Produced by Roger Frank, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net THE CODE OF THE MOUNTAINS BY CHARLES NEVILLE BUCK AUTHOR OF THE CALL OF THE CUMBERLANDS, THE BATTLE CRY, ETC. ILLUSTRATIONS BY G. W. GAGE NEW YORK GROSSET & DUNLAP PUBLISHERS COPYRIGHT, 1915, BY W. J. WATT & COMPANY _Published May_ * * * * * _OTHER BOOKS BY_ CHARLES NEVILLE BUCK THE KEY TO YESTERDAY THE LIGHTED MATCH THE PORTAL OF DREAMS THE CALL OF THE CUMBERLANDS THE BATTLE CRY [Illustration: "Newty," she said softly, "why don't you shake the dirt of this place offen your feet?"] THE CODE OF THE MOUNTAINS CHAPTER I This morning the boy from the forks of Troublesome Creek had back his name once more. It was not a distinguished name, nor one to be flaunted in pride of race or achievement. On the contrary, it was a synonym for violent law-breaking and in the homely parlance of the Cumberland ridges, where certain infractions are condoned, it stood for "pizen meanness." Generations of Spooners before him had taken up the surname and carried it like runners in a relay race--often into evil ways. Many had laid down their lives and name with abruptness and violence. When the pioneers first set their feet into the Wilderness trail out of Virginia, some left because the vague hinterland west of the ridges placed them "beyond the law's pursuing." Tradition said that of the latter class were the Spooners, but Newt Spooner had no occasion to probe the remote past for a record of turpitude. It lay before him inscribed in a round clerical hand on the ledger which the warden of the Frankfort Penitentiary was just closing. Though the Governor's clemency had expunged the red charge of murder set against his name at the tender age of eighteen, there was another record which the Governor could not erase. A sunken grave bore testimony in a steep mountainside burial-ground back in "Bloody Breathitt," where dead weed stalks rattled and tangled ropes of fox-grapes bore their fruit in due season. However, even the name of Newt Spooner is a better thing than the Number 813, which for two years had been his designation within those gray and fortressed walls along whose tops sentry-boxes punctuated the angles.