When 'Bear Cat' Went Dry

CHAPTER XIV

T he post-office at Possum Trot, which serves the dwellers along the waters of Skinflint, is housed in one corner of a shack store and the distribution of its mail is attended with a friendly informality.

Thus no suspicion was engendered when a neighbor of Joe Stacy's dropped in each day and regularly volunteered, with a spirit of neighborly accommodation, "I reckon ef thar's anything fer Joe Stacy or airy other folks dwellin' 'twixt hyar an' my house, I'll fotch hit over to 'em."

The post-master had no way of knowing that this person was an agent of Kinnard Towers or that, when one day he handed out a letter "backed" to Joe in the scrawl of Lone Stacy, it went not to its rightful recipient but to the Quarterhouse.

Jerry Henderson, in due time, stepped from his day coach at Marlin Town, equally innocent of suspicion, and was pleased to see emerging from the raw, twilight shadows, a man, unfamiliar of face, whose elbow cradled a repeating rifle.

"I reckon ye be Jerry Henderson, hain't ye?" inquired a suave and amicable voice, and with a nod Jerry replied, "Yes – and you are Joe Stacy?"

The man, slight but wiry and quick of movement, shook his head. "No – my name's John Blackwell. Joe, he couldn't hardly git hyar hisself, so he sent me in his stid but I reckon me an' ther boys kin put ye over ther route, without deefault."

As if in corroboration of this assurance Jerry saw shadowy shapes materializing out of the empty darkness and as he mounted the extra horse provided for him he counted the armed figures swinging easily into their saddles. There were eight of them. His personal escort was larger than that with which Towers himself traveled abroad.

But when the cortège swung at length into an unfamiliar turning Jerry was startled and demanded sharply: "Why are we leaving the high road? This isn't the way to Lone Stacy's house."

The man who had met him bowed with a reassuring calmness.

"No, but Joe 'lowed hit would be safer an' handier, too, fer ye ter spend ther night at his house on Skinflint. Hit's nigher an' all these men air neighbors of his'n. Ter-morrow you kin fare on ter Little Slippery by daylight."

With an acquiescent nod, Henderson relapsed into silence and they rode in the starlight without sound save the thud of cuppy hooves on muddy byways, the straining creak of stirrup straps and a clinking of bit-rings.

Finally the cavalcade halted at a crossing where the shadows lay in sooty patches and its leader detached himself to engage in low-voiced converse with someone who seemed to have been suddenly created out of the pitchy thickness of the roadside.

Soon Blackwell rode back and, with entire seriousness, made a startling suggestion.

"Right down thar, in thet valley, Mr. Henderson – whar ye kin see a leetle speck of light – sets Kinnard Towers' Quarterhouse. Would hit pleasure ye ter stop off thar an' enjoy a small dram? Hit's a right-chillin' night."

The railroad's agent had never visited that place of whose ill repute he had heard such bizarre tales, but in all this high, wild country, he thought, there was no other spot of which it so well behooved his party to ride wide. John Blackwell was lighting his pipe just then and by the flare of the match Henderson studied the face for a glint of jesting, but the eyes were humorless and entirely sober.

"I think we'd better give the Quarterhouse as wide a berth as possible," he answered dryly.

"Hits fer you ter say, Mr. Henderson," was the quiet rejoinder. "But I'll give ye Joe Stacy's message. From what his brother writ him Joe concluded thet Lone warn't aimin' ter start no needless strife with Kinnard Towers, but he aimed ter make hit p'intedly cl'ar thet ther Stacys was detarmined ter pertect ye, an' thet ye'd done come back hyar plumb open an' upstandin'."

"That's true enough," assented Jerry. "I'm not trying to hide out, but I don't see any profit in walking into the lion's den."

The guide nodded sympathetically. He seemed imbued with the excellent military conception of obeying orders and proffering no gratuitous counsel.

