When 'Bear Cat' Went Dry Part 27

plunged us all inter tribulation! Hain't I got no men thet hain't d.a.m.ned 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 debris 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 t.i.tans, pressing in ponderously to smother and bury him. He felt that he must fend them off; hold back from crushing and fatal a.s.sault 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 ma.s.siveness 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 melee 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 G.o.d's miracle," commented Dog. He pa.s.sed 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 sh.e.l.l 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 G.o.d--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'