xt72804xh44c https://exploreuk.uky.edu/dips/xt72804xh44c/data/mets.xml Fox, John, 1863-1919. 1909  books b92-151-29579513 English Scribner, : New York : Contact the Special Collections Research Center for information regarding rights and use of this collection. Kentuckians  : a knight of the Cumberland / by John Fox, Jr. ; illustrated by W.T. Smedley and F.C. Yohn. text Kentuckians  : a knight of the Cumberland / by John Fox, Jr. ; illustrated by W.T. Smedley and F.C. Yohn. 1909 2002 true xt72804xh44c section xt72804xh44c 
 


















































" Mart's a-gittin ready fer a tourneyment."

 



THE KENTUCKIANS

A KNIGHT OF THE

   CUMBERLAND




           BY

      JOHN FOX, JR.



    ILLUSTRATED BY
W. T. SMEDLEY AND F. C. YOHN






     NEW YORK
CELARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
       1909

 
















       COPYRIGHT, 1909, BY
  CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS


      THE KENTUCKIANS
  00pyright, 1897, by HARPER  BROTHZS


A KNIGHT OF THE CUMBERLAND
O(y-rigbt. 1906, by CRAPJLES SCRIBNEE'S SONS


 

              CONTENTS


THE KENTUCKIANS . . . . . .


A KNIGHT OF THE CUMBERLAND  .



  I. THE BLIGHT IN THE HILLS .  .   . 163

  IL. ON THE WILD DOG'S TRAIL.  .  173

  III. THE AURICULAR TALENT OF THE HON.
      SAMUEL BUDD  .  .  .  .  .   184

 IV. CLOSE QUARTERS  . .   .  .  . 195

 V. BACK TO THE HILLS.  .  .  .   213

 VI. THE GREAT DAY  .  .  .  .  . 220

 VII. AT LAST-THE TOURNAMENT .  .  232

VIII. THE KNIGHT PASSES .  .  .  . 258



PAGE
L


161

 This page in the original text is blank.


 

ILLUSTRATIONS



"Mart's a gittin' ready fer a tourneyment " Frontispiece
                                              FACING
                                              PAGE
Marshall went at once to the piano . . . . . 60

"He's in jail ". . . . . . . . . . . . 86

He tossed his weapon aside. . . . . . . .1 28

"If I'd a' known hit was you I'd a stayed in jail" 172

The Knight of the Cumberland reined in before
    the Blight . . . . . . . . . . . . 246

But every knight and every mounted policemen took
    out after the outlaw. . . . . . . . .256

 This page in the original text is blank.


 

















THE KENTUCKIANS

 





















      TO

  MY FATHER
AND MY FATHERS
KENTUCKIANS


 
I



T    HE people of the little Kentucky capital
r]    do not often honor the gray walls of their
state-house. The legislators play small part in
the social life of the town. A member must have
blood, as well as gifts unusual, who can draw
from the fine old homes a people with a full cen-
tury of oratory and social distinction behind
them, and, further back, the proud traditions of
Virginia. For years young Marshall was the
first to quite fill the measure, and he was to speak
that afternoon. The ladies' gallery was full,
and the Governcr a; daughter, Anne, sat midway.
About her was a sudden flutter and a leaning for-
ward when Marshall strode a little consciously
down the aisle and took his seat. When he rose
to speak, the quick silence of the House was a
tribute to thrill him.
  It was oratory that one hears rarely now, even
in the South. There was an old-fashioned pitch
to the vibrant voice, the fire of strong feeling in
the fearless eye, an old-fashioned grace and dig-
nity of manner, and a dash that his high color
showed to be not wholly natural. The speech
                       3

