PRESS OF BRAUNWORTH & CO. BOOK MANUFACTURERS BROOKLYN, N. Y. (continued 5)

He seized up an axe which had been lying at his feet and swung it above his head. Poised in that posture of arrested action, his final words were defiantly thundered out.

"I've done took my oath ter hang these things like dead snakes along ther highway fer all men ter see. They stands accountable fer poverty an' squalor an' bloodshed. Because of ther pestilence they've brought an' ther prosperity they've turned away—they've got ter go."

The ax crashed down in stroke after stroke upon the coiled thing at his feet, gashing it into destruction as the crowd broke into a restive shuffling of feet and looked on in dismay—as yet too dumfounded for open protest.

"My God, Bear Cat's done gone crazed," whispered a man on the outskirts of the crowd. "He's plumb fittified."

Slowly the spell of astonishment began to give way to a fuller realization of the heresy that had been preached and which had appalled them by its audacity. Comparatively few of them were actual moonshiners but at other times many of them had been—and their spirit was defense of their institutions. Yet the face of this young man, bred to their own traditions, was fired with an ardor amazingly convincing and dauntless. In many of the elder heads had glimmered a germ of the same thought that Bear Cat had put into hot words; glimmered in transient consideration, to be thrust back because the daring needed for its expression was lacking. Here was Bear Cat Stacy boldly proclaiming his revolutionary purpose in advance because he wished to be fair; announcing that if need arose he would wage war on his enemies and his friends alike in its fulfilment. It would take a bold spirit to volunteer aid—and yet there were those whose only objection to the crusade was its mad impracticability. There were others, too, who, as Bear Cat had prophesied, would fight such vandal menace to the death.

So, after the first spell-bound pause, a threatening growl ran through the crowd and then like a magpie chorus broke and swelled the babel of discussion. Out of it came a dominating note of disappointment—almost disgust—for the leader to whom they had loyally rallied. Kinnard Towers stood for a while appraising their temper, then his lips parted in a smile that savored of satisfaction.

"So Bear Cat Stacy goes dry!" he exclaimed with a contemptuous tone intended to be generally overheard. Then in a lower voice he added for Turner's ear alone:

"Son, ye've done made a damn' fool of yoreself, but hit hain't hardly fer me ter censure ye. Hit suits me right well. Afore this day I feared ye mout be troublesome ter me, but ye've done broke yore own wings. From this time forward ye hain't nothin' but an eaglet thet kain't rise offen ther ground. I was sensibly indignant whilst ye blackguarded me a while ago—but now I kin look over hit. I reckon yore own people will handle ye all right, without any interference from me."

The chief of the Towers clan turned insolently on his heel and walked away and the crowd fell back to let him pass.

CHAPTER XX

When the Jews heard of a Messiah coming as a king they made ready to acclaim him, but when they found him a moralist commanding the sacrifice of their favorite sins, they surrendered him to Pilate and cried out to have Barrabas freed to them.

That afternoon Turner Stacy, the apostate leader, saw his kinsmen breaking into troubled groups of seething debate. The yeast of surprise and palpable disappointment was fermenting in their thoughts. They had come prepared to follow blindly the command of a warrior—and had encountered what seemed to them a noisy parson.

Those who saw in the young man a bigger and broader leadership than they had expected were those who just now said little. So some regarded him with silent and pitying reproach while others scowled openly and spat in disgust—but all dropped away and the crowd melted from formidable numbers to lingering and unenthusiastic squads. They had not even attached serious importance to his threat upon blockading—it was mere bumptiousness indicating his mercurial folly.

In every indication he read utter repudiation by his clan. His eager but limited reading had taught him that every true leader, if he is far enough in advance of those he leads, must bear this bitter brunt of misunderstanding, but he was young and a freshly inspired fanatic, and that meant that he was in this respect, humorless—but he was not beaten.

Standing somewhat apart with a satirical smite drawing his lips, Bear Cat watched them ride away, and when most of them had gone his uncle, Joe Stacy, came over and stood by his side.

