When 'Bear Cat' Went Dry

CHAPTER XV

Kinnard Towers had spent that evening in his house at the distance of a furlong from the stockaded structure wherein the drama of his authorship was to be staged and acted. The cast, from principals to supernumeraries, having been adequately rehearsed in lines and business, his own presence on the scene would be not only unnecessary but distinctly ill advised, and like a shrinkingly modest playwright, he remained invisible. The plot was forcible in its direct simplicity. A chance disturbance would spring out of some slight pretext – and Henderson, the troublesome apostle of innovation, would fall, its accidental and single victim. When death sealed his lips the only version of the affair to reach alien ears would be that dictated by Towers himself: the narrative of a regrettable brawl in a rough saloon. Against miscarriage, the arrangements seemed airtight, and there was need that it should be so for, desirable as was the elimination of Jerry's activities, that object would not have warranted recklessly fanning into active eruption the dormant crater of Stacy animosities. However, with Lone Stacy in duress and Turner Stacy in hiding beyond the state border, the hereditary foes were left leaderless – and would hardly rise in open warfare. Moreover, Kinnard meant to insure himself against contingencies by hastening to such prominent Stacys as might be in communication with the absentees and avowing, with deep show of conviction that, of all the turbulent affairs which had ever come to focus in his tavern, nothing had so outraged him as this particular calamity. He would appear eager for active participation in hunting down and punishing the malefactors.

Of course, a scape-goat might be required, perhaps more than one, but there were men who could be well enough sacrificed to such a diplomatic necessity.

So during the first part of that evening, Kinnard sat comfortably by his hearth, smoking his pipe with contemplative serenity the while he waited for the rattle of firearms, which should announce the climax of the drama. He allowed to drop on his knees the sheaf of correspondence which had come to his hand through the courtesy of his nephew in the legislature. These papers bore the caption: C. and S. E. Railways Company: "In Re– Cedar Mountain extension," and they contained meaty information culled from underground and confidential sources.

Across the hearth from him, with bare feet spread to the blaze, sat the well-trusted Tom Carmichael – sunk deep in meditation, though his eyes were not entirely serene – nor cloudless of apprehension.

"'Pears like ther show ought ter be startin' up," complained Towers restively. "Ye seed 'em go inter ther Quarterhouse, ye said?"

Tom nodded.

"I watched 'em from ther shadders of ther roadside. They went in all right. They're inside now."

After a brief pause the lieutenant demanded querulously, "Ye've done tuck inter account thet ther killin' of this feller from Looeyville's goin' ter stir up them furriners down below, hain't ye, Kinnard? I wouldn't be none astonished ef they sent them damn' milishy soldiers up hyar ergin."

"Ease yore mind, Tom." Towers spoke with the confidence of the strategist who has, in advance, balanced the odds of campaign. "Ther railroad will kick up hit's heels – an' snort like all hell – but ther Co'te sets hyar– an' I carries ther Co'te in my breeches pocket."

After a moment he added, "The only people I'm a-fear'd of air ther Stacys – an' I've done arranged thet."

At last across the frosty, sound-carrying distance, came the spiteful crack of pistols, and Kinnard Towers leaned attentively forward in his chair.

"Them damn' fools air bunglin' hit, some fashion," he broke out wrathfully. "Thar hain't no sort of sense in a-stringin' hit out so long."

A momentary diminuendo of the racket was followed by the sharp, repeated bark of a rifle, which brought the intriguer violently to his feet.

"Hell's fiddle!" he ejaculated in sudden alarm. "They hain't finished hit up yit! I cautioned 'em special not ter use no rifle-guns – jest pistols, accidental like."

Hatless and coatless, he rushed out and made for the Quarterhouse, disquieted and alarmed by the din of a howling chorus which sounded more like uncertain battle than orderly and definite assassination.

Before his panting, galloping haste brought him to the stockade he caught, above the confused pandemonium, a yell of: "Bear Cat Stacy! Git him! Git 'em both!"

"Good God!" he muttered between grinding teeth. "Good God, them fools air startin' ther war ergin! I've got ter stop hit!"

If Bear Cat fell within the four walls of that house to-morrow would dawn upon a country-side disrupted in open warfare. So Kinnard appeared in the door, his face distorted with an ashen fury and sought, too late, to assume again the rôle of pacifist and rescuer.