 
THE KENTUCKIANS



was old-fashioned, emotional, the sentences full,
swinging, poetic, rich with imagery and classical
allusion. And always-in voice, eye, bearing,
and gesture-was there gallant consciousness of
the gallery behind. More than once his eyes
swept the curve of it; and when he came to pay
his unfailing tribute to the women of his land,
he turned quite around, until his back was upon
the Speaker and his uplifted face straight tow-
ard the Governor's daughter, who moved her
idle fan and colored as many an eye was turned
from him to her.
  The Speaker's gavel lay untouched before him
when the last period rang through the chamber.
It would have been useless against the outbreak
of applause that followed. Marshall had flamed
anew from an already brilliant past. Anne was
leaning back with luminous eyes and a proud
heart. The gallant old Governor himself was
hurrying from under the gallery to bend over
his proteg6 and grasp his hand. The pit of the
house buzzed like a hive of bees. Down there
a Greek passion for oratory was still alive; in
the older men the young fellow stirred memories
that were sacred; and the hum rose so high that
the sharp rap of the gavel went through it twice
unnoticed, then twice again, more sharply still.
The Speaker's face was turned to one dark cor-
ner of the room where, under the big clock, stood
                      4

 
THE KENTUCKIANS



the rough figure of a mountaineer, with hands
behind him and swaying awkwardly from side
to side, as though his tongue were refusing him
utterance. Once he cleared his throat huskily,
and a smile started on many a face, and quickly
stopped, for it was plain that the man's trouble
was not embarrassment, but some storm of feel-
ing that threatened to engulf his brain and surge
out in a torrent of invective. The mountaineer
himself seemed fearful of some such thing; for,
with turbulent calmness, he began slowly, and
went on with great care. No reason was ap-
parent, but at the sound of his voice the House
turned toward him with the silence of premoni-
tion. One by one wrinkles came into the Speak-
er's strong, placid face. Marshall, quick to feel
merit and generous to grant it, had straightened
in his chair. The old Governor, going out, was
halted by the voice at the door. And one, who
himself loved the Governor's daughter, remem-
bered long afterward that she leaned suddenly
toward the man, with her eyes wide and her
face quite tense with absorption. The secret was
in more than his simple bigness, more than his
massive head and heavy hair, in more even than
the extraordinary voice that came from him. It
was an electric recognition of force-the force
with which Nature does her heavy work under
the earth and in the clouds; and here and there
                      5

 
THE KENTUCKIANS



an old member knew that a prophet was among
them.
  It was the old fight-patrician against plebe-
ian, crude force against culture-but the House
knew that young Randolph Marshall, who al-
ready challenged the brilliant traditions of a
great forefather, who was a promise to redeem
a degenerate present and bring back a great past,
had found an easy peer in the awkward bulk just
risen before them, unknown.
  There was little applause when the mountain-
eer was done. The surprise was too great, the
people were too much moved. Adjournment
came at once, and everybody asked who the man
was, and nobody could tell. One member, who
still stood gripping his own wrist hard, recalled
on a sudden the recent death of a mountain rep-
resentative; and, on a sudden, the old Governor
at the door remembered that he had signed cre-
dentials for somebody to take a dead member's
place. This was the man. Outside, Anne Bruce
came slowly down the oval stone stairway, and
at the bottom Marshall was waiting for her. She
smiled a little absently when he raised his hat,
and the two stepped from the Greek portico into
the sunlight and, passing slowly under the elms
and out the sagging iron gate, turned toward
the old Mansion. On the curb-stone, just out-
side, stood one of the figures familiar to the
                     6

 

           THE KENTUCKIANS
streets of the capital, a man in stripes- a
" trusty " on parole-whose square, sullen jaw
caught Anne's attention sharply, as did the sign
of force in a face always. A moment later, the
big mountaineer stopped there and talked kindly
with the convict awhile. Then, still in a tremor,
he moved on alone, across the town and through
the old wooden bridge over the river, then out
to Devil's Hollow and the hills.


 
II



T    HE sun must climb mountains first-the
      Cumberland range, that grim and once
effectual protest against the march of the race
westward. Over this frowning wall, the first
light flashes down through primitive woods and
into fastnesses that hold the sources of great riv-
ers and riches unimagined, under and on the
earth; beyond, it slants the crests of lesser hills
and bushy knolls that sink by-and-by to the
gentle undulations of blue-grass pasture and
woodland; south and west then, catching the
spire of convent and monastery, over fields
of pennyroyal, and finally through the Pur-
chase - last clutch of the Spaniard - to light
up the yellow river that holds a strange mix-
ture of soils and people in the hollow of its
arm.
  Something more than a century ago the range
gave way a little, as earth and water must when
the Anglo-Saxon starts, but only to say, " You
may pass over and on, but what drops behind is
mine; and I hold my own." To-day its woods
are primeval, its riches are unrifled, and its peo-
                      8

 
THE KENTUCKIANS



pie are the people of another age-for the range
has held its own.
  These men of the mountains and the people
of the blue-grass are the extremes of civilization
in the State. Through the brush country they
can almost touch hands, and yet they know as
little and have as little care of one another as
though a sea were between them. A few years
ago there was but one point where they ever
came in contact, one point where their interests
could clash. That was the capital, the lazy little
capital, on both sides of the river between the big,
sleepy hills, with its old, gray wooden bridge, its
sturdy old homes, its State buildings of gray
stone and classic porticos, and its dead asleep, up
in the last sunlight, around the first great Ken-
tuckian-the hunter Boone.    There the river
links highland with lowland like an all but use-
less artery, barren hill-side with rich pasture-
land, blue-grass with rhododendron, deteriora-
tion with slow progress, darkness with light that
sometimes is a little dim, the present century
with the last. The big hills about the town are
little mountains that have followed the river
down from the great highlands, and have brought
with them mute messengers mountain trees,
mountain birds, and mountain flowers-to ask
that the dark region within be not wholly forgot,
and to show that the wish of Nature at least is
                       9

 
THE KENTUCKIANS



for brotherhood. Down this river come wild
raftsmen, who stalk along the middle of the
street, single file and curiously subdued; who
climb through the car windows, and are swept
through the blue-grass, to trudge the old Wilder-
ness Road back home. Here are two points of
close contact for the mountaineer and the low-
lander-the legislature and the penitentiary.
Thirty miles away is an old university-the first
college built west of the Alleghanies-where a
mountaineer drifted in occasionally to learn to
teach or to preach. Nowhere else and in no
way else had the extremes ever touched, until
now, for the first time in history, they were in
conflict.
  A feud--one of those relics of medihval days
that had been held like a fossil in the hills-had
broken out afresh. It was called the Keaton-
Stallard " war " in the mountains, and it had been
giving trouble a long while. Recently the coun-
ty judge had been driven from the court-house,
and the Attorney-General of the State had gone
with soldiers to hold court at the county-seat.
The only verdict rendered during the term was
against the General himself for carrying a
weapon concealed; and a heavy fine was imposed
for the same which the Governor had to remit.
Meanwhile the feudsmen were out in the brush,
waiting. When the soldiers went back to the
                      I0

 
THE KENTUCKIANS



blue-grass, they came out from their hiding-
places and began over again. Now it was worse
than ever. The Keatons had got the Stallards
besieged not long since, and the Keaton leader
tried to get a cannon. In good faith, and with
a humor that was mighty because unconscious,
he had tried to purchase one from the State au-
thorities-from the Governor himself. Judge,
jailer, sheriff, and constable were involved now,
and the county was nearing anarchy.
  The reputation of the State was at issue, and
civilization in the blue-grass was rebuking bar-
barism in the mountains. Abolish the county,
was the cry at the capital, and that afternoon
Marshall had voiced it. He had been taken off
guard. He had gone down the current of tradi-
tion, catching up straws that are anybody's for
the catching-stock allusions to wolf-scalps and
pauperism; scathing mountain lawlessness as a
red blot on the 'scutcheon of the State, which,
to quote the spirit of his talk, had stained the
highland border of the commonwealth with
blood, and abroad was engulfing the reputation
of the lowland blue-grass; contrasting, finally,
the garden-spot of the earth, his own land of
milk and honey, with the black ribs of rock and
forest that still harbor the evil spirit of the
Middle Ages. It had never been better done,
for under the humor and easy good-nature of the
                      I I

