When 'Bear Cat' Went Dry Part 23

Turner Stacy's longing to see Blossom had driven him to the imprudence of breaking the restrictions of exile. After traveling by night and hiding by day it happened that he was breasting a ridge just at sunrise one morning on his way to her house, when his alert gaze caught an indistinct movement through the hazy half-light of the dawn. He could make out only that two figures seemed coming west along the mist-veiled path and that they appeared to be the figures of a man and a woman.

Surprised to encounter travelers at so remote a spot at that hour, he edged cautiously into the underbrush and lay flat on a huge rock which overlooked the path from a low eminence at its right.

They had halted just beyond the range of hearing, but when with mountain suddenness, like a torn curtain, the half-light became full-light he froze into a petrified astonishment which seemed to have clutched and squeezed all the vitality out of his heart, and to have left his blood currentless.

The abrupt revelation of light had fallen on the bright hair of Blossom Fulkerson and the dark uncovered head of Jerry Henderson; and before the monstrous incredibility of the situation could be fully grasped, the girl, to whom he had bade farewell as his acknowledged sweetheart, had thrown her arms around the neck of the man to whose loyal care he had confided her, and that man was kissing her with a lover's ardor!

What their words might be he could not tell--but their clinging embrace said enough--and Blossom was giving her lips with eager willingness.

[Ill.u.s.tration: What their words might be he could not tell--but their clinging embrace said enough]

Bear Cat lay for a moment, sick, dizzy and motionless while a groan, which never reached his lips, spasmodically shook his chest and shoulders. Succeeding that paralyzed instant, a fever of unspeakable fury surged over him and while all the rest of his body stretched unstirring, his arms slipped forward and the muzzle of his rifle crept over the ledge of rock. But that, too, was only a response to instinct and the thumb halted in the act of c.o.c.king the hammer. His vengeance called not only for satisfaction but for glutting.

Henderson must die face to face with him, not by the stealth of ambuscade, but by open violence to be administered with bare hands--realizing the cause of his punishment--dying by inches!

But as he was on the point of rising to confront them, something arrested him: the stupor of a man whose mind and heart had trusted so implicitly that they could not yet fully credit even the full demonstration of his eyes. This must, despite all its certainty, be some hallucination--some wide-eyed nightmare!

While the spell of his stunned heart held him in the thrall of inaction, Henderson and Blossom parted with slow reluctance and took up their opposite direction of journey.

Left alone, like a man sitting, shaken and demoralized, upon the broken debris of a wrecked universe, Turner stared ahead with a dull incredulity. But inaction was foreign to his nature and after a while he rose unsteadily to his feet. He turned and started at a swift stride which broke presently into a dog-trot along the way Henderson had taken; then he hesitated, halted and wheeled in his tracks.

"No!" he exclaimed. "No, by G.o.d, ef I meets up with _him_ the way I feels now, I'll kill him afore he has ther chanst ter speak with me. I kain't govern myself. I aims ter let _her_ tell hit to me her own self!"

So he altered his direction and went plunging westward.

A short route through broken rock and tangled brush enabled him to cut ahead of Blossom's course so that, turning an abrupt angle in the trail, the girl found him standing before her with clenched hands and a face so set and pale that she started back. It seemed to her that, instead of himself, it was his ghost which confronted her.

With a slow and stifled outcry, at the apparition, she carried her hands to her face, then broke into convulsive sobs.

"I didn't aim ter eavesdrop, Blossom," said Turner, his sternness wavering before her tears. "But I seed ye givin' yore lips ter Jerry Henderson back thar. Hit seems ter me like I kin almost discern the stain of thet kiss soilin' em now. I reckon I ought rightfully ter hev speech with him fust--but I knowed I'd kill him ef I did--an' so I held my hand twell I'd done seed _you_."

They were both trembling, and the girl's hands came slowly away from a face pitifully agitated. Her voice was a whisper.

"Ye mustn't censure me, Turney," she huskily protested. "I'm plighted--ter _him_."

"Plighted!" The word broke from the man as explosively as an oath, then after a moment's silence she heard him saying, in a slow and stunned fashion: "I 'lowed thet ye war all but plighted to _me_."

"I knows--I knows, Turney," she pleaded desperately. "I wants thet ye should understand. I thought thet I loved ye--I _do_ love ye better then ef ye war my own blood brother--but I didn't know afore now ther kind of love thet--thet----"

"Thet Jerry Henderson's done stole from me," he finished for her, in a voice she had never before heard on his lips. "Atter all I did make a mistake. Hit _war_ him I should hev spoke with fust--an' I reckon hit hain't too late ter overtake him yit."

Her hands were clinging to his arms. "No, Turney," she sought to explain. "He didn't know hit an' I didn't know hit either, when ye left. Neither one of us wouldn't hev sought ter lie ter ye."

Bear Cat Stacy was only partly conscious of what she was saying. Before his eyes swam red spots of fury which blinded him. If there was any vestige of truth in his ugly suspicion that Blossom was being deceived or played with, the responsible man, trusted friend and admired preceptor though he had been, was Bear Cat's to kill--and must die!

So he stood, tensely strained of att.i.tude and ashen of cheek while a murder light kindled afresh in his eyes, and Blossom seemed the wavering shape of a dream: the dream of every hope his life had known--now utterly unattainable. Her fingers were clutching his taut arms yet she seemed suddenly withdrawn from his world, leaving it void.

But she was talking earnestly, beseeching, and with the strained effort of one striving to separate lucid voices from the chaotic din of a delirium, he gave painstaking heed. She told the story of Jerry's narrow escape from death and of her conducting him to a place of safe departure. Part of it only he understood through the crashing dissonance of tempest which still confused his brain.

The volcanic fires within him that were destined to bring earthquake and transition were licking consumingly at the gates of his self-control.

