Callomb spent the night at the house of Spicer South. He met and
talked with a number of the kinsmen, and, if he read in the eyes of
some of them a smoldering and unforgiving remembrance of his unkept
pledge, at least they repressed all expression of censure.

With Spicer South and Samson, the Captain talked long into the night.
He made many jottings in a notebook. He, with Samson abetting him,
pointed out to the older and more stubborn man the necessity of a new
regime in the mountains, under which the individual could walk in
greater personal safety. As for the younger South, the officer felt,
when he rode away the next morning, that he had discovered the one man
who combined with the courage and honesty that many of his clansmen
shared the mental equipment and local influence to prove a constructive
leader.

When he returned to the Bluegrass, he meant to have a long and
unofficial talk with his relative, the Governor.

He rode back to the ridge with a strong bodyguard. Upon this Samson
had insisted. He had learned of Callomb's hasty and unwise denunciation
of Smithers, and he knew that Smithers had lost no time in relating it
to his masters. Callomb would be safe enough in Hollman country,
because the faction which had called for troops could not afford to let
him be killed within their own precincts. But, if Callomb could be shot
down in his uniform, under circumstances which seemed to bear the
earmarks of South authorship, it would arouse in the State at large a
tidal wave of resentment against the Souths, which they could never
hope to stem. And so, lest one of Hollman's hired assassins should
succeed in slipping across the ridge and waylaying him, Samson
conducted him to the frontier of the ridge.