xt77wm13nh4k https://exploreuk.uky.edu/dips/xt77wm13nh4k/data/mets.xml Buck, Charles Neville, b. 1879. 1920  books b92-177-30418494 English Doubleday, Page, : Garden City, New York : Contact the Special Collections Research Center for information regarding rights and use of this collection. Tempering  / by Charles Neville Buck ; frontispiece by Ralph Pallen Coleman. text Tempering  / by Charles Neville Buck ; frontispiece by Ralph Pallen Coleman. 1920 2002 true xt77wm13nh4k section xt77wm13nh4k 

















THE TEMPERING

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" ' I've never seen the evening star rise up over the Kain tuck
Ridges that I haven't  . . . thought of it as your own
star' "

 

THE



TEMPERING



            BY
CHARLES NEVILLE BUCK
  Author of "The Call of the Cumberland,"
     "The Battle Cry," etc., etc.











        FRONTISPIECE BY
    RALPH PALLEN COLEMAN









GARDEN CITY       NEW YORK
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE  COMPANY
           1920

 


















       Copyright, 1920, by
DOUHLEDIAY, PAGE     COMPANY
All rights reserved, including that of
   translation intoforeign langwages
   including the Scandinavian



Copyright, 191, by The Ridgway Company

 


















THE TEMPERING

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        THE TEMPERING

                    CHAPTER I

      OTHIN' don't nuver come ter pass hyarabouts!"
  "N     The boy perched disconsolately on the rotting
       fence threw forth his lament aloud to the laurelled
silences of the mountain sides and the emptiness of space.
  "Every doggone day's jest identical with all ther bal-
ance-save only thet hit's wuss!"
  He sat with his back turned on the only signs of human
life within the circle of his vision; unless one called the
twisting creek-bed at his front, which served that pocket of
the Kentucky Cumberlands as a high-way, a human mani-
festation.
  There behind him a log-cabin breathed smokily through
its mud-daubed chimney; a pioneer habitation in every
crude line and characteristic. On the door hung, drying,
the odorous pelt of a "varmint." Against the wall leaned
a rickety spinning wheel.
  To all that, which he hated, he kept his stiff back turned,
but his ears had no defence against the cracked falsetto of
an aged voice crooning a ballad that the pioneers had
brought across the ridges from tide-water . . . a ballad
whose phrasing was quaintly redolent of antiquity.
  The boy kicked his broganned heels and snorted. His
clothes were home-spun and home sewed and his touselled
shock of red-brown hair cropped out from under a coon
skin cap. His given name was Boone and his life was as
hobbled by pioneer restrictions as was that of the greater
Boone-but with a difference.
  The overland argonauts who had set their feet and faces
                           3

 

THE TEMPERING



westward across these same mountains bore on their mem-
ories the stimulating image of all that they had left behind
and carried before their eyes the alluring hope of what they
were to find.
  This Boone, whose eyes, set in a freckled face, were as
blue as overhead skies and deep with a fathomless discon-
tent, had neither past nor future to contemplate-only a
consuming hunger for a life less desolate. That of his
people was unaltered-save for a lapse into piteous human
lethargy-from the days when the other Boone had come
on moccasined feet to win the West-for they were the off-
spring of the stranded; the heirs of the lost.
  Over all the high, hunched steepness of the ranges, Au-
tumn had wandered with a palette of high colour and a
brush of frost, splashing out the summer's sun-burned
green with champagne yellow, burgundy-red and claret-
crimson. To the nostrils, too, there floated with the thistle-
down, hints of bursting ripe for-grapes and apples ready
for the cider press.
  Countless other times Boone had sat here on this top-rail
in his hodden-gray clothes and his slate-gray despair, mak-
ing the same plaint, and knowing that only a miracle would
ever bring around the road's turning anything less com-
monplace than a yoke of oxen or a native as drab as the
mule he straddled.
  Yet as the boy capped his lamentation with a sigh that
seemed to struggle up from the depths of his being, a
breeze whispered along the mountain sides; the crisp leaves
stirred to a tinkle like low laughter and there materialized
a horseman who was in no wise to be confused with ordi-
nary travellers in these parts. Boone Wellver caught his
breath in a gasp of surprise and interest, and a low whistle
sounded between his white teeth.
  "Lord o' Mercy," breathed the urchin, "hit's a furri-
ner! Now I wonder who is he,"'
  The stranger was mounted on a mule whose long ears
flapped dejectedly and whose shamble had in it the flineh