As Bear Cat had gone stumbling out, bearing his burden of wounded and misused humanity, two men started forward keyed for pursuit.

"We kin still git 'em from ther brush," hazarded one, but with a biting sarcasm the chieftain wheeled on the volunteer.

"Stand where ye're at, ye fool! Ye've done flung away ther chanst – an' plunged us all inter tribulation! Hain't I got no men thet hain't damned bunglers?"

He stood panting in a rage like hydrophobia.

"Thet Bear Cat, he hain't mortal noways!" whined a disheveled youth who nursed a limp arm. "I seed his chest square on my pistol sights, not two yards' distant, an' I shot two shoots thet hed a right ter be deadeners – but ther bullets jest bounced offen him. Ye kin bleed him a leetle, but ye kain't in no fashion kill him."

Kinnard Towers stood looking about the débris of the place where shattered bottles on the shelves and grotesque figures cluttering the floor bore testimony to the hurricane that had swept and wrecked it.

"Them fools war mortal enough," he disdainfully commented. "I reckon ye'd better take a tally an' see what kin be done fer 'em."

Under stars that were frostily clear, Bear Cat Stacy rode doggedly on, gripping in his arms the limp and helpless figure of Jerry Henderson. Beneath his shirt he was conscious of a lukewarm seeping of moisture as if a bottle had broken in an inner pocket and he recognized the leakage as waste from his own arteries.

Within his skull persisted a throbbing torture, so that from time to time he closed his eyes in futile effort to ease the blinding and confusing pain. With both arms wrapped about the insensible figure before him, and one hand clutching his pistol, rather from instinct than usefulness, he went with hanging reins. A trickle of blood filled his eyes and, having no free hand, he bent and dabbed his face against the shoulder of his human burden. Through all his joints and veins he could feel the scalding rise of a fever wave like a swelling tide. To his imagination this half-delirious recognition of sanity-consuming heat became an external thing which he must combat with will-power. So long as he could fight it down from engulfing and quenching his brain, he told himself, he could go on. Failing in that, he would be drowned in a steaming whirlpool of madness.

The stark and shapeless ramparts of the hills became to his disordered senses hordes of crowding Titans, pressing in ponderously to smother and bury him. He felt that he must fend them off; hold back from crushing and fatal assault the very mountains and the pitchiness of death – for a while yet – until his task was finished.

Above all he must think. No man could defeat death, but, for a sufficient cause and with dauntless temper of resolution, a man might postpone it. He must win Blossom's battle before he fell. He swayed drunkenly in his saddle and gasped in his effort to breathe as a hooked fish gasps, out of water.

It seemed that on his breast lay all the massiveness of the rock-built ranges and at his reason licked fiery tongues of lunacy so that he had constant need to remind himself of his mission.

There was some task that he had set out to accomplish – but it wavered into shadowy vagueness. There were scores of mountains to be pushed back and a heavy, sagging thing which he carried in his arms, to be delivered somewhere – before it was too late.

His mind wandered and his lips chattered crazy, fever-born things, but to his burden he clung, with a grim survival of instinctive purpose. Sometimes an inarticulate and stifled sound came stertorously from the swollen lips of the weltering body that sagged across the horse's withers – but that was all, and it failed to recall the custodian from the nightmare shades of delirium.

But the night was keenly edged with frost and as the plodding mount splashed across shallow fords its hooves broke through a thin rime of ice. That same cold touch laid its restoring influence on Turner Stacy's pounding temples. His eyes saw and recognized the setting of the evening star – and something lucid came back to him. To him the evening star meant Blossom. He remembered now. He was taking a bridegroom to the woman he loved – and the bridegroom must be delivered alive.

Jerking himself painfully up in his saddle, he bent his head. "Air ye alive?" he demanded fiercely, but there was no response. He shifted his burden a little and held his ear close. The lips were still breathing, though with broken fitfulness.

His fever would return, Bear Cat told himself, in intermittent waves, and he must utilize to the full the available periods of reason. Henderson would bleed to death unless his wounds were promptly staunched. Liquor must be forced down his throat if he were to last to Brother Fulkerson's house with life enough to say "I will."

Since the dawn when Bear Cat had given his pledge to Blossom he had always carried a flask in his pocket. He had done so in order that his fight should be one without any sort of evasion of issues: in order that the thirst should be met squarely and that whenever or wherever it attacked him he would have to face and conquer it with the knowledge that drink was at hand.

