He still tended the fire under the kettle—but he laughed scornfully at the foolish need of keeping his face always in the shadow. Then suddenly he dropped down close to the dark earth, let the cup splash into the bucket, and thrust forward his rifle.
His ears had caught a sound which might have been a raccoon stirring in the brush—or a fox slipping covertly through the fallen hemlock top.
But there was no repetition, so he laughed again and with the first pallid hint of dawn on the ridges he shook the shoulder of his sleeping companion. Then he himself sank down in the heavy torpor of exhaustion and drunkenness.
At the same time, because it would soon be light, the living creature which had made the sound began creeping away, and in doing so it avoided any other alarms. It was the figure of a man who had learned what he came there to determine.
When Lone Stacy plodded up to his still-house some hours later, he exchanged nods with the squat mountaineer whom he found waiting.
"Whar's Turner?" was his brief inquiry and the reply matched it in taciturnity. "In thar—a-layin' drunk."
The father went over and looked scowlingly down at the prostrate figure stretched awkwardly in open-mouthed stupor.
"I reckon," he announced succinctly, "thar hain't nothin' fer hit but ter suffer him ter sleep hit off."
With the toe of his boot Lone Stacy stirred the insensate body which sprawled there; all its youthful vitality stilled into grotesque stagnation. But when the hired man, Lee, was out of sight the bearded face twitched with a spasm of distress.
Its eyes traveled in a silent pathos from the sight of sagging jaw and hunched shoulders to the unresponsive majesty of the calm hills as if beseeching comfort there. In his only son's spirit had seemed to burn a fire of promise which even he could not understand. Was that fire to be quenched into the stale ashes of habitual drunkenness?
A groan rumbled in his throat.
Yet, had he remembered his Scriptures, Samson, the Mighty, had surrendered in his moment of weakness to the allurements and the shears of Delilah! Afterward, he had pulled down the pillars of the temple.
These hills that had stood upright in days when the Alps and the Himalayas had not yet stirred in conception, looked down placid, and unsympathetic. Perhaps the eternal spirit of the range was not ashamed of this erring child, asleep on its bosom. Perhaps, cognizant alike of tempest and calm, it recognized this son's kinship with itself. The prophecy which dwells in the immemorial may have foreseen gathering powers of hurricane and might, which should some day make him rise, above lesser summits. Possibly as he slept the great, silent voices were crooning a lullaby over offspring destined for mastery.
When Ratler Webb had turned away from the tub-mill his brain was still half stunned from the jarring punishment of battle. He was thoroughly conscious only of deep chagrin and a gnawing hunger for reprisal.
From childhood he retained no tender memories.
There was no one upon whom he had a claim of blood, and neighborhood report had not let him forget that he was a woodscolt. In hill parlance a woodscolt signifies one whose birth has been sanctioned by no prior rites of matrimony.
Since he could remember he had existed only by virtue of the same predatory boldness which gives the lean razor-back strength and innate craftiness to live.
Just now his whole abundant capacity for hatred was centered on Bear Cat Stacy, yet since Bear Cat's kinsmen peopled every creek and spring-branch of this country he could not be casually murdered.
Any word slipped to the ear of the revenue man might be traced back to him and after that he could no longer live among his native hills. Still, he reflected as he slowly rubbed his fingers along his uneven nose, time brings changes and chances. The possession of definite evidence against his enemy might some day bear fruit.
So Ratler did not ride home after his encounter at the mill. He took refuge instead in an abandoned cabin of which he knew, strategically located within a mile of the place where he had surmised the Stacy family were making illicit whiskey. While the storm raged, threatening to bring down the sagging roof timbers about his ears, he sat before its dead and ruined hearth, entertaining bitter thoughts.
Between midnight and dawn he stepped over the broken threshold and began his reconnaissance. For two hours he crouched, wet and cramped, in the laurel near enough to throw a stone against the kettle of the primitive distillery—waiting for that moment of relaxed vigilance, when the figure that moved in the shadows should permit a ray from the fire to fall upon its features.
When dawn had almost come his vigil was rewarded and he had turned away again.
Blossom Fulkerson knew none of these things at noon of the day following the fight at the mill when, in the road, she encountered Lone Stacy making his way back to his house for his midday dinner, but as the old man stopped and nodded she read trouble in his eyes.
"Air ye worrited about somethin', Mr. Stacy?" she demanded, and for a little space the man stood hesitantly silent.
At last he hazarded, "Little gal, thar's a thing I'd like ter name ter ye. I reckon if anybody kin holp me hit mout be you."
The girl's eyes lighted with an instinctive sympathy—then shadowed with a premonition of what was coming.
"Is hit—about—Turner?"
The father nodded his head gravely. His eyes wore the harassed disquiet of a problem for which he knew no solution.
"Does ye mean thet he's—he's——" She broke off abruptly and Lone Stacy answered her with unrelieved bluntness.
"He's a-layin' up thar drunk ergin, an' he's got a gash on one shoulder thet's powder burned. I reckon he's been engagin' in some manner of ruction."
For a moment the girl did not speak, but her cheeks paled and tears swam abruptly in her eyes. She raised one hand and brushed them fiercely away.
She had awakened this morning with a new and unaccountable happiness in her heart. In all the lilt and sparkle of the world and all the tunefulness of the young summer there had seemed a direct message to herself. In her memory she had been hearing afresh the crude but impassioned eloquence with which the boy had talked to her yesterday. Now he lay up there at the distillery in the heavy sleep of the drunkard.
"Ther boy's all I've got," announced Lone Stacy with an unaccustomed break in his voice. "I reckon mebby ef I hadn't been so harsh I mout hev more influence with him." Then he turned abruptly on his heel and trudged on.
Blossom Fulkerson slipped into the woods and came to a sun-flecked amphitheater of rock and rhododendron where the ferns grew lush and tall, by the sparkle of water. There she sank down and covered her face with her hands. Her sobs shook her for a while, and then washing the tears away, she knelt and prayed with a passionate simplicity.
Sometimes she lifted a pale face and her lips twisted themselves pathetically in the earnestness of her prayer.
The Almighty to Whom she made her plea, and Who knew everything, must know, even as she knew, that Turner Stacy was not like those rowdy youths who habitually disgraced the hills. That occasional smile which lurked with its inherent sweetness under his affected sullenness must meansomething.
