PRESS OF BRAUNWORTH & CO. BOOK MANUFACTURERS BROOKLYN, N. Y. (continued 4)

Of course, a scape-goat might be required, perhaps more than one, but there were men who could be well enough sacrificed to such a diplomatic necessity.

So during the first part of that evening, Kinnard sat comfortably by his hearth, smoking his pipe with contemplative serenity the while he waited for the rattle of firearms, which should announce the climax of the drama. He allowed to drop on his knees the sheaf of correspondence which had come to his hand through the courtesy of his nephew in the legislature. These papers bore the caption: C. and S. E. Railways Company: "In Re—Cedar Mountain extension," and they contained meaty information culled from underground and confidential sources.

Across the hearth from him, with bare feet spread to the blaze, sat the well-trusted Tom Carmichael—sunk deep in meditation, though his eyes were not entirely serene—nor cloudless of apprehension.

"'Pears like ther show ought ter be startin' up," complained Towers restively. "Ye seed 'em go inter ther Quarterhouse, ye said?"

Tom nodded.

"I watched 'em from ther shadders of ther roadside. They went in all right. They're inside now."

After a brief pause the lieutenant demanded querulously, "Ye've done tuck inter account thet ther killin' of this feller from Looeyville's goin' ter stir up them furriners down below, hain't ye, Kinnard? I wouldn't be none astonished ef they sent them damn' milishy soldiers up hyar ergin."

"Ease yore mind, Tom." Towers spoke with the confidence of the strategist who has, in advance, balanced the odds of campaign. "Ther railroad will kick up hit's heels—an' snort like all hell—but ther Co'te sets hyar—an' I carries ther Co'te in my breeches pocket."

After a moment he added, "The only people I'm a-fear'd of air ther Stacys—an' I've done arranged thet."

At last across the frosty, sound-carrying distance, came the spiteful crack of pistols, and Kinnard Towers leaned attentively forward in his chair.

"Them damn' fools air bunglin' hit, some fashion," he broke out wrathfully. "Thar hain't no sort of sense in a-stringin' hit out so long."

A momentary diminuendo of the racket was followed by the sharp, repeated bark of a rifle, which brought the intriguer violently to his feet.

"Hell's fiddle!" he ejaculated in sudden alarm. "They hain't finished hit up yit! I cautioned 'em special not ter use no rifle-guns—jest pistols, accidental like."

Hatless and coatless, he rushed out and made for the Quarterhouse, disquieted and alarmed by the din of a howling chorus which sounded more like uncertain battle than orderly and definite assassination.

Before his panting, galloping haste brought him to the stockade he caught, above the confused pandemonium, a yell of: "Bear Cat Stacy! Git him! Git 'em both!"

"Good God!" he muttered between grinding teeth. "Good God, them fools air startin' ther war ergin! I've got ter stop hit!"

If Bear Cat fell within the four walls of that house to-morrow would dawn upon a country-side disrupted in open warfare. So Kinnard appeared in the door, his face distorted with an ashen fury and sought, too late, to assume again the rôle of pacifist and rescuer.

As Bear Cat had gone stumbling out, bearing his burden of wounded and misused humanity, two men started forward keyed for pursuit.

"We kin still git 'em from ther brush," hazarded one, but with a biting sarcasm the chieftain wheeled on the volunteer.

"Stand where ye're at, ye fool! Ye've done flung away ther chanst—an' plunged us all inter tribulation! Hain't I got no men thet hain't damned bunglers?"

He stood panting in a rage like hydrophobia.

"Thet Bear Cat, he hain't mortal noways!" whined a disheveled youth who nursed a limp arm. "I seed his chest square on my pistol sights, not two yards' distant, an' I shot two shoots thet hed a right ter be deadeners—but ther bullets jest bounced offen him. Ye kin bleed him a leetle, but ye kain't in no fashion kill him."

Kinnard Towers stood looking about the débris of the place where shattered bottles on the shelves and grotesque figures cluttering the floor bore testimony to the hurricane that had swept and wrecked it.

"Them fools war mortal enough," he disdainfully commented. "I reckon ye'd better take a tally an' see what kin be done fer 'em."

Under stars that were frostily clear, Bear Cat Stacy rode doggedly on, gripping in his arms the limp and helpless figure of Jerry Henderson. Beneath his shirt he was conscious of a lukewarm seeping of moisture as if a bottle had broken in an inner pocket and he recognized the leakage as waste from his own arteries.

Within his skull persisted a throbbing torture, so that from time to time he closed his eyes in futile effort to ease the blinding and confusing pain. With both arms wrapped about the insensible figure before him, and one hand clutching his pistol, rather from instinct than usefulness, he went with hanging reins. A trickle of blood filled his eyes and, having no free hand, he bent and dabbed his face against the shoulder of his human burden. Through all his joints and veins he could feel the scalding rise of a fever wave like a swelling tide. To his imagination this half-delirious recognition of sanity-consuming heat became an external thing which he must combat with will-power. So long as he could fight it down from engulfing and quenching his brain, he told himself, he could go on. Failing in that, he would be drowned in a steaming whirlpool of madness.

The stark and shapeless ramparts of the hills became to his disordered senses hordes of crowding Titans, pressing in ponderously to smother and bury him. He felt that he must fend them off; hold back from crushing and fatal assault the very mountains and the pitchiness of death—for a while yet—until his task was finished.

Above all he must think. No man could defeat death, but, for a sufficient cause and with dauntless temper of resolution, a man might postpone it. He must win Blossom's battle before he fell. He swayed drunkenly in his saddle and gasped in his effort to breathe as a hooked fish gasps, out of water.

It seemed that on his breast lay all the massiveness of the rock-built ranges and at his reason licked fiery tongues of lunacy so that he had constant need to remind himself of his mission.

There was some task that he had set out to accomplish—but it wavered into shadowy vagueness. There were scores of mountains to be pushed back and a heavy, sagging thing which he carried in his arms, to be delivered somewhere—before it was too late.

His mind wandered and his lips chattered crazy, fever-born things, but to his burden he clung, with a grim survival of instinctive purpose. Sometimes an inarticulate and stifled sound came stertorously from the swollen lips of the weltering body that sagged across the horse's withers—but that was all, and it failed to recall the custodian from the nightmare shades of delirium.

But the night was keenly edged with frost and as the plodding mount splashed across shallow fords its hooves broke through a thin rime of ice. That same cold touch laid its restoring influence on Turner Stacy's pounding temples. His eyes saw and recognized the setting of the evening star—and something lucid came back to him. To him the evening star meant Blossom. He remembered now. He was taking a bridegroom to the woman he loved—and the bridegroom must be delivered alive.

Jerking himself painfully up in his saddle, he bent his head. "Air ye alive?" he demanded fiercely, but there was no response. He shifted his burden a little and held his ear close. The lips were still breathing, though with broken fitfulness.

His fever would return, Bear Cat told himself, in intermittent waves, and he must utilize to the full the available periods of reason. Henderson would bleed to death unless his wounds were promptly staunched. Liquor must be forced down his throat if he were to last to Brother Fulkerson's house with life enough to say "I will."

Since the dawn when Bear Cat had given his pledge to Blossom he had always carried a flask in his pocket. He had done so in order that his fight should be one without any sort of evasion of issues: in order that the thirst should be met squarely and that whenever or wherever it attacked him he would have to face and conquer it with the knowledge that drink was at hand.

Now he felt for that flask and found that in the mêlée it had been shattered.

Rough and almost perpendicular leagues intervened between here and Brother Fulkerson's and there must immediately be some administration of first aid. The instinct of second nature came to Bear Cat's aid as he groped for his bearings.

Over this hill, a half mile through the "roughs," unless it had been moved of late, lay Dog Tate's blockade still. Slipping back of his saddle, onto the flanks of his mount, Turner lowered Henderson until he hung limp after the fashion of a meal-sack between cantle and pommel. He himself slid experimentally to the ground, supporting himself against the horse while he tested his legs. He could still stand—but could he carry a man as heavy as himself?

"A man kin do whatsoever he's obleeged ter do," he grimly told himself. "This hyar's a task I'm plumb decreed ter finish."

The fever had temporarily subsided. His brain felt preternaturally clarified by the contrast, but the hinges of his knees seemed frail and collapsible.

He hitched the horse, and hefting the insensible man in his arms, staggered blindly into the timber.

Dog's place was hedged about with the discouragement of thickets as arduous as a cheval de frise, but Bear Cat's feet groped along the blind path with a surety that survived from a life of wood-craft. Once he fell, sprawling, and it was a little while before he could conquer the nausea of pain sufficiently to rise, gather up his weighty burden, and stumble on again.

"I'll hev abundant time ter lay down an' die ter-morrow," he growled between the clamped jaws that were unconsciously biting the blood out of his tongue. "But I've got ter endure a spell yit—I hain't quite finished my job."

At last he lifted his voice and called guardedly out of the thickets. "This is Bear Cat Stacy—I'm bad wounded an' I seeks succor!"

