 which follows the man scent. The ex sheriff's family were instituting pro- ceedings independent of the chiefs or ders. The next morning this party plunged into the mountain tangle and beat the cover with the bloodhounds | in leash.
 The two gentle-faced dogs picked their way between the towering rho dodendrons, the glistening laurels, the feathery pine sprouts and the moss covered rocks. They went gingerly and alertly on ungainly, cushioned feet. Just as their masters were de spairing they came to a place directly over the store, where a branch had been bent back and hitched to clea, the outlook and where a boot heel had crushed the moss. There one o1 them raised his nose high into the air, opened his mouth, and let out a long, deep-chested bay of discovery.
 CHAPTER w.
 George Lescott had known hospital