4

 

THE TEMPERING



of galled withers, but the man in the saddle sat as if he
had a charger under him-and it was this indefinable dec-
laration of bearing that the boy saw and which, at first
glance, fired his imagination.
  The traveller's face was bronzed and the moustache and
imperial, trimmed in the fashion of the Third Napoleon's
court, were only beginning to lose their sandy colour under
a dominance of gray.
  The eyes-though now they were weary with travel and
something more fundamental, too, than physical fatigue
were luminous of quality and a singularly clear gray of
colour. They were such eyes as could be dogged and stern
as flint or deep and bafflingly gentle like mossy waters.
  Covering the bony flanks of the mule and bulging gro-
tesquely to port and starboard, hung capacious canvas
saddle pockets-and as the stranger drew rein the boy's
eyes dwelt with candid inquisitiveness upon them. Out
of the cavernous maw of one of these receptacles protruded
the corner of a tin dispatch box and fastened to a cantle
ring behind the saddle was a long, slender object in a
water-proof covering laced at the top.
  At sight of that, Boone's eyes livened yet more, for he
recognized the shrouded shape though it was a thing al-
most as foreign to his world as starlight is to the floor of
the sea. Once he had been to Marlin Town on a troubled
Court day when a detachment of militia had stood guard
in the square to overawe warring factions and avert blood-
shed. Their failure to do so is another story, but their
commanding officer had worn a sabre, and now with a
stirring excitement the boy divined that this "qu'ar con-
traption" dangling at the newcomer's back was nothing
less portentous than a sword!
  Straightway the drab curtain of life's unrelief was rent
for Boone Wellver, and shot through with gleaming fila-
ments of wonderment and imaginative speculation. Here,
of a sudden, came Romance on horseback, and what matter
that the horse was a mule 



5

 

THE TEMPERING



  "Son," he said in a kindly manner, "I'm bound for
Cyrus Spradling's house, and I begin to suspect that I
must have lost my way. How about it"
  Boone did not immediately reply. He merely poured
out of his wide and innocent blue eyes a scrutiny as in-
quisitorial as though he had been stationed here on picket
duty and were vested with full authority to halt whom-
soever approached.
  While the newcomer sat, waiting in his saddle, Boone
Wellver vaulted lightly down from fence rail to gravel
roadway and, standing there as slim yet as sturdy as a
hickory sapling, raised one hand towards the mule's flank,
but arrested it midway as he inquired, "Thet critter o'
yourn-hit don't foller kickin', does hit"
  "Stand clear of its heels," cautioned the man hastily.
"I've known this beast only since morning-but as
acquaintance ripens, admiration wanes. What's your
name  "
  "Boone Wellver. What's yourn 1"
  "Mine is Victor McCalloway. Does your father live
near here"
  "Hain't got no daddy."
  "Your mother, then"
  "Hain't got no mammy nuther."
  The stranger gazed down from his saddle with interested
eyes, and under the steadiness of his scrutiny Boone was
smitten with an abrupt self-consciousness.
  "Don't you belong to any one at all" The question
was put slowly, but the reply came with prompt and pride-
ful certitude.
  "I'm my own man. I dwells with a passel of old granny
folks an' gray-heads, though. " Having so enlightened
his questioner, he added with a ring of pride, as though
having confessed the unflattering truth about his immedi-
ate household, he was entitled to boast a little of more dis-
tant connections:



6

 