There was no reply, but shortly he defined a shadow stealing cautiously toward him and Dog Tate stood close, peering through the sooty dark with amazement welling in his eyes.

The gorge which Dog had chosen for his nefarious enterprise was a "master shut-in" between beetling walls of rock, fairly secure against discovery and now both the moonshiner and his sentinel brought their lanterns for an inquiry into this unexpected visit.

At first mute astonishment held them. These two figures were bruised, torn and blood-stained, almost beyond semblance to humanity. In the yellow circlet of flare that the lantern bit out of the darkness, they seemed gory reminders of a slaughter-house. But much of the blood that besmeared Bear Cat Stacy had come from his weltering burden.

"I hain't got overly much time fer speech, Dog," gasped Turner between labored breaths. "We've got ter make Brother Fulkerson's afore we gives out.... Strip this man an' bind up his hurts es well es ye kin.... Git him licker, too!"

They staunched Henderson's graver wounds with a rough but not undeft speed, and when they had forced white liquor between his lips the faltering heart began to beat with less tenuous hold on the frayed fringes of life.

"Ef he lives ter git thar hit's a God's miracle," commented Dog. He passed the whiskey to Bear Cat, who thrust it ungraciously back as he repeated, with dogged reiteration. "He's got ter last twell mornin'. He's got ter."

When the prostrate figure stirred with a flicker of returning consciousness Turner's eyes became abruptly keen and his words ran swiftly into a current of decisiveness:

"Dog, yore maw war a Stacy—an' yore paw was kilt from ther la'rel. I reckon ye suspicions who caused his death?"

A baleful light glimmered instantly into the moonshiner's pupils; the light of a long-fostered and bitter hate. His answer was breathed rather than spoken.

"I reckon Kinnard Towers hired him killed.... I was a kid when he died, but my mammy give me his handkerchief, dipped in his blood ... an' I tuck my oath then." He paused a moment and went on more soberly: "I've done held my hand ... because of ther truce ... but I hain't nowise forgetful ... an' some day——"

Bear Cat leaned forward and laid an interrupting hand on the shoulder of the speaker, to find it trembling.

"Hearken, Dog," he said. "Mebby yore time will come sooner then ye reckoned. I wants thet afore sun-up ter-morrow word should go ter every Stacy in these-hyar hills, thet I've done sent out my call, an' thet they shell be ready ter answer hit—full-armed. I wants thet ye shall summons all sich as ye hev ther power ter reach, ter meet fer counsel at my dwellin'-house ter-morrow mornin' ... an' now I wants ter hev private speech with this-hyar man—" he jerked his head toward Henderson—"afore he gits past talkin'."

With a nod of comprehension the moonshiner and his helper slipped out of sight in the shadows, and kneeling at Jerry's side, Bear Cat again raised a cup of white whiskey to his lips.

The odor of the stuff stole seductively into his own nostrils, but he raised his eyes and saw again the evening star, not rising but setting.

"Blossom's star!" he groaned, then added, "Ye don't delight in me none, little gal! Thar hain't but one thing left thet I kin do fer ye—an' I aims ter see hit through."

With insupportable impatience he bent, waiting for a steadier light of consciousness to dawn in that other face. Every atom of his own will was focused and concentrated in the effort to compel a response of sensibility. Finally Henderson's eyes opened and the wounded man saw close to him a face so fiercely fixed that slowly, under its tense insistence, fragments of remembrance came driftingly and disjointedly back to him.

"Kin ye hear me?" demanded Bear Cat Stacy with an implacably ringing voice. "Does ye understand me?" And the other's head moved faintly—almost imperceptibly.

"Then mark me clost because I reckon both of us hes got ter stand afore many hours facin' Almighty God—an' hit don't profit us none ter mince words."

Through the haze of a brain still fogged and reeling, Henderson became aware of a hatred so bitter that it dwarfed into petulance that of the murder horde at the Quarterhouse.

"Ye come hyar ... an' we tuck ye in." The tone rose from feebleness to an iron steadiness as it continued. "When I come inter ther Quarterhouse I 'lowed ye'd done turned traitor an' joined Kinnard Towers ... but since they sought ter kill ye, mayhap I war misguided.... Thet don't make no difference, now, nohow." He paused and struggled for breath.

"Ye tuck Blossom away from me ... ye made her love ye because she hadn't never knowed ... an eddicated man afore.... All my days an' nights I'd dreamed of her.... Ter make her happy, I'd gladly hev laid down my life ... but I war jest a rough mounting man ... an' then she seed you."

Henderson's lips moved in a futile effort as Bear Cat halted, gasping. His hand wavered in a weak gesture of protest—as against an unjust charge. But Bear Cat's voice leaped suddenly. "Don't stop me! Thar hain't much time left! You an' me needs ter go ter God's jedgment seat with our jobs finished.... I don't censure Blossom none ... hit war es rightful thet she should want a real life ... es fer ther flowers ter want sunshine.... But you! Ye stole her love—an' then abandoned her."

Henderson's eyes were eloquent with a denial—but the darkness hid it—and his lips refused utterance, while the other talked on, feebleness muting the accusing voice to a lower timbre.

"She warn't good enough fer you—her thet war too good fer any man! But perchance ye may be wiser dyin' then livin'." The weak utterance mounted into inexorable command.

"Now ye're a-goin' ter make good afore ye dies.... She trusted ye ... an—" Turner broke suddenly into a deep sob of agony. "I don't know how fur ye taxed her trust ... but I knows she told me she had full faith in ye, an' faith like thet don't stop ter reckon up costs. Now she's sickenin' away—an' thet trust is broke ... an' I reckon her heart's broke, too."

Henderson moistened his lips and with a supreme effort succeeded in whispering almost inaudibly, "That's a lie."

"A lie is hit? She gave ye her lips," went on the burning indictment. "An' in these hills when a woman like Blossom gives her lips ter a man, she gives him her soul ter keep.... Ye're a mountain man yoreself ... ye knows full well what mountain folks holds.... Ye hain't got no excuse of ign'rance ter hide behind. Ye knows thet withouten ye weds her, folks will tell lies an' she won't never be able ter hold up her head—ner smile again."

"Stacy—" Henderson had rallied a little now, but he sagged back and at first got no further than the name. With another struggle, he added,

"I ... I'm dying——"

"Mebby so. I hopes ye air ... but fust ye're a-goin' over thar with me ... an', because she'll be happier ef she thinks ye come of yore own free will.... I hain't a-goin' ter tell her ... thet I dragged ye thar ... like a sheep-killin' dog.... Ye're a-goin' ter let her think thet her hero has done come back ter her ... deespite death hitself."

"But—but——"

The young mountaineer broke out with something half sob and half muffled roar.

"Hell, thar hain't no but! I'm tellin' ye what ye air a-goin' ter do! With God's aid I aims ter keep ye alive thet long ... an' atter thet—I hain't takin' no heed what comes ter pass."

"Was ... that ... why you ... saved me?" The words were barely audible.

"What else would hit be? Did ye reckon hit war love for ther man thet hed done stole everything I counted dear—ther traitor thet betrayed my roof-tree? Did ye 'low thet hit war fer yore own sake I war openin' up ther war ergin, deespite ther fact that I knows hit'll make these hills run red with ther blood of my kith an' kin?"

Abruptly Bear Cat came to his feet and shouted into the darkness. Henderson saw two figures detach themselves from the inky void and come forward.

Then as they lifted him he swooned with pain.

CHAPTER XVI

Dog Tate had left his mash kettle unguarded that night, putting clan loyalty above individual interest as he hastened off to stir into action the dwellers of the Stacy cabins, and to dispatch other night-riders upon the same mission. But he sent Joe Sanders, his assistant, to convoy the wounded men along their road. They went at a labored and snail-like pace, Sanders walking on one side of the horse, supporting the swooning figure it bore, while Turner Stacy trudged at the other saddle skirt. Sometimes Bear Cat plodded on with fair erectness, setting his teeth against weariness and pain, but at other times the intermittent waves of fever rose scaldingly until, in a blind fog, he dragged shuffling feet, clinging grimly the while to pommel and stirrup-leather as his head sagged forward between his shoulders. Sometimes, too, he mumbled incomprehensible things in a voice that was weirdly unnatural. From time to time there was a halt to make sure that the life spark still flickered, though tenuously and gutteringly, in the breast of the inert thing lashed to the saddle.

When they had been on the road for three hours Bear Cat and Sanders, by a common impulse, strained their ears through what had been silence, except for the wail of the high-riding breeze among the pine crests.

Now faint, and far away, hardly more than a hint of sound, they could hear something else, and it lifted Turner out of his reek of nightmare and semi-delirium so that his eyes cleared and his head came up. It was as though a bugle had sounded a note of martial encouragement through the mists of despair.

Joe Sanders spoke shortly, half to his companion and half to himself.

"Hit kinderly seems like Dog Tate's rousin' em up. I reckon ther war's on now all right an' it's liable ter be unshirted hell."