Turner had always been her willing vassal, and "sometime" she had supposed, though hitherto that had always seemed a vaguely distant matter like the purple haze on the horizon, they would be avowed sweethearts.
Yesterday, though, as she walked back from the meeting on the ridge it had seemed as if she had spent a moment in that languourous land where the far mists drouse,—and yet the glamour had not faded. She hadn't sought to analyze then, she had only felt a new thrill in her heart as she instinctively broke clusters of pink-hearted bloom from the laurel.
She left the woods after a while and as she came out again to the high road, she heard a voice raised in the high-pitched, almost falsetto, minors of mountain minstrelsy.
It was not a pleasing voice, nor was the ballad a cheery one. As for the singer himself, the twisting of the way still concealed him from view, so that his song proclaimed him like a herald in advance.
"He stobbed her to ther heart an' she fell with a groan.He threw a leetle dirtov-er her, an' started fer home,"
"He stobbed her to ther heart an' she fell with a groan.He threw a leetle dirtov-er her, an' started fer home,"
"He stobbed her to ther heart an' she fell with a groan.
He threw a leetle dirtov-er her, an' started fer home,"
wailed the dolorous voice of the traveler. There was a splashing of hoofs in shallow water, then a continuation
"His debt ter ther devil now William must pay,Fer he fell down an' died afore break of day."
"His debt ter ther devil now William must pay,Fer he fell down an' died afore break of day."
"His debt ter ther devil now William must pay,
Fer he fell down an' died afore break of day."
Thus announced, a mule plodded shortly into sight, and upon his back, perching sidewise, sat a tow-headed lout of a boy with staring, vacant eyes and a mouth which hung open, even when he desisted from song.
With an access of callow diffidence he halted his mount at sight of Blossom, staring with a nod and a bashful "Howdy."
"Howdy, Leander," accosted the girl. "How's all your folks?"
Leander White, of Crowfoot Branch, aged fifteen, gulped twice with prodigious and spasmodic play of his adam's apple, before he eventually commanded voice to reply:
"They're all well.... I'm obleeged ... ter ye." Then, however, reassured by the cordial smile on the lips of Blossom Fulkerson, his power of speech and his hunger for gossip returned to him in unison.
"But old Aunt Lucy Hutton, over acrost ther branch, she fell down yistiddy an' broke a bone inside of her, though."
"Did she?" demanded the girl, readily sympathetic, and Leander, thus given sanction as a purveyor of tidings, nodded and gathered confidence. "Huh-huh, an' Revenuers raided Joe Simmons's still-house on ther headwaters of Skinflint an' cyarried off abeautiful piece o' copper—atter they'd punched hit full o' holes."
"Revenuers!" Into the girl's voice now came a note of anxiety.
"Huh-huh, revenuers. Folks says they're gittin' bodaciously pesky these days."
"Ye ain't—ye ain't seen none of 'em yourself, have ye, Leander?" The question came a bit breathlessly and the boy forgot his bashfulness as he expanded with the importance of his traveler's tales.
"Not to know 'em fer sich," he admitted, "but I met up with a furriner a few leagues back along ther highway. He was broguein' along mighty brash on his own two feet. La! But he was an elegant party ter be a-ridin' on shoe-leather, though!"
"What manner of furriner was he, Leander?" demanded Blossom with a clutch of fright at her heart, but the boy shook his head stupidly.
"Wa'al he was jest a feller from down below. Ter tell hit proper, I didn't hev much speech with him. We jest met an' made our manners an' went our ways. He 'lowed ter go ter Lone Stacy's house."
"Lone Stacy's house," echoed the girl faintly.
"Reckon' I'll be a-ridin' on," drawled the young horseman nonchalantly. "Reckon I've done told ye all ther tidings I knows."
Blossom stood, for a while, rooted where he had left her, listening to the splash of the mule's feet along the creek. If a prying eye should discover the Stacy still to-day it would find not only "a beautiful piece of copper" but Bear Cat lying there incapacitated and helpless!
Her heart missed its beat at the thought. The hills seemed to close in on her stiflingly with all their age-old oppression of fears and impending tragedies, and she sat down by the roadside to think it out. What should she do?
After a while she saw the tall figure of the elder Stacy climbing the mountainside, but he was taking a short cut—and would not come within hailing distance. Her eye, trained to read indications, noted that a rifle swung in his right hand.
Bitterly she had been taught by her father to resent the illicit business to which Turner's service was grudgingly given. But above all ethical hatred of law-breaking rose the very present danger to Turner himself. Laws were abstract things and Turner was Turner!
There was only one answer. She must watch and, if need arose, give warning.
Just where the brook that trickled down from the still gushed out to the creek and the road which followed its course, lay a steeply sloping field of young corn. Along its back grew rows of "shuckybeans," and here Blossom took her station for her self-appointed task of sentry duty.
CHAPTER V
Jerry Hendersonhad lost his way.
Aching muscles protested the extra miles because back there at Marlin Town he had been advised to cross Cedar Mountain on foot.
"Unless they suspicions ye, 'most any man'll contrive ter take ye in an' enjoy ye somehow," his counselors had pointed out. "But thar's heaps of them pore fam'lies over thar thet hain't got feed fer a ridin' critter noways."
Now Cedar Mountain is not, as its name mendaciously implies, a single peak but a chain that crawls, zig-zag as herringbone, for more than a hundred miles with few crossings which wheels can follow.
It is a wall twenty-five hundred feet high, separating the world from "back of beyond." Having scaled it since breakfast, Jerry Henderson was tired.
He was tanned and toughened like saddle-leather. He was broad of shoulder, narrow of thigh, and possessed of a good, resolute brow and a straight-cut jaw. His eyes were keen with intelligence and sufficiently cool with boldness.
Arriving at a narrow thread of clear water which came singing out at the edge of a corn-field, his eyes lighted with satisfaction. Tilled ground presumably denoted the proximity of a human habitation where questions could be answered.
So he stood, searching the forested landscape for a thread of smoke or a roof, and as he did so he perceived a movement at the edge of the field where the stalks had grown higher than the average and merged with the confusion of the thicket.
Jerry turned and began making his way along the edge of the patch, respecting the corn rows by holding close to the tangle at the margin. Then suddenly with a rustling of the shrubbery as startling as the sound with which a covey of quail rises from nowhere, a figure stepped into sight and the stranger halted in an astonishment which, had Blossom Fulkerson realized it, was the purest form of flattery.