THE TEMPERING



  " Asa Gregory's my fust cousin by blood. I reckon
ye've done heered tell of him, hain't ye"
  Across the face of Victor MeCalloway flitted the ghost
of a satirical smile, which he speedily repressed.
  "Yes," he said briefly with noncommittal gravity, "I've
heard of him."
  To the outer world from which MeCalloway came few
mountain names had percolated, attended by notability.
A hermit people they are and unheralded beyond their own
environment-yet now and then the reputation of one of
them will not be denied. So the newspaper columns had
given Asa Gregory space, headlines even, linking to his
name such appositives as " mountain desperado " and
"feud-killer. "
  When he had shot old John Carr to death in the high-
way, such unstinted publicity had been accorded to his
acts-such shudder-provoking fulness of detail-that Asa
had found in it a very embarrassment of fame.
  But the boy spoke the name of his kinsman in accents of
unquestioning admiration, and Victor McCalloway only
nodded as he repeated,
  "Yes, I've heard of him."
  Then as the traveller gathered up his reins to start on-
ward, a tall young man came, with the swing of an elastic
stride, around the next turn and, nodding to the boy, halted
at the mule's head. Hie was an upstanding fellow, of
commanding height, and the tapering staunchness of a
timber wedge. He carried a rifle upon his shoulder and his
clear-chiselled face bore the pleasant recommendation of
straight-gazing candour. His clothing was rough, yet es-
caped the seeming of roughness, because it sat upon his
splendid body and limbs as if a part of them-like a
hawk's plumage. But it was the eyes under a broad fore-
head that were most notable. They were unusually fine
and frank; dark and full of an almost gentle meditative-
ness. Here was a native, thought the man on the mule,



7

 

THE TEMPERING



whose gaze, unlike that of many of his fellows, was neither
sinister nor furtive. Here was one who seemed to have
escaped the baleful heritage of grudge-bearing.
  Then McCalloway's thought was interrupted by the
voice of the boy declaring eagerly: "This hyar furriner
'lows ter ride over ter Cyrus Spradlin's dwellin' house.
We've jest been talkin' erbout ye-an' he's already done
heered of ye, Asa!"
  The tall man on foot stiffened, at the announcement, into
something like hostile rigidity, and the velvet softness of
eye which, a moment ago, a woman might have envied,
flashed into the hard agate of suspicion.
  He stood measuring the stranger for an uncompromising
matter of moments before he spoke, and when words came
they were couched in a steely evenness of tone. "So ye've
heerd of me-hev ye"
  He paused a moment after that, his face remaining mask-
like, then he went on:
  "I reckon whatever ye heered tell of me war either right
favourable or right scandalous-dependin' on whether ye
hed speech with my friends-or my enemies. I've got a
lavish of both sorts."
  McCalloway also stiffened at the note of challenge.
  "I never talked to any one about you," he rejoined
crisply. "I read your name in newspapers-as did many
others, I dare say."
  "Yes. I reckon ye read in them papers thet I kilt Old
Man Carr. Wa'al, thet war es true es text. I kilt him
whilst he was aimin' ter lay-way me. He'd done a'ready
kilt my daddy an' I was ridin' inter Marlin Town ter buy
buryin' clothes-when we met up in ther highway. Thet's
ther whole hist'ry of hit."
  "Mr. Gregory," the older man said slowly with an even
courtesy that carried a note of aloofness, "I've neither
the right nor the disposition to question you on personal
matters. I reserve the privilege of discussing my own
affairs only so far as I choose, and I recognize the same



8

 

THE TEMPERING



right in others. My final opinions, however, are not formed
on hearsay."
  The brown eyes softened again and the features relaxed.
"I reckon," commented Asa with a touch of shame-faced
apology in his tone, "thar warn't no proper call fer me
ter start in straightway talkin' erbout myself nohow-but
when a man'a enemies air a'seekin' ter git him hung, hit's
liable ter make him touchy an' mincy-like. Hit don't take
no hard bite ter hurt a sore tooth, noways."
  Victor McCalloway inclined his head. "I stopped
here," he explained, "to ask directions of this lad. These
infernal roads confuse me."
  "I reckon they do be sort o' mystifyin' ter a furriner,"
assented the mountaineer, who stood charged with mur-
der, then he added with grave courtesy: "I'll go back ter
ther fork of ther high-road with ye an' sot ye on yore way
ef so be hit would convenience ye any."
  As mounted traveller and unmounted guide went on
toward the rounded cone of Cinder Knob it seemed to
loom as far away as ever, masking behind its timbered dis-
tances the unseen trickle of Hominy Mill Creek, where
Cyrus Spradling dwelt.
  But to right and left, ever the same, yet ever changing;
sombre in shadowed gorge and bright of sunlit crest, lay
the broken, forested hills. Their horizons gathered in tan-
gled depths of timber-shadowed hiding places of chasms-
silences and a brooding spirit of mystery.
  At length a sudden elbow in the twisting way brought
them face to face with two rifle-bearing men. They were
gaunt fellows, tall but slouching and loose of joint. Their
thin faces, too, were saturnine and ugly with the cast of
vindictiveness.
  "Howdy, Asa," accosted one and, with a casual nod, the
guide responded, "Howdy, Jett," but in the brief silence
that followed, broken by the wheezy panting of the mule,
McCalloway fancied he could discern an undernote of
tension.



9

 

THE TEMPERING



  "This here man," went on Asa Gregory, jerking his head
backward, as if in answer to an unuttered query, "gives
ther name of McCalloway. I hain't never seed him afore
this day, but he's farin' over ter Spradling's an' I prof-
fered ter kinderly sot him on his way. I couldn't skeercely
do no less fer him."
  The two nodded and when some further exchange of
civilities had followed, passed on and out of sight. But
for a while after their departure Asa stood unmoving with
his head intently bent in an attitude of listening-and
though his rifle still nestled unshifted in its cradling elbow,
the fingers of the trigger hand twitched a little and the
brown eyes were again agate-hard. Finally the guide 's
mouth line relaxed from the straight tautness of whatever
emotion had caused that stiffening of posture, and the lips
moved in low speech-almost drawlingly soft of cadence.
  "I reckon they've done gone on," he said, as if speaking
to himself; then lifting his eyes to his companion, he ex-
plained briefly. "Not meanin' no offence, I 'lowed hit war
kinderly charitable ter ye ter lAt them fellers know ye jest
fell in with me accidental like. They wouldn't favour ye
no great degree ef they figgered me an' you was close
friends. "
  "And yet," hazarded McCalloway, groping in the bewil-
derment of this strange environment, "you greeted each
other amicably enough."
  Gregory's lips twisted at the corners into a satirical
smile.
  "When they comes face ter face with me in ther high-
road," he answered calmly, "we meets an' makes our man-
ners ther same es anybody else-a man's got ter be civil.
But we keeps a'watchin' one another outen ther tails of our
eyes, jest ther same. Them two fellers air Blairs an' them
an' ther Carrs is married in an' out an' back an' fo'th
twell they're all as thick tergether as pigs outen ther same
litter. "
  The traveller's question came a little incredulously.



so

 

THE TEMPERING



  "You mean-that those men are your actual enemies"
  "I'd call 'em enemies. I knows thet they aims ter git
me some day-ef so be they're able."
  ' And you- "
  The tall man in the road looked steadily into the face of
his companion for a moment, then said deliberately, "Met
Oh, of course, I aims ter carcumvent 'em-ef so be I'm
able. "
  When the newcomer had reached a point from which he
no longer needed guidance Asa Gregory wheeled and began
to back-track on his steps, but before he had covered a
half mile he turned abruptly from the road and was swal-
lowed in the thicket where the waxen confusion of rhodo-
dendron and laurel, the tangle of holly and thorn seemed
solid and impenetrable. He went with head bent and
noiseless footfall-though the sifting leaves were crisp-but
with eye, ear and nostril delicately alert and receptive.
  As Asa Gregory slipped, shadow like, among the shift-
ing lights of the late afternoon, his face wore a grim smile,
and when he had come to a point determined by some sys-
tem of his own, he dropped to a low-crouching posture and
continued his journey a step or two at a time, with a per-
fection of caution, and with eyes and ears strained in
expectancy.
  Across a gray-green hummock of sandstone, so villain-
ously matted with blackberry briars that a pointer-dog
would have balked at its edge, he hitched himself forward
on his belly. From there he could look down on the road
he had abandoned-and the thick bushes that fringed it,
and there he lay, silent and flat as a lizard, scanning the
lower ground.
  A less acute and instinctive eye would have made little
of it all, save the variegated colours of the foliage, but
after a while he picked out a scrap of grey-brown buried
deep and motionless under the leafage, much like the hue
of the earth itself. His smile became more sardonically set
and his muscles tensed as his rifle barrel was thrust for-



11

 