Blossom had been sitting until late that evening with her hands lying listlessly in her lap and her eyes staringly fixed on the blaze of her hearth. Their amber pools were darkened with jaded misery and her cheeks were pale. Their graciousness of youthful curve had been somewhat flattened, as her whole life had been flattened. Only her hair, awakened into halo-brightness by the blaze of the logs, spoke of that old vividness of color that had been a sort of delicate gorgeousness and even that nimbus had the suggestion of the glow about the head of a saint who has achieved sanctity through suffering.

"He swore he aimed ter come back ter me right soon," she repeated to herself. "I wouldn't have him imperil himself—but he mout have writ me a letter." Her instinct told her what had happened with a fulness of realization from which there was no escape. It was only because she had pretended her Cinderella dream to be a fact, that she had not all along recognized it for an impossible fairy tale. The Jerry Henderson who had promised her marriage was only a temporary Jerry: a man swept off his feet by the stress and freshet of crisis. The mountain blood in his veins had welled up to flood tide and swept away the dams of his superimposed cultivation. He had relapsed into her life—for a little while—just as his ardent tongue had relapsed into her uncouth vernacular.

Now the more permanent Jerry, awakened by his return to city conditions, was standing aloof, regarding that experience with self-contemptuous regret: thinking of it as a lapse into savagery. It had been an impetuous thing of the flesh to which his mind denied permanent sanction. The dream was over now—but she could not forget it.

Her fingers twisted themselves tightly together and she rose and leaned wearily against the mantel-shelf. As her eyes, clouded with misery, traveled about the tidy room, its every note spoke of Bear Cat Stacy. He had fashioned, for her comfort, all the furnishings that made it a place different from the rooms of other mountain cabins.

On the Pelion of her own misery she heaped the Ossa of self-condemnation. She saw again the stricken look in Turner's eyes as he had set out for Virginia after hearing the news that had cut the foundation from under all his own life-dream. She remembered, too, the gentleness with which, placing thought of her above self, he had made his renunciation.

"Oh, God," she murmured, "why air hit thet we kain't love best of all ther folks thet loves us most? Turney would hev walked through ther Valley of Death fer me—an' I've got ter break my heart fer a man thet don't hold me good enough ter wed."

Yet even now she was making excuses for the lover who had neither come nor written. The first bond between Turner and herself had been their common revolt against a life of squalid ignorance and emptiness. That revolt had carried them into the no-man's land of discontent without bringing them to the other side: the line of real attainment upon which Jerry stood secure.

Her father came once to the door, but did not enter it. His bearded face was more soberly patriarchal than ever. He had long struggled against violence in his efforts to shepherd a wild and turbulent flock. He had pleaded for the Christ-law of forgiven sins, but in his veins ran the unforgetting blood of warring generations. There had been times of late when he had felt that he would need God's help and restraint should he ever meet the man who had broken his daughter's heart.

"I reckon thar hain't sca'cely nothin' I kin say ter console her," he mused as he turned away from the door.

At length when the fire had burned low Blossom went to bed and lay wide-eyed for other hours.

Through the harping wind in the evergreens sometimes came the high, wild note of southward-winging ducks and geese—refugees from winter. Henceforth her life was all to be winter. Neither the freshly green and tuneful things of springtime nor the gorgeousness and fragrance of autumn could amend or temper its lethargy.

She had tossed until nearly dawn, and the house lay deadly quiet. If sleep came near her it was only to veer away again for each sputter of a dying ember brought her, with a start, into tenser wakefulness.

Then came another sound, and her nervous little body tightened into the dismay of panic. Unmoving, holding her breath between pressed lips, she strained her ears. There was no mistake—she had heard it again.

It was a wild note riding the wind, and now for the first time it became more than a legend in her experience. From babyhood she had heard of this night noise, long silenced by the truce, and had trembled at its portentousness. She had from childhood heard her father thank God that men were no more roused by it from their sleep: that it was one accursed thing which belonged to the past. Now it had found resurrection!

As she lay listening it sounded once more, nearer than before, a shout suggestive of a wild-cat's wail that quavered and rose and dwindled and rose again. That clan-signal of the Stacys along the ridges meant war—open and unmitigated war.

It was not merely a demonstration of inimical feeling but a definite summons. The man of that blood who heard it needed no particulars. He had his orders. Straightway he must arm and rally.

From her father's room came a deeply anguished groan and the muttering of a prayer. He, too, had been awakened and realized that the "war" had broken out afresh.

It was useless to try to sleep now. Blossom rose and threw fresh fagots on the fire. She dressed and sat with her fingers twisting and her lips trembling.

Once she stifled a scream at the rush of hoof-beats and the scatter of gravel along the road, but the commotion went by in hot haste and silence closed down again.

Eventually an abrupt shout sounded imperatively from just beyond the door—a voice which Blossom did not recognize, and as she came to her feet she heard her father's stern challenge, "Who's out thar?"

"Hit's Joe Sanders—an' I'm in haste!"

Despite the urgency of word and tone the preacher hesitated to demand:

"What business brings ye hyar in ther dead of night-time?"

"I've got Bear Cat Stacy an' Mr. Henderson. They're both sore wounded. Fer God's sake, hasten!"

With a swiftness of motion that outstripped her father's, Blossom flung herself forward and with feverish fingers was sliding the bar from its sockets.

But while the preacher stood waiting, his lips drew themselves into an unbending line and his shaggy brows lowered. Inwardly he was praying: "Almighty God, I beseeches Ye ter strengthen me in this hour ter fergive mine enemies—fer Thou knowest thar's murder in my heart!"

As the girl threw the door wide, she saw what seemed to be three figures locked in a close embrace.

The trio lurched rather than stepped into the lighted area, and, shrinking back horrified, Blossom saw Brother Fulkerson close his house, his face marked, as she had never before seen it, with a grim unwelcome.

Sanders carried in his arms a figure whose limbs fell in grotesque inertia. Its clothing was torn by briars and bullets; matted with mire and blood. Its face was half hidden by a rough bandage made from Jerry's own handkerchief, upon which the stains had turned from red to dull brown, except at the spots where the crimson had been renewed by an unstaunched trickle.

Bear Cat stumbled across the threshold unaided, but as he halted, blinking at the light, he reeled drunkenly and propped his disheveled body against the wall. That was for a moment only and at its end he drew himself into something nearer uprightness and swept his hand across his brow. He had not carried the matter this far to fail at the finish.

"Lay thet man on a bed," he panted with fierce earnestness. "Thar hain't no time ter waste ... he's nigh death ... an' he's come hyar ter be wedded."

Brother Fulkerson answered in a voice of bewilderment, tinged, too, with protest.

"Thar hain't sca'cely no life in him. Hit's too late fer marryin'."

"Not yit hit hain't ... hit will be ef ye tarries!" Turner ripped out his words with the staccato snap of rifle fire. His own feebleness seemed to drop away like the hat he flung to one side. His eyes burned with tawny fire and a positive fury of haste. For hours, he felt he had been holding death in abeyance by a sheer grapple of resolution, and now men paused to parley and make comment. An impulse of insane wrath besieged him. He must be obeyed—and the moments were flying—the sands running out.

"Hasten now—an' talk afterwards," he burst out.

They laid Jerry on Blossom's bed, its coverings magically smoothed into comfort by her flying hands, and Joe Sanders once more pressed his pocket flask to the white lips.

The girl, buoyed up, beyond her strength, by the moment's need and the mettle of her blood, swiftly and capably eased the posture of the wounded man, loosened his heavy boots and rushed from the room to prepare fresh bandages. The stunning impact of despair would come later. Now every fighting chance must be preserved to him.

While she was still out of the room, Henderson's eyes opened in a fluttering and precarious consciousness, to find other eyes fixed on them with flaming intensity.

The basilisk gaze was fabulously reputed to bring death, but Turner Stacy was reversing its hypnotism to compel life.

"Where—am I?" whispered Jerry; and the answer was as peremptory as predestination.

"Ye're at Blossom's house—ter git married—an,' by God, ye've got ter last thet long. She's got ter believe ye come of yore own free will—see thet she does!"

The half-insensible eyes ranged vaguely about the place. The weak fingers plucked absently at the coverlet, and then essayed a gesture. The promoter seemed rallying his failing faculties for a supreme effort though his voice was hardly audible.

"But—Stacy—you don't—under—stand."

Bear Cat brought his face close; a face with belligerently out-thrust chin and fiercely narrowed eyes. Henderson must consent before Blossom returned to divine with her quick intuition that her dying lover balked in the shadow of death.

"Don't explain nothin' ter me. Save yore breath ter say 'I will.' Thet's all ye hev need ter utter now—an' hits need enough."

In his overwrought singleness of purpose Turner forgot that this man was beyond any force of threat or coercion. As he spoke so dictatorially he believed himself, too, to be facing death with equal certainty, though more slowly, and what he had sworn to do must first be done.

Yet there was such an inescapable compulsion in the ernest fixity of his pale face and burning eyes that the outstretched figure felt its own declining will merged and conquered.

