urnish you with an office
in our new building in Harlan and will make no objection to you
attending to such local business as may come your way, provided it does
not take you away from Harlan. What we need is a man on the ground.
Think this over and let me know in the morning. I am at the Galt House,
room 247. You had better call instead of telephoning. I shall be
disappointed if you do not accept my offer."

"I thank you and I will take it up with mother tonight, then call at
your room at 8:30 in the morning. Please excuse me now as I am due at
the office."

* * * * *

Mr. Rogers and John Cornwall, several days later, arrived at Pineville
on the early morning train and after lunch left on horseback, taking the
Straight Creek road to Harlan.

It was not their intention to ride through that afternoon, but stop
overnight at Simeon Saylor's and the following morning look over the
Helton, Saylor and Brock coal properties on the south or main fork of
the creek.

The road follows the creek and is canopied by sycamore, elm and birch
trees or grape vines and other creepers. It is screened by thickets of
pawpaw, blackberry, sumac or elderberry bushes which grow thick in the
corners of the abutting worm fences.

It is not a lonely way. Every three or four hundred yards you pass a
small mountain farmhouse overflowing with children, calling to mind the
home of the old woman who lives in the shoe. Many squads of geese,
following their corporal, march across the road towards the creek or
back again to the barnyard. The thickets are alive with red birds and
ground robins and an occasional squirrel, who has come down the mountain
for a drink, rustles the leaves in his flight or at giddy heighth barks
defiance at passing strangers.

Pine Mountain, without a break or scarce a deep cove, walls in the
narrow valley on the south, while on the north smaller mountains stand
at attention. The stream, with little chance to wander, bisects the
valley in its unvarying course and perforce pursues its way, true to
name.

They arrive at the foot of Salt Trace just as the lively tinkling of
cowbells, as well as their own appetites, and the setting sun, suggests
supper time; and their chafed buttocks, more used to a swivel chair than
a saddle, pleaded for the comfort of an altered position.

Simeon Saylor lives several hundred yards up the creek from where the
Salt Trace Trail, the bridle path to Harlan, leav