Except for those two reports there was no sound. Samson stood still,
anticipating an uproar of alarm. Now, he should doubtless have to pay
with his life for both the deaths which would inevitably and logically
be attributed to his agency. But, strangely enough, no clamor arose.
The shot inside had been muffled, and those outside, broken by the
intervening store, did not arouse the house. Purvy's bodyguard had been
sent away by Hollis on a false alarm. Only the "womenfolks" and
children remained indoors, and they were drowning with a piano any
sounds that might have come from without. That piano was the chief
emblem of Purvy's wealth. It represented the acme of "having things
hung up"; that ancient and expressive phrase, which had come down from
days when the pioneers' worldly condition was gauged by the hams
hanging in the smokehouse and the peppers, tobacco and herbs strung
high against the rafters.

Now, Samson South stood looking down, uninterrupted, on what had been
Aaron Hollis as it lay motionless at his feet. There was a powder-
burned hole in the butternut shirt, and only a slender thread of blood
trickled into the dirt-grimed cracks between the planks. The body was
twisted sidewise, in one of those grotesque attitudes with which a
sudden summons so frequently robs the greatest phenomenon of all its
rightful dignity. The sun was gilding the roadside clods, and
burnishing the greens of the treetops. The breeze was harping sleepily
among the branches, and several geese stalked pompously along the
creek's edge. On the top of the stockade a gray squirrel, sole witness
to the tragedy, rose on his haunches, flirted his brush, and then, in a
sudden leap of alarm, disappeared.