"Hit's ther only decent thing thet's left fer ye ter do," went on the strained but inflexible voice. "Ye took her heart fer yore own—an' broke hit. Ye've got ter let her have yore name an' ther consolation of believin' thet ye came ter her ... honest, fightin' back black death hitself!"

Sometimes between sleep and waking come fugitive thoughts that seem crystal-clear, but that elude definite memory. Such a process enacted itself in the mind of the dying man. Doubt and complications were dissolved into simplicity—and acquiescence.

Faintly he nodded his head and even tried to hold out his hand to be shaken. Perhaps Bear Cat was too excited to recognize that proffer of amenity. Possibly his own bitterness was yet too black for forgiveness—at all events he turned away without response to seek out Joel Fulkerson, who had disappeared.

"Ye've got ter hasten, Brother Fulkerson," he hurriedly urged. "Jerry Henderson's done come back ter give his name ter Blossom afore he dies an' death hain't far off."

The old evangelist was bending over a medicine chest. It was a thing which a visiting surgeon had once given him and in the use of which he had developed an inborn skill that had before now saved lives and ameliorated suffering. He straightened up dubiously and faced the younger man.

"Turney," he said grimly, "ef they don't wed, folks hyarabouts'll always look askance at my little gal with a suspicion thet I'm confident is as false as hell hitself—but God made ther state of matrimony holy—an' I'm his servant—onlessen they both enters inter hit free-minded hit wouldn't be nothin' but a blasphemy. Air they both of one mind?"

Turner stiffened to a ramrod straightness. His hands clenched themselves into hard fists and his nostrils quivered.

"Brother Fulkerson, ye're a godly man," he declared with suppressed passion, "an' I hain't never sought ter dispute ye ner defy ye afore now—but thar hain't no time ter argyfy. Willin'ly or unwillin'ly ye're a-goin' ter wed them two—right hyar—an' now! He plighted his troth ter her. He's got a mighty brief chanct ter fulfill his pledge an' leave her thinkin' she gave her love ter a true man. He's come acrost hyar, shot like a bob-white—jest fer thet. I've fought off death my own self ter-night—jest fer thet! Ef God has spared both of us this long, I reckon He done hit—jest fer thet! I'll answer ter Him at ther jedgment-seat, ef so be I'm wrong."

For an irresolute moment the father hesitated, then he said briefly, "Come on."

Turner wheeled, bracing himself for the bitterest ordeal of all. He must be the spokesman for a rival whom he hated beyond superlatives—and in order that Blossom might keep her dream, which was all she could now hope to salvage out of life, he meant to tell a lie which would for all time enshrine that detestable traitor. None the less, when he had drawn her aside, he spoke with great gentleness, perjuring himself with knightly self-effacement.

He took both her hands in his own and looked with a tender consideration into her forlorn eyes, gulping down the choke that rose in his throat and threatened his power of speech. Though her gaze was fixed on his face she seemed hardly to see him, so stiff and trance-like was her posture and so tight-drawn and expressionless her features. If he could soften that paralysis of grief it was worth a self-sacrificing lie.

"Blossom," he began softly, "Mr. Henderson fell inter a murder trap an' I got thar too late ... ter fotch him out unharmed. Betwixt us we did come through, though, with ther breath still in our bodies ... an' he made me pledge myself ter git him hyar in time ... ter wed with ye afore he died."

He saw the eyes widen and soften as if the tight constriction of heart and nerve had been a little eased. Into them came even a pale hint of serenity and pride—pride for the splendid vindication of a hero whom she had tried to believe true and had been compelled to doubt. Even the bleak dreariness of widowhood could not tarnish that memory: her ideal instead of being shattered was canonized!

"I knowed he'd prove true," she loyally declared. "Despite everything I jest knowed hit deep down in my heart!"

A pallid thinning of the darkness was discernible over the eastern ridges as Brother Fulkerson, who had administered his most powerful restoratives, thrust back his medicine chest. His face became mysteriously grave as he joined the hands of his daughter and the man whose fingers were limp in their enfeebled clasp. Across the quilted four-poster stood Bear Cat Stacy, as erectly motionless as bronze. His unblinking eyes and lips, schooled into firm stoicism, might have suggested some young Indian brave going, set of purpose, to his torture. The lamp flared and sputtered toward the end of its night-long service and the fire had dwindled to an ashen desolation.

At the foot of the bed, and depressed with a dull sense of awe, was Joe Sanders, fingering his hat-brim and shifting his weight from foot to foot.

The old preacher of the hills, ordained in no recognized school of divinity, had for this occasion put aside the simple formula that the mountains knew and substituted for it such fragments as he remembered from the Church of England's more stately ritual. It was a service that he had heard infrequently and long ago, but it had stirred him with its solemn beauty and God would forgive any unmeant distortions since the intent was reverent.

"Dearly Beloved, we're gathered together hyar in ther sight of God A'mighty an' in the face of this hyar company ... to j'ine tergither this-hyar man an' this-hyar woman." There exact memory failed him and his voice broke in a pathetic quaver. Bear Cat Stacy bit his tongue until he could taste the blood in his mouth as he held his gaze rigidly fixed above the heads of the little group. God alone knew how bitter were the broken dreams in his heart, just then.

"I require an' charge ye both, as ye will answer at ther dreadful day of jedgment—" the holy words were still illusive and memory tricky—"thet ef either one of ye knows any—any—cause why ye kain't rightfully be j'ined tergither in matrimony ... ye do now confess hit."

The pause which ensued lay upon the small company with oppressive weight. Joe Sanders coughed and nervously cleared his throat.

"Wilt thou have this-hyar woman fer thy wedded wife? Wilt thou love her, comfort her an' keep her in sickness an' in health?"

For a moment there was dead and unresponsive silence. A cold fear smote upon them all that death had intervened. Then Bear Cat, bringing his eyes back from their fixity, bent abruptly; so abruptly that his movement seemed a thing of violent threat.

"Don't ye hear?" he demanded in a strained whisper. "Speak whilst thar's breath left. Say 'I will.' Say hit speedily!"

Recalled by that sharp challenge out of his sinking consciousness, Jerry Henderson stirred and murmured faintly, "I will."

"Wilt thou have this-hyar man fer thy wedded husband ter serve, honor an' obey——"

But before the interrogation came to its period Blossom Fulkerson broke in with a prideful and willing avowal, "I will! I will!"

Turner Stacy felt icy moisture on his temples. His world seemed rocking as he stood straight again with wooden immobility.

"I pronounces ye man an' wife."

Bear Cat turned away, walking with the stiff fashion of an automaton. He could feel a stringent tightness like paralysis at his heart—and his limbs seemed unresponsive and heavy. Then to his ears came, on the morning breeze, that same call to arms that had stiffened Blossom into a paralysis of fear. His cramped posture relaxed, and to himself he said, "I reckon I hain't quite through yit!"

CHAPTER XVII

Blossom still knelt at the bedside with eyes of absorbed suffering and fingers that strayed flutteringly toward the bandaged head.

Bear Cat, with his hand on the latch, lingered at the door, held there by a spell which he seemed powerless to combat. His part here was played out and to remain longer was an intrusion—yet he seemed unable to go. The kneeling girl was not even conscious of his presence. For her there was no world except that little one bounded by the sides and the end of the bed upon which her lover lay dying. Her hands clasped themselves at last and her face buried itself in the coverings. She was praying.

Bear Cat saw the glimmer of the firelight on her hair and to him it was all the lost gold of his dreams. He caught the sweet graciousness of her lissome curves, and his own fingers clutched at the shirt which had become stiff with dried blood. Once she had prayed for him, he remembered—but that was before her real power of loving had burned to its fulness. Now he stood there forgotten.

He did not blame her for that forgetfulness. It only demonstrated the singleness of devotion of which she was capable; the dedication of heart which he had once hoped would be lavished on himself.

He, too, was so centered on one yearning that he was beyond the realization of lesser matters, so that the gaunt preacher came within arm's length unnoticed and laid a hand on his shoulder. Brother Fulkerson nodded toward the other room, and Turner followed him with the dumb and perfunctory abstraction of a sleep-walker.

"Now, son, ef hit hain't too late ter avail, let's hev a look at yore own hurts. Ye didn't come through totally unscathed yore own self."

Bear Cat stood apathetically and his eyes turned hungrily toward the stout partition of logs beyond which knelt the girl. It was not until the older man had spoken the second time that he replied with a flat tonelessness of voice, "My worst hurts ... hain't none ... thet ye kin aid."

"Thet's what I aims ter find out." Joel Fulkerson's manner was brisk and authoritative. "Strip off yore coat an' shirt."

Indifferently Bear Cat obeyed. Several times his lips moved without sound, while the other pressed investigating fingers over the splendidly sinewed torso and bathed away the dried blood.

"Hit looks p'intedly like ye've been seekin' ter prove them fruitless stories thet bullets kain't kill ye," observed the preacher at the end of his inspection, speaking with a somber humor. "Ye've done been shot right nigh yore heart, an' ther bullet jest glanced round a rib without penetratin'. Ye've done suffered wounds enough ter kill a half-dozen ord'nary humans—an' beyond wastin' a heap of blood ye don't seem much injured."