Now he felt for that flask and found that in the mêlée it had been shattered.

Rough and almost perpendicular leagues intervened between here and Brother Fulkerson's and there must immediately be some administration of first aid. The instinct of second nature came to Bear Cat's aid as he groped for his bearings.

Over this hill, a half mile through the "roughs," unless it had been moved of late, lay Dog Tate's blockade still. Slipping back of his saddle, onto the flanks of his mount, Turner lowered Henderson until he hung limp after the fashion of a meal-sack between cantle and pommel. He himself slid experimentally to the ground, supporting himself against the horse while he tested his legs. He could still stand – but could he carry a man as heavy as himself?

"A man kin do whatsoever he's obleeged ter do," he grimly told himself. "This hyar's a task I'm plumb decreed ter finish."

The fever had temporarily subsided. His brain felt preternaturally clarified by the contrast, but the hinges of his knees seemed frail and collapsible.

He hitched the horse, and hefting the insensible man in his arms, staggered blindly into the timber.

Dog's place was hedged about with the discouragement of thickets as arduous as a cheval de frise, but Bear Cat's feet groped along the blind path with a surety that survived from a life of wood-craft. Once he fell, sprawling, and it was a little while before he could conquer the nausea of pain sufficiently to rise, gather up his weighty burden, and stumble on again.

"I'll hev abundant time ter lay down an' die ter-morrow," he growled between the clamped jaws that were unconsciously biting the blood out of his tongue. "But I've got ter endure a spell yit – I hain't quite finished my job."

At last he lifted his voice and called guardedly out of the thickets. "This is Bear Cat Stacy – I'm bad wounded an' I seeks succor!"

There was no reply, but shortly he defined a shadow stealing cautiously toward him and Dog Tate stood close, peering through the sooty dark with amazement welling in his eyes.

The gorge which Dog had chosen for his nefarious enterprise was a "master shut-in" between beetling walls of rock, fairly secure against discovery and now both the moonshiner and his sentinel brought their lanterns for an inquiry into this unexpected visit.

At first mute astonishment held them. These two figures were bruised, torn and blood-stained, almost beyond semblance to humanity. In the yellow circlet of flare that the lantern bit out of the darkness, they seemed gory reminders of a slaughter-house. But much of the blood that besmeared Bear Cat Stacy had come from his weltering burden.

"I hain't got overly much time fer speech, Dog," gasped Turner between labored breaths. "We've got ter make Brother Fulkerson's afore we gives out… Strip this man an' bind up his hurts es well es ye kin… Git him licker, too!"

They staunched Henderson's graver wounds with a rough but not undeft speed, and when they had forced white liquor between his lips the faltering heart began to beat with less tenuous hold on the frayed fringes of life.

"Ef he lives ter git thar hit's a God's miracle," commented Dog. He passed the whiskey to Bear Cat, who thrust it ungraciously back as he repeated, with dogged reiteration. "He's got ter last twell mornin'. He's got ter."

When the prostrate figure stirred with a flicker of returning consciousness Turner's eyes became abruptly keen and his words ran swiftly into a current of decisiveness:

"Dog, yore maw war a Stacy – an' yore paw was kilt from ther la'rel. I reckon ye suspicions who caused his death?"

A baleful light glimmered instantly into the moonshiner's pupils; the light of a long-fostered and bitter hate. His answer was breathed rather than spoken.

"I reckon Kinnard Towers hired him killed… I was a kid when he died, but my mammy give me his handkerchief, dipped in his blood … an' I tuck my oath then." He paused a moment and went on more soberly: "I've done held my hand … because of ther truce … but I hain't nowise forgetful … an' some day – "

Bear Cat leaned forward and laid an interrupting hand on the shoulder of the speaker, to find it trembling.

"Hearken, Dog," he said. "Mebby yore time will come sooner then ye reckoned. I wants thet afore sun-up ter-morrow word should go ter every Stacy in these-hyar hills, thet I've done sent out my call, an' thet they shell be ready ter answer hit – full-armed. I wants thet ye shall summons all sich as ye hev ther power ter reach, ter meet fer counsel at my dwellin'-house ter-morrow mornin' … an' now I wants ter hev private speech with this-hyar man – " he jerked his head toward Henderson – "afore he gits past talkin'."

