________________________________________________
_ The boy from Misery rode slowly toward Hixon. At times, the moon
struggled out and made the shadows black along the way. At other times,
it was like riding in a huge caldron of pitch. When he passed into that
stretch of country at whose heart Jesse Purvy dwelt, he raised his
voice in song. His singing was very bad, and the ballad lacked tune,
but it served its purpose of saving him from the suspicion of
furtiveness. Though the front of the house was blank, behind its heavy
shutters he knew that his coming might be noted, and night-riding at
this particular spot might be misconstrued in the absence of frank
warning.
The correctness of his inference brought a brief smile to his lips
when he crossed the creek that skirted the orchard, and heard a stable
door creak softly behind him. He was to be followed again--and watched,
but he did not look back or pause to listen for the hoofbeats of his
unsolicited escort. On the soft mud of the road, he would hardly have
heard them, had he bent his ear and drawn rein. He rode at a walk, for
his train would not leave until five o'clock in the morning. There was
time in plenty.
It was cold and depressing as he trudged the empty streets from the
livery stable to the railroad station, carrying his saddlebags over his
arm. His last farewell had been taken when he left the old mule behind
in the rickety livery stable. It had been unemotional, too, but the
ragged creature had raised its stubborn head, and rubbed its soft nose
against his shoulder as though in realization of the parting--and
unwilling realization. He had roughly laid his hand for a moment on the
muzzle, and turned on his heel.
He was all unconscious that he presented a figure which would seem
ludicrous in the great world to which he had looked with such
eagerness. The lamps burned murkily about the railroad station, and a
heavy fog cloaked the hills. At last he heard the whistle and saw the
blazing headlight, and a minute later he had pushed his way into the
smoking-car and dropped his saddlebags on the seat beside him. Then,
for the first time, he saw and recognized his watchers. Purvy meant to
have Samson shadowed as far as Lexington, and his movements from that
point definitely reported. Jim Asberry and Aaron Hollis were the chosen
spies. He did not speak to the two enemies who took seats across the
car, but his face hardened, and his brows came together in a black scowl.
"When I gits back," he promised himself, "you'll be one of the fust
folks I'll look fer, Jim Asberry, damn ye! All I hopes is thet nobody
else don't git ye fust. Ye b'longs ter me."
He was not quite certain yet that Jim Asberry had murdered his father,
but he knew that Asberry was one of the coterie of "killers" who took
their blood hire from Purvy, and he knew that Asberry had sworn to
"git" him. To sit in the same car with these men and to force himself
to withhold his hand, was a hard bullet for Samson South to chew, but
he had bided his time thus far, and he would bide it to the end. When
that end came, it would also be the end for Purvy and Asberry. He
disliked Hollis, too, but with a less definite and intense hatred.
Samson wished that one of the henchmen would make a move toward attack.
He made no concealment of his own readiness. He removed both overcoat
and coat, leaving exposed to view the heavy revolver which was strapped
under his left arm. He even unbuttoned the leather flap of the holster,
and then being cleared for action, sat glowering across the aisle, with
his eyes not on the faces but upon the hands of the two Purvy spies.
The wrench of partings, the long raw ride and dis-spiriting gloom of
the darkness before dawn had taken out of the boy's mind all the
sparkle of anticipation and left only melancholy and hate. He felt for
the moment that, had these men attacked him and thrown him back into
the life he was leaving, back into the war without fault on his part,
he would be glad. The fierce activity of fighting would be welcome to
his mood. He longed for the appeasement of a thoroughly satisfied
vengeance. But the two watchers across the car were not ordered to
fight and so they made no move. They did not seem to see Samson. They
did not appear to have noticed his inviting readiness for combat. They
did not remove their coats. At Lexington, where he had several hours to
wait, Samson bought a "snack" at a restaurant near the station and then
strolled about the adjacent streets, still carrying his saddlebags, for
he knew nothing of the workings of check-rooms. When he returned to the
depot with his open wallet in his hand, and asked for a ticket to New
York, the agent looked up and his lips unguardedly broke into a smile
of amusement. It was a good-humored smile, but Samson saw that it was
inspired by some sort of joke, and he divined that the joke was--himself!
"What's the matter?" he inquired very quietly, though his chin
stiffened. "Don't ye sell tickets ter New York?"
The man behind the grilled wicket read a spirit as swift to resent
ridicule as that of d'Artagnan had been when he rode his orange-colored
nag into the streets of Paris. His face sobered, and his manner became
attentive. He was wondering what complications lay ahead of this raw
creature whose crudity of appearance was so at odds with the compelling
quality of his eyes.
