When 'Bear Cat' Went Dry Part 32

Slowly, with a comprehending sympathy but a firm resolution, Stacy shook his head.

"Ye've got ter be as heedful an' patient es ye bade ther others be.

I've got a right-sensible hankerin' atter vengeance myself to-day, Dog--but I've got ter hold my hand for a spell yit, an' ye've got ter give me yore solemn pledge ter hold your'n, too. Hit mustn't be said thet ef any man--even Kinnard--trusts us enough ter ride inter our midst when we're gathered, he kain't be heered in safety."

The messenger stood looking down at the grewsome souvenir of the tragedy which he believed left him a debtor with an unpaid score. Clan obedience and individual l.u.s.t for reprisal shook him in profound dilemma, but finally, with a strong effort, he nodded his head--though grudgingly.

"I gives ye my hand," he said in a dull voice, and up to them at that moment rode a spattered horseman who, because of Towers' relationship and marriage with a Stacy wife, was qualified as a neutral.

"I brings tidin's from Kinnard Towers," he announced. "He seeks ter hold a parley with ye. He comes in peace, an' he wants yore pledge thet he kin fare hither without harm."

Turner's jaw came out with a belligerent set, but he answered slowly.

"I was over at his place last night an' he didn't hardly hold _me_ harmless. None-the-less, tell him ter come on. I'll send back a few of my kinfolks with ye ter safeguard him along ther way."

CHAPTER XVIII

Luke Towers, the father of Kinnard, had been one of those fierce and humorless old feudists of primal animosities and exploits as engagingly bold as the feats of moss-trooping barons. The "Stacy-Towers" war had broken into eruption in his day. No man remembered to just what origin it was traceable--but it had, from its forgotten cause, flared, guttered, smoldered and flared again until its toll of lives had reached a scattering summary enumerated in scores and its record had included some sanguinary highlights of pitched battle. The state government had sought to regulate its bloodier phases with the impressive lesson of troops and Gatling guns, but that had been very much like scourging tempestuous seas with rods.

Courts sat and charged panels, with a fine ironic mask of solemnity.

Grand juries were sworn and listened with an equal mockery of owlish dignity. Deputies rode forth and returned with unserved subpoenas.

Prosecutions collapsed, since no law unbacked by public sanction in its own jurisdiction can prevail. Stacys and Towers, alike fierce in private quarrel and jealous of their right of personal settlement, became blankly ignorant in the witness chair; welded by their very animosities into a common cause against judge and jury.

There had been, among that generation of Stacys, no such outstanding figure as old Mark Towers, the indomitable lion of the hills. Kinnard had followed Mark, bringing to the succession no such picturesque savagery--but still a bold spirit, tempered by craft. In lieu of the sledge blow he favored the smiling face with the dirk unsheathed behind his back. Times were altering and to him mere leadership meant less than enough. He was also covetous of wealth, in a land of meagerness.

To clan loyalty as an abstract principle he must have added such obedience as comes only from fear--and men must know that to thwart him was dangerous. Upon that principle, he had built his dominance until men shaped even their court testimony to the pattern of his requirements. At first the Stacy clan had challenged his autocracy, but twenty years before, the truce had been made and, since no Stacy leader had arisen of sufficient caliber to wrest from him the ascendency of his guile and bold wits, he had triumphed and fattened in material wealth.

The farm that he had "heired" from his father, with its few fallow acres of river bottom, had spread gradually but graciously into something like a domain.

He might now have moved his household to a smoother land and basked in the security of fair affluence--but an invisible bond chains the mountain-born to mountain environment. Highland nostrils shut themselves against lowland air. Highland lips spit out as flat and stale that water which does not gush from the source of living brooks.

There were enemies here who hungered for his life--a contingency which he faced with open-eyed realization--enemies actuated by grievances apart from feud cleavage. Three attempts upon his life, he had already survived. Some day he would not escape. But that eventuality was more welcome, despite its endless threat, than an ease that carried with it surrender of his rude ascendency and the strong intoxication of petty might.