"Joe 'lowed thet ef things looked favorable hit mout be a right-bold sort of thing an' a right wise one, too, to stop in thar as ye rid by. Hit's a public tavern – an' hit would prove thet ye're hyar, with a bodyguard, neither seekin' trouble ner fearin' hit."

"Why didn't you suggest this before, Mr. Blackwell?" inquired Henderson to whom the very effrontery of the plan carried an appeal.

"Joe didn't want me ter risk even namin' hit ter ye twell we knowed how ther land lay over thar," came the prompt and easy response. "Ye seed me talkin' with a man out front thar jest now, didn't ye? Wa'al thet war one of our boys, thet come direct from ther Quarterhouse, ter bear me ther tidin's. Thar hain't more'n a handful of men thar now – an' half of 'em's our friends. I reckon ye hain't in no great peril nohow so long as we're all tergither – an' full-armed."

Henderson felt that already his prestige had suffered from an appearance of flight. Here was an opportunity ready to hand for its complete rehabilitation. The bold course is always the best defense, and his decision was prompt.

"Come on then. Let's go in."

At the long rack in front of the frowning stockade, as they dismounted and hitched, were already tethered a half-dozen horses.

Bear Cat Stacy, impelled by Lew Turner's news, traveled in a fever of haste. He meant to go as straight as a hiving bee to Marlin and if need be to follow Henderson to the lowlands of Kentucky. Henderson had compromised Blossom, by the undeviating standards of mountain code, and he must come back and marry her even if he had to be dragged out of the most conspicuous place in Louisville itself. Casting all considerations of precaution and safety to the winds, the lover, whose devotion called for self-effacement, sought only the shortest way, and the shortest way led past the Quarterhouse.

When he was within a mile of the point where Towers' resort straddled the state line he met a mounted man with a lantern swinging at his pommel.

"I kain't tarry ter hev speech with ye, Sim," he said shortly, "I'm in hot haste."

Yet as the other drawled a question, Bear Cat did tarry and a cold moisture dewed his temples.

"Did ye know thet yore friend, Jerry Henderson, hed done come back?" inquired Sim, and Turner's limbs trembled, then grew stiff as saddle leather.

"Come back! When did he come? Whar is he now?" The questions tumbled upon each other with a mounting vibrance of impetuosity.

"I war a-ridin' inter the road outen a side path a leetle spell back when I heered hosses an' so I drawed up ter let 'em go by," the chance traveler informed him. "I reckon they didn't hardly discern me. I hadn't lit my lantern then, but one of 'em lighted his pipe with a match an' I reecognized two faces. One was Mr. Henderson's an' one was Sam Carlyle's. I seed sev'ral rifles acrost ther saddles, too."

"Which way war they ridin'?"

"'Peared like most likely they war makin' fer ther Quarterhouse."

"I'm obleeged ter ye." And Bear Cat was gone again into the darkness.

When he had turned the first bend his walk broke into a run. His mind was racing, too. So Henderson had not only come back, but come back with a reversed allegiance. He was riding with a Towers bodyguard and bound for a Towers stronghold! The name of Sam Carlyle indicated that as definitely as if it had been the name of Black Tom Carmichael. In one way this dropping of all friendly pretense by Jerry made his own task clearer and easier – but it was the most hazardous thing he had ever undertaken. Single handed, he must go into the place where bloodshed was no novelty and take Henderson away, and he went at a run.

Presumably, Jerry Henderson would not stop long in the bar-room, but would be conducted to the presence of Kinnard Towers, and, with all his haste, Bear Cat's speed seemed to himself desperately slow.

He and his father had protected this ingrate against Towers' wrath, he bitterly reflected, and this was their requital. Their guest had used that hospitality to steal the love of Blossom and then to discard her. He had deceived her, compromised her, promised her marriage and fled in the face of danger. Lew Turner had said: "She's been pinin' round like somebody sickenin' ter her death!" That was what her full trust had come to – and if she had trusted that far her trust might have gone farther! Then finally from the secure distance of the city Henderson had made his terms with Kinnard Towers!