"I wisht," declared the young man bitterly, "ye'd done told me thet I was about ter lay down an' die. Thet's all I'm longin' fer now."

For some moments they were silent; then Joel Fulkerson's grave pupils flickered and a hint of quaver stole into his voice.

"Son, I've done spent my life in God's sarvice—unworthily yet plumb earnest, too, an' thar's been times a-plenty when hit almost looked ter me like He'd turned aside His face in wrath fer ther unregenerate sin of these-hyar hills. I've hed my big dreams, too, Turner ... an' I've seed 'em fail. Oftentimes, despairin' of ther heathenism of ther growed-ups, I've sot my hopes on ther comin' generation. If ther children could be given a new pattern of life ther whole system mout come ter betterment."

The young man had been putting on again his discarded shirt and coat, but his hands moved with the fumbling and apathetic motions of a sleep-walker. His face, turned always toward that room beyond the wall, was set in a dull immobility, yet he heard what the elder man was saying, and listened with the impatience of one whose thoughts are in travail, and whose interest for abstractions is dead. The preacher recognized this, but with a resolute effort he continued. "When you war a leetle shaver I seed in yore eyes thet ye hed dreams above sordidness.... Oft-times when I watched ye gazin' off acrost the most distant ridges I 'lowed that God hed breathed a wonderful gift inter ye ... ther ability ter dream an' make them dreams come true. I seed thet ye hed power, power thet mout do great good or make yore name a terror ter mankind, dependin' on which way ye turned hit." An agonized groan came brokenly from the twisted lips. Bear Cat dropped into a chair and covered his eyes with trembling palms. He had faced his enemies without flinching, but after the cumulative forms of torture through which he had passed to-night, his stoicism threatened to break under the kind intentions of a talkative friend.

Still the evangelist went on: "I had visions of a new type of mountain folks—some day ... when boys like you an' gals like Blossom grew up—and wedded. Folks with all the honesty an' generosity we've got now—but with ther black hate an' suspicion gone—. Ay—an' ther cause of hit gone, too,—ther blockade stills."

Turner's nails bit into his temples as if with an effort to hold the fugitive reason in his bursting head, as the words assaulted his ears.

"I've set hyar afore my fire many's ther night, a-dreamin' of some day when there'd be a grandchild on my knee ... yore child an' Blossom's ... a baby thet would be trained up right."

Suddenly Turner's silence of apathy broke and he fell to trembling, while his eyes flared wildly. "In God's name why does ye have ter taunt me in this hour with reminders of all thet I've lived fer an' lost? Does ye reckon I kin ever fergit hit?" He broke off, then went on again with panting vehemence. "I hain't never had no dream but what was jest a part of thet dream.

"Why I've stood up thar on ther ridges in ther spring when ther face of God's earth war so beautiful thet I've wondered ef His heaven could be much better—an' thet's ther sperit of ther hills thet Blossom stood fer ter me." The shaking voice gathered volume and passion. "I've seed ther bleak misery of winter strangle all but ther breath of life hitself outen folks thet lives hyar—an' thet's what this country means ter me without Blossom! Folks knows how ter hate up hyar, but jest now, somehow, I feels thet no man in all these God-forsaken mountings kin hate life an' humanity like I hates 'em!"

Joel Fulkerson responded soberly though without reproof: "Yore man Lincoln could go right on when things was turrible black. When his own ends failed he still went on—fer others. He didn't give way ter hate. He could go on tell he give his life hitself—fer dreams of betterin' things thet needed betterment, an' he come from ther same blood as us."

"Wharfore in God's name does ye stand thar preachin' at me?" The young man's reaction from stunned torpor to passion had brought with it something like the fever of madness.

"Ye knows I holds with ye es ter schools—an' all fashion of betterment—but what's them things ter me now? What I wants in this hour is ter visit on ther man thet's ruint my life ther direst punishment thet kin be meted out—an' he's cheatin' me by a-dyin'. Listen—" He broke off and bent his head toward the wall of Blossom's room and his voice took on a queer, almost maniacal note. "Kain't ye heer her—in thar—groanin' out her heart! Let me git outen hyar.... I kain't endure hit.... I'm liable ter do even you an injury ef I stays—albeit I loves ye!"

"I hates thet man in thar, too, Turner." The preacher laid a restraining hand on his companion's taut arm and sought to soothe the frenzy of wrath with the cool steadiness of his tone. "I've had need ter pray fer strength against thet hate—but I've heered ther Stacy rallyin' cry ter-night an' we've got ter hev speech."

"Speech hain't ergoin' ter mollify me. What I wants is ter hev ther things I've suffered this night paid fer. Hit's all got ter be paid fer!" The inheritor of feudal instincts wheeled and burst from the room, the preacher following more slowly but still determined.

Outside Turner halted. The ordeal through which he had passed had left him shaken in a frenzy of passion, and he stood looking about him with the gaze of a wild beast fretting under the feral urge of blood-lust. With a clan easily inflamed and gathering to his call, Brother Fulkerson realized the danger of that mood. Its menace must be met and stemmed before it ran to a flood-tide of homicidal violence.

The preacher came close and spoke quietly.

"I don't know yit what tuck place ter night—over yon," he said. "I only knows I've heered acrost ther hills a sound I'd prayed I mout never hear ergin—ther cry of ther Stacys rallyin' fer battle. Ye've got power, son—power beyond ther common. What air ye goin' ter do with hit? Air ye a-goin' ter fergit yore dreams, because ther future's black afore ye? Or air ye goin' ter be big enough, since ye're denied children of yore own, ter make them dreams come true fer ther benefit of other men's children?"

Bear Cat Stacy's voice as he answered was gratingly hard and his eyes were unyielding.

"I don't know yit," he savagely announced. "I don't know yit fer sure whose a-goin' ter need punishment, but I've called on my kinsmen ter gather—an' when I knows the truth we'll be ready to deal hit out full measure."

"Ther days of feuds is past, son. Fer God's sake don't be ther backwardest man in all this evil-ridden country—you thet should be the forwardest."

But Bear Cat's hands, clenched into fists, were raised high above his head.

"My paw's in jail," he ripped out. "I hed ter go over thar ter hide out in Virginny. Ef them things hadn't come ter pass mebby I mout hev saved Blossom from her tribulation." Suddenly he fell silent. In the dim light the preacher saw his face alter to the ugly set of a gargoyle and his body come to such sudden rigidity as paralysis might have brought.

"God Almighty in heaven!" Turner exclaimed, then his words come racing in a torrent of frenzy. "I war a damn' fool not ter hev seed hit afore! Why air my paw in jail? Why did Kinnard Towers counsel me ter go ter Virginny an' hide out? Hit war because he war plannin' ter murder Jerry Henderson—an' he didn't dast do hit with us hyar! I knows now who needs killin' an' so holp me God, I hain't a goin' ter lay down ner sleep, ever again, until I kills him!" The eyes burned madly; the figure shook and he would have rushed off at the moment had not the preacher caught his arms and held them doggedly even though the infuriated young giant tossed him about in his efforts to free himself. Yet for all his thinness and age, Joel Fulkerson had power in his frame—and an unshakeable determination in his heart.

"Listen ter me," he pleaded. "I won't keep ye hyar long—an' ef ye don't listen now, ye won't never forgive yoreself hereafter.... Ye hain't got no cause ter misdoubt my loyalty.... I hain't never asked a favor of ye afore."

At any other time Turner would have acquiesced without debate and in a spirit of fairness, but now he was driven by all the furies of his blood. He had been through the icy chill of dull despair and then plunged into the blast furnace of red wrath. Upon some guilty agency reprisal must be wreaked—and as if with a revelation, he thought he saw the origin of the conspiracy which his father had long ago suspected.

He saw it so late because until now his mind had been too focused on effects to hark back to causes, and now that he did see it, unless he could be curbed, he would run amuck with the recklessness of a Mad Mullah.

"Let me go, damn ye," the young man almost shrieked as he tore himself loose from the restraining grasp, and flung the old preacher spinning to the side so that he fell to his knees, shaken. He clambered up slowly with a thin trickle of blood on his lips, where his teeth had cut them in the fall.

"Thet war a pity, Bear Cat," he said in a queer voice, though still unangered, wiping his mouth with his bony hand. "I'd thought thet we two—with a common sorrow between us——" There he broke off, and the boy stood for a breathing space, panting and smoldering. He could not come back to cold sanity at one step because he had been too far shaken from his balance—but as he watched the gray-haired man, to whom he had always looked up with veneration and love, standing there, hurt to the quick, and realized that upon that man he had laid violent hands, the crazy fire in his arteries began to cool into an unutterable mortification.

Since the cattle trader's story had been told back in the Virginia cabin, until this moment, his mind had been successively scorched with wrath, chilled in despair and buffeted by hurricane violence, but never had it for a tranquil instant been stilled to normality. Over at the Quarterhouse, when in Berserker rage he had been lashing out through a red mist of battle, he had suffered less than since, because in action he was spending the hoarded accumulation of wrath—but since then he had been in the pits of an unbearable hell.