He had seen many women and girls working in the fields as he had come along the way and most of them had been heavy of feature and slovenly of dress. Here was one who might have been the spirit of the hills themselves in bloom; one who suggested kinship with the free skies and the sunlit foliage.
With frank delight in the astonishing vision, Jerry Henderson stood there, his feet well apart, his pack still on his shoulders and his lips parted in a smile of greeting and friendliness.
"Howdy," he said, but the girl remained motionless, vouchsafing no response.
"I'm a stranger in these parts," he volunteered easily, using the vernacular of the hills, "and I've strayed off my course. I was aiming to go to Lone Stacy's dwelling-house."
Still she remained statuesque and voiceless, so the man went on: "Can you set me right? There seems to be a sort of a path here. Does it lead anywhere in particular?"
He took a step nearer and eased his pack to the ground among the briars of the blackberry bushes.
Abruptly, as if to bar his threatened progress, Blossom moved a little to the side, obstructing the path. Into her eyes leaped a flame of Amazonian hostility and her hands clenched themselves tautly at her sides. Her lips parted and from her throat came a long, mellow cry not unlike the yodle of the Tyrol. It echoed through the timber and died away—and again she stood confronting him—wordless!
"I didn't mean to startle you," he declared reassuringly, "I only wanted information."
Again the far-carrying but musical shout was sent through the quiet of the forest—his only answer.
"Since you won't answer my questions," said Jerry Henderson, irritated into capriciousness, "I think I'll see for myself where this trail leads."
Instantly, then, she planted herself before him, with a violently heaving bosom and a wrathful quivering of her delicate nostrils, Her challenge broke tensely from her lips with a note of unyielding defiance.
"Ye can't pass hyar!"
"So youcantalk, after all," he observed coolly. "It's a help to learn that much at all events."
He had chanced on a path, he realized, which some moonshiner preferred keeping closed and the girl had been stationed there as a human declaration, "no thoroughfare."
Still he stood where he was and presently he had the result of his waiting.
A deep, masculine voice, unmistakable in the peremptoriness of its command, sounded from the massed tangle of the hillside. It expressed itself in the single word "Begone!" and Henderson was not fool enough to search the underbrush for an identifying glimpse of his challenger.
"My name is Jerry Henderson and I was seeking to be shown my way," he said quietly, keeping his eyes, as he spoke, studiously on the face of the girl.
"Begone! I'm a-warnin' ye fa'r. Begone!"
The wayfarer shrugged his shoulders. Debate seemed impracticable, but his annoyance was not lessened as he recognized in the clear eyes of the young woman a half-suppressed mockery of scorn and triumph.
Henderson stooped and hefted his pack again to his shoulders, adjusting it deliberately. If it must be retreat, he wished at least to retire with the honors of war. The girl's expression had piqued him into irascibility.
"I'd heard tell that folks hereabouts were civil to strangers," he announced bluntly. "And I don't give a damn about whatever secret you're bent on hiding from me."
Then he turned on his heel and started, not rapidly but with a leisurely stride to the road. He seemed to feel the eyes of the girl following him as he went, and his spirit of resentment prompted an act of mild bravado as he halted by the rotten line of fence and unhurriedly tightened the lace of a boot.
"Hasten!" barked the warning voice from the laurel, but Henderson did not hasten. He acknowledged the disquieting surmise of a rifle trained on him from the dense cover, but he neither looked back nor altered his pace. Then he heard a gun bark from the shrubbery and a bullet zip as it found its billet in a tree trunk above his head, but that he had expected. It was merely a demonstration in warning—not an attempt on his life. As long as he kept on his way, he believed hostilities would go no further.
Without venturing to use his eyes, he let his ears do their best, and a satirical smile came to his lips as he heard a low, half-smothered scream of fright break from the lips of the girl whom he could no longer see.
And, had he been able to study the golden-brown eyes just then, he would have been even more compensated, for into them crept a slow light of admiration and astonished interest.
"He ain't nobody's coward anyways," she murmured as the figure of the unknown man swung out of sight around the bend, and some thought of the same sort passed through the mind of the elderly man in the thicket, bringing a grim but not an altogether humorless smile to his lips.
"Wa'al, I run him off," he mused, "but I didn't hardly run him no-wayshard!"
Jerry Henderson had borne credentials from Uncle Israel Calvert who kept a store on Big Ivy, and he had been everywhere told that once Uncle Billy had viséd his passports, he would need no further safe-conduct.
In the encounter at the cornfield there had been no opportunity to show that bill of health and it was only after an hour spent in walking the wrong way, that its possessor met the next person to whom he could put questions. Then he learned that "Lone Stacy dwelt in a sizeable house over on Little Slippery,"—but that he had strayed so far from the true course that now he must climb a mountain or take a detour and that in either event he would have to hasten to arrive there before nightfall.
So the shadows were lengthening when he turned into the course of what must be "Little Slippery"—and came face to face with two men of generous stature, one elderly and the other youthful. He noted that the older of these men carried a rifle on his shoulder and was conscious of a piercing scrutiny from both pairs of eyes.
"I'm seeking Lone Stacy," began Henderson, and the older face darkened into a momentary scowl of animosity, with the coming of the curt reply:
"Thet's my name."
The traveler gave a violent start of astonishment. It was a deep-chested voice which, once heard, was not to be confused with other voices, and Jerry Henderson had heard it not many hours before raised in stentorian warning from the depth of the thickets. But promptly he recovered his poise and smiled.
"I have a piece of paper here," he said, "from Uncle Israel Calvert. He said that if he vouched for me you would be satisfied."
As Lone Stacy accepted the proffered note with his left hand he passed his rifle to the younger man with his right, and even then he held the sheet unopened for a space while his serious gaze swept the stranger slowly from head to foot in challenging appraisal.
He read slowly, with the knitted brows of the unscholastic, and as he did so the youth kept his eye on Henderson's face—and his finger on the trigger.
Having seen the boy's face, Henderson found it hard to shift his glance elsewhere. He had encountered many mountain faces that were sinister and vindictive—almost malign, but it was not the unyielding challenge which arrested him now. It was something far more individual and impressive. There are eyes that reflect light with the quicksilver responsiveness of mirrors. There are others, though more rare, which shine from an inner fire.
Bear Cat Stacy's held the golden, unresting flame that one encounters in the tawny iris of a captive lion or eagle. Such eyes in a human face mean something and it is something which leads their possessor to the gallows or the throne. They are heralds of a spirit untameable and invincible; of the will to rend or rebuild.
