When 'Bear Cat' Went Dry Part 29

Eventually an abrupt shout sounded imperatively from just beyond the door--a voice which Blossom did not recognize, and as she came to her feet she heard her father's stern challenge, "Who's out thar?"

"Hit's Joe Sanders--an' I'm in haste!"

Despite the urgency of word and tone the preacher hesitated to demand:

"What business brings ye hyar in ther dead of night-time?"

"I've got Bear Cat Stacy an' Mr. Henderson. They're both sore wounded.

Fer G.o.d's sake, hasten!"

With a swiftness of motion that outstripped her father's, Blossom flung herself forward and with feverish fingers was sliding the bar from its sockets.

But while the preacher stood waiting, his lips drew themselves into an unbending line and his s.h.a.ggy brows lowered. Inwardly he was praying: "Almighty G.o.d, I beseeches Ye ter strengthen me in this hour ter fergive mine enemies--fer Thou knowest thar's murder in my heart!"

As the girl threw the door wide, she saw what seemed to be three figures locked in a close embrace.

The trio lurched rather than stepped into the lighted area, and, shrinking back horrified, Blossom saw Brother Fulkerson close his house, his face marked, as she had never before seen it, with a grim unwelcome.

Sanders carried in his arms a figure whose limbs fell in grotesque inertia. Its clothing was torn by briars and bullets; matted with mire and blood. Its face was half hidden by a rough bandage made from Jerry's own handkerchief, upon which the stains had turned from red to dull brown, except at the spots where the crimson had been renewed by an unstaunched trickle.

Bear Cat stumbled across the threshold unaided, but as he halted, blinking at the light, he reeled drunkenly and propped his disheveled body against the wall. That was for a moment only and at its end he drew himself into something nearer uprightness and swept his hand across his brow. He had not carried the matter this far to fail at the finish.

"Lay thet man on a bed," he panted with fierce earnestness. "Thar hain't no time ter waste ... he's nigh death ... an' he's come hyar ter be wedded."

Brother Fulkerson answered in a voice of bewilderment, tinged, too, with protest.

"Thar hain't sca'cely no life in him. Hit's too late fer marryin'."

"Not yit hit hain't ... hit will be ef ye tarries!" Turner ripped out his words with the staccato snap of rifle fire. His own feebleness seemed to drop away like the hat he flung to one side. His eyes burned with tawny fire and a positive fury of haste. For hours, he felt he had been holding death in abeyance by a sheer grapple of resolution, and now men paused to parley and make comment. An impulse of insane wrath besieged him. He must be obeyed--and the moments were flying--the sands running out.

"Hasten now--an' talk afterwards," he burst out.

They laid Jerry on Blossom's bed, its coverings magically smoothed into comfort by her flying hands, and Joe Sanders once more pressed his pocket flask to the white lips.

The girl, buoyed up, beyond her strength, by the moment's need and the mettle of her blood, swiftly and capably eased the posture of the wounded man, loosened his heavy boots and rushed from the room to prepare fresh bandages. The stunning impact of despair would come later. Now every fighting chance must be preserved to him.

While she was still out of the room, Henderson's eyes opened in a fluttering and precarious consciousness, to find other eyes fixed on them with flaming intensity.

The basilisk gaze was fabulously reputed to bring death, but Turner Stacy was reversing its hypnotism to compel life.

"Where--am I?" whispered Jerry; and the answer was as peremptory as predestination.

"Ye're at Blossom's house--ter git married--an,' by G.o.d, ye've got ter last thet long. She's got ter believe ye come of yore own free will--see thet she does!"

The half-insensible eyes ranged vaguely about the place. The weak fingers plucked absently at the coverlet, and then essayed a gesture.

The promoter seemed rallying his failing faculties for a supreme effort though his voice was hardly audible.

"But--Stacy--you don't--under--stand."

Bear Cat brought his face close; a face with belligerently out-thrust chin and fiercely narrowed eyes. Henderson must consent before Blossom returned to divine with her quick intuition that her dying lover balked in the shadow of death.

"Don't explain nothin' ter me. Save yore breath ter say 'I will.'

Thet's all ye hev need ter utter now--an' hits need enough."

In his overwrought singleness of purpose Turner forgot that this man was beyond any force of threat or coercion. As he spoke so dictatorially he believed himself, too, to be facing death with equal certainty, though more slowly, and what he had sworn to do must first be done.

Yet there was such an inescapable compulsion in the ernest fixity of his pale face and burning eyes that the outstretched figure felt its own declining will merged and conquered.

"Hit's ther only decent thing thet's left fer ye ter do," went on the strained but inflexible voice. "Ye took her heart fer yore own--an'

broke hit. Ye've got ter let her have yore name an' ther consolation of believin' thet ye came ter her ... honest, fightin' back black death hitself!"

Sometimes between sleep and waking come fugitive thoughts that seem crystal-clear, but that elude definite memory. Such a process enacted itself in the mind of the dying man. Doubt and complications were dissolved into simplicity--and acquiescence.