Now at the sight of that unresenting figure, wiping the blood from its lip, a new emotion swept him with a flood of chagrin and self-contempt. He had struck down a friend, defenseless and old, who had sought only to give true counsel. The stubborn spirit that had upheld him as he fought his fever-scalded way over the hills, and remained with him as he watched the wedding ceremony, broke; and with face hidden behind spread palms and a body racked by a spasm of collapse, he shook with dry sobs that come in wrenching incoherence from deep in his chest.

He reeled and rocked on his feet under the tempest of tearless weeping—and like a blind man staggered back and forth, until the preacher, with a hand on each shoulder, had soothed him, as a child is soothed. At last he found the power of speech.

"Fer God's sake, Brother Fulkerson, fergive me ... ef ye kin.... I don't know what I'm doin'.... I'm seein' red." Again his voice vaulted into choleric transports. "Ye says I mustn't call ther Stacys ter bloodshed. Ye're right. Hit's my own private job—an' I'm goin' back thar ter kill him—now! But es fer you, I wouldn't hev treated ye with sich disrespect fer no cause in ther world—ef I hadn't been well-nigh crazed."

"Son, I forgives ye full free ... but ye jest suspicions these other matters. Ye hain't dead sure—and ye hain't ther man ter go out killin' without ye air plumb sartain.... Now will ye set down an' give me leave ter talk a spell?"

The boy dropped upon the edge of the porch and jerked with a palsy of wretchedness, and as he sat the old preacher pleaded.

For a while Bear Cat's attention was perfunctory. He listened because he had promised to listen, but as the evangelist swept on with an earnestness that gave a fire of eloquence to his uncouth words, his congregation of one was heeding him because of the compulsion of interest. He saw a bigger enemy and one more worthy of his warfare behind the malign individual who was, after all, only its figure-head and coefficient.

"Ef them ye loves hed been struck ter death by a rattlesnake—and hit war feasible fer ye, 'stid of jest killin' ther snake, ter put an end ter ther pizen hitself—fer all time—would ye waste strength on a single sarpent?" The eyes of the speaker were glowing with ardor. "Men like Kinnard air snakes thet couldn't do no harm save fer ther pizen of ther copper worms. Hit's because they pertects them worms thet ther lawless stands behind sich men—an' ther law-abidin' fears 'em. Wipe out ther curse itself—an' ye wipes out ther whole system of meanness an' murder." He paused, and for the first time since his outburst Bear Cat spoke soberly.

"Over thar—at ther Quarterhouse—whar they sought ter git Henderson—they warn't nothin' but a yelpin' pack of mad dogs—all fired ter murder with white licker."

Brother Fulkerson nodded.

"I said ye hed power, an' I don't want ter see ye misuse hit.

"Ye asked me a spell back why I pestered ye with talk about betterment in this hour of yore affliction. Hit's because I wants ye ter go on fightin' fer thet dream—even ef hit's denied ye ter profit by hit. I wants thet jest now with ther Stacys gatherin' in from back of beyond, ye starts out leadin' 'em rightfully 'stid of wrongfully—fer whichever way ye leads, ye'll go far."

Bear Cat Stacy rose from his seat. His chest still heaved, but his eyes were aflame with a fire no longer baleful. In them was the thrilling blaze of far-reaching vision. For a time he stood silent, then he thrust out his hand.

"Brother Fulkerson, I've done been right close ter hell's edge ter-night—but ye've brought me out. I hevn't put by my resolve ter punish murder—if I can prove hit—but I've put by punishin' hit with more murder. I aims ter make an end of blockadin'."

"Praise God," murmured Brother Fulkerson with the glowing face of an old and wearied prophet who sees a younger and mightier rise before him. Yet because his own long labors had taken heavy toll of weariness, he knew the ashes of despair as well as the flame of ardor. Now he found himself arguing the insurmountable difficulties. "But how does ye aim ter persuade men ter forego blockadin'? Yore own kinfolks air amongst 'em."

Bear Cat's excitement of resolve brought a tremor to his voice.

"By God, I don't aim ter persuade 'em over-much. I aims ter force 'em. I aims ter rip out every still this side of Cedar Mounting—Stacys' and Towers' alike, an' I don't aim ter sneak up on 'em, but ter march open about ther business!"

It was to a campaign of persuasion, rather than abrupt coercion, that the preacher had sought to guide his convert, and at this announcement of audacious purpose he shook his head, and the hopefulness faded from his pupils.

"The system hes hits roots set deep in ancient toleration, an' hooked under ther rocks themselves. Afore ye alters hit by fo'ce, ye've got ter shake, ter the bottom-most ledges, hills thet hain't never been shuck afore."

But Bear Cat Stacy had within the hour become the crusader in spirit, hot with a new-born purpose, and it would have been as possible to send molten lava traveling uphill to go tamely back again into its bursted crater, as to shake his purpose. He was in eruption.

"I knows thet, but I aims ter blast out the bed-rock hitself an' build hit up anew.

"Hit seems ter me right now es ef I kin see ther picture of this land in y'ars ter come. I kin see men walkin' with thar heads high an' thar gaze cl'ar—'stid of reelin' in thar saddles an' scowlin' hate outen drunken eyes. I kin see sich schools es Jerry Henderson named ter me in other valleys an' coves.

"Ye says hit hain't a-goin' ter be easy, but I tells ye more then thet—hit's goin' ter be jest one mite short of impossible—an' none-the-less I'm a-goin' ter do hit. I'm a-goin' ter lay ther foundations fer a peace thet kin endure. I reckon folks'll laugh at 'em fust, an' then mark me down fer death, but I means ter prevail afore I quits—an' I'm beholden ter ye fer p'intin' me ther way."

The preacher clasped his hands in a nervous uncertainty. The transition from night to the twilight of the day's beginning had passed through its most ghostly vagueness to a fog-wrapped morning. A dour veil of gray and sodden mists trailed along the slopes with that chill that strikes at the heart and quenches the spirit in depression.

Joel Fulkerson stood, gray, too, and colorless.

"I don't hardly know how ter counsel ye, son," he said, and his voice was that of a man whose burden of weariness was crushing him.

"Ye aims ter do a thing thet hain't nuver been successfully undertook afore. Ef ye seeks ter fo'ce men 'stid of persuadin' 'em—ye're mighty liable ter fail—and cause ther valleys ter run red."

Bear Cat's lips twisted themselves into a smile ironically mirthless.

"Brother Fulkerson," he said, "in thar—ye kin almost hear her moanin' now—is ther gal thet I've always loved. Ter me ther ground she walks on is holy—ther air she breathes is ther only air I kin breathe without tormint ... ter-night I fotched hyar ther man thet my heart was clamorin' ter kill: fotched him hyar ter wed with her." As he paused Turner's face twitched painfully.

"Ye says I mustn't undertake this job in no spirit of vengeance. Thar hain't no other fashion I kin undertake hit. I must needs throw myself inter this warfare with all ther hate—an' all ther love thet's in my blood. I hain't a-goin' ter try ter gentle iniquity—I'm goin' ter strive ter tromp hit underfoot."

When Bear Cat was joined by Joe Sanders a few minutes later, the ridges were still grim and unrelieved heaps of ragged gray. The sky was lowering and vague, and the face of the sun pale and sullen.

Joe, too, in that depressing dimness looked like a churlish ghost, and as the pair stood silently in the road they saw a trio of horsemen approaching and recognized at their head Dog Tate, mud-splashed and astride a horse that limped stiffly with weariness.

Dog slid from his saddle, and reported briefly.

"Ther boys air a-comin' in from ther branch waters an' ther furthermost coves. I've done started a tide of men flowin' ter-night."

"I'm beholden ter ye. I reckon we'd all better fare over ter my house and make ready ter meet 'em thar."

Tate leaned forward and gripped Bear Cat's arm.

"I've done warned everybody thet our folks must come in quiet. I 'lowed ye'd want ter hold counsel afore any man fired a shot—but—" He paused and looked furtively about him, then lowered his voice. "But thar's a thing comin' ter pass thet don't pleasure me none. Kinnard Towers air a-ridin' over hyar ter hev speech with ye—an' ef ye jest says ther word—thar hain't no need of his ever gittin' hyar."

"Kinnard Towers!" For an instant an astonished and renewed anger flared in Bear Cat's pupils, and the face of the other man blackened with the malevolence of a grudge long nursed and long festering in repression.

"Kinnard Towers," repeated Dog Tate, vindictively mouthing the name. "He's hired more men killed then he's got teeth in his jaws. He's raked hell itself, stirrin' tribulation fer yore people an' mine—an' I've done took my oath. Jest es soon es things start poppin' he's my man ter kill!"

Abruptly Tate fell to trembling. His face became a thing of ash and flint. From his pocket he drew a small package folded in newspaper, which he unwrapped and held out, displaying an old and very soiled handkerchief, spotted with dark discolorations. A shrill note sharpened his voice as he spoke in vehement haste.