Henderson found himself thinking of volcanoes which are latent but not extinct. It was a first glimpse, but if he never again saw this boy, who stood there measuring him with cool deliberation, he would always remember him as one remembers the few instantly convincing personalities one has brushed in walking through life.
But when Lone Stacy had finished his perusal, the nod of his head was an assurance of dissipated doubt. There was even a grave sort of courtesy in his manner now, as he announced:
"Thet's good enough fer me. If Uncle Israel vouches fer ye, ye're welcome. He says hyar 'ther bearer is trustworthy'—but he don't say who ye air. Ye said yore name war Jerry Henderson, didn't ye?"
"Thatismy name," assented the newcomer, once more astonished. "But I didn't realize I'd told it yet."
With an outright scorn for subterfuge the older man replied, "I reckon thar hain't no profit in a-beatin' ther devil round ther stump. You've heered my voice afore—an' I've seed yore face. Ye tole me yore name back thar—in ther la'rel, didn't ye?"
Henderson bowed. "Ididrecognize your voice, but I didn't aim to speak of it—unless you did."
"When I says that I trusts a man," the moonshiner spoke with an unambiguous quietness of force, "I means what I says an' takes my chances accordin'. Ef a man betrays my confidence—" he paused just an instant then added pointedly—"he takeshischances. What did ye 'low yore business war, hyarabouts, Mr. Henderson?"
"I mean to explain that to you in due time, Mr. Stacy, but just now it takes fewer words to say what'snotmy business."
"Wall then, whathain'tyore business?"
"Other people's business."
"Wa'al so far as hit goes thet's straight talk. I favors outright speech myself an' ye don't seem none mealy-mouthed. Ye talks right fer yoreself—like a mountain man."
"You see," said Henderson calmly, "Iama mountain man even if I've dwelt down below for some years."
"You—a mountain man?" echoed the bearded giant in bewilderment and the visitor nodded.
"Ever hear of Torment Henderson?" he inquired.
"Colonel Torment Henderson! Why, hell's fiddle, man, my daddy sarved under him in ther war over slavery! I was raised upon stories of how he tuck thet thar name of 'Torment' in battle."
"He was my grandpap," the stranger announced, dropping easily into the phrases of the country.
"Mr. Henderson," said the old man, drawing himself up a trifle straighter, "we're pore folks, but we're proud ter hev ye enjoy what little we've got. This hyar's my son, Turner Stacy."
Then Bear Cat spoke for the first time. "I reckon ye be leg-weary, Mr. Henderson. I'll fotch yore contraptions ter ther house."
There remained to the splendidly resilient powers of Bear Cat's physical endowment no trace of last night's debauch except that invisible aftermath of desperate chagrin and mortification. As he lifted the pack which Henderson had put down something like admiring wonderment awoke in him. Here was a man born like himself in the hills, reared in crude places, who yet bore himself with the air of one familiar with the world, and who spoke with the fluency of education.
As the wearied traveler trudged along with his two hosts, he had glowing before his eyes the final fires of sunset over hills that grew awesomely somber and majestic under the radiance of gold and ash of rose. Then they reached a gate, where a horse stood hitched, and before them bulked the dark shape of a house whose open door was a yellow slab of lamplight.
From the porch as they came up, rose a gray figure in the neutrality of the dying light; a man with a patriarchal beard that fell over his breast and an upper lip clean shaven, like a Mormon elder. Even in that dimness a rude dignity seemed inherent to this man and as Henderson glanced at him he heard Lone Stacy declaring, "Brother Fulkerson, ye're welcome. This hyar is Mr. Henderson." Then turning to the guest, the householder explained. "Brother Fulkerson air ther preacher of God's Word hyarabouts. He's a friend ter every Christian an' a mighty wrastler with sin."
As the stranger acknowledged this presentation he glanced up and, standing in the light from the door, found himself face to face with yet another figure; the figure of a girl who was silhouetted there in profile, for the moment seemingly frozen motionless by astonishment. Her face was flooded with the pinkness of a deep blush, and her slender beauty was as undeniable as an axiom.
Lone Stacy turned with an amused laugh, "An' this, Mr. Henderson," he went on, "air Brother Fulkerson's gal, Blossom. I reckon ye two hev met afore—albeit ye didn't, in a way of speakin', make yore manners ther fust time."
Blossom bowed, then she laughed shyly but with a delicious quality of music in her voice.
"I reckon ye 'lowed I didn't know nothin'—I mean anything—about manners, Mr. Henderson," she confessed and the man hastily assured her:
"I 'lowed that you were splendidly loyal—to somebody."
As he spoke he saw Bear Cat at his elbow, his eyes fixed on the girl with a wordless appeal of contrition and devotion, and he thought he understood.
"Howdy, Blossom," murmured Turner, and the girl's chin came up. Her voice seemed to excommunicate him as she replied briefly: "Howdy, Turner."
This was a lover's quarrel, surmised Henderson and discreetly he turned again to the host, but, even so, he saw Turner step swiftly forward and raise his hands. His lips were parted and his eyes full of supplication, but he did not speak. He only let his arms fall and turned away with a face of stricken misery.
Blossom knew about last night, reflected Bear Cat. He was, as he deserved to be, in disgrace.
Then as the girl stood looking off into the gathering darkness her own face filled wistfully with pain and the boy, dropping to a seat on the floor of the porch, watched her covertly with sidewise glances.
"Blossom met me down ther road," observed the minister, "an' named ter me thet she hed——" He paused, casting a dubious glance at the stranger, and Lone Stacy interrupted: "She named ter ye thet she stood guard at ther still an' warned Mr. Henderson off?"
Brother Fulkerson nodded gravely. "I was a little mite troubled in my mind lest she'd put herself in jeopardy of the law. Thet's why I lighted down an' hitched hyar: ter hev speech with ye."
"Ye needn't worrit yoreself none, Brother Fulkerson," reassured the host. "Mr. Henderson comes vouched fer by Uncle Israel."
The preacher sat for a space silent and when he next spoke it was still with a remnant of misgiving in his tone.
"I don't aim to go about crossin' good men and a-cavilin' with thar opinions," he began apologetically. "Like as not heaps of 'em air godlier men than me, but I holds it to be my duty to speak out free." Again he paused and cast a questioning glance at his host as though in deference to the hospitality of the roof, and the tall mountaineer, standing beside the post of his porch, nodded assent with equal gravity.
"Talk right fer yoreself, Brother Fulkerson. I don't never aim ter muzzle no man's speech."
"Waal, this day I've rid some twenty miles acrost high ridges and down inter shadowy valleys, I've done traversed some places thet war powerful wild an' laurely. Wharsoever God's work calls me, I'm obleeged ter go, but I raised my voice in song as I fared along amongst them thickets, lest some man thet I couldn't see; some man a-layin' on watch, mout suspicion I was seekin' ter discover somethin' he aimed ter keep hid—jest as ye suspicioned Mr. Henderson, hyar."
Lone Stacy stroked his beard.
"I reckon thet war ther wisest way, Brother Fulkerson, unless every man over thar knowed ye."
"I reckon God likes ther songs of his birds better," declared the preacher, "then ther song of a man thethester 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' atterthethit 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'swuth 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'sabovether 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 doyouthink, 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 formerdays 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 circumstance 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 pass. 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 passed by close enough fer ye ter hit him with a rock."
"He was totin' his baby," apologized the designated assassin 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 damned 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 githim, too? Howsoever next time I'll give ye a rifle-gun."
Like all unlettered folk the mountaineer is deeply superstitious and prone 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 tothatone.
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 vassals 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.
"Gentlemen," said the host in a matter-of-fact voice, "ef you'll excuse me, I'll rest yore guns."
Then in observance of a quaint and ancient ceremonial, each armed guardian passed in, surrendering his rifle at the threshold. In retarded Appalachia so runs the rule. To fail in its fulfilment is to express distrust for the honesty and ability of the householder to protect his guests, and such an implication constitutes a grave discourtesy.
Inside a fire roared on the hearth, for even in June, the mountain nights are raw.
Henderson, watching the small cavalcade troop in, smiled inwardly. He was not unmindful of the identity or the power of this modern baron, and he was not without suspicion that he himself was the cause of the visit.
"I chanced ter be farin' by, Lone," Kinnard Towers enlightened his host easily, "an' I 'lowed I'd light down an' rest a little spell."
"Ye're welcome," was the simple reply. "Draw up ter ther fire an' set ye a cheer."
The talk lingered for a space on neighborhood topics, but the host had found time, between hearing the shout outside and replying to it, to say in a low voice to his guest: "I reckon atter Kinnard Towers comes in we won't talk no more erbout my still—jest stills in gin'ral," and that caution was religiously observed.
The kitchen tasks had been finished now and while the men sat close to the smoking hearth the faces of the women looked on from the shadowed corners of the room, where they sat half obscured upon the huge four-poster beds.
The man who had crossed Cedar Mountain lighted his pipe from the bed of coals and then, straightening up, he stood on the hearth where his eyes could take in the whole semicircle of listening faces. They were eyes that, for all their seeming of a theorist's engrossment, missed little.
This house might have been a pioneer abode of two hundred years ago, standing unamended by the whole swelling tide of modernity that had passed it by untouched.
The leaping blaze glittered on the metal of polished rifles stacked in a corner, and on two others hanging against the smoke-dimmed logs of the walls. Red pods of peppers and brown leaves of tobacco were strung along the rafters. Hardly defined of shape against one shadowy wall, stood a spinning wheel.
Henderson knew that the room was pregnant with the conflict of human elements. He realized that he himself faced possibilities which made his mission here a thing of delicate manipulation; even of personal danger.
The blond man with the heavy neck, who sat contemplatively chewing at the stem of an unlighted pipe, listened in silence. He hardly seemed interested, but Henderson recognized him for the sponsor and beneficiary of lawlessness. He more than any other would be the logical foe to a new order which brought the law in its wake—and the law's reckonings.
Near to the enemy whom he had heretofore faced in pitched battle, sat old Lone Stacy, his brogans kicked off and his bare feet thrust out to the warmth; bearded, shrewd of eye, a professed lover of the law, asking only the exemption of his illicit still. He, too, in the feud days had wielded power, but had sought in the main to wield it for peace.
And there, showing no disposition to draw aside the skirts of his raiment in disgust, sat the preacher of the hills whose strength lay in his ability to reconcile antagonisms, while yet he stood staunch, abating nothing of self-sacrificial effort. It was almost as though church and crown and commoner were gathered in informal conclave.
But luminous, like fixed stars, gleamed two other pairs of eyes. As he realized them, Henderson straightened up with such a thrill as comes from a vision. Here were the eyes of builders of the future—agleam as they looked on the present! Blossom's were wide and enthralled and Turner Stacy's burned as might those of a young crusader hearing from the lips of old and seasoned knights recitals of the wars of the Sepulchre.
Bear Cat Stacy saw in this stranger the prophet bearing messages for which he had longed—and waited almost without hope. But Kinnard Towers saw in him a dangerous and unsettling agitator.
"You said," declared Henderson, when the theme had swung back again to economic discussion, "that your cornfield was good for a few crops and then the rains would wash it bare, yet as I came along the road I saw an out-cropping vein of coal that reached above my head, and on each side of me were magnificent stretches of timber that the world needs and that is growing scarce."
"Much profit thet does me," Lone Stacy laughed dryly. "Down at Uncle Israel's store thar's a dollar bill thet looks like hit's a-layin' on ther counter—but when ye aims to pick hit up ye discarns thet hit's pasted under ther glass. Thet coal an' timber of mine air pasted ter ther wrong side of Cedar Mounting."
"And why? Because there are few roads and fewer schools. It's less the cost and difficulties of building wagon roads than something else that stands in the way. It's the laurel."
"The laurel?" repeated Lone Stacy, but the preacher nodded comprehendingly, and the visitor went on:
"Yes. The laurel. I've been in Central American jungles where men died of fever because the thick growth held and bred the miasma. Here the laurel holds a spirit of concealment. If there wasn't a bush in all these hills big enough to hide a man, the country would be thrown open to the markets of the world. It's the spirit of hiding—that locks life in and keeps it poor."
"I presume ye means on account of ther blockade licker," replied the host, "but thet don't tech ther root of ther matter. How erbout ther fields thet stand on end; fields thet kain't be plowed an' thet ther rains brings down on yore head, leavin' nuthin 'thar but ther rock?"
Henderson had the power of convincing words, abetted by a persuasive quality of voice. As a mountain man he preached his faith in the future of the hills. He spoke of the vineyards of Madeira where slopes as incorrigibly steep as these were redeemed by terracing. He talked of other lands that were being exhausted of resources and turning greedy eyes upon the untapped wealth of the Cumberlands. He painted the picture glowingly and fervently, and Turner Stacy, listening, bent forward with a new fire in his eyes: a fire which Kinnard Towers did not fail to mark.
"When ther railroad taps us," interpolated Lone Stacy, in a pause, "mebby we kin manage ter live. Some says ther road aims ter cross Cedar Mounting."
"Don't deceive yourself with false hopes," warned the visitor. "This change must be brought about from inside—not outside. The coming of the railroad lies a decade or two away. I've investigated that question pretty thoroughly and I know. The coal-fields are so large that railroads can still, for a long time to come, choose the less expensive routes. Cedar Mountain balks them for the present. It will probably balk them for the length of our lives—but this country can progress without waiting for that."
"So ye thinks thet even without no railroad this God-forsaken land kin still prosper somehow?" inquired the host skeptically, and the visitor answered promptly:
"I do. I am so convinced of it that I'm here to buy property—to invest all I have and all my mother and sisters have. I think that by introducing modern methods of intensive farming, I can make it pay a fair return in my own time—and when I die I'll leave property that will ultimately enrich the younger generations. Idon'tthink it can make me rich in my lifetime—butsomeday it's a certainty of millions."
"Why don't ye buy yoreself property whar ther railroad will come in yore own day, then? Wouldn't thet pay ye better?"
The suggestion was the first contribution to the conversation that had come from Kinnard Towers, and it was proffered in a voice almost urbane of tone.
Henderson turned toward him.
"That's a straight question and I'll answer it straight. To buy as much property as I want along a possible railway line would cost too much money. I'm gambling, not on the present but on the future. I come here because I know the railroad isnotcoming and for that reason prices will be moderate."
As he made this explanation the newcomer was watching the face of his questioner almost eagerly. What he read there might spell the success or failure of his plans. Any enterprise across which Kinnard Towers stamped the word "prohibited" was an enterprise doomed to great vicissitude in a land where his word was often above the law.
But the blond and florid man granted him the satisfaction of no reply. He gazed pensively at the logs crackling on the hearth and his features were as inscrutably blank as those of the Sphinx.
After a moment Towers did speak, but it was to his host and on another topic.
"Lone," he said, "thet firewood of yourn's right green an' sappy, hain't it? Hit pops like ther fo'th of July."
Brother Fulkerson spoke reflectively: "We needs two more things then we've got in these hills—an' one thing less then we've got. We wants roads an' schools—and the end of makin' white licker."
Henderson saw Blossom slip from the bed and flit shadow-like through the door, and a few moments later he missed, too, the eagerly attentive presence of the boy. Blossom had escaped from the reek of tobacco smoke inside, to the soft cadences of the night-song and the silver wash of the moonlight.
Turner Stacy found her sitting, with her face between her palms, under a great oak that leaned out across the trickle of the creek, and when he spoke her name, she raised eyes glistening with tears.
"Blossom," he began in a contrite voice, "ye're mad at me, ain't ye? Ye've done heerd about—about last night." Then he added with moody self-accusation, "God knows I don't blame ye none."
She turned her head away and did not at once answer. Suddenly her throat choked and she broke into sobs that shook her with their violence. The young man stood rigid, his face drawn with self-hatred and at last she looked up at him.
"Somehow, Turner," she said unsteadily, "hit wouldn't of been jest ther same ef hit had been any other time. Yestiddy—up thar on ther ridge—ye promised me thet ye'd be heedful with licker."
"I knows I did," he declared bitterly. "Ye've got a right ter plumb hate me."
"Ef I'd a-hated ye," she reminded him simply, "I wouldn't sca'cely have watched ther road all day." Then irrelevantly she demanded, "How did ye git yore shoulder hurt?"
The wish to defend himself with the palliations of last night's desperate fatigue and the chill in his wound was a strong temptation, but he repressed it. Knowledge of his encounter with Ratler Webb would only alarm her and conjure up fears of unforgiving vengeance.
"Hit war just a gun thet went off accidental-like," he prevaricated. "I wasn't harmed none, Blossom." Then in a tense voice he continued: "I only aimed ter drink a leetle—not too much—an' then somehow I didn't seem ter hev ther power ter quit."
He felt the lameness of that plea and broke off.
"I'd been studyin' about what you said on ther ridge," she told him falteringly, and the tremor of her voice electrified him. Again the mountains on their ancient foundations grew unsteady before his eyes.
"Does ye mean thet—thet despite last night—ye keers fer me?"
He bent forward, lips parted and heart pounding—and her reply was an unsteady whisper.
"I hain't plumb dead sartain yit, Turner, but—but this mornin' I couldn't think of nothin' else but you."
"Blossom!" exclaimed the boy, his voice ringing with a solemn earnestness. "I don't want thet ye shall hev ter feel shame fer me—but——"
Once again the words refused to come. The girl had risen now and stood slender in the silver light, her lashes wet with tears. With that picture in his eyes it became impossible to balance the other problems of his life. So he straightened himself stiffly and turned his gaze away from her. He was seeing instead a picture of the squat shanty where the copper worm was at work in the shadow, and for him it was a picture of bondage.
So she waited, feeling some hint of realization for the struggle his eyes mirrored.
There would be many other wet nights up there, he reflected as his jaw set itself grimly; many nights of chilled and aching bones with that wild thirst creeping seductively, everpoweringly upon him out of the darkness. There would be the clutch of longing, strangling his heart and gnawing at his stomach.
But if hedidpromise and failed, he could never again recover his self-respect. He would be doomed. With his face still averted, he spoke huskily and laboriously.
"I reckon thar hain't no way ter make ye understand, Blossom. I don't drink like some folks, jest ter carouse. I don't oftentimes want ter tech hit, but seems like sometimes I jesthaster hev hit. Hit's most gin'rally when I'm plumb sick of livin' on hyar withouten no chance ter better myself."
Even in the moonlight she could see that his face was drawn and pallid. Then abruptly he wheeled:
"Ther Stacys always keeps thar bonds. I reckons ye wants me ter give ye my hand thet I won't never tech another drop, Blossom, but I kain't do thet yit—I've got ter fight hit out fust an' be plumb dead sartain thet I could keep my word ef I pledged hit——"
Blossom heard her father calling her from the porch and as she seized the boy's arms she found them set as hard as rawhide.
"I understands, Turney," she declared hastily, "an'—an'—I'm a-goin' ter be prayin' fer ye afore I lays down ternight!"
As Turner watched the preacher mount and ride away, his daughter walking alongside, he did not return to the house. He meant to fight it out in his own way. Last night when the hills had rocked to the fury of the storm—he had surrendered. To-night when the moonlit slopes drowsed in the quiet of silver mists, the storm was in himself. Within a few feet of the gate he took his seat at the edge of a thick rhododendron bush, where the shadow blotted him into total invisibility. He sat there drawn of face and his hands clenched and unclenched themselves. He did not know it, but, in his silence and darkness, he was growing. There was for him a touch of Golgotha in those long moments of reflection and something of that anguished concentration which one sees in Rodin's figure of "The Thinker"—that bronze man bent in the melancholy travail of the birth of thought.
When an hour later Kinnard Towers and his cortège trooped out of Lone Stacy's house, Jerry Henderson, willing to breathe the freshness of the night, strolled along.
The men with the rifles swung to their saddles and rode a few rods away, but Towers himself lingered and at last with a steady gaze upon the stranger he made a tentative suggestion.
"I don't aim ter discourage a man thet's got fine ideas, Mr. Henderson, but hev ye duly considered thet when ye undertakes ter wake up a country thet's been slumberin' as ye puts hit, fer two centuries, ye're right apt ter find some sleepy-heads thet would rather be—left alone?"
"I'm not undertaking a revolution," smiled the new arrival. "I'm only aiming to show folks, by my own example, how to better themselves."
The man who stood as the sponsor of the old order mounted and looked down from his saddle.
"Hain't thet right smart like a doctor a-comin' in ter cure a man," he inquired dryly, "a-fore ther sick person hes sent fer him? Sometimes ther ailin' one moutn't take hit kindly."
"I should say," retorted Henderson blandly, "that it's more like the doctor who hangs out his shingle—so that men can come if they like."
There was a momentary silence and at its end Towers spoke again with just a hint of the enigmatical in his voice.
"Ye spoke in thar of havin' personal knowledge thet ther railroad didn't aim ter come acrost Cedar Mounting, didn't ye?"
"Yes."
"Well now, Mr. Henderson—not meanin' ter dispute ye none—I don't feel so sartain about thet."
"I spoke from fairly definite information."
The man on horseback nodded.
"I aims ter talk pretty plain. We're a long ways behind ther times up hyar, an' thet means thet we likes ter sort of pass on folks thet comes ter dwell amongst us."
"I call that reasonable, Mr. Towers."
"I'm obleeged ter ye. Now jest let's suppose thet ther railroaddidaim ter come in atter all an' let's jest suppose for ther fun of ther thing, thet hit likewise aimed ter grab off all ther best coal an' timber rights afore ther pore, ign'rant mountain-men caught on ter what war happenin'. In sich a case, ther fust step would be ter send a man on ahead, wouldn't hit—a mountain man, if possible—ter preach thet ther railroad didn't aim ter come? Thet would mean bargains, wouldn't hit?"
Jerry Henderson laughed aloud.
"Do you mean that you suspect me of such a mission?"
Glancing about to assure himself that no one heard except his single auditor, the erstwhile hirer of assassins bent over his saddle pommel. Into the suavity of his voice had crept a new hardness and into the pale color of his eyes an ominous glint.
"Back in ther days of ther war with England, Mr. Henderson, I've heered tell thet our grandsires hed a flag with a rattlesnake on hit, an' ther words, 'Don't tread on me!' Some folks says we're right-smart like our grandsires back hyar in ther timber."
"If that's a threat, Mr. Towers," said Henderson steadily, "I make it a point never to understand them."
"An' I makes hit a point never ter give them more then onct. I don't say I suspicions ye—but I dop'intedlysay this ter ye: Whatever yore real project air, afore ye goes inter hit too deep—afore ye invests all ye've got, an' all yore mother hes got an' all yore sister hes got, hit mout be right heedful ter ride over ter my dwellin'-house an' hev speech with me."
An indignant retort rose to Jerry's lips, but with diplomatic forbearance he repressed it.
"When I've been here a while, I guess your suspicions will be allayed without verbal assurances, Mr. Towers."
"Even if ye only comes preachin' ther drivin' out of licker," said Towers slowly, "ye're treadin' on my friends. We suffers Sabbath talk like thet from preachers, but we don't relish hit on week-days from strangers. In thar a while back I listened. I seen ye an' Brother Fulkerson a-stirrin' up an' onsettlin' ther young folks. I kin feel ther restless things thet's a-ridin' in ther wind ter-night, Mr. Henderson, an' hit hain't sca'cely right ter bring trouble on these folks thet's shelterin' ye."
Bear Cat Stacy, unseen but eagerly listening, felt a leaping of resentment in his veins. All the feudal instincts that had their currents there woke to wrath as he heard his hereditary enemy warning away his guest. It was the intolerable affront of a hint that the power of the Stacys had dwindled and waned until it could no longer secure the protection of its own roof-trees.
With the anger of Marmion for Angus, sternly repressed but forceful, Bear Cat suddenly stood out revealed in the moonlight. He had only to take a step, but the effect was precisely that of having been suddenly materialized out of nothingness, and when his voice announced him, even the case-hardened control of Kinnard Towers suffered a violent jolt of surprise.
"I reckon, Kinnard Towers," said the boy with a velvety evenness of voice, "ther day hain't hardly come yit when ther Stacys hes ter ask ye what visitors they kin take inter thar dwellin'-houses. I reckon mebby Mr. Henderson's ideas may suit some folks hyarabouts, even if they don't pleasure you none. So long as he aims ter tarry hyar, an' we aims ter enjoy him, ther man thet seeks ter harm him will hev ter come hyar an' git him."
Never since the fend had ended in a pact of peace, had two factional leaders come so near a rupture. Henderson could feel the ominous tensity in the air, but Towers himself only shook his head and laughed. It was a good-humored laugh, since this was not the time for open enmity.
"Oh, pshaw, son! I reckon nobody don't aim no harm to Mr. Henderson. I jest knows this country an' he ought ter realize thet my counsel mout help him." There was a brief pause and then with an audacity of bantering Kinnard proceeded. "I've done heered thet ye tuck yore dram onct in a while yoreself—mebby you've got friends thet makes licker—an' you knows how they mout feel about too much talk."
Bear Cat Stacy stood with his shoulders drawn back and his eyes smoldering.
"Thet's my business," he retorted curtly, but the Quarterhouse baron went on with the same teasing smile.
"Mebby so, son, but hit kinderly 'peared like ter me thet Brother Fulkerson's gal war a-'lowin' thet hit warherbusiness, too. I overheered yore maw say somethin' 'bout yore drinkin' some last night an' I seed Blossom's purty eyes flash."
The mounted man waved his hand and rode away, his escort falling in at front and rear, but when the cavalcade had turned the angle of the road Kinnard Towers beckoned Black Tom Carmichael to his side and spoke grimly.
"Thar's trouble breedin', Tom, an' this young Bear Cat Stacy's in ther b'ilin'. Ye played ther fool when yer failed ter git him as a kid. Hit war only a-layin' up torment erginst ther future."
Henderson lay long awake that night in the loft which he shared with Bear Cat. He heard the snores of the man and woman sleeping below, but the unmoving figure beside him had not relaxed in slumber. Henderson wondered if he were reflecting upon that talk by the gate and all the dark possibilities it might presage.
It was almost dawn, when Bear Cat slipped from under his quilt, drew on his shoes and trousers and left the loft-like attic, his feet making no sound on the rungs of the ladder.
What furtive mission was taking him out, pondered Henderson, into the laurel-masked hills at that hour?
But out in the creek-bed road, with the setting moon on his face, Bear Cat Stacy paused and drank in a long breath.
"He seen Blossom's eyes flash, he said," murmured the boy with his hands clenched at his sides, then he threw back his shoulders and spoke half aloud and very resolutely: "Wa'al they won't never hev ter flash no more fer thet cause." After a little while, his gaze fixed on the myriad stars, he spoke again. "God Almighty, I needs thet ye should holp me now. I aims ter go dry fer all time—an' I kain't hardly compass hit withouten ye upholds me."
Wheeling abruptly, he went with long strides around the turn of the road. A half hour later he was noiselessly opening the gate of the preacher's house. He meant to wait there until Blossom awoke, but prompted by habit he gave, thrice repeated, the quavering and perfectly counterfeited call of a barn owl. Since she had been a very small girl, that had been their signal, and though she would not hear it now, it pleased him to repeat it.
Then to his astonishment he heard, very low, the whining creak of an opening door, and there before him, fully dressed, intently awake, stood the girl herself.
"Blossom," said Bear Cat in a low voice that trembled a little, "Blossom, I came over ter wail hyar till ye woke up. I came ter tell ye—thet I'm ready ter give ye my hand. I hain't never goin' ter tech a drap of licker no more, so long es I lives. I says hit ter ye with God Almighty listenin'."
"Oh, Turney——!" she exclaimed, then her voice broke and her eyes swam with tears. "I'm—I'm right proud of ye," was all she could find the words to add.
"Did I wake ye up?" demanded the boy in a voice of self-accusation. "I didn't aim to. I 'lowed I'd wait till mornin'."
Blossom shook her head. "I hain't been asleep yit," she assured him. Her cheeks flushed and she drooped her head as she explained. "I've been a-prayin, Turney. God's done answered my prayer."
Turner Stacy took off his hat and shook back the dark lock of hair that fell over his forehead. Beads of moisture stood out on his temples.
"Did ye keer—thet much, Blossom?" he humbly questioned, and suddenly the girl threw both arms about his neck. "I keers all a galkinkeer, Turney. I wasn't sartain afore—but I knowed hit es soon as I begun prayin' fer ye."
Standing there in the pallid mistiness before dawn, and yielding her lips to the pressure of his kiss, Blossom felt the almost religious solemnity of the moment. She was crossing the boundary of acknowledged love—and he had passed through the stress of terrific struggle before he had been able to bring her his pledge. His face, now cool, had been hot with its fevered passion. But she did not know that out of this moment was to be born transforming elements of change destined to shake her life and his; to quake the very mountains themselves; to rend the old order's crust, and finally, after tempest and bloodshed—to bring the light of a new day. No gift of prophecy told her that, of the parentage of this declaration of her love and this declaration of his pledge, was to be born in him a warrior's spirit of crusade which could only reach victory after all the old vindictive furies had been roused to wrath—and conquered—and the shadow of tragedy had touched them both.
And had Bear Cat Stacy, holding her soft cheek pressed to his own, been able to look even a little way ahead, he would have gone home and withdrawn the hospitality he had pledged to the guest who slept there.
CHAPTER VII
BecauseJerry Henderson viewed the life of the hills through understanding eyes, certain paradoxes resolved themselves into the expected. He was not surprised to find under Lone Stacy's rude exterior an innate politeness which was a thing not of formula but of instinct.
"Would hit pleasure ye," demanded the host casually the next morning, "ter go along with me up thar an' see that same identical still thet I tuck sich pains yestiddy yeshouldn'tsee?" But Henderson shook his head, smiling.
"No, thank you. I'd rather not see any still that I can avoid. What I don't know can't get me—or anyone else—into trouble."
Lone Stacy nodded his approval as he said: "I didn't aim ter deny ye no mark of confidence. I 'lowed I'd ought ter ask ye."
Turner Stacy stood further off from illiteracy than his father. In the loft which the visitor had shared with him the night before he had found a copy of the Kentucky Statutes and one of Blackstone's Commentaries, though neither of them was so fondly thumbed as the life of Lincoln.
By adroit questioning Jerry elicited the information that the boy had been as far along the way of learning as the sadly deficient district schools could conduct him; those shambling wayside institutions where, on puncheon benches, the children memorize in that droning chorus from which comes the local name of "blab-school."
Turner had even taken his certificate and taught for a term in one of these pathetic places. He laughed as he confessed this: "Hit jest proves how pore ther schools air, hyarabouts," he avowed.
"I expect you'd have liked to go to college," inquired Henderson, and the boy's eyes blazed passionately with his thwarted lust for opportunity—then dimmed to wretchedness.
"Like hit! Hell, Mr. Henderson, I'd lay my left hand down, without begrudgin' hit, an' cut hit off at ther wrist fer ther chanst ter do thet!"
Henderson sketched for him briefly the histories of schools that had come to other sections of the hills; schools taught by inspired teachers, with their model farms, their saw-mills and even their hospitals: schools to which not only children but pupils whose hair had turned white came and eagerly learned their alphabets, and as much more as they sought.