 
THE KENTUCKIANS



speech were a quivering pride of State and a bit-
ter arraignment of the people who were bringing
it into disrepute. The mountaineer was a strag-
gler, a deserter from the ranks. He was vicious,
untrustworthy, ignorant, lawless, and content
with his degradation. He was idle, shiftless,
hopeless; a burden to the State, a drawback to
civilization. That was the plain truth under
Marshall's courteous words, and, well told as it
was, it would have been better told had he known
the presence of the rough champion who, answer-
ing just that truth, tore apart his loose net-work
with the ease of summer lightning lifting the
horizon at dusk. His was a voice from the wil-
derness; it bespoke a new and throbbing power
in the destiny of the State; it proclaimed a com-
mercial epoch. He admitted much, he denied
somewhat, he made little defence, and he apolo-
gized not at all. His appeal was for fairness-
that was all; and it was fierce, passionate, and
tender. He was a mountaineer. He lived in
the county under discussion, in the town where
the feud was going on.  More, an uncle of his
had once been a leader of the Stallard faction.
His people were idle, shiftless, ignorant, lawless.
No wonder. They had started as backwoods-
men a century ago; they had lived apart from
the world and without books, schools, or
churches since the Revolution; they had had a
                      12

 
THE KENTUCKIANS



century of such a life in which to deteriorate.
Their law was lax. They lived apart from one
another as well, and, of necessity, public senti-
ment was weak and unity of action difficult-
except for mischief. It was easy for ten bad
men to give character to a community-to em-
broil ninety good ones. And that was what had
been done. The good ninety were there for
every ten that were bad. Nobody deplored the
feud more than he, but he saw there were times
when people must take the law into their own
hands. The mountain people must in the end
govern themselves, and they could not begin too
soon. To disrupt the county would be to take
away the only remedy possible in the end. Then
the heavy brows lifted, and a surprising chal-
lenge came. By what right and from what high
place did the people of the blue-grass rebuke
the people of the mountains Were they less
quick to fight In one section, the fighting was
by individuals; in the other, families and friends
for a good reason took up the quarrel. Was
not that the great difference And for whom
was there the less excuse For the people who
knew, or for the ignorant; for them who could
enforce the law, or for them who, because of
their environment, were almost helpless Who
knew how powerful that environment had been
Who knew that it did not make the mighty dis-
                     '3

 
THE KENTUCKIANS



tinctions between the mountaineers and the peo-
ple of the blue-grass; that the slipping of a linch-
pin in a wagon on the Wilderness Road had not
made the difference between his own family and
the proudest in the State; that the gentleman
himself was not scoring his own kin Why not
And with stirring queries like these he closed
like a trumpet over the future of his much-
mocked hills when their riches were unlocked to
their own people and to the outer world. It
was the man that made the sensation. What he
said, at another time and from another source,
would have got scant attention and no credence.
But two facts spoke for him now: already a tide
of speculation was turning into those little-known
hills, and there before the House was at least
one human product of them who plainly could
force the question to be handled with serious
care.
  It was the power of the speech that stung
Marshall. The matter of it was of little mo-
ment to him. Once in a while he had chased a
red fox from the blue-grass to the foot-hills.
As a boy, he had gone with his father on annual
trips to the Cumberland to fish and to hunt deer.
The Marshalls even owned mountain lands some-
where, which, with their sole crop of taxes, had
been a jest in the family for generations. That
was the little he knew of his own mountains.
                     14

 
THE KENTUCKIANS



He had cared even less; but, while he listened,
his sense of fairness made him quickly sorry that
he had spoken with such confidence when there
was room for any doubt; and before the moun-
taineer was done he was silently and uneasily
measuring strength with him, point by point.
  To Anne, the man and the speech were a rev-
elation: she barely knew her State had moun-
tains. She hardly spoke on her way home, and
she seemed not to notice Marshall's unusual si-
lence.
  " He has the fascination of something new
and perhaps terrible," she said once. " And it's
startling, what he said. I wonder if it can be
true " And again, a moment later, slowly:
" It is very strange; it all seems to have hap-
pened before."
  Marshall's answer was a little grim:
  " Once is enough for me, I think."
  " You and your speech," she went on, barely
heeding his interruption. " It seemed as though
I had already heard you make just that speech
under just those circumstances. It's one of those
queer experiences that seem to have occurred be-
fore, down to minute details."
  "That was the trouble," said Marshall,
quietly. " I made that speech, practically, on
my graduating-day. I hadn't studied the ques-
tion since."
                      IS

 

