When 'Bear Cat' Went Dry Part 4

"I hain't got no licker. I don't never use hit," replied Jason curtly.

"So ef thet's all thet brought ye hyar, ye've already got yore answer an' ye mout es well be farin' on."

Webb's leer darkened to malignity and his voice came in a snarl.

"Ye hain't hardly got no tolerance fer drinkin', hes ye, Bud? Albeit ye hain't none too sanctified ter grind up all ther sprouted corn thet other fellers fotches in ter ye."

The old fellow was alone and unarmed save for his hickory staff, but he was vested with that authority which stiffens a man, standing on his own threshold and facing an insolent trespa.s.ser. His manner was choleric and crisp in its note of command.

"I don't aim ter waste no time cavilin' with a drunken carouser. I bids ye ter leave my place. Begone!"

But the traveler, inflamed with the venom of the drunken bully, lurched forward, whipping a revolver from its sagging pocket. With an oath he rammed the muzzle close against the pit of the other's stomach.

Bud's level eyes did not falter. He gripped his useless hickory as if it had been a lictor's staff of unchallengeable office. Perhaps that steady moment saved his life, for before his a.s.sailant's flood of obscene vilification had reached its period, Ratler Webb leaped back--interrupted. He changed front, wheeling to protect his back against the logs of the rude wall and thrusting his pistol before him, while his jaw sagged abruptly in dismay.

Bear Cat stood facing him, ten yards distant, and his right hand was thrust into his opened shirt, under the armpit, where the mountain man carries his holster. That the position of the hand was a bluff, covering an unarmed helplessness, Ratler Webb did not know.

"Air ye follerin' revenuin' these days, Ratler?" inquired Stacy in a voice of such velvet softness that the other responded only with an incoherent snarl. "Because ef ye air, numerous folks hyarabouts will be right glad ter find out who it is that's informin' on 'em."

"d.a.m.n ye! Keep thet hand whar hit's at!" ordered the aggressor violently and like the cornered rat he had become doubly dangerous. He had set out only to torture a defenseless victim, and now it seemed a question of killing or being killed, so he loaded his voice with truculence as he went on.

"Ef ye seeks ter draw hit out or come a step frontwards, so help me Almighty G.o.d I'll kill ye in yore tracks!"

Turner Stacy smiled. Upon his ability to do so with a semblance of quiet contempt he was staking everything.

"Shoot whenever ye gits ready, Ratler," he challenged. "But don't do hit onless ye're expectin' ter die, too. When this trigger-work commences, I aims ter _git_ ye."

"Move a hand or a foot then, an' see--" The voice was desperately high pitched and nasal now, almost falsetto, but through its threat Bear Cat recognized an undercurrent of sudden terror. The desperado remembered that his horse stood hitched a quarter of a mile away. His right boot sole had been freshly patched and left a clearly identifying mark in the mud. He had prepared no alibi in advance, and within a few hours after Turner fell scores of his kinsmen would be baying on the trail.

"Shoot!" taunted Bear Cat Stacy. "Why don't ye shoot?"--and then with an effrontery which dazed his antagonist, he deliberately moved several steps forward--halting nearer the pistol's muzzle.

"I don't aim ter kill ye onless I has ter," stormed Webb with weakening a.s.surance. "Halt! I'm givin' ye fa'r warnin'. Hit's self-d_ee_fense ef ye crowds me."

Stacy spoke again, standing once more motionless.

"Ye couldn't shoot thet pistol at me ef I walked in on ye with my hands over my head. My time hain't come yit ter die, because ther's things I was born ter do--an' G.o.d Almighty aims ter hev me live till I've done 'em. He don't aim ter hev me hurt by no coward like you, I reckon. Ye couldn't shoot any man noways whilst his eyes was lookin' full at ye.

Ye has need ter lay hid in ther la'rel afore ye kin pull yore trigger finger. I dares ye to shoot!"

The white-bearded miller stood motionless, too, measuring all the chances. For a moment he wondered whether it would be possible to strike up the armed hand with his long staff, but he wisely repressed the impulse. This after all was a new sort of combat, a duel of wills rather than of weapons. He knew that Bear Cat Stacy was unarmed because he had so recently seen the sweat-drenched shirt clinging close to the arched chest.

Ratler Webb's hand no longer trembled with the uncertainty of tipsiness. His eyes were no longer obfuscated and muddled with whiskey fumes. He had reverted to the feral instincts of desperation--and was suddenly sobered.

He gripped his out-thrust pistol in both hands for greater surety and half-crouched with knees bent under him, ready either to spring or brace himself against attack. His eyes, gleaming with blood-pa.s.sion, traveled shiftily so that he could keep watch on both his possible adversaries.

The other and younger man stood upright, but his muscles, too, were poised and balanced with all nicety of readiness and his eyes were measuring the distance between: gauging sundry odds of life and death.

For a moment more the tableau held in silence. Both the miller and the boy could hear the labored, almost gasping breath of the man with the pistol and both knew that the mean temper of his heart's metal was weakening.

