When 'Bear Cat' Went Dry Part 49

Yet from out there came no response of musketry and, after all, the deceitful effort to convert the period of parley into a paralyzing blow had failed. Few flambeaux had been blazing in the s.p.a.ce between the stockade and the house itself, and the ponderous eight-foot wall of logs built to make the place a fortress had become a protection for the besiegers so that only a few scattered figures fell. Then, with amazing unanimity of action, the torches were thrust down and quenched in the snow.

But Bear Cat Stacy himself had remained flattened against the door, too close to be seen from any window, and at his feet was a can of kerosene.

The glow from a match-end became first a slender filament of flame which widened to a greedy blanket as it lapped at the oil and spread crackling up the woodwork of the door's frame. Then, gathering a swift and mighty force, it laid a frenzied and roaring mantle of destruction upon the integrity of the walls themselves.

From inside came a chorused howl of bitter wrath and despair, and as Bear Cat turned and ran for it, crossing the s.p.a.ce between door and stockade, he went through a hail of lead--and went with the old charm still holding him safe.

The Quarterhouse was strong enough to laugh at rifles, but to flame it was tinder-like food. The roar and crackle of its glutting soon drowned the howls of its imprisoned victims. Maddened with the thought that, having refused parley, their lives were forfeit unless they could cut their way out, they raved like dying maniacs. The glare reddened and inflamed the skies and sent out a rain of soaring sparks that was seen from many miles away.

The Virginia door was obliterated in a blanket of flame, but abruptly the Kentucky door vomited a stream of desperate men, running and shooting as they came. Then, for the first time, the cordon of rifles that held them in its grip gave voice.

Between the house-door and the stockade, figures fell, grotesque in the glare, and those that did not fall wheeled and rushed back within the blazing walls. But in there was an unendurable furnace. They shouted and raved, choking with the suffocation of foul smoke waves like the demoralized shapes of madmen in some lurid inferno.

Then standing at the one door which still afforded a chance of exit, Kinnard Towers for the last time raised his arms.

"Throw down yore guns, men, an' go out with yore hands up," he yelled, seeking to be heard above the din of conflagration. "Myself, I aims ter stay hyar!"

A few caught the words and plunged precipitately out, unarmed, with hands high in surrender; and others, seeing that they did not fall, followed with a sheep-like imitation--but some, already struggling with the asphyxiation that clawed at their throats, writhed uneasily on the floor--and then lay motionless.

Kinnard Towers, with a bitter despair in his eyes, and yet with the leonine glare of defiance unquenched, stood watching that final retreat. He saw that at the stockade gate, they were being pa.s.sed out and put under guard. It was in his own mind, when he had been left quite alone to walk deliberately out, fighting until he fell.

About him the skies were red and angry. His death would come with a full and pyrotechnic illumination, seen of all men, and it would at least be said of him that he had never yielded.

So picking up a rifle from the floor, he deliberately examined its magazine and efficiency. After that he stepped out, paused on the doorstep, and fired defiantly at the open gate of the stockade.

There was a spatter of bullets against the walls at his back, but he stood uninjured and defiantly laughing. Without haste he walked forward. Then a tall figure, with masked face came running toward him and he leveled the rifle at its breast. But he was close to the gate now, and the man plunged in, in time to strike his barrel up and bear him to the ground.

Outside the stockade stood, herded, the prisoners, and at their front, the posse of deputies brooded over Kinnard Towers and Tom Carmichael, both shamefully hand-cuffed.

Bear Cat Stacy looked over his captives who, taking their cue from Towers himself, remained doggedly silent.

"You men," he said crisply, "all save these two kin go home now--but when ther co'te needs ye ye've got ter answer--an ye've got ter speak ther truth."

As they listened in surprised silence Turner's voice became sterner: "Ef ye lies ter ther High co'te thar's another co'te thet ye kain't lie ter. Now begone."

Then Bear Cat turned to the tall figure that had defeated Kinnard's determination to die uncaptured.

"We've done seed ther manner of yore fightin'," he said in the voice of one who would confer the accolade. "Now let's see what manner of face ye w'ars. I reckon we don't need ter go masked no longer, anyhow."

The mountaineer ripped off his hat and the black cloth which had covered his face--and Turner Stacy stood looking into the eyes of Lone Stacy, his father. For an instant he leaned forward incredulously, and his voice was strangely unsteady.

"How did ye git hyar," he demanded.

"They kept puttin' off my trial--ontil I reckon they wearied of hit,"

was the grave response. "Day before yistiddy ther jedge dismissed my case."

