The watchman and southron. [volume] (Sumter, S.C.) 1881-1930, 1915-11-27

AS abruptly as the drumbeat hat
come 1t died again into silence, ant
there was no diminuendo of hoofbeats
receding into distance. The thing was
weird and ghostly. She had not no
tlced IN the weariness Of her arrival al
the cabin that the road ran deep in
sand to the corner of the fence and
that after fifty yards of rough and
broken rock it fell away again into an
other sound-muflling stretch. She
knew only that she was thoroughly
frightened, and that whatever the
noise was, it proclaimed hot and des
perate haste.
Yet even in her terror she had
moved only to turn her head and had
opened her eyes cautiously and mar
rowly.
There was no sound in the cabin
now; not even the stertorous breath OF
snore. The fire flickered family and
occasionally sent up from it's white
bed of ashes dying squirt, before
which the darkness fell back a little
AOA Iuo uOmeQL.
She could see that Fletch McNash
had half risen in his bed. His head
was partly turned in an attitude OF
intent listening, and his pose was as
rigid as that Of bird-dog frozen on q
point. 1t had all been monlentary, and
as Juanita gazed she saw other fig.
ures stir uneasily, though no one
spoke. The missionary lay still, but
the woman's figure moved restlessly
beneath the heaped-up comforter.
So, for a few moments, the strange
and tense tableau held, and the girl,
watching the househoher's alert yet
motionless pose, remembered him as
he had hunched drunkenly over his
plate few hours ago. The two pic.
lures were hard to reconcile.
Then, at some warning which her
less acute ears failed to register, she
saw Fletch McNash's right hand sweep
outward toward the wall and come up
gripping the rifle.
Still there was 10 word, but the eld.
est boys head had risen from the
pallet.
Keyed now to concert pitch, the girl
held her body rigid, and through half
closed lids looked across the dim
room. While she was so staring and
pretending to sleep, there drifted from
long way off an insistent, animal.
like yell with peculiar quaver in it's
final note. She did not know that It
was the famous McBriar rallying cry,
and that trouble inevitably followed
fast in the wake Of it's sounding. She
knew only that it fitted in with her
childhood's conception Of the Indian s
warwhoop. But she did know that
IN an instant after it had been borne
along the wind she had seen q thing
happen which she would have disbe.
lieved had she heard it from the lips
Of narrator. .... 49,
She saw in one breathing space the
half.raised figure Of Fletch McNash un-
der the quilts Of his bed, and that of
young Jeb under the covers of his
pallet. She saw in the next breathing
space, with no realization of how it
had happened, both of them crouched
low at the center of the floor, the fa-
Tiers eyes glued to the front door,
the sons to the back. The older man
bent low, like runner on his mark
awaiting the starting signal. His right
hand held the rifle at his front, his
left lightly touched tie floor with
fingers spread to brace his posture,
and his face was tensely upturned.
So, while she counted ten, father
and son crouched in precisely similar
poses, one covering the barred door
at the front with repeating rifle, the