Now Blossom was going to be married – a heart-racking groan rumbled in his throat. Blossom's wedding! How he had dreamed of it from his first days of callow love-thoughts! He had fed his imagination upon pictures of the house he had meant to build for her down there by the river! To his nostrils now seemed to come the sweet fragrance of freshly hewn timbers and sawed lumber; incense of home-making! A hundred times he had visualized himself – the ceremony over – riding proudly with his bride on a pillion behind him, as the mountain groom had always brought his bride, from her father's house to his own – and her own!

Now her honor required that an unwilling husband should be brought to her – her honor and her heart's bruised wish – and he, who had planned it all differently, must see the matter accomplished – to-night!

Henderson and his guard had strolled with a fine assumption of carelessness into the barn-like resort and, as the handful of loiterers there recognized them, an abrupt silence fell and glasses, half-raised, were held for a moment poised.

From a huge hearth-cavern at one end of the room leaped the ruddy illumination of burning logs and fagots in the flaming proportions of a bonfire. Wreaths of blue and brown smoke floated in foggy streamers between the dark walls and up to the cobwebbed rafters. The lamps guttered and flared against their tin reflectors, reeking with an oily stench in the stagnation of the unaltered air.

Along one end of the place went the bar, backed by its shelves of bottles and thick glassware, and in each side wall gaped a door – one for each state. Besides a few hickory-withed chairs there were several even ruder tables and benches, riven with axe and adze out of wide logs, and supported by such legs as those of a butcher's block. But these furnishings were all near the walls – and the whole center area of the floor, with its white-painted boundary line, was as unencumbered as a deck cleared for action.

The momentary surprise which greeted the newcomers was for the most part fictitious – and carefully rehearsed, but of this Jerry Henderson had no knowledge.

He walked to the bar, followed by one or two of his guardians, and extended a general invitation. "Gentlemen, it's my treat. What will you-all have?"

After the glasses had been filled and drained, Henderson went over and stood for a while in the grateful warmth of the booming hearth. He was looking on at this picture with its savor of medievalism – the ensemble that called to mind a Hogarth prim, but soon he nodded to his guide who slouched not far from his elbow.

"I reckon we'd better fare on, Mr. Blackwell," he suggested evenly. "We've still got a journey ahead of us."

Blackwell seemed less impressed with the immediate urgency.

"Thar hain't no tormentin' haste," he demurred. "We're all right stiff-j'inted from ridin'. We mout as well limber up a leetle mite afore we starts out ergin."

Jerry's eyes clouded. He would have preferred finding a spirit of readier obedience in his body-guard, but it was best to accept the situation with philosophy. Accordingly he turned again to the bar, though this time he made only a pretense of drinking. Fresh arrivals had begun drifting in and the place now held more than a score. Among them were already several whose voices were thickening or growing shrill, according to their individual fashions of becoming drunk.

Jerry sought to reassure himself against the disquieting birth of suspicion, yet when he heard one of the newcomers address Blackwell as Sam instead of John, an ugly apprehension settled upon him and this foreboding was not allayed as he caught the response in a low and savage growl: "Shet up, ye fool!"

The temper of the motley outfit was rapidly growing boisterous, though he himself seemed ignored until, in turning, he accidently jostled a man whom he had never seen before to-night, and that individual wheeled on him with an abusive truculence. Henderson's gorge rose, but his realization was now fully awake to the requirement of self-control, so with a good-natured retort he moved away.

Beckoning peremptorily to Blackwell, he started at a deliberate pace toward the door, but before he reached it, the staggering figure of the quarrelsome unknown overtook him and lurched drunkenly against him. Then Henderson felt a stunning blow in the face, and under its unexpected force he reeled back against the wall.

He was no longer in doubt. He had been beguiled here to be made the victim of what should appear an accidental encounter, and all that remained now was to sell his life at as punitive a rate as possible.