THE TEMPERING



ward. But he still sprawled there hugging the earth, and
finally hushed voices stole up to him.
  ". . . He's got ter pass by hyar ef he holds ter ther
highway.. .. I reckon he don't hardly suspicion nothin'."
Then a second voice spoke Asa s name and linked it with
foul expletives, yet save for the gray patches in the brush
almost as hard to see as a rabbit crouched in dry grass
there was no visible sign . . . no warning.
  Asa's face blackened. His thumb lay on the hammer of
his rifle and his thoughts ran to bitter turmoil.
  "I 'lowed them Blairs lied hit in head ter lay-way me
this evenin'," he mused. "I jest febt hit in my bones,
somehow. "
  The hatred in his veins pulsed and simmered. Here he
lay behind them and above them, while they lurked in am-
bush waiting for him to pass in front and below. One shot
from his rifle and Jett Blair would never rise. His face
would sag forward-that was all-and as his companion
scrambled up in dismay, he too would fall back. Asa
could picture the expression of astonished panic that would
gleam in his eyes for the one brief moment before he too
crumpled. Asa's finger tingled with an itch which only
trigger-pressure could cool and appease.
  Yet slowly and resolutely he shook his head. "No," he
told himself, " no, hit won't hardly do. Thar's one mur-
der charge a 'hangin' over me now-an' es fer them.,
thar's time a'plenty. I hain't no-ways liable ter fergit!"



12


 

CHAPTER II



B    ACKWARD he edged to the far side of the rock,
      and on he went by a detour which, in due course,
      brought him out to the road once more at that panel
of fence where Boone Wellver still sat perched in the deep
preoccupation of his thoughts. These reflections focussed
about the stranger who had lately ridden by, and as Greg-
ory paused, with no revealing sign in his face of the events
of the past half-hour, the boy blurted out the fulness of
his interest.
  "Asa, did ye find out who is he Did ye see thet sward
he hed hangin' ter his saddle, an' did ye note all them qu 'ar
contraptions he was totin' along with him"
  "I didn't hev overly much speech with him," was the
grave response. " But he 'lowed he 'd done come from
acrost ther waters-from somewhars in tother world. I
reckon he's done travelled wide."
  "His looks hain't none common nuther!" Boone's eyes
were sparkling; his imagination galloping free and un-
curbed. "I've done read stories about kings an' sich-like,
travellin' hither an' yon unbeknownst ter common folks.
What does ye reckon, Asa, mout he be su'thin' like thett
A king or su 'thin "
  "Ef so be he's a king," opined Asa Gregory drily, "he's
shore done picked him out a God-fersaken place ter go
a'travellin' in." The dark eyes riffled for a moment into a
hint of covert raillery. "Ye didn't chanst ter discarn no
crown, did ye, Booney, pokin' a gold prong or two up outen
them saddle pockets"
  Boone Wellver flushed brick-red and straightway his
words fell into a hot disclaimer of gullibility. "I hain't
no plum, daft idjit. I didn't, ter say, really think he was
a king-but his looks wasn't none common."
                           13

 

T1TE TEMPERING



  The older kinsman granted that contention and for a
while they talked of Victor McCalloway, but at length Asa
shifted the subject.
  "A week come Monday," he informed the boy, "thar's
a'goin' ter be a monstrous big speakin' at Marlin Town.
Ther Democrat candidate fer Governor aims ter speechify
an' I 'lowed mebby ye'd love ter go along with me an' lis-
ten at him."
  Whenever Asa yielded to the temptation of teasing his
young cousin he hastened to make amends for the indul-
gence and now the boy's face was ashine with anticipa-
tion.
  Customarily in Kentucky from the opening of the cam-
paign to the day of election the tide and sweep of political
battle runs hot and high. But in that autumn of 1899
all precedents of party feeling were engulfed in a tidal
wave of bitterness and endowed with a new ferocity omi-
nously akin to war. The gathering storm centred and beat
about the head of one man whose ambition for gubernato-
rial honours was the core and essence of the strife. He
was, in the confident estimate of his admirers, a giant whose
shoulders towered above the heads of his lesser compa-
triots. An election law bore his name- and his adver-
saries gave insistent warning that it surrendered the state,
bound hand and foot, to a triumvirate of his own choos-
ing.
  Into the wolf-like battle-royal of his party's convention
he had gone seemingly the weakest of three aspirants for
the Democratic nomination. Out of it, over disrupted
party-elements, he had emerged-triumphant.
  Whether one called him righteous crusader or self-seek-
ing demagogue, the fact stood baldly clear that his name
with an "ism" attached had become the single issue in that
State, and that hero-worship and hatred attended upon its
mention.
  Back to the people of the inaccessible hills, living apart,
aloof and neglected, came some of the murmurs of the



14

 

