She rose and replaced the slate and primer. Then, she took tenderly
from its corner the rifle, which the boy had confided to her keeping,
and unwrapped its greasy covering. She drew the cartridges from chamber
and magazine, oiled the rifling, polished the lock, and reloaded the
piece.
"Thar now," she said, softly, "I reckon ther old rifle-gun's ready."
As she sat there alone in the shuck-bottomed chair, the corners of the
room wavered in huge shadows, and the smoke-blackened cavern of the
fireplace, glaring like a volcano pit, threw her face into relief. She
made a very lovely and pathetic picture. Her slender knees were drawn
close together, and from her slim waist she bent forward, nursing the
inanimate thing which she valued and tended, because Samson valued it.
Her violet eyes held the heart-touching wistfulness of utter
loneliness, and her lips drooped. This small girl, dreaming her dreams
of hope against hope, with the vast isolation of the hills about her,
was a little monument of unflinching loyalty and simple courage, and,
as she sat, she patted the rifle with as soft a touch as though she had
been dandling Samson's child--and her own--on her knee. There was no
speck of rust in the unused muzzle, no hitch in the easily sliding
mechanism of the breechblock. The hero's weapon was in readiness to his
hand, as the bow of Ulysses awaited the coming of the wanderer.
Then, with sudden interruption to her reflections, came a rattling on
the cabin door. She sat up and listened. Night visitors were rare at
the Widow Miller's. Sally waited, holding her breath, until the sound
was repeated.
"Who is hit?" she demanded in a low voice.
"Hit's me--Tam'rack!" came the reply, very low and cautious, and
somewhat shamefaced.
"What does ye want?"
"Let me in, Sally," whined the kinsman, desperately. "They're atter
me. They won't think to come hyar."
Sally had not seen her cousin since Samson had forbidden his coming to
the house. Since Samson's departure, the troublesome kinsman, too, had
been somewhere "down below," holding his railroad job. But the call for
protection was imperative. She set the gun out of sight against the
mantle-shelf, and, walking over unwillingly, opened the door.
The mud-spattered man came in, glancing about him half-furtively, and
went to the fireplace. There, he held his hands to the blaze.
"Hit's cold outdoors," he said.
"What manner of deviltry hev ye been into now, Tam'rack?" inquired the
girl. "Kain't ye never keep outen trouble?"