When 'Bear Cat' Went Dry Part 9

Lone Stacy stroked his beard.

"I reckon thet war ther wisest way, Brother Fulkerson, unless every man over thar knowed ye."

"I reckon G.o.d likes ther songs of his birds better," declared the preacher, "then ther song of a man thet _hes_ ter sing ter protect his own life. I reckon no country won't ever prosper mightily, whilst hit's a land of hidin' out with rifle-guns in ther laurel."

There was no wrath in the eyes of the host as he listened to his guest's indictment or the voice of thrilling earnestness in which it was delivered. He only raised one hand and pointed upward where a mighty shoulder of mountain rose hulking through the twilight. Near its top one could just make out the thread-like whiteness of a new fence line.

"Yonder's my corn patch," he said. "When I cl'ared hit an' grubbed hit out my neighbors all came ter ther workin' an' amongst us we toiled thar from sun-up twell one o'clock at night--daylight an' moonlight. On thet patch I kin raise me two or three master crops o' corn an' atter _thet_ hit won't hardly raise rag weeds! A bushel o' thet corn, sledded over ter ther nighest store fotches in mebby forty cents. But thar's two gallons of licker in hit an' _thet's_ wuth money. Who's a-goin' ter deny me ther rightful license ter do hit?"

"Ther Law denies ye," replied the preacher gravely, but without acerbity.

"Thar's things thet's erginst ther law," announced the old man with a swift gathering of fierceness in his tone, "an' thar's things thet's _above_ ther law. A criminal is a man thet's done befouled his own self-respect. I hain't never done thet an' I hain't no criminal. What do _you_ think, Mr. Henderson?"

Henderson had no wish to be drawn, so soon, into any conflict of local opinion, yet he realized that a candid reply was expected.

"My opinion is that of theory only," he responded seriously. "But I agree with Brother Fulkerson. A community with secrets to hide is a hermit community--and one of the strangers that is frightened away--is Prosperity."

Bear Cat Stacy, brooding silently in his place, looked suddenly up.

Hitherto he had seen only the sweet wistfulness of Blossom's eyes. Now he remembered the words of the old miller.

"Some day a mountain man will rise up as steadfast as the hills he sprung from--an' he'll change hit all like ther sun changes fog!"

Perhaps Turner Stacy was ripe for hero-worship.

Over the mountain top appeared the beacon of the evening star--luminous but pale. As if saluting it the timber became wistful with the call of whippoorwills and fireflies began to flit against the sooty curtain of night.

Something stirred in the boy, as though the freshening breeze brought the new message of an awakening. Here was the talk of wise men, concurring with the voices of his dreams! But at that moment his mother appeared in the doorway and announced

"You men kin come in an' _eat_, now."

CHAPTER VI

In former days an Appalachian tavern was a "quarter-house"; a hostelry where one paid a quarter for one's bed and a quarter, each, for meals.

Now the term has fallen into such disuse as to be no longer generic, but locally it survived with a meaning both specific and malodorous.

The press of Kentucky and Virginia had used it often, coupled with lurid stories of blood-lettings and orgies; linking with it always the name of its proprietor, Kinnard Towers.

How could such things go on in the twentieth century? questioned the readers of these news columns, forgetting that this ramparted isolation lives not in the twentieth century but still in the eighteenth; that its people who have never seen salt water still sing the ballads of Walter Raleigh's sea-rovers, and that from their lips still fall, warm with every-day usage, the colloquialisms of Chaucer and of Piers the Ploughman.

The Quarterhouse stood in a cleft where the mountains had been riven.

Its front door opened into Virginia and its rear door gave into Kentucky. Across the puncheon floor was humorously painted a stripe of whitewash, as constantly renewed as the markings of a well-kept tennis court--and that line was a state boundary.

Hither flocked refugees from the justice of two states, and if a suddenly materializing sheriff confronted his quarry in the room where each day and each night foregathered the wildest spirits of a wild land, the hounded culprit had only to cross that white line and stand upon his lawful demand for extradition papers. Here, therefore, the hunted foxes of the law ran to ground. The man who presided as proprietor was a power to be feared, admired, hated as individual circ.u.mstance dictated, but in any case one whose wrath was not to be advisedly stirred.

He had found it possible to become wealthy in a land where such achievement involves battening on poverty. Cruel--suave; predatory--charitable, he had taken life by his own hand and that of the hireling, but also he had, in famine-times, succored the poor.

He had, in short, awed local courts and intimidated juries of the vicinage until he seemed beyond the law, and until office-holders wore his collar.