As he reached under his coat for the automatic pistol which was his sole remaining dependence, he caught in a sidewise glimpse the face of Sam Carlyle alias John Blackwell. It wore a sardonic smile and its lips opened like a trap to shout in a staccato abandonment of disguise. "Git him, boys! Git him!"

It was palpably enough a signal for which they had been waiting, like the pack-master's horn casting loose his hounds. Instantly the place burst into an eruption of confused and frenzied tumult. Henderson had a momentary sense of unshaven faces with lips drawn over wolfish fangs, of the pungent reek of gunpowder in his nostrils and, in his ears, the cracking of pistol reports – as yet sounding only in demonstration.

With a few steps more they would be swarming upon him, as a pack piles upon its defenseless quarry. But his own weapon spat doggedly, too, and for the brevity of an instant the rush wavered.

His assailants were crowding each other so hamperingly that the fusillade from the front was wild and, at first, ineffective. Those at the fore, cooled by a resolute reception and the sight of one of their number going down, with a snarl of pain, pressed forcibly back.

For the space of one quick breath, they afforded their victim a reprieve. He was groping, with his left hand outstretched, against the wall toward the nearby door, when he felt that arm grow numb and drop limp at his side. Through his left shoulder darted a sensation hardly recognized as pain.

The two doors had not been closed. It was unnecessary. Before the victim should reach either he would be riddled, and even if he gained one he would fall before he could mount and ride away. Since they had him at their mercy they could afford to toy with him.

No one saw the figure that had materialized on the threshold to which all the backs of the yelping crowd were turned. It had come unannounced from the outer darkness. It stood for a moment looking on and in that moment understood the only thing necessary to comprehend: that the man who must be married to-night, was being prematurely assassinated.

From his shadow of concealment at the door, this volunteer in the conflict thrust forward his rifle. His lean jaws were set and his eyes were full of a cold and very deadly light. It was the ringing voice of his repeater that announced him as it launched into the place so swift and fatal a sequence of messages that, to those inside, it appeared that they were being raked by a squad's volley.

The sharp challenge of the clean-mouthed rifle, multiplied by its echo, dominated the muffled belching of revolvers like thunder crashing through the smother of winds, and upon the drunken mob of murderers, the effect was both immediate and appalling. To a savage lust for violence succeeded panic and an uncontrollable instinct of flight.

A very different performance had been rehearsed in advance. It had contemplated a pretense of mêlée in which Jerry Henderson was to be killed – and no one else was to suffer. What had been staged as a bar-room brawl with an incidental murder had been switched without prior notice into battle and siege, and as every head came about with eyes starting and jaws sagging, many dropped and lay prone on the floor to escape the scathe of flying lead. Utilizing the respite of diverted attention, Jerry Henderson overturned a heavy table, behind which he crouched. He was bleeding now from half a dozen wounds – and his only thought was to die fighting.

But that moment of terror-arrested inaction would not last, and before it was spent, Bear Cat Stacy had hurled himself with hurricane fury into the room, his rifle clubbed and flying, flail-like, about his head. The brief advantage of surprise must be utilized for the rush across the floor and, if it were to succeed, it must be accomplished before the boldest recovered their poise.

He must reach Henderson's side and the two must fight their way out shoulder to shoulder. Henderson must not die – just yet!

Turner Stacy covered half the distance by the sheer impetuosity of his onslaught, and reached the painted line of the state border, before a voice from the outskirts sought to rally the dismayed and disorganized forces with a rafter-rocking howl: "Bear Cat Stacy! Git him boys! Git 'em both!"

But the new arrival was not easy to "git." He seemed an indestructible spirit of devastation; a second Samson wielding the jaw bone of an ass and wreaking death among his adversaries. He hurled aside his rifle shattered against broken heads and caught up a heavy chair. He cast away the chair, carrying a man down with it as it flew, and fought with his hands.