"Ontil ter-day, Turner," he said with a note of deep sorrow in his voice, "I 'lowed ye hed ahead of ye a right hopeful future. I 'lowed ye'd be a leader—but ye kain't lead men contrarywise ter doctrines thet they fed on at thar mothers' breasts. I've always kind of hed ther notion thet someday ye'd go down thar ter Frankfort an' set in ther legislature ... but ter-day ye've done flung away ther loyalty of men that bragged about ye an' war ready ter die, follerin' ye."

"I reckon they kin find plenty of men ter lead 'em thet way,—round an' round in circles thet don't git nowhars," came the defiant response. "Thet hain't ther sort of leadership I craves."

"Hit hain't thet I holds no love fer blockade 'stillin'," explained the older man seriously. "I got my belly full a long time back—an' quit. Ef ye could stomp hit out, I'd say do hit—but ye kain't. Ye hain't jest seekin' ter t'ar out stills—ye're splittin' up yore own blood inter factions an' warfare. Thar hain't nothin' kin come outen hit all, save fer ye ter be diskivered some day a-layin' stretched out in a creek-bed road, with a bullet bored through yore body."

Bear Cat only shook his head with stubborn insistence. "Ye don't raise no crop," he declared, "twell ye've done cl'ared ther ground, an' ef ther snags goes deep hit takes dynamite."

"Then I kain't dissuade ye? Ye aims ter go ahead with hit?"

"I aims ter go ahead with hit twell I finishes my job or gets kilt tryin'."

"Then thar hain't nuthin' left ter do but bid ye farewell. Ye've done made yoreself a hard bed. In a fashion I honors ye fer hit, but I pities ye, too. Ye've done signed yore own doom."

"I thanks ye," said Bear Cat gravely. "But I hain't askin' pity yit."

In the yard where so many feet had been tramping there was now total emptiness. The flock of geese still waddled and squawked down by the creek, but by the gate Bear Cat stood alone—a man who had forfeited his heritage.

The sun was setting and the ache of recent wounds and fatigue was accentuated by the rawness of approaching twilight. Beyond the trickle of prattling water, went up the frowning and unchanging hills, bleak and sinister with their ancient contempt for change. Bear Cat Stacy threw back his head.

"They don't see nothin' in me but brag an' foolishness," he bitterly admitted, "but afore God I aims ter show 'em thet thar's more in me then thet!"

Already a plan for the first chapter of his undertaking had fully evolved itself and it was a thing which must be launched to-night—but first he meant to make a sad pilgrimage. He would not go in, but he would stand outside Blossom's window—perhaps for the last time. Something drew him there—a compelling force and he remained an hour. When he turned away cold beads of nervous sweat stood on his temples.

Suddenly he saw two figures cross the road and plunge furtively into the laurel, and they moved as men move who have a nefarious intent. They were Dog Tate and Joe Sanders; the men to whom, last night, he had fled for succor, and at once he divined their purpose.

Bear Cat, too, turned into the timber and, by hurrying over the broken face of the slopes, intercepted their more cautious course. But when he stood out in the path and confronted them, it was no longer into friendly faces that he looked.

"Dog, I wants ter hev speech with ye," he said quietly, and the moonshiner, who had instinctively thrust forward his rifle, stood with a finger that trembled in impatience while it nursed the trigger.

"Don't hinder me, Bear Cat," he barked warningly, "I'm in dire haste—an' I've got severe work ahead of me."

"I knows right well what thet work air, Dog." The young man spoke calmly. "I reckon hit's a thing ye gave me yore pledge not many hours back ye'd put by twell another day an' I hain't freed ye from thet bond."

"Who air you ter talk of pledges?" The friend of last night savagely snarled his question with a scorn that shook his voice. "You thet this day broke yore faith with yore blood ter line up with raiders an' revenuers!"

Bear Cat's face whitened with an anger which he rigidly repressed.