Faintly he nodded his head and even tried to hold out his hand to be shaken. Perhaps Bear Cat was too excited to recognize that proffer of amenity. Possibly his own bitterness was yet too black for forgiveness--at all events he turned away without response to seek out Joel Fulkerson, who had disappeared.

"Ye've got ter hasten, Brother Fulkerson," he hurriedly urged. "Jerry Henderson's done come back ter give his name ter Blossom afore he dies an' death hain't far off."

The old evangelist was bending over a medicine chest. It was a thing which a visiting surgeon had once given him and in the use of which he had developed an inborn skill that had before now saved lives and ameliorated suffering. He straightened up dubiously and faced the younger man.

"Turney," he said grimly, "ef they don't wed, folks hyarabouts'll always look askance at my little gal with a suspicion thet I'm confi_dent_ is as false as h.e.l.l hitself--but G.o.d made ther state of matrimony holy--an' I'm his servant--onlessen they both enters inter hit free-minded hit wouldn't be nothin' but a blasphemy. _Air_ they both of one mind?"

Turner stiffened to a ramrod straightness. His hands clenched themselves into hard fists and his nostrils quivered.

"Brother Fulkerson, ye're a G.o.dly man," he declared with suppressed pa.s.sion, "an' I hain't never sought ter dispute ye ner defy ye afore now--but thar hain't no time ter argyfy. Willin'ly or unwillin'ly ye're a-goin' ter wed them two--right hyar--an' now! He plighted his troth ter her. He's got a mighty brief chanct ter fulfill his pledge an'

leave her thinkin' she gave her love ter a true man. He's come acrost hyar, shot like a bob-white--jest fer thet. I've fought off death my own self ter-night--jest fer thet! Ef G.o.d has spared both of us this long, I reckon He done hit--jest fer thet! I'll answer ter Him at ther jedgment-seat, ef so be I'm wrong."

For an irresolute moment the father hesitated, then he said briefly, "Come on."

Turner wheeled, bracing himself for the bitterest ordeal of all. He must be the spokesman for a rival whom he hated beyond superlatives--and in order that Blossom might keep her dream, which was all she could now hope to salvage out of life, he meant to tell a lie which would for all time enshrine that detestable traitor. None the less, when he had drawn her aside, he spoke with great gentleness, perjuring himself with knightly self-effacement.

He took both her hands in his own and looked with a tender consideration into her forlorn eyes, gulping down the choke that rose in his throat and threatened his power of speech. Though her gaze was fixed on his face she seemed hardly to see him, so stiff and trance-like was her posture and so tight-drawn and expressionless her features. If he could soften that paralysis of grief it was worth a self-sacrificing lie.

"Blossom," he began softly, "Mr. Henderson fell inter a murder trap an'

I got thar too late ... ter fotch him out unharmed. Betwixt us we _did_ come through, though, with ther breath still in our bodies ... an' he made me pledge myself ter git him hyar in time ... ter wed with ye afore he died."

He saw the eyes widen and soften as if the tight constriction of heart and nerve had been a little eased. Into them came even a pale hint of serenity and pride--pride for the splendid vindication of a hero whom she had tried to believe true and had been compelled to doubt. Even the bleak dreariness of widowhood could not tarnish that memory: her ideal instead of being shattered was canonized!

"I knowed he'd prove true," she loyally declared. "Despite everything I jest knowed hit deep down in my heart!"

A pallid thinning of the darkness was discernible over the eastern ridges as Brother Fulkerson, who had administered his most powerful restoratives, thrust back his medicine chest. His face became mysteriously grave as he joined the hands of his daughter and the man whose fingers were limp in their enfeebled clasp. Across the quilted four-poster stood Bear Cat Stacy, as erectly motionless as bronze. His unblinking eyes and lips, schooled into firm stoicism, might have suggested some young Indian brave going, set of purpose, to his torture. The lamp flared and sputtered toward the end of its night-long service and the fire had dwindled to an ashen desolation.

At the foot of the bed, and depressed with a dull sense of awe, was Joe Sanders, fingering his hat-brim and shifting his weight from foot to foot.

The old preacher of the hills, ordained in no recognized school of divinity, had for this occasion put aside the simple formula that the mountains knew and subst.i.tuted for it such fragments as he remembered from the Church of England's more stately ritual. It was a service that he had heard infrequently and long ago, but it had stirred him with its solemn beauty and G.o.d would forgive any unmeant distortions since the intent was reverent.

"Dearly Beloved, we're gathered together hyar in ther sight of G.o.d A'mighty an' in the face of this hyar company ... to j'ine tergither this-hyar man an' this-hyar woman." There exact memory failed him and his voice broke in a pathetic quaver. Bear Cat Stacy bit his tongue until he could taste the blood in his mouth as he held his gaze rigidly fixed above the heads of the little group. G.o.d alone knew how bitter were the broken dreams in his heart, just then.

"I require an' charge ye both, as ye will answer at ther dreadful day of jedgment--" the holy words were still illusive and memory tricky--"thet ef either one of ye knows any--any--cause why ye kain't rightfully be j'ined tergither in matrimony ... ye do now confess. .h.i.t."