"Do you want a Pullman reservation?" he asked.
"What's thet?" The boy put the question with a steadiness of gaze that
seemed to defy the agent to entertain even a subconsciously critical
thought as to his ignorance.
The ticket man explained sleeping- and dining-cars. He had rather
expected the boy to choose the day coach, but Samson merely said:
"I wants the best thar is." He counted out the additional money, and
turned gravely from the window. The sleeping-car to which he was
assigned was almost empty, but he felt upon him the interested gaze of
those few eyes that were turned toward his entrance. He engaged every
pair with a pair very clear and steady and undropping, until somehow
each lip that had started to twist in amusement straightened, and the
twinkle that rose at first glance sobered at second. He did not know
why an old gentleman in a plaid traveling cap, who looked up from a
magazine, turned his gaze out of the window with an expression of grave
thoughtfulness. To himself, the old gentleman was irrelevantly quoting
a line or two of verse:
"' ... Unmade, unhandled, unmeet--
Ye pushed them raw to the battle, as ye picked them
raw from the street--'"
"Only," added the old gentleman under his breath, "this one hasn't
even the training of the streets--but with those eyes he'll get
somewhere."
The porter paused and asked to see Samson's ticket. Mentally, he
observed:
"Po' white trash!" Then, he looked again, for the boy's eyes were
discomfortingly on his fat, black face, and the porter straightway
decided to be polite. Yet, for all his specious seeming of unconcern,
Samson was waking to the fact that he was a scarecrow, and his
sensitive pride made him cut his meals short in the dining-car, where
he was kept busy beating down inquisitive eyes with his defiant gaze.
He resolved after some thought upon a definite policy. It was a very
old policy, but to him new--and a discovery. He would change nothing in
himself that involved a surrender of code or conviction. But, wherever
it could be done with honor, he would concede to custom. He had come to
learn, not to give an exhibition of stubbornness. Whatever the outside
world could offer with a recommendation to his good sense, that thing
he would adopt and make his own.
It was late in the second afternoon when he stepped from the train at
Jersey City, to be engulfed in an unimagined roar and congestion. Here,
it was impossible to hold his own against the unconcealed laughter of
the many, and he stood for an instant glaring about like a caged tiger,
while three currents of humanity separated and flowed toward the three
ferry exits. It was a moment of longing for the quiet of his ancient
hills, where nothing more formidable than blood enemies existed to
disquiet and perplex a man's philosophy. Those were things he
understood--and even enemies at home did not laugh at a man's
peculiarities. For the first time in his life, Samson felt a tremor of
something like terror, terror of a great, vague thing, too vast and
intangible to combat, and possessed of the measureless power of many
hurricanes. Then, he saw the smiling face of Lescott, and Lescott's
extended hand. Even Lescott, immaculately garbed and fur-coated, seemed
almost a stranger, and the boy's feeling of intimacy froze to inward
constraint and diffidence. But Lescott knew nothing of that. The stoic
in Samson held true, masking his emotions.
"So you came," said the New Yorker, heartily, grasping the boy's hand.
"Where's your luggage? We'll just pick that up, and make a dash for the
ferry."
"Hyar hit is," replied Samson, who still carried his saddlebags. The
painter's eyes twinkled, but the mirth was so frank and friendly that
the boy, instead of glaring in defiance, grinned responsively.
"Right, oh!" laughed Lescott. "I thought maybe you'd brought a trunk,
but it's the wise man who travels light."
"I reckon I'm pretty green," acknowledged the youth somewhat ruefully.
"But I hain't been studyin' on what I looked like. I reckon thet don't
make much difference."
"Not much," affirmed the other, with conviction. "Let the men with
little souls spend their thought on that."
The artist watched his protege narrowly as they took their places
against the forward rail of the ferry-deck, and the boat stood out into
the crashing water traffic of North River. What Samson saw must be
absolutely bewildering. Ears attuned to hear a breaking twig must ache
to this hoarse shrieking of whistles. To the west, in the evening's
fading color, the sky-line of lower Manhattan bit the sky with its
serried line of fangs.
Yet, Samson leaned on the rail without comment, and his face told
nothing. Lescott waited for some expression, and, when none came, he
casually suggested:
"Samson, that is considered rather an impressive panorama over there.
What do you think of it?"
"Ef somebody was ter ask ye ter describe the shape of a rainstorm,
what would ye say?" countered the boy.
Lescott laughed.
"I guess I wouldn't try to say."
"I reckon," replied the mountaineer, "I won't try, neither."
"Do you find it anything like the thing expected?" No New Yorker can
allow a stranger to be unimpressed with that sky-line.
