Still moving and living in the free circles of nature, he did not perceive the formidable, pitiless, restless, fierce angles of the great city waiting in the dark to close about the rotundity of his heart and brain and mould him to the form of its millions of re-shaped victims. A cabby picked him out of the whirl, as Sam himself had often picked a nut from a bed of wind-tossed autumn leaves, and whisked him away to a hotel commensurate to his boots and carpet- sack.
On the next morning the last of the Folwells made his sortie into the city that sheltered the last Hark- ness. The Colt was thrust beneath his coat and se- cured by a narrow leather belt; the hunting-knife hung between his shoulder-blades, with the haft an inch below his coat collar. He knew this much -- that Cal Harkness drove an express wagon some- where in that town, and that he, Sam Folwell, had come to kill him. And as he stepped upon the side- walk the red came into his eye and the feud-hate into his heart.
The clamor of the central avenues drew him thith- erward. He had half expected to see Cal coming down the street in his shirt-sleeves, with a jug and a whip in his hand, just as he would have seen him in Frankfort or Laurel City. But an hour went by and Cal did not appear. Perhaps he was waiting in ambush, to shoot him from a door or a window. Sam kept a sharp eye on doors and windows for a while.
About noon the city tired of playing with its mouse and suddenly squeezed him with its straight lines.
Sam Folwell stood where two great, rectangular arteries of the city cross. He looked four ways, and saw the world burled from its orbit and reduced by spirit level and tape to an edged and cornered plane. All life moved on tracks, in grooves, accord- ing to system, within boundaries, by rote. The root of life was the cube root; the measure of existence was square measure. People streamed by in straight rows; the horrible din and crash stupefied him.
Sam leaned against the sharp corner of a stone building. Those faces passed him by thousands, and none of them were turned toward him. A sudden fool- ish fear that he had died and was a spirit, and that they could not see him, seized him. And then the city smote him with loneliness.
A fat man dropped out of the stream and stood a few feet distant, waiting for his car. Sam crept to his side and shouted above the tumult into his ear:
"The Rankinses' hogs weighed more'n ourn a whole passel, but the mast in thar neighborhood was a fine chance better than what it was down -- "
The fat man moved away unostentatiously, and bought roasted chestnuts to cover his alarm.
Sam felt the need of a drop of mountain dew.
Across the street men passed in and out through swinging doors. Brief glimpses could be had of a glistening bar and its bedeckings. The feudist crossed and essayed to enter. Again had Art eliminated the familiar circle. Sam's hand found no door-knob - it slid, in vain, over a rectangular brass plate and polished oak with nothing even so large as a pin's head upon which his fingers might close.
Abashed, reddened, heartbroken, he walked away from the bootless door and sat upon a step. A locust club tickled him in the ribs.
"Take a walk for yourself," said the policeman.
You've been loafing around here long enough."
At the next corner a shrill whistle sounded in Sam's ear. He wheeled around and saw a black-browed vil- lain scowling at him over peanuts heaped on a steam- ing machine. He started across the street. An im- mense engine, running without mules, with the voice of a bull and the smell of a smoky lamp, whizzed past, grazing his knee. A cab-driver bumped him with a hub and explained to him that kind words were in- vented to be used on other occasions. A motorman clanged his bell wildly and, for once in his life, cor- roborated a cab-driver. A large lady in a changeable silk waist dug an elbow into his back, and a newsy pensively pelted him with banana rinds, murmuring, "I hates to do it -- but if anybody seen me let it pass!"
Cal Harkness, his day's work over and his express wagon stabled, turned the sharp edge of the build- ing that, by the cheek of architects, is modelled upon a safety razor. Out of the mass of hurrying people his eye picked up, three yards away, the surviving bloody and implacable foe of his kith and kin.
He stopped short and wavered for a moment, be- ing unarmed and sharply surprised. But the keen mountaineer's eye of Sam Folwell had picked him out.
There was a sudden spring, a ripple in the stream of passersby and the sound of Sam's voice crying:
"Howdy, Cal! I'm durned glad to see ye."
And in the angles of Broadway, Fifth Avenue and Twenty-third Street the Cumberland feudists shook hands.