For several years now he had been hearing tales of a Stacy youth who bore the ear-marks of leadership, and from whom, some day, he might expect a challenge of power. If such a test came, he must combat a younger and fierier adversary when his own prime had pa.s.sed.

Elsewhere in the hills waves of transition were encroaching on the old order of lethargic ignorance. The hermit blindfold was being loosened from eager eyes--and men like himself were being recognized and overthrown. So far the rock-built ridges of Cedar Mountain had been a reef, protecting his own locality--but the advent of Jerry Henderson had bespoken the imminence of a mounting tide--and whispered the warning of deluge.

The elimination of Jerry had seemed imperative, but the result promised disaster--since the wounding of Bear Cat had threatened the wrath-glutting of the Stacys.

There was only one method of discounting that danger. Bear Cat had come single-handed to his stronghold--he must now go single-handed, or escorted only by his customary body-guard, into the heart of Stacy territory, disavowing responsibility for the attack. He must, by that convincingly reckless device, appear to demonstrate that he trusted himself among them and expected in turn to be trusted by them.

He hoped with a fair degree of confidence that Jerry Henderson had not reached the minister's alive--or that at all events he had not been able to talk with a revealing fluency.

So the guileful old wolf had set out to ride boldly through an aroused and hostile country, facing a score of parlous contingencies.

As he rode, he heard the rallying cry and its full portent in no wise escaped his just appraisal. It caused him to spur on faster, however, for the ugliness of the situation made it the more imperative that he should reach Lone Stacy's house in time to present himself as an ally before he was sought out as an enemy.

But when he had sent his message ahead by a neutral bearer, Kinnard Towers slowed down and watched the stream of hors.e.m.e.n that flowed past him: all men with scowling eyes responding to the cry which meant war: all men who pa.s.sed without attack, only because, as yet, the summons had not been explained.

"By ther G.o.dlings!" muttered the Towers chieftain, with a bitter humor, "I didn't know thar was sich a pa.s.sel o' Stacys in ther world. They'll stand a heap of thinnin' out!"

"An' as sh.o.r.e es h.e.l.l's hot," growled Black Tom Carmichael with a dark pessimism brooding in his eyes, "they'll _do_ right-smart thinnin' out their own selves--once they gits stirred up."

By the time the sun had fully dissipated the early mists, the door yard of Lone Stacy's house was dotted with little groups of men, and from the wide doors of the barn more faces looked expectantly out. Along the sandy creek-bed of the road, where a flock of geese waddled and hissed, other arrivals stamped their feet against the cold of the frost-stiffened mud, and rammed chapped hands into trouser pockets.

They talked little, but waited with an enduring patience. They were determined men, raggedly clothed and bearded; incurious of gaze and uncommunicative of speech--but armed and purposeful. They were men who had left their beds to respond to the call of their clan.

Slowly Bear Cat circulated among the motley crowd, exchanging greetings, but holding his counsel until the tide of arrivals should end. It was a tatterdemalion array that he had conjured into conclave with his skittering whoop along the hill-tops. There were lads in jeans and veterans in long-tailed coats, green of seam and fringed of cuff.

They carried rifles of all descriptions from modern repeaters to antiquated squirrel guns, but, in the bond of unshrinking stalwartness, they were uniform.

To hold such a headstrong army--mightily leaning toward violence--in leash needed a firm hand, and an unbending will. Old fires were kindling in them, ignited by the cry that had been a match set to tinder and gunpowder.

It was, all in all, a parlous time, but no one caught any riffle of doubt in Turner Stacy's self-confident authority as he pa.s.sed from group to group, explaining the vital need of forbearant control until Kinnard Towers had come, spoken and departed. The Stacy honor was at stake and must be upheld. His morning hurricane of pa.s.sion had left him alertly cool and self-possessed--but there was battle-light in his eyes.