Then when a squirrel barked from the timber, Ratler Webb started violently and above the stubble of dirty beard, sweat drops began to ooze on his face.

Why didn't Bear Cat Stacy say something? Why didn't somebody move? If he fired now he must kill both men or leave a witness to blab deadly information close on the heels of his flight! In his heart welled a rising tide of panic.

Turner knew by instinct that every moment he could hold Ratler there with his pistol leveled, was for the desperado, a moment of weakening resolve and nerve-breaking suspense. But he also knew another thing.

When the strain of that waiting snapped Ratler would either run or shoot. Mountain annals hold more instances of the latter decision that the former, but that was the chance to be taken.

Webb carried a notched gun. He had forced many fights in his day, but in all of them there had been the swift tonic of action and little time to think. Now he dared not lower his weapon in surrender--and he was afraid to fire. He felt that his lips were growing dry and thickening.

He thrust out his tongue to lick them, and its red tip gave, to his ugly features, a strange grotesqueness.

Under the brown of wind and sun and the red of liquor-flush his face paled perceptibly. Then it grew greenish yellow with a sick clamminess of dread.

At last with a discernible quaver in his voice he broke the unendurable silence, and his words came brokenly and disjointed:

"I didn't aim ter force no quarrel on ye, Bear Cat.... Ef ye plumb compels me ter do hit, I've got ter kill ye, but I hain't a-hankerin'

none fer ther task."

"Thet's a lie, too. Ye come hyar a-seekin' of _evidence_ because ye're harborin' a grudge erginst me an' ye dastn't satisfy hit no other way."

There was a pause, then Webb said slowly, and with a half-heartedness from which all the effrontery had ebbed:

"I 'lows ter go on erbout my business now, but if either one of ye moves from whar ye're standin' twell I'm outen range I aims ter kill ye both."

Shifting his revolver to his right hand and feeling behind him with his left, he began backing away, still covering his retreat and edging a step at a time toward the corner of the shack, but at the second step, with a swiftness which vindicated his name, the Bear Cat sprang.

The old miller shook his head, but made no outcry. He heard the thud of two bodies and the grunt driven from a chest by the impact of charging shoulders. He saw two figures go down together while a tongue of flame and a m.u.f.fled roar broke belatedly from the mouth of the pistol.

Whether the bullet had taken effect or, if so, who was its victim, he could not at first distinguish. Two human beings, muscled like razor-backs were writhing and twisting in a smother of dust, their limbs clinched and their voices mingled in snarling and incoherent savagery. The mountain ethics of "fist and skull" impose no Queensbury restrictions. Tooth and knee, heel and knuckle may do their best--and worst.

But the pistol itself flew clear and the old miller picked it up, turning again to observe the result of the encounter.

The fighters had struggled up again to their feet and were locked in a bone-breaking embrace of hatred. For the moment the advantage seemed to rest with Webb, who was clutching Turner's head in the distressing chancery of his powerful right arm and doing his utmost to break the neck. Bear Cat's breathing was a hoa.r.s.e and strangling agony, but his fists battered like unremitting flails against the ribs and kidneys of his antagonist. As they swayed and tottered their brogans were ploughing up the hard soil and, totally blinded by sweat and rage, they wavered perilously close to the edge of the huge rock--with its ten-foot drop to the mill race.

Even as Old Bud gave his warning cry, they went down together--and fell short of the brink, escaping that danger. Stacy writhed free from the neck-grip, and both came up again, leaping into a fresh embrace of panthers, with eyes glaring insanely out of blood-smeared faces.

Then it all ended abruptly. Bear Cat wrenched himself free and sent a chance blow, but one behind which went all his weight and pa.s.sion, to the other's mouth. The smitten head went back with a jerk. Webb reeled groggily for an instant, then crumpled, but before he had quite fallen Stacy, with an insensate fury, was dragging him to his feet and clutching at the throat which his fingers ached to strangle.

At that instant, the old miller seized his arms.

"Hold on thar, Bear Cat," he cried with his quavering voice. "He's already licked. You'll kill him ef ye hain't heedful."

"I _aims_ ter kill him," panted the boy, casting off the interference of aged arms with the savagery of a dog whose fangs have been pried too soon from the throat of its victim.

But Bud Jason clung on, reiterating: "Fer shame, son! Thet hain't _yore_ manner of conduct. Fer shame!"

Unsteadily, then, with a slow dawning of reason Bear Cat Stacy staggered back and leaned heavily against the wall of the tub-mill, breathing in sob-like gasps. His shirt was half torn from his body and for the first time the miller saw the ugly gash where a pistol bullet had bitten its grazing course along his left shoulder. Grime and blood stained him and for a while he stood gazing down on the collapsed figure at his feet--a figure that stirred gropingly.

"I reckon," he said slowly, "I'd jest about hev finished him, ef hit hadn't a-been fer _you_, Bud. I'm beholden ter ye. I reckon I was seein' red."

Together they lifted Ratler Webb and gave him water from the gourd that hung by the door. When he was able to stand, dourly resentful, baleful of eye but mute as to tongue, Bear Cat spoke briefly with the victor's authority: