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The Call of the Cumberlands
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an empty cabin in a thicket well within South territory. Shortly a candle flickered inside.
Fifteen minutes later, dressed in a rough suit of clothes, he stood, in the moonlight, in front of the Widow Miller's cabin, and, lifting his head, sent out a clear whippoorwill call — the old signal to Sally. The cabin door opened. Framed in the patch of yellow candlelight stood a slender figure, eager, but uncertain. In her right hand she clutched a rifle — the rifle that he had bequeathed to her in trust when he had bidden her good-by.
Sally had been true to her trust. For four years she had waited for the signal.
The man stepped out of the shadow into the bright moonlight. With a glad cry, the girl came running to him. He stretched out his arms to her, and his voice broke in a hoarse, passionate cry :
"Sally!"
And as she came into his arms, her heart fluttering with joy, they closed about her in a convulsive grip.
"Did ye think I wuzen't comin' back, Sally?" he questioned softly, falling back into the vernacular.
"Ye said ye wuz comin', an' I knowed shore ye'd do hit," replied the girl, as if she, too, had never made war on crude idioms.
Ordinarily, this happy reunion of two true hearts would be considered a fitting ending for this story, but they never relate it down in Cumberland County without telling how the Hollman grand jury indicted Samson South for the killing of Aaron Hollis and Jesse Purvy; how Samson, warned by Lieutenant Callomb, of the militia — who had come to know the truth — had slipped away to Frankfort, where the governor, a cousin of the lieutenant's,
had not only pardoned him before trial, but had made him high sheriff to succeed the Hollman incumbent ; how Samson, authorized by the governor, had organized a local militia company composed of the younger South adherents, and drilled by Lieutenant Callomb; and how, when the Hollman faction held the courthouse and refused to recognize the authority of the sheriff, this roughand-ready company had taken the building by storm, although at the cost of several lives.
When law and order had been restored, some months later, George Lescott, accompanied by his sister and Wilfred Horton, who had lately entered upon life together bound by the ties of marriage, came to the Cumberlands to organize the South-Horton Company for the purpose of developing the natural resources of the country.
Samson introduced Adrienne to Sally, and added meaningly the words :
"I want you to learn to love her."
"Learning is unnecessary," replied the girl from the city. "I love her already."
Then it was that Samson settled down amid the grandeurs of 'nature's land to paint the pictures that were dearest to his heart, with love for his easel and Sally for his model. And so it happened that, one night when the moon appeared particularly bright as it smiled down upon the mountains, two figures that seemed almost as one stood in the shadows of the pines.
"I couldn't have stayed up there without you, dear," spoke Samson quietly, and Sally gazed up into his eyes.
"And I wouldn't have stayed down here if you hadn't come," she replied softly.