His whole life had been builded on a single dream: the dream of her love--and she had promised it. For that he had fought the one enemy that had ever mastered him, and had conquered. For that he had shaped his life. Now he had been robbed of everything!

"Don't ye see how hit is, Turney?" she pleaded. "Hit wasn't his fault ner hit wasn't my fault.... Hit jest had ter be! Ye sees how hit is, don't ye?"

"Yes, I sees--how hit is!" The response came dully, then with a nearer recovery of a natural tone he went on. "Anyways I reckon ye've got ther right ter decide atween us. I reckon yore heart's yore own ter give or withhold. Hit war ter me that ye pledged yoreself first. Yore first kiss was mine--an' ye suffered me ter hope an' believe." There was a strained pause, then he added: "But even ef I could hold yer erginst yore free will, I wouldn't seek ter do hit."

Blossom's contrite wretchedness was so sincere and her sympathy so inarticulate that his face presently changed. The bitter and accusing sternness died gradually out of it and after a grief-stricken moment gave way to a great gentleness--such a gentleness as brought a transformation and stamped his lips and brow with a spirit of renunciation.

"Thar was murder in my heart, jest at first, little gal," he a.s.sured her softly, "but I reckon atter all hit's a right-pore love thet seeks ter kill a man fer gainin' somethin' hit's lost hitself. He kin take ye down thar whar life means sich things as ye desarves ter enjoy. With me ye'd have ter endure ther same hardships thet broke my mother down. I wants above all else thet ye should be happy--an' ef I kain't make ye happy----" He paused abruptly with a choked throat and demanded: "When does ye aim ter wed?"

The girl flushed. She did not think Turner would accord a sympathetic understanding to her lover's somewhat vague att.i.tude on that point, so she only answered. "He 'lows ter write ter me--ef so be he kain't come back soon."

"Write ter ye!" The militant scorn snapped again in his eyes, burning away their softness as a prairie fire consumes dry gra.s.s, in its first hot breath. "Write ter ye! No, by Almighty G.o.d in Heaven, ye says ye're plighted ter wed him! Ye've done suffered him ter hold ye in his arms.

Mountain men comes ter fotch thar brides ter church--they don't send fer 'em ter journey forth an' meet 'em. In these hills of old Kaintuck men come to thar women! He's got ter come hyar an' claim ye ef he has ter fight his way acrost every league of ther journey--an' ef he _don't_----!" But Bear Cat broke off suddenly with a catch in his voice.

"I've got full trust, Turney," she declared, and her eyes showed it, so that the man forced himself to calmness again, and went on in a level voice.

"I aims ter see thet ye hes what ye wants, Blossom, ef I hes ter plumb tear ther hills down level by level ter git hit fer ye. I must be a-farin' back inter Virginny," he announced a moment later with a curtness meant to bulwark him against a fresh outburst of feeling.

Blossom raised her hands as if to detain him, then let them drop again with a pathetic gesture. Bear Cat picked up his hat which had fallen to the ground and stood crushing its limp brim in his clenched fingers.

Finally he said, without anger, but very seriously: "I wants thet ye should give me back my pledge--erbout drinkin'. Ye knows why I give hit ter ye--an' now----"

"Oh, Turner," she interrupted protestingly, "don't ask thet!"

"I'm obleeged ter ask hit, Blossom," he obdurately answered. "I reckon mebby I kin still win my fight with licker--but I mustn't be beholden by a bond thet's lost hits cause."

Tearfully she nodded her head. "I'll free ye if ye demands. .h.i.t," she conceded, "but I aims ter go on a-prayin'."

Jerry Henderson was not a scoundrel in a general sense nor had he hitherto been a weakling, but for once he was the self-governed man who has lost control of his life and fallen victim to vacillation. Surging waves of heart-hunger made him want to go recklessly back; to fight his way, if need be, through all the Towers' minions to Blossom's side and claim her as his promised bride.

Other and perhaps saner waves of tremendous misgiving beat with steady reiteration against those of impulse. He must live out most of his days among people to whom such an alliance would be stripped of all illusion; would resolve itself into nothing more than a mesalliance.

For both of them it would eventuate in wreck--and so Blossom heard nothing from him and she tasted first fear, then despair.

At last Kinnard Towers either learned or guessed the truth; that Blossom had hidden Henderson out in the absence of her father and had aided his escape. He saw to it that the report gained wide currency in a land avid for gossip.

Whatever the condition of his love affairs, Jerry came up short against the realization that he could not indefinitely abandon his business. He must, in some way, demonstrate that he was not being effectively put to flight by feudal threats and so he carried his perplexities to Lone Stacy, who was awaiting trial in the Louisville jail, and unbosomed himself in a full and candid recital.

The bearded moonshiner, gaunter than ever and with the haunted eyes of a caged eagle, listened with grave courtesy but with a brow that gradually knitted into an expression half puzzled and half sinister.

"I reckon Bear Cat'll feel right-sensibly broke up," he said slowly.

"Ye've done cut him out with his sweetheart, endurin' his absence from home, and ther two of 'em's growed up without no other notion then thet of bein' wed some day."

Henderson was on the point of self-justification, but before he could speak the prisoner went thoughtfully on: "Howsoever, a gal's got a rather as to her sweet-heartin'--an' ef ye won her fa'r an'

above-board, I reckon Turner kin be fa'r-minded, too. I was thinkin' of somethin' else, though. From what ye tells me hit looks like es ef all these things, my jailin' an' yore lay-wayin', is jest pieces of one pattern. Hit looks like _I_ was brought down hyar so thet Kinnard Towers could git _you_. Ef I'd a-knowed erbout his warnin' ye off thet night ye came, I mout hev guessed hit afore now."