THE KENTUCKIANS



  Anne's face cleared. " Oh, that's the explana-
tion! A thing seems to have happened before,
I suppose, because it has so nearly happened that
it seems to be exactly the same thing."
  " Yes," assented Marshall, but he was watch-
ing Anne steadily. He was already smarting
with humiliation, and it hurt him that she could
be so absorbed as to carelessly press the thorn
in his flesh still farther in, and apparently not
guess or not care how it rankled.
  " Once even that man's face seemed familiar,"
she added. " I'd like to know all about him."
They had reached the steps of the Mansion, and
Marshall was taking off his hat.
  " Make him tell you."
  Anne looked up quickly. " I will."
  " Good-by."
  Anne smiled. She was accustomed to that
tone; she had forgiven it many times; she had
been distrait, and she would forgive it again.
  " Good-by," she said gently.



i6


 
III



IT was Saturday, and Marshall always spent
   Sunday at home. It was the run of an hour
to Lexington on the fast train, and at sunset he
was in a buggy, behind a little blooded mare, and
on one of the white turnpikes that make a spider's
web of the blue-grass, speeding home. A red arc
of the sun was still visible just behind the statue
of the great Commoner, and across the long, low
sky one cloud in the east was still rosy with light.
Already the dew was rising, and when he swept
down over a little bridge in a hollow the air was
deliciously cool and heavy with the wet fragrance
of mint and pennyroyal. On either side the ves-
pers of a song-sparrow would radiate now and
then from the top of a low weed, and a meadow-
lark would rise and wheel, singing, toward the
west. Marshall's chin was almost on his breast.
The reins were loose, and the noble little mare
was plying her swift legs so easily under her that
her high head and shining back gave hardly a
sign of effort.  She let the dark have barely
time to settle over the rolling fields before she
stopped of her own accord at her master's home
                      17

 

THE KENTUCKIANS



gate. Marshall got out with some difficulty,
and, without a word of command, she walked
through the gate and waited for him to climb
in. The buggy made no noise on the thick
turf, and no one was in sight when he reached
the stiles.
  " Tom!"
  " Yessuh!
  The voice came from a whitewashed cabin
behind a clump of lilac, and an old negro shuffled
hastily after it. The young fellow's voice was
impatient. A woman's figure appeared in the
doorway under the sunrise window-light as Mar-
shall climbed the stiles.
  " Rannie! "
  " Yes, mother," he answered; and he held his
breath while she kissed him. It was a big hall
that he entered, with a graceful, semi-Oriental
arch midway, and two doors opening on either
side. The parlor was lighted, and through its
door old furniture and old portraits were visible;
and ancient wall-paper, brought from England a
century since, blue in color, with clouds painted
under the high ceiling, and an English stag-chase
running entirely around the four walls. The
ring of girlish laughter came down the stairway
as Marshall passed into the dining-room. His
mother had gathered in a little house-party of
girls from the neighborhood, as she often did, to
                      i 8

 

THE KENTUCKIANS



brighten his home-coming. Supper was over,
and they were awaiting the arrival of young men
from town. Marshall ate little and had little to
say, and very slowly a shadow passed over his
mother's brow and eyes.
  " What's wrong, my son " she asked quietly.
  "Nothing, mother, nothing. Don't bother."
He laughed slightly. " Maybe it's because I've
got a rival."
  His mother smiled.
  " Oh, no, not with her "-he laughed again-
" at least, not yet. A man beat me speaking
this afternoon. He took me by surprise, but
I'll be ready for him next time. Still, I'm not
very well, and I can't go into the parlor to-
night. Besides, I've got some writing to do.
Tell them how sorry I am, won't you " He
rose from his seat, for he could hear the com-
ing guests in the hall. " Good-night," he said;
and he kissed her forehead as he passed be-
hind her chair, but the shadow that was there
stayed.
  A little darky girl in a checked cotton dress
lighted his way outside along a path of round-
stone flagging. For the the house was built after
the earliest colonial fashion, with an ell left and
right-one of which, disconnected from the
house and called the " office " in slavery days,
had been Marshall's room since the day he
                     '9

