Then, in the thickening gloom, Samson turned at the foot of the stile, and faced the gathering. He stood rigid, and his eyes flashed with deep passion. His hands, hanging at the seams of his jeans breeches, clenched, and his voice came in a slow utterance through which throbbed the tensity of a soul-absorbing bitterness.
"I knowed all 'bout Jesse Purvy's bein' shot.... When my pap lay a-dyin' over thar at his house, I was a little shaver ten years old ... Jesse Purvy hired somebody ter kill him ... an' I promised my pap that I'd find out who thet man was, an' thet I'd git 'em both--some day. So help me, God Almighty, I'm a-goin' ter git 'em both--some day!" The boy paused and lifted one hand as though taking an oath.
"I'm a-tellin' you-all the truth.... But I didn't shoot them shoots this mornin'. I hain't no truce-buster. I gives ye my hand on hit.... Ef them dawgs comes hyar, they'll find me hyar, an' ef they hain't liars, they'll go right on by hyar. I don't 'low ter run away, an' I don't 'low ter hide out. I'm agoin' ter stay right hyar. Thet's all I've got ter say ter ye."
For a moment, there was no reply. Then, the older man nodded with a gesture of relieved anxiety.
"Thet's all we wants ter know, Samson," he said, slowly. "Light, men, an' come in."
In days when the Indian held the Dark and Bloody Grounds a pioneer, felling oak and poplar logs for the home he meant to establish on the banks of a purling water-course, let his axe slip, and the cutting edge gashed his ankle. Since to the discoverer belongs the christening, that water-course became Cripple-shin, and so it is to-day set down on atlas pages. A few miles away, as the crow flies, but many weary leagues as a man must travel, a brother settler, racked with rheumatism, gave to his creek the name of Misery. The two pioneers had come together from Virginia, as their ancestors had come before them from Scotland. Together, they had found one of the two gaps through the mountain wall, which for more than a hundred miles has no other passable rift. Together, and as comrades, they had made their homes, and founded their race. What original grievance had sprung up between their descendants none of the present generation knew--perhaps it was a farm line or disputed title to a pig. The primary incident was lost in the limbo of the past; but for fifty years, with occasional intervals of truce, lives had been snuffed out in the fiercely burning hate of these men whose ancestors had been comrades.