"Thar hit air! Thet's my daddy's 'kerchief—an' thet spot air ther blood thet was spilled outen his heart—by a bullet Kinnard Towers caused ter be fired! Seems like I kin see him a-lyin' thar now, sort of gaspin' an' tryin' ter say somethin' ter me, thet he didn't never succeed in utterin' afore he died! I wasn't hardly more'n a baby them days an' when I come ter manhood they'd done made a truce an' yore paw 'lowed thet hit bound me. But now!" The man's excited tones cracked like a mule-whip. "Now ef ther truce air ended, hit's my right ter hev ther fust chance."

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

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

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

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

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

Turner's jaw came out with a belligerent set, but he answered slowly. "I was over at his place last night an' he didn't hardly hold me harmless. None-the-less, tell him ter come on. I'll send back a few of my kinfolks with ye ter safeguard him along ther way."

CHAPTER XVIII

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

Courts sat and charged panels, with a fine ironic mask of solemnity. Grand juries were sworn and listened with an equal mockery of owlish dignity. Deputies rode forth and returned with unserved subpoenas. Prosecutions collapsed, since no law unbacked by public sanction in its own jurisdiction can prevail. Stacys and Towers, alike fierce in private quarrel and jealous of their right of personal settlement, became blankly ignorant in the witness chair; welded by their very animosities into a common cause against judge and jury.

There had been, among that generation of Stacys, no such outstanding figure as old Mark Towers, the indomitable lion of the hills. Kinnard had followed Mark, bringing to the succession no such picturesque savagery—but still a bold spirit, tempered by craft. In lieu of the sledge blow he favored the smiling face with the dirk unsheathed behind his back. Times were altering and to him mere leadership meant less than enough. He was also covetous of wealth, in a land of meagerness. To clan loyalty as an abstract principle he must have added such obedience as comes only from fear—and men must know that to thwart him was dangerous. Upon that principle, he had built his dominance until men shaped even their court testimony to the pattern of his requirements. At first the Stacy clan had challenged his autocracy, but twenty years before, the truce had been made and, since no Stacy leader had arisen of sufficient caliber to wrest from him the ascendency of his guile and bold wits, he had triumphed and fattened in material wealth.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"An' as shore es hell's hot," growled Black Tom Carmichael with a dark pessimism brooding in his eyes, "they'll do right-smart thinnin' out their own selves—once they gits stirred up."

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

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

Slowly Bear Cat circulated among the motley crowd, exchanging greetings, but holding his counsel until the tide of arrivals should end. It was a tatterdemalion array that he had conjured into conclave with his skittering whoop along the hill-tops. There were lads in jeans and veterans in long-tailed coats, green of seam and fringed of cuff. They carried rifles of all descriptions from modern repeaters to antiquated squirrel guns, but, in the bond of unshrinking stalwartness, they were uniform.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bear Cat declined to meet diplomacy in kind.

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

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

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

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

"I reckon," said Kinnard Towers,—and now the ingratiating quality that had sugar-coated his address dissolved into frank enmity,—"I reckon ef thet's ther road ye elects ter travel, thar hain't scarcely any avail in my tarryin' hyar. I mout es well say farewell an' tell hell with ye! Yore paw wouldn't hardly be so malicious an' stiff-necked. Ye don't need ter be told thet I've got numerous enemies hyar in these mountings, too—an' thet more'n once they've marked me down fer death."

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

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

"By God in heaven!" Bear Cat Stacy leaned forward and his words cracked like flame in green wood. "Ye says ye stands fer law—an' ye' makes slaves of ther men thet runs ther co'tes of law! Ye says ye stands fer ther people an' ye fosters thar ign'rance and denies 'em roads an' schools. Ye sacrifices everything fer yore own gain—an' ther profit of yore boot-lickers thet seeks ter run blockade stills. Wa'al ef thet's law, I'm goin' ter start ter-day makin' war on ther law. I'm goin' ter see what an outlaw kin do! I aims ter give thet message to them thet's gathered hyar this afternoon—an' as soon as I'm done talkin' I'm goin' ter commence actin'. Atter ter-day thar'll be decent Towerses alongside of me and worthless Stacys 'longside of you!" His voice fell—then leaped again to passion. "I reckon ther time's ripe. Let's go now an' talk with 'em. I've jest been a-waitin' fer ye ter get hyar."

Deeply perplexed and depressed with the foreboding of one who fights enemies shadowy and ill-defined, yet forced, since he had come so far, to go forward, Kinnard Towers followed, as Bear Cat led the way to a huge rock which afforded a natural rostrum.

"Men," cried Turner Stacy when a semi-circle of lowering faces had pressed close and attentive about the shallow eminence, "last night Mr. Henderson an' me come sore wounded from ther Quarterhouse, whar a murder hed done been hatched: a murder thet partly failed. I sent out messengers ter call ye tergether fer counsel as ter whether ther truce hed been busted. I hain't found out yit fer sartain whether hit has er not—an' until we knows fer sure we're still held in our bonds of peace. Meanwhile I've done give my hand ter Kinnard Towers hyar, in my name an' yourn, thet he kin ride home, safe. If he speaks ther truth he's entitled ter respect. If he lies thar'll be time a plenty an' men a plenty ter deal with him hereafter. Kinnard aims ter talk ter ye, an' I wants thet ye hearken till he gits through."

The hereditary foeman, who knew that he was being pilloried in bitter disbelief, stood with an erect calmness as he was introduced. His face held an almost ministerial tranquillity, though his sense apprised him of the hush that goes ahead of the storm. He saw the green patches of the pines against the unaltered blue of the sky and the dull sparkle awakened by the sunlight on the barrels and locks of fiercely-caressed firearms.

As he moved a pace forward a chorused growl of truculent hatred was his reception, but that was a demonstration for which he was prepared—and against which he had steeled himself. He was less accustomed to making public pleas than to giving orders in cloistered privacy—but he was a lord of lies, and deeply versed in the prejudices upon which he hoped to play.

"I come over hyar this day," he declared by way of preface, "of my own free will—an' unsolicited by any man. I come open-eyed an' chancin' death, because I knowed I'd done kept ther compact of ther peace—an' I trusted myself ter ther upstandin' honesty of ther Stacys ter do likewise. Ef harm overtakes me hit'll be because I trusted thet honesty over-much."

CHAPTER XIX

As the snarling restiveness moderated to curiosity under Kinnard's uncouth forcefulness and seemingly candid words, he repeated the mendacious story of his outraged righteousness, when he had learned that in his tavern the murder of a gentleman from the lowlands had been attempted. His place, he pointed out, was open to all comers—the law required that he extend its entertainment to every man who paid the price. He himself had not been present in time to prevent the outbreak. Had he entertained a prior and guilty knowledge of the plot, he would scarcely have interfered last night. He would not have come to-day with his assurance of sympathy and his proffer of aid into a nest of swarming hornets.

Mr. Henderson's life had been attempted by some unknown foe once before, he reminded them. Apparently it had been his misfortune to make enemies as well as friends. The speaker paused and shook his head regretfully.

"He come hyar a stranger amongst us an' war tuck in by Lone Stacy, a man we all trusts—a man we all loves. Why should ther hand of anybody hev been lifted erginst him? Ther stranger thet sojourns hyarabouts, mindin' his own business, gin'rally walks safe. Hit's a question I kain't answer.... Mebby hit war because Mr. Henderson fell inter ther error of preachin' too strong a doctrine of change.... I only knows this much myself: thet on ther night he got hyar I heered him talk thet a-way—an' outen sheer friendliness I warned him thet amongst us simple folks thar'd be some thet wouldn't take kindly ter sich notions. He aimed ter show us how wrong our idees war; notions of life thet our grand-sires hes fostered fer two hundred y'ars an' upwards. He aimed ter undo in a twinklin' all thet's growed into our bones an' blood an' free life endurin' ginerations—an' ter civilize us. It war considerable undertakin'."

Again a low growl ran through his audience, but this time its indignation was not aimed at the speaker.

"I've even heered men claim thet Mr. Henderson come up hyar seekin' ter rob us in ther interest of ther railroad, though I don't sceercely like ter believe hit—ner even ter repeat hit."

Once more the blond head was shaken in sad regretfulness.

"We've done dwelt hyar, cut off from ther rest of ther world fer ginerations. We hain't got much eddication, but we're honest an' independent an' all we asks is ter be left alone ter work out our own salvation. In other times ther feud split us up into enemies, but since ther truce war made we've consorted peaceable." For a space he paused to gaze meditatively at the spear-like timber fringe against the fleckless blue.

"Ef Mr. Henderson unthoughtedly meddled an' somebody acted rash," went on Towers easily, "sorry es we all feels fer hit, an' det'armined es we all air ter punish thet person in full accordance with ther law—still hit warn't no Stacy thet was attacked. Mr. Henderson lays thar a-dyin' an' fer him I hain't got no feelin' but charity—but he warn't no Stacy! Ther folks down below, whar he hails from, will take plentiful pains ter avenge his death. Ter them, we hain't nothin' but benighted barbarians of ther bloody hills—an' he war an eddicated gentleman! Hit'll be a turrible pity ef we neighborly men goes ter war ergin over any false suspicion."