 
THE KENTUCKIANS



started to town to school. It signified paternal
trust; it meant independence. His room was
ready. The student-lamp was lighted. On the
table was a vase of flowers from his mother's
garden, and he sat down close to their fragrance,
and, with a conscious purpose of fulfilling his
word, he did try for a while to write. But his
hand shook, and he arose and opened a pantry
door to one side of the fireplace, and called from
the window for old Tom to bring him drinking-
water. The glisten of glass-ware came through
the crack of the pantry door, and the old negro
gave it one sullen glance and went out without
speaking. Marshall was walking up and down
the room. Once he stopped at the mantel to
look at the picture of a very young girl in white
muslin and with a big Leghorn hat held lightly
by one slender hand in her lap. Under it was
a scrawling line, " To Rannie from Anne." He
turned sharply away and sat down at his table
again, with his forehead on his crossed arms.
There had been no trouble, no doubt, between
the two in those young days. Now there seemed
to be nothing else; and it was in one of these
wretched intervals of causeless misunderstanding
that a hulking countryman had taught him his
first bitter lesson in defeat while Anne looked on.
They were having a good time in the parlor.
Somebody was playing a waltz. There was a
                     20

 
THE KENTUCKIANS



ripple of light laughter through the hall door,
and some deep-voiced young fellow was talking
low on the porch not far from his window. The
sounds smote him with a sharp pain of remote-
ness from it all, and straightway a memory be-
gan to bridge the gap between him and those
other days; so that he rose presently and took
down the picture and put it on the table before
him, looking at it steadily. In a little while he
unlocked a drawer at his right hand, and took
out a note-book and began with the beginning,
slowly turning the leaves. It was filled with his
own manuscript. Here and there was a verse,
" To Anne." On every page, from every para-
graph, the name sprang from the white paper-
Anne I Anne! Anne ! He had meant to burn
that book; the impulse came now, as always;
but now, as always, he went on turning the
leaves. It ran back years-to the childhood of
the girl. " Her father's brain, her mother's
heart," ran one line, " but her beauty is her
own." Some of the verse was almost good. It
was Anne's brow here, her eyes there, her mouth,
her hand, her arm; " that arm," he read, smiling
faintly-" the little hollow midway from which
the gracious, lovely lines start up and down. It
would hold the rain a snowdrop might catch;
dew enough for the bath-the ivory bath-of
a humming-bird; enough nectar to make Cupid
                     2 1

 
THE KENTUCKIANS



delirious, were he to use it for a drinking-cup.
Looking for Psyche, the little god rests there,
no doubt, while she sleeps. It he doesn't, he is
blind, indeed."
  Those were the days when he thought he
might be a poet or a novelist if either were a
manlier trade; if there were not always the more
serious business of law and politics to which he
was committed by inheritance. Still it was very
foolish, the book, and with the impulse again
to burn, he placed it back in the drawer and
turned the key. Then he put the picture in its
place, and sat down again, as though he would
go on with his work, but, instead, reached sud-
denly across the table. The sound of old Tom's
banjo was coming up through his back window
from the lilacs below, and, as his fingers closed
around the glass, the strum started up before
him the old array of ever-weakening visions-
the negro's reproachful look, the deepening
shadows in his mother's face, the pain in Anne's
clear eyes-and now a new one, the figure of the
mountaineer, burly, vivid, and so menacing that
he felt nerve, muscle, and brain get suddenly
tense as though to meet some shock. And there
was his hand trembling like an old man's under
the green shade of the lamp. The sight smote
him. through with a fear of himself so sharp
that he brushed his hands rapidly across his eyes,
                     22

 
THE KENTUCKIANS



and with tightened lips once more took up his
pen.
  The moon looked in at his window radiantly
when he pushed the curtains aside to close a shut-
ter, so that he changed his mind about going to
bed, and blew out his lamp and sat at the win-
dow, looking out. The young men were going
home. He heard the laughing good-bys in the
hall, and the low, laughing talk of the young
fellows where they were unhitching their horses
behind the shrubbery; then the soft beat of hoofs
and wheels on the turf, the loud slam of the pike
gate, and the wild rush of the young bucks racing
each other home. There was a rustle in the hall,
the closing of a door below, a shutter above, and
the house was still.
  Not a breath of air moved outside. The
white aspens were quiet as the sombre, aged pines
that had been brought over from old Hanover,
in Virginia, and stood with proud solemnity be-
fitting the honor. Across the meadow came the
low bellow of a restless bull; nearer, the tinkle
of a sheep-bell; and closer, the drowsy twitter of
birds in the lilac-bushes at the garden gate. Be-
yond the lawn and the mock-orange hedge was
the woodland, with its sinuous line of soft shadow
against the sky, and the broken moonlight under
its low branches. Primitive soil, that woodland;
no plough had run a furrow through it; no white
                     23