"But no man hain't nuver been with us afore without he was oath-bound--how did ye contrive hit?"

The old man smiled. "Dog Tate 'lowed I could take ther oath an' all ther rest of ther formalities in due time. He fixed me up an' brought me along. This hyar war a matter thet I was right interested in."

"I 'lowed," Turner's voice fell to a more confidential note, "I 'lowed ye mout be right wrathful at all I've been doin' since ye went away. Ye used ter berate me fer not lovin' blockadin'."

There was a momentary silence. The bearded man, somewhat thinner and more bent than when he had gone away to prison, and the son with a face more matured by these weeks and months, stood gazing into each other's eyes. To the reserve of each, outspoken sentiment came hard and even now both felt an intangible barrier of diffidence.

Then Lone Stacy answered gruffly, but there was an unsteadiness of feeling under his laconic reply.

"I've done showed ye how wrathful I air. I'm tolable old--but I reckon I kin still l'arn."

Even when Kinnard Towers sat a prisoner in the courtroom which he had dominated, and heard Sam Carlyle, seeking to save his own neck by turning traitor, tell the lurid story of all his iniquities, an unbending doggedness characterized his att.i.tude. As his eyes dwelt on the henchman who was swearing away his life, they burned so scornfully that the witness twisted and fidgeted and glanced sidewise with hangdog shame.

When the jury trooped in and stood lined solemnly before the bench, he gazed out of the window where the hills were beginning to soften their slaty monotone with a hint of tender green. He did not need to hear them respond to the droning inquiries of the clerk, because he had read the verdict in their faces long before.

But when they had, for greater security, removed him to the Louisville jail and had put him in that row of cells reserved for those whose lives are forfeit to the law, it is doubtful whether that masklike inexpressiveness truly mirrored an inward phlegm.

There was an electric lamp fixed against the iron bars of the death corridor, turned inward like a spot-light of shame which was never dimmed either day or night--and there was a warden who paced the place, never leaving him unwatched--and Kinnard Towers had lived in places where eagles breed and where the air is wild and bites the lungs with its tang of freedom.

It was June again--June full-bosomed and tuneful with the over-spilling melody of birds. Over the tall peaks arched a sky of such a pure and colorful blue that it, too, seemed to sing--and the little clouds that drifted placidly along were like the lazy sails of pleasure craft, floating in high currents. Along the dimmest and most distant ridges lay a violet mist that was all ash-of-dreams--but near at hand, whether on the upper levels of high hills or down in the shadowed recesses, where the small waters trickled, everything was color--color, bloom and song.

The rhododendron, which the mountaineer calls laurel, was abloom. The laurel, which is known in hill parlance as ivy, was gay with pink-hearted blossom. The mountain magnolia flaunted its great petals of waxen while and the wild rose nodded its frail face everywhere.

But these were details. Over the silver tinkle of happy little brooks was the low but infinite harping of the breeze, and over the glint of golden flecks on mossy rock, was the sweep of sunlight and shadow across the majesty of towering peaks and the league-wide spread of valleys.

The hills were all singing of summer and rebirth, but as Bear Cat Stacy went riding across them his eyes were brooding with the thought of dreams that had not come true.

Many of them had come true, he told himself, in their larger aspects--even though he found himself miserably unsatisfied. There was a large reward in the manner of men and women who paused in their tasks of "drappin' an' kiverin'" along the sloping cornfields to wave their hats or their hands at him and to shout cheery words.

Those simple folk looked upon him as one who had led them out of bondage to a wider freedom, instilling into them a spirit of enterprise.

One farmer halted his plow and came to the fence as Bear Cat was riding by.

"I heers tell," he began, "thet ther whole world, pretty nigh, air at war an' thet corn's goin' ter be wuth money enough, this crop, ter pay fer haulin' hit."

Stacy nodded. "I reckon that's right," he said.

"An' I heers thet, deespite all contrary accounts, ther railroad aims ter come in hyar--an' pay fa'r prices."

Turner smiled. "They had ter come round to it," he answered. "There are more tons of coal in Marlin county than there are dollars in Jefferson county, and Jefferson county is the richest in the state."

The farmer rested his fore-arms on the top rail of the fence and gazed at the young man on horseback.

"I reckon us folks are right-smart beholden ter ye, Bear Cat," he suggested diffidently. "With a chief like you, we'll see prosperity yit."

"We don't have no chiefs here," declared the young man with a determined setting of his jaw. "We're all free and equal. The last chief was Kinnard Towers--and he's pa.s.sed on."