Kinnard swept his hands outward in a gesture like a benediction and stepped back. Where slurring growls had greeted him he left a silence which testified to the telling effect of his words. Their anger now was readier to burn into indignation against the invader who had sought to alter their life.

Though the young Stacy had interrupted by no word or sound, there was something in his stillness of deportment that presaged storm ready to burst. As he came to the edge of the bowlder his movements had the smooth elasticity of a panther—and when he stood silent for a moment his eyes rained lightning bolts of intensity.

"I've done stood here without interruptin' an' listened at Kinnard Towers' talk," he said, and the contempt of his tone was as stinging as a rawhide lash. "'Most all of what he has told ye, I believes ter be lies an' if they be, I aims ter have a full reckonin', but afore I begins I wants ter charge ye all in full solemnity thet we've pledged him a safe journey home—an' ef harm comes ter him afore he gits thar our name stands disgraced ter ther end of time. He's a hirer of murderers an' he's fattened offen poverty an' ther gallows air too good fer him—but a pledge is a bond!"

Bear Cat wheeled for a moment to face Kinnard Towers himself as he made this assertion, then he proceeded with the crescendo of a gathering tempest.

"He says thet ther murder of Jerry Henderson hain't no consarn of your'n, and he tells ye thet Henderson's under suspicion of seekin' ter cheat ye outen yore birthright. Ef he believed thet on good reason an' held his counsel thus far he aided an' abetted ther robbery. But I believes thet's a lie, too, because ef Jerry Henderson sought ter rob ye an' plunder ye successfully all he needed ter do war to make a deal with Kinnard Towers, fust.

"This man thet rules thet country from a boozin' ken, whar' ther stench of infamy pizens ther air, tells ye he stands fer law—an' I tells ye thet his kind of law makes all decent men want ter be outlaws. Judges an' juries hyarabouts does his biddin' ter ther damage of every honest man, because they walks in terror of him—an' debauches themselves ter hold his favor! He flies high an' his wings are strong—he passes fer an eagle—but he feeds on carrion."

Bear Cat swept into a stinging arraignment of the chicanery with which he charged Towers, piling invective upon anathema with the passionate sweep of a tornado. As faces that had listened to Towers with attention hardened again, Kinnard braced himself and forced a satirical smile.

"This man aimed ter git Jerry Henderson from ther fust day he come hyar—not because ther stranger sought ter feel ther way fer ther railroad, but because he dared ter talk fer enlightenment: for schools whar yore children could grow inter straight manhood, an' roads thet could take yore crops and timber ter market. Sich open speech didn't suit Kinnard, hyar, because when folks has knowledge they ceases ter be victims ter his greed and cunnin'.

"Jerry Henderson spoke out his belief an' he was marked down by Kinnard Towers fer death. He's a-dyin' now."

A low and dangerous murmur ran over the crowd, but Bear Cat Stacy stilled it with his raised hands.

"I believes thet Kinnard connived with ther Judas revenuer to jail my paw expressly ter cl'ar ther road fer this murder. Ef thet's true he didn't jest attack a furriner, but he affronted every Stacy an' busted ther truce ter boot! Till I kin prove what I suspicions, I aims ter hold my hand; but I stud in Brother Fulkerson's house last night amids ther ashes of sorrow an' I've done dedicated what's left of my life ter one aim.

"I don't know whether I'll hev holp or go single-handed, but as Almighty God hears me, I aims ter clean up these hills! I aims thet 'stid of grumblin' like old grannies because our fields air littered with rock an' our roads air all dirt, we shell take ther rock outen ther fields an' put hit on ther roads. I aims thet every child thet hankers fer enough larnin' ter raise himself above ther level of beasts shell hev a school whar he kin git hit. I aims thet when yore baby falls sick or thar's a bornin' at yore house, ther doctor kin git thar—in time!"

He paused, and his audience, swept by the abandon of his extemporaneous fervor, fell into an excited approval. The magic of inherent strength and sheer personality was at work upon them.

"Before sich things es them kin be brought ter pass," began the speaker again in a voice dropping suddenly to stern calm, "ther wrath of numerous folks will flare up ter murder-hate—because thar's a stumblin' block in ther path thet's ancient an' thet hes got ter be man-powered loose. Betwixt us an' betterment stands ther thing thet all our troubles springs from—an' though hit don't profit but one man in every score, yit thar be some amongst ye thet'll die fer hit!"

He stopped and looked down into faces puzzled and uncomprehending. Eyes turned up to the speaker out of lean and serious visages, waiting for his next sentence, and he himself stood there for a moment or two in a silence which was as much an emphasis as a blank margin which stresses the conspicuousness of print.

His own face, still drawn with the travail of last night's gamut of emotion, and his figure motionless with the pent-up dynamics of a tight-wound coil, carried the impression of action presently to burst with a force beyond governing. They had always thought of him as a man bred for action but short of speech; a man bound like themselves by the constrictions which generations of taciturn ancestors had laid upon fluency, damming it into difficulty. But now self-consciousness was as absent from his attitude as though the torrential quality of his thoughts and words came from an external force sweeping through him and speaking through him.

Abruptly he thrust a hand into the breast pocket of his coat—a coat torn recently by bullets meant for his heart—and drew out a thing familiar to every man in that assemblage: a flat flask of colorless glass, filled with a fluid as white as itself. He held the thing high above his head, and ripped out his words with a crackling force.

"Thar's ther enemy thet's laid hits curse on the men an' women of these-hyar mountings! Thar's ther thing thet's hatched from ther worm of their still—ther pizen thet breeds in ther la'rel! That's what turns kindly men inter brutes an' wives inter widders an' children inter orphans! Thar's ther thing thet hes made ther purest blood in all America bear ther repute afore ther rest of ther world of a people of bloody outlaws!

"Hit's bottles like thet thet hes shut ther doors of our country against progress an' prosperity—an' barred out ther future from ther hills. Hit's bottles like thet thet hes chained us ter ther dead past when our kinsmen down below war a-marchin' on ter advancement. Hit's ther false idee thet a man hes a license ter break ther law in blockadin', even ter ther hurt of them thet don't blockade, thet's carried along with hit a contempt fer all other law—an' raised up a spirit of murder an' lay-wayin'."

As he paused again for a breathing space, still holding high the flask above his head, he might have read a warning in the clouding of pupils and the tightening of lips; in the out-thrusting of jaws and the stiffening of shoulders. But these indications of hostile sentiment seemed only to bring a more fiery hotness to his words and his voice.

"I made this licker myself," he declared. "I made hit up thar in ther thickets. My paw lies in jail now fer doin' ther same thing. Many's ther night—an' ther day, too—thet I've laid up thar drunk with ther pizen thet I've brewed—but no man will ever see me drunk ergin!

"I've carried this flask in my pocket whar I could feel hit a-layin' against my heart—ever since ther day I quit. I've carried hit thar so thet thar wouldn't never be a time, day or night, when hit couldn't hev ther chance ter lick me, ef so be hit proved bigger an' stronger then me. I wasn't askin' no favors of ther worm of ther still—an' now I hain't a-goin' ter give hit none! Thar's been times when my throat scalded me an' my belly tormented me—when I felt like as ef I'd burn an' shrivel ef I didn't uncork hit an' drink. But I hain't never teched hit since then—an' now I kin laugh at hit. Now I know that Satan helped me ter make hit—an' I'm a-goin' ter make war on hit till I stomps hit out or hit kills me!"

Bear Cat Stacy, with that quick gesture so often seen in the hills, raised the flask to his mouth and jerked out the cork with his teeth—then he spat the stopper out of his mouth, and with hand again raised high, inverted the flask so that the contents gurgled out in a thin stream and, in the dead silence, the blubbering sound of the emptying was as if the thing itself was giving up its life with a sob of protest.

Then dashing down the bottle and shattering it on the rocks, the young man broke out with a crescendo of vehemence.

"What you men hev seed me do with thet-thar flask of blockade licker thet I made myself, ye're a-goin' ter see me do in like fashion with all the rest this side of Cedar Mounting. Ye're a-goin' ter see me lift ther curse thet's been on us like a lunacy an' a pestilence. Ye're goin' ter see me smash every flask an' every bottle. Ye're goin' ter see me empty out every jug an' knock in ther head of every kag an' barrel, twell ther spleen of meanness an' murder runs out with ther licker—an' a peace comes thet kin hope ter endure."

Then with abrupt and climacteric effect he wheeled and shouted to someone who stood unseen behind the angular shoulder of the rock itself. The next moment he lifted up and set down at his feet a spiral thing of copper tubing which caught on its burnished coils the brightness of the sun and gave back a red glitter.

"Ther day of hills enslaved by a copper sarpint hes done come to an end!" he declared in a passion-shaken voice. "I aims ter do ter every cursed one of 'em this side of Cedar Mountain what I'm goin' ter do ter this one, hyar an' now!"