 
THE KENTUCKIANS



man had called it his own before the boy's great
forefather, asleep under the wrinkled pines.
How full of peace it was-how still!
  Over in the other ell, his mother had gone to
sleep with the last prayer on her lips, the last
thought in her heart, for him. She had taken
him with her into dreamland, no doubt. She
was affected, his mother, so a teasing old aunt
had told him-and her; but never in his life
could he remember her perfect poise of body and
soul to waver, her sweet dignity to unbend.
Proud, but very gentle, her face was-he knew
but one other like it. " To be your father's wife
and your mother, my son," he had heard her, in
simple faith, once say. That was her mission on
earth. And what a mission he was making for
that gracious lifel
  In the dark parlor, just through the wall of
his room, were Jouett portraits of his kinspeople
-of the great Marshall, whose great day people
said he was to bring back. Next him was that
Marshall's youngest son, a proud-looking young
fellow with a noble face and a quiet smile, who
had died early, and who, the old aunt said, was
the more brilliant of the two. Rannie was like
that great-uncle, she used often to say. And
he, Marshall knew, had quietly and with beauti-
ful dignity drunk himself to death for a woman.
Men could do that in his day. Men had-the
                     24

 
THE KENTUCKIANS



young fellow rose, shivering from another rea-
son than the cooling night air; it still was pos-
sible.
  Over the quiet fields of blue-grass and young
wheat and blossoming clover, in the capital,
Boone Stallard was looking from his window on
the prison, white in the moonlight as a sepulchre,
and on the bleak cliff rising behind it; and his
last thoughts, too, were on his home and his peo-
ple; the old two-roomed log cabin with its long
porch and long slanting roof, Black Mountain
rising in a sheer wall of green behind it, and a
little creek tinkling under laurel and rhododen-
dron into the Cumberland; his mother, gaunt,
aged, in brown homespun, with her pipe, in a
corner of the fireplace; opposite, his sister-
whose husband had been killed in the feud-
with a worn, pallid face and dull eyes; his half-
brother, cleaning his Winchester, no doubt; the
children in bed; the talk of the feud, always the
feud. They were all Stallards on that creek,
just as in the next bend of the river all were
Keatons their hereditary enemies. They were
"i a high-heeled and over-bearin' race," the Stal-
lards were; and they were hated and fought, and
they hated and fought back, with the end not yet
come. All his life, Boone Stallard had known
only hardship, work, self-denial. There was no
love of sloth, no vice of blood, to stunt his
                      25

 
THE KENTUCKIANS



growth; as yet, no love of woman to confuse his
purpose, nor inspire it.
  Not once did the two currents cross but on
the thinkers themselves; on nothing else-not
even on Anne.



26


 
IV



A    WEEK   later the Mansion was thrown
      open, for the third time during the ses-
sion, to the law-makers and their wives. Stal-
lard, Colton said, must go; and Colton's word,
now, was to the good-natured mountaineer little
short of law.
  He had found an unknown ally when he
opened the great Kentucky daily on the morning
after his first fight. There was a long account
of the debate, a strong tribute to " The Cumber-
land Cyclone," as Colton, the correspondent,
called him, and an editorial on the question that
bore the distinctive ear-marks of the great man
in charge. That same morning, when the ques-
tion of disruption came up, a member who had
considerable aspiration, some foresight, and no
principles to make or mar his future, and who
knew he would help himself in another section
and not harm himself in his own, rose and took
sides with Stallard, emphasizing the editor's em-
phasis of Stallard's idea that the mountain people
must some day govern themselves, and, there-
fore, would be better let alone now. To the sur-
                     27

 
THE KENTUCKIANS



prise of all, Marshall rose and stated frankly
the lack of positive knowledge on which he had
spoken the day before. While he must hold to
certain