THE TEMPERING



tempest that shook the lowlands. Here at the edge of a
normally Democratic State which had in earlier times held
slaves and established an aristocracy, the hillsmen living
by the moil of their own sweat had hated alike slave and
slave-holder and had remained solidly Republican. For
them it was enough that William Goebel was not of their
party. Basing their judgment on that premise, they passed
on with an uncomplicated directness to the conclusion that
the deleterious things said of him by envenomed orators
were assertions of gospel truth.
  Now that man was carrying his campaign into the en-
emy's country. Realizing without illusion the temper of
the audience which would troop in from creek-bed and
cove and the branch-waters "back of beyond," he was to
speak in Marlin Town where the cardinal faith of the
mountains is, "hate thine enemy!"
  In the court-house square of Marlin Town, under the
shadow of high-flung hills, had gathered close-packed bat-
talions of listeners. Some there were who carried with
them their rifles and some who looked as foreign to even
these rude streets as nomads ridden in from the desert.
  A brass band had come with the candidate's special train
and blared out its stirring message. There was a flutter-
ing of flags and a brave showing of transparencies, and to
Boone Wellver, aged fifteen, as he hung shadow-close at
Asa Gregory's elbow, it all seemed the splendour of pan-
oply and the height of pageantry.
  From the hotel door, as the man and boy passed it,
emerged two gentlemen who were clothed in the smoother
raiment of "Down below," and Boone pointed them out to
his companion.
  "Who air they, Asa" he whispered, and his kinsman
carelessly responded:
  "One of 'em's named AMasters. He's a coal-mine boss -
but I hain't never seed t'other one, afore now."
  Strolling along the narrow plank ranway that did serv-
ice as a sidewalk, the boy glimpsed also the mysterious



15

 

THE TEMPERING



stranger who had ridden in on a mule, with a canvas-cov-
ered sword at his saddle ring.
  Then the fanfare of the band fell silent and a thin figure
in an ancient frock coat stepped forward on the platform
itself and raised its hands to shout: "Fellow Citizens and
Kentuckians of Marlin County!"
  Ranged importantly behind the draped bunting stood
the corporal's guard of native Democratic leaders-leaders
who were well-nigh without followers-and who now stood
as local sponsors for the Candidate himself.
  Boone caught his breath and listened, his eager eyes con-
spicuous among the immobile and stolid faces of the unre-
sponsive throng as the speaker let flow his words of en-
comium.
  Seeking to compensate by his own vehemence for the
unreceptiveness of his audience, the thin master of cere-
monies heaped the Ossa of fulsomeness upon the Pelion of
praise. "And now, men of Marlin," he shouted in his
memorized peroration, "now I have the distinguished hon-
our of presenting to you the man whose loins are girt in
the people's fight-the-the-ahem,-unterrified champeen
of the Commonwealth's yeomanry-. Gentlemen, the next
Governor of Kentucky!"
  A peroration without applause is like a quick-step beat
upon a loose drum-head, and as the local sponsor stood
back in the dispiriting emptiness of dead silence-unbroken
by a single hand-clap-his face fell. For several moments
that quiet hung like a paralyzing rebuff, then from the out-
skirts of the crowd a liquor-thickened voice bellowed-
"Next gov'nor-of hell!"
  To the front of the platform, with that derisive intro-
duction, calmly-even coldly, stepped a dark, smooth-
shaven man, over whose stocky shoulders and well-rounded
chest a frock coat was tightly buttoned.
  For a while the Candidate stood looking out, gauging his
audience, and from him there seemed to emanate an assur-
ance of power before his lips parted. A heavy lock of



16

 

THE TEMPERING



coal-black hair fell over his forehead, across almost disdain-
fully cold eyes went sooty lashes, and dark brows met above
the prominent nose. The whole face seemed drawn in bold
charcoal strokes, uncompromising of line and feature-a
portrayal of foree.
  Then the resonant voice broke silence, and though it
came calmly and moderately pitched, it went out clarion-
clear over the crowd like the note of a fox horn.
  " Some one out there shouted-' Next governor of hell !'
he began without preamble. "I grant you that if any re-
gion needs improved government it is hell, and if there is
a state on this earth where a man might hope to qualify
himself for that task, it is this state. Let me try that first,
my friend. I believe in myself, but I am only human."
  He launched forthright into arraignment of his enemies
with sledge-blows of denunciation untempered by any con-
cession to time, place or condition, and though scowls grew
vindictively black about him, he knew that he was holding
his audience.
  He was a Vulcan forging thunders with words and de-
structive batteries of bolts with phrases, and Boone Wellver
-trembling with excitement as a pointer puppy trembles
with the young eagerness of the covey-scent in his nostrils
-seemed to be in the presence of a miracle; the miracle of
eloquence.
  "My God," breathed the less impressionable Asa Greg-
ory under his breath, "but thet feller hes a master gift fer
lyin' ! "
  At the end, with one clenched fist raised high, the speaker
thundered out his final words of defiance: "The fight is
on, and I believe in fighting. I ask no quarter and I fear
no foe!"
  Again he paused, and again save for the valiant enthusi-
asm on the platform at his back, he met with no response
except a grim and negative silence.
  But this disconcerting stillness was abruptly ripped
asunder by a pistol shot and a commotion of confused



17

 

THE TEMPERING



voices, rising where figures, began to eddy and mill at the
outskirts. The reception committee closed hastily and pro-
tectingly about the candidate, whose challenge seemed to
have been accepted by some irresponsible gun-fighter, but
he thrust them back with a face of unaltered and stony
calmness. Though he had finished, he continued to stand
at the front with hands idly resting on the platform rail
as if meaning to demonstrate his contempt for anything like
retreat.
  While he still tarried there a tall figure elbowed its way
through the crowd until it stood near. It was the figure
of Asa Gregory, and, raising a hand for recognition, it
called out in a full-chested voice: " Thet shot war fired by
a feller thet war full of white licker-an' they're takin'
him ter ther jail-house now. I reckon yore doctrine hain't
hardly converted nobody hyarabouts-but we don't aim
ter insult no visitor."

  Victor McCalloway had come to Cyrus Spradling's house
to remain until he could arrange a more permanent resi-
dence. The purpose that lay behind his coming was one
which he had not felt called upon to explain, and though
he had much to learn of this new place of abode, still he
had come forearmed with some of the cardinals of a neces-
sary understanding.
  They were an incurious people with whom he had cast his
lot, content with their remoteness, and it was something
that here a man could lose himself from questions touching
the past, so long as he answered frankly those of the pres-
ent. It suited McCalloway to seal the back pages and the
bearded men evinced no wish to penetrate them.
  Before the snow flew the neweomer was to be housed
under his own roof-tree, and today in answer to the verbal
announcement that he was to have a "working" on the
land he had bought, the community was present, armed
with hammer and saw, with adze and plane, mobilized under



18

 

THE TEMPERING



the auspices of Cyrus Spradling who moved, like a shaggy
patron saint, among them.
  There were men, working shoulder to shoulder, whose
enmities were deep and ancient, but who today were re-
strained by the common spirit of volunteer service to a
neighbour. Cyrus had seen to it that the gathering at Mc-
Calloway's "house-raising" should not bear the prejudicial
colour of partisanship, but that Carrs and Gregories alike
should have a hand in the activities which were going ro-
bustly forward at the head of Snag Ridge.
  Back of Cedar Mountain no architect was available and
no builders' union afforded or withheld labour, but every
man was carpenter and artisan in his own right, and some
were "practiced corner-men" as well.
  Through the sun-flooded day with its Indian summer
dream along the sky-line their axes rang in accompaniment
to their homely jests, and the earnest whine of their saws
went up with the minors of voices raised in the plaintive
strains of folk-lore ballads.
  The only wage accepted was food and drink. They
would have thought as readily of asking payment for par-
ticipation in the rough festivities of the "infare" with
which the mountain groom brings his bride from her wed-
ding to his own house on a pillion at the back of his
saddle.
  Tomorrow some of these same men, meeting in the road-
way, would perhaps eye each other with suspicion. Riding
on, after greetings, they would go with craned necks,
neither trusting the other to depart unwatched. but today
the rude sanctuary of hospitality to the stranger rested over
them and the timbers that went up were raised by the
hands of friends and enemies alike.
  But toward sunset the newcomer chanced upon a fight
that the simple code had not safeguarded and that had
gained headway before his interference.
  Down by the creek-bed, with no audience, he found two



19

 

THE TEMPERING



boys rolling in a smother of dust and, until he remembered
that the hill code of "fist and skull" bars neither shod-toe
nor bared tooth, he was sh