With a nod of comprehension the moonshiner and his helper slipped out of sight in the shadows, and kneeling at Jerry's side, Bear Cat again raised a cup of white whiskey to his lips.

The odor of the stuff stole seductively into his own nostrils, but he raised his eyes and saw again the evening star, not rising but setting.

"Blossom's star!" he groaned, then added, "Ye don't delight in me none, little gal! Thar hain't but one thing left thet I kin do fer ye – an' I aims ter see hit through."

With insupportable impatience he bent, waiting for a steadier light of consciousness to dawn in that other face. Every atom of his own will was focused and concentrated in the effort to compel a response of sensibility. Finally Henderson's eyes opened and the wounded man saw close to him a face so fiercely fixed that slowly, under its tense insistence, fragments of remembrance came driftingly and disjointedly back to him.

"Kin ye hear me?" demanded Bear Cat Stacy with an implacably ringing voice. "Does ye understand me?" And the other's head moved faintly – almost imperceptibly.

"Then mark me clost because I reckon both of us hes got ter stand afore many hours facin' Almighty God – an' hit don't profit us none ter mince words."

Through the haze of a brain still fogged and reeling, Henderson became aware of a hatred so bitter that it dwarfed into petulance that of the murder horde at the Quarterhouse.

"Ye come hyar … an' we tuck ye in." The tone rose from feebleness to an iron steadiness as it continued. "When I come inter ther Quarterhouse I 'lowed ye'd done turned traitor an' joined Kinnard Towers … but since they sought ter kill ye, mayhap I war misguided… Thet don't make no difference, now, nohow." He paused and struggled for breath.

"Ye tuck Blossom away from me … ye made her love ye because she hadn't never knowed … an eddicated man afore… All my days an' nights I'd dreamed of her… Ter make her happy, I'd gladly hev laid down my life … but I war jest a rough mounting man … an' then she seed you."

Henderson's lips moved in a futile effort as Bear Cat halted, gasping. His hand wavered in a weak gesture of protest – as against an unjust charge. But Bear Cat's voice leaped suddenly. "Don't stop me! Thar hain't much time left! You an' me needs ter go ter God's jedgment seat with our jobs finished… I don't censure Blossom none … hit war es rightful thet she should want a real life … es fer ther flowers ter want sunshine… But you! Ye stole her love – an' then abandoned her."

Henderson's eyes were eloquent with a denial – but the darkness hid it – and his lips refused utterance, while the other talked on, feebleness muting the accusing voice to a lower timbre.

"She warn't good enough fer you– her thet war too good fer any man! But perchance ye may be wiser dyin' then livin'." The weak utterance mounted into inexorable command.

"Now ye're a-goin' ter make good afore ye dies… She trusted ye … an – " Turner broke suddenly into a deep sob of agony. "I don't know how fur ye taxed her trust … but I knows she told me she had full faith in ye, an' faith like thet don't stop ter reckon up costs. Now she's sickenin' away – an' thet trust is broke … an' I reckon her heart's broke, too."

Henderson moistened his lips and with a supreme effort succeeded in whispering almost inaudibly, "That's a lie."

"A lie is hit? She gave ye her lips," went on the burning indictment. "An' in these hills when a woman like Blossom gives her lips ter a man, she gives him her soul ter keep… Ye're a mountain man yoreself … ye knows full well what mountain folks holds… Ye hain't got no excuse of ign'rance ter hide behind. Ye knows thet withouten ye weds her, folks will tell lies an' she won't never be able ter hold up her head – ner smile again."

"Stacy – " Henderson had rallied a little now, but he sagged back and at first got no further than the name. With another struggle, he added,

"I … I'm dying – "

"Mebby so. I hopes ye air … but fust ye're a-goin' over thar with me … an', because she'll be happier ef she thinks ye come of yore own free will… I hain't a-goin' ter tell her … thet I dragged ye thar … like a sheep-killin' dog… Ye're a-goin' ter let her think thet her hero has done come back ter her … deespite death hitself."

"But – but – "

The young mountaineer broke out with something half sob and half muffled roar.

"Hell, thar hain't no but! I'm tellin' ye what ye air a-goin' ter do! With God's aid I aims ter keep ye alive thet long … an' atter thet – I hain't takin' no heed what comes ter pass."