Macon beacon. [volume] (Macon, Miss.) 1859-1995, 1916-01-21
CHAPTER ".

Physical exhaustion will finally tell,
ever over such handicaps as a moun-
tain feather bed and the fumes Of q
backwoods cabin.
II Juanita Holland did not at last
actually fall asleep. she drifted into a
sort Of nightmare coma from which
she awoke with a start.
Finally she fell again into that half
sleep which dreams OF wakefulness.
1t may have lasted minutes or hours.
but suddenly she reused again with a
start from a new nightmare and lay
trembling under the oppression Of q
poignant foreboding. What was It that
she had subconsciously heard II imag.
tined? sho was painfully wide awake
in the slumbering cabin. At last she
was sure Of a sound, low but instinct
with warning.
Beardog wal growing just outside
the door.
Then, violently and without the pref.
ace Of gradual approach-precisely as
though horsemen had sprung from the
earth-there clattered and beat past
the front of the cabin a ~staccato thun-
der OF wildly galloping hoofs and a
rattle of scattered rocks. She felt an
uncanny freezing OF her marrow.
Horses travel perilous and broken
roads in that fashion only when their
riders are in wild haste.
As abruptly as the drumbeat had
come 1t died again into silence. and
there was no %diminuendo Of hoofbeats
receding into distance. The thing was
weird and ghostly. She had not no
ticed in the WEAKNESS OF her arrival at
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 1t fell away again into an
other sound mufling stretch. She
knew only that she was thoroughly
frightened, and that whatever the
noise was, 1t 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 yer the stertorous breath OF
a snore. The fire nickered family and
occasionally sent up from It's white
bed of ashes a dying squirt, before
which the darkness fell back a little
for the moment.
She could see that Fetch 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 a bird-dog frozen on q
point. 1t had all been momentary, and
as Juanlta 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 householders alert YET
motionless pose, remembered him as
he had hunched drunkenly over hii
plate a few hours ago. The two pic
lures were hard to reconcile.
Then, at somo warning which hel
less acute ears failed to register, sht
saw Fletch McNash's right hand SWEEP
outward toward the wall and come VI
gripping the rife.
Still there was no word, but the ED
est boys head had risen from thu
pallet.
Keyed now to concert pitch, the cir
held her body rigid, and through half
closed lids looked across the din
room. While she was so staring anC
/ pretending to sleep, there drifted from
] a long way off an inststent, animal
like yell with a peculiar Quaver in III
! final note. She did not know that 1
4 was the famous McBriar r~allying CRY
-. and that trouble inevitably followe,