Kinnard Towers was floridly blond of coloring, mild of eye and urbanely soft-spoken of voice.

Once, almost two decades ago, while the feud was still eruptive, it had seemed advisable to him to have Lone Stacy done to death, and to that end he had bargained with Black Tom Carmichael.

Black Tom had been provided with a double-barreled gun, loaded with buckshot, and placed in a thicket which, at the appointed hour, the intended victim must pa.s.s. But it had chanced that fate intervened. On that day Lone Stacy had carried in his arms his baby son, Turner Stacy, and, seeing the child, Black Tom had faltered.

Later in the seclusion of a room over the Quarterhouse, the employer had wrathfully taken his churl to task.

"Wa'al, why didn't ye git him?" was the truculent interrogation. "He pa.s.sed by close enough fer ye ter hit him with a rock."

"He was totin' his baby," apologized the designated a.s.sa.s.sin shamefacedly, yet with a sullen obstinacy, "I was only hired ter kill a growed-up man. Ef ye'd a-give me a rifle-gun like I asked ye 'stid of a scatter-gun I could've got him through his d.a.m.ned head an' not harmed ther child none. Thet's why I held my hand."

Kinnard Towers had scornfully questioned: "What makes ye so tormentin'

mincy erbout ther kid? Don't ye know full well thet when he grows up we'll have ter git _him_, too? Howsoever next time I'll give ye a rifle-gun."

Like all unlettered folk the mountaineer is deeply superst.i.tious and p.r.o.ne to believe in portents and wonders. Often, though he can never be brought to confess it he gives credence to tales of sorcery and witchcraft.

Turner Stacy was from his birth a "survigrous" child, and he was born on the day of the eclipse. As he came into the world the sun was darkened. Immediately after that a sudden tempest broke which tore the forests to tatters, awoke quiet brooks to swirling torrents, unroofed houses and took its toll of human life. Even in after years when men spoke of the "big storm" they always alluded to _that_ one.

An old crone who was accounted able to read fortunes and work charms announced that Turner Stacy came into life on the wings of that storm, and that the sun darkened its face because his birth savored of the supernatural. This being so, she said, he was immune from any harm of man's devising. Her absurd story was told and retold around many a smoky cabin hearth, and there were those who accorded it an unconfessed credence.

Later Black Tom was given a rifle and again stationed in ambush. Again Lone Stacy, favored by chance, carried his baby son in his arms. Black Tom, whose conscience had never before impeded his action, continued to gaze over his gun-sights--without pressing the trigger.

Towers was furious, but Carmichael could only shake his head in a frightened bewilderment, as if he had seen a ghost.

"Ther brat looked at me jest as I was about to fire," he protested.

"His eyes didn't look like a human bein's. He hain't no baby--he was born a man--or somethin' more then a man."

As affairs developed, the truce was arranged soon afterward, and also the marked man's death became unnecessary, because he was safe in prison on a charge of moonshining.

Neither Lone Stacy nor his son had ever known of this occurrence, and now the Stacys and the Towers met on the road and "made their manners"

without gun-play.

But to Kinnard Towers local happenings remained vital and, for all his crudity, few things of topical interest occurred of which he was not duly apprised.

Into his dwelling place came one day the Honorable Abraham Towers, his nephew, who sat in the state Legislature at Frankfort. The two were closeted together for an hour and as the nephew emerged, at the end of the interview, Kinnard walked with him to the hitching-post where the visitor's horse stood tethered.

"I'm obleeged ter ye, Abe," he said graciously. "When this man Henderson gits hyar, I'll make hit a point ter hev casual speech with him. I aims ter l'arn his business, an' ef what ye suspicions air true, he'll have dealin's with me--or else he won't hardly succeed."

So it happened logically enough that on the evening of Jerry's arrival, Kinnard Towers mounted and started out over the hill trails. He rode, as he always did when he went far abroad, under armed escort since tyrants are never secure. Four rifle-equipped va.s.sals accompanied him; two riding as advance guard and two protecting the rear.

Kinnard's destination was the house of Lone Stacy on Little Slippery, a house whose threshold he could not, in the old days, have crossed without blood-letting; but these were the days of peace.

Arriving, he did not go direct to the door and knock, but discreetly halting in the highway, lifted his voice and shouted aloud, "Halloo!

I'm Kinnard Towers an' I'm a-comin' in."

The door was thrown promptly open and Lone Stacy appeared, framed between threshold and lintel, holding a lamp aloft and offering welcome.