In grim expectancy they waited, while nerves tightened under the heavy burden of suspense. Turner had sternly commanded cold sobriety, and the elders had sought to enforce it, but here and there in hidden places the more light-headed pa.s.sed flasks from hand to hand and from mouth to mouth.

Such was the crowd into which Kinnard Towers eventually rode, with his double body-guard, and even his tough-fibred spirit must have acknowledged an inward qualm of trepidation, though he nodded with a suave ease of bearing as he swung himself from his saddle at the gate.

The urbane blue eyes under the straw-yellow brows were not unseeing, nor were they lacking in a just power of estimate. They noted the thunder-cloud quiet--and did not like it, but, after all, they had not expected to like it.

As Bear Cat came forward the Towers chieftain began unctuously. "How air Mr. Henderson? Air he still alive?"

"He war last time I heered," was the curt reply.

Towers nodded with the air of one whose grave anxiety has been allayed, but under the meditative quality of his Sabbath calm he was wishing that he could learn, without asking, whether Jerry had been able to talk. A great deal depended on that--but making the best of affairs as he found them, he broached his mission.

"This hyar trouble came up in my place--an' hit's made me mighty sore-hearted," he avowed. "But I've got ther names of every man thet war thar when I come in--an' I rid over hyar ter proffer ye my aid in runnin' down ther matter and punishin' them thet's guilty." He paused, and feeling the unmasked distrust with which his a.s.surance was greeted, added:

"I reckon yore father's son wouldn't hardly want no _illegal_ punishment."

Bear Cat declined to meet diplomacy in kind.

"Ye reckons thet my father's son aims ter stand out fer a truce thet's kept on one side an' broke on ther t'other. Air thet what ye means?"

Kinnard Towers felt his cheek-bones grow red and hot with anger at the taunt, but he blunted the edge of acerbity and parried in sober dignity.

"Ef I'd aimed ter bust ther truce I wouldn't hardly hev interfered ter save ye, fust in Marlin Town and then ergin last night. I rid over hyar with ther roads full of Stacys ter hold counsel with ye. I aimed ter tell ye all I knowed and find out what _you_ knowed, so thet betwixt us we could sift this matter ter ther bottom."

"Whatever ye've got ter say ter me, ye kin say ter these men, too," was the tartly unconciliating reply. "I've pledged ye safety twell ye rides back home. I aims ter say some things myself--an' I reckon most of 'em won't pleasure ye none." The speaker's eyes flared as he added, "But from this day forwards either you or me air goin' ter run things in these hills an' ther t'other one of us won't hardly hev standin' room left."

"I reckon," said Kinnard Towers,--and now the ingratiating quality that had sugar-coated his address dissolved into frank enmity,--"I reckon ef thet's ther road ye elects ter travel, thar hain't scarcely any avail in my tarryin' hyar. I mout es well say farewell an' tell h.e.l.l with ye!

Yore paw wouldn't hardly be so malicious an' stiff-necked. Ye don't need ter be told thet I've got numerous enemies hyar in these mountings, too--an' thet more'n once they've marked me down fer death."

The younger man's att.i.tude was that of unmasked distrust, yet of patience to listen to the end. Kinnard Towers, hirer of a.s.sa.s.sins though he was, spoke with a certain dignity that savored of sound logic. "Moreover, ye knows right well thet when I rid over hyar with yore war-whoop skitterin' from hill-top ter hill-top, an' yore men trapesin' along highways an' through ther timber trails, I traveled, in a manner of speakin', with my neck in a halter. I was willin' ter risk ther shot from the la'rel because, in a fashion, you an' me holds ther lives an' ther welfare of our people in ther hollers of our hands. I fared hither seekin' peace; aimin' ter stand side by side with ye in huntin' down ther men thet sought ter murder you an' yore friend from down below."

A crimson flush mantled on the full jowl and bull-like neck. The voice shook with antagonism. "But I didn't come over hyar ter _sue_ fer peace--an' the day hain't dawned yit when any man kin order me ter leave ther mountings whar I belongs."