"I didn't have no notion what to expect." Samson's voice was matter-of-
fact. "I 'lowed I'd jest wait and see."
He followed Lescott out to the foot of Twenty-third Street, and
stepped with him into the tonneau of the painter's waiting car. Lescott
lived with his family up-town, for it happened that, had his canvases
possessed no value whatever, he would still have been in a position to
drive his motor, and follow his impulses about the world. Lescott
himself had found it necessary to overcome family opposition when he
had determined to follow the career of painting. His people had been in
finance, and they had expected him to take the position to which he
logically fell heir in activities that center about Wall Street. He,
too, had at first been regarded as recreant to traditions. For that
reason, he felt a full sympathy with Samson. The painter's place in the
social world--although he preferred his other world of Art--was so
secure that he was free from any petty embarrassment in standing
sponsor for a wild man from the hills. If he did not take the boy to
his home, it was because he understood that a life which must be not
only full of early embarrassment, but positively revolutionary, should
be approached by easy stages. Consequently, the car turned down Fifth
Avenue, passed under the arch, and drew up before a door just off
Washington Square, where the landscape painter had a studio suite.
There were sleeping-rooms and such accessories as seemed to the boy
unheard-of luxury, though Lescott regarded the place as a makeshift
annex to his home establishment.
"You'd better take your time in selecting permanent quarters," was his
careless fashion of explaining to Samson. "It's just as well not to
hurry. You are to stay here with me, as long as you will."
"I'm obleeged ter ye," replied the boy, to whose training in open-
doored hospitality the invitation seemed only natural. The evening meal
was brought in from a neighboring hotel, and the two men dined before
an open fire, Samson eating in mountain silence, while his host chatted
and asked questions. The place was quiet for New York, but to Samson it
seemed an insufferable pandemonium. He found himself longing for the
velvet-soft quiet of the nightfalls he had known.
"Samson," suggested the painter, when the dinner things had been
carried out and they were alone, "you are here for two purposes: first
to study painting; second, to educate and equip yourself for coming
conditions. It's going to take work, more work, and then some more work."
"I hain't skeered of work."
"I believe that. Also, you must keep out of trouble. You've got to
ride your fighting instinct with a strong curb."
"I don't 'low to let nobody run over me." The statement was not
argumentative; only an announcement of a principle which was not
subject to modification.
"All right, but until you learn the ropes, let me advise you."
The boy gazed into the fire for a few moments of silence.
"I gives ye my hand on thet," he promised.
At eleven o'clock the painter, having shown his guest over the
premises, said good-night, and went up-town to his own house. Samson
lay a long while awake, with many disquieting reflections. Before his
closed eyes rose insistently the picture of a smoky cabin with a
puncheon floor and of a girl upon whose cheeks and temples flickered
orange and vermilion lights. To his ears came the roar of elevated
trains, and, since a fog had risen over the Hudson, the endless night-
splitting screams of brazen-throated ferry whistles. He tossed on a
mattress which seemed hard and comfortless, and longed for a feather-bed.
"Good-night, Sally," he almost groaned. "I wisht I was back thar whar
I belongs." ... And Sally, more than a thousand miles away, was
shivering on the top of a stile with a white, grief-torn little face,
wishing that, too.
Meanwhile Lescott, letting himself into a house overlooking the Park,
was hailed by a chorus of voices from the dining-room. He turned and
went in to join a gay group just back from the opera. As he
thoughtfully mixed himself a highball, they bombarded him with questions.
"Why didn't you bring your barbarian with you?" demanded a dark-eyed
girl, who looked very much as Lescott himself might have looked had he
been a girl--and very young and lovely. The painter always thought of
his sister as the family's _edition de luxe_. Now, she flashed on
him an affectionate smile, and added: "We have been waiting to see him.
Must we go to bed disappointed?"
George stood looking down on them, and tinkled the ice in his glass.
"He wasn't brought on for purposes of exhibition, Drennie," he smiled.
"I was afraid, if he came in here in the fashion of his arrival--carrying
his saddlebags--you ultra-civilized folk might have laughed."
A roar of laughter at the picture vindicated Lescott's assumption.
"No! Now, actually with saddlebags?" echoed a young fellow with a
likeable face which was for the moment incredulously amused. "That goes
Dick Whittington one better. You do make some rare discoveries, George.
We celebrate you."
"Thanks, Horton," commented the painter, dryly. "When you New Yorkers
have learned what these barbarians already know, the control of your
over-sensitized risibles and a courtesy deeper than your shirt-fronts
--maybe I'll let you have a look. Meantime, I'm much too fond of all of
you to risk letting you laugh at my barbarian." _
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