"Ye succored me last night when I needed ye sore," came the steady response, "an' I'm willin' ter look over these hardships of speech, but a pledge given is a pledge thet's got ter stand till hit's done been given back."

Tate's eyes were blazing with a dangerous passion and his rage made his words come pantingly:

"Hit's too late fer preachin' texts, Bear Cat. We believed in ye yestiddy. Ter-day we spits ye outen our mouths. Ye kain't call us ter war one day an' send us back home, unsatisfied, ther next. My pappy's kerchief's right hyar in my pocket now—an' ther blood thet's on hit calls out ter me louder then yore fine palaverin's!"

Bear Cat Stacy's rifle had been swinging in his hand. He made no effort to raise it.

"When ye calls me a traitor ter my blood, ye lies, Dog," he said with a hard evenness of tone. "I reckon ye knows what hit means ter hold a bitter hate—I've done read thet much in yore face, but I holds a deeper an' blacker hate then ye ever dreamt of—an' I've done put hit aside—fer a reason thet meant more ter me then hit did."

Through the excitement that made the other's chest heave Turner recognized a bewildered curiosity and he went on.

"I hain't never stood by afore an' suffered no man ter give me names like you've jest called me. I reckon I won't hardly never do hit ergin—but I owes ye gratitude fer last night an' I'm goin' ter owe ye more. Ye hain't a-goin' ter lay-way Kinnard Towers this night, Dog. Ye're a-goin' along with me ter do what I bids ye."

"Like hell I am!" snarled Tate, though in the next breath, without realizing the anti-climax of his question, he added, "Why am I?"

"Because I've got a bigger aim then sneakin' murders an' I aims ter hev men like you holp me. Because when we finishes our job yore children air goin' ter dwell in safety." He talked on fervently and despite himself the man with his finger on the trigger listened.

It all seemed very fantastic and radical to Dog Tate, yet there was such a hypnotic power in the voice and manner that he lowered his cocked rifle.

"Bear Cat," he said with a sort of bewilderment, "thet talk sounds powerful flighty ter me, but if ye air outen yer right mind I reckon I kain't kill ye—an' ef thar's a solitary grain of sense in what ye says God knows I'd like ter hev ye show hit ter me."

The shadows lengthened across the valleys and the peaks grew cloudily somber as Bear Cat Stacy talked. He was trying for his first convert and his soul went into his persuasiveness. He had himself done first what he asked of others. His still was destroyed for a bigger aim. It was a new and more effective warfare which required certain sacrifices.

A slow grin of sardonic amusement spread eventually over the face of Dog Tate. He put down his rifle.

"Then ye means thet hit hain't a-goin' ter be jest preachin'? Kinnard hain't goin' ter escape scot-free? Because I've always figgered he belonged ter me."

"So many men figgers thet," retorted Stacy dryly, "thet in ther time of final reckonin' thar won't be enough of him ter go round. I aims ter hang him in Marlin Town, with his own jedge passin' sentence on him."

Dog Tate drew a clay pipe from his pocket and kindled it. His eyes glowed with a pleasurable anticipation.

"Wa'al, now, es ter thet blockade still of mine," he drawled reflectively. "My old woman's been faultin' me erbout hit fer a long spell, an' seekin' ter prevail on me ter quit. She 'lows hit'll cost more'n hit comes ter afore we gits through an' I misdoubts she hain't fur wrong." He chewed on the pipe-stem yet a while longer, then suddenly he announced: "I reckon thet still don't owe me nothin' much. Hit's about wore out anyhow. Let's go over thar an' bust her up—an' straightway start hell a-poppin'."

Bear Cat Stacy glanced keenly at Joe Sanders who had remained a pace or two apart, holding his counsel with a face that bore no index to his sentiments. "Air you with us, too, Joe?" he demanded. "This-hyar business hain't a-goin' ter be no frolic. We don't want no men thet don't aim ter go through with hit."

Joe scratched his head, speaking cautiously. "I works fer wages myself. Dog hires me—albeit I'd ruther do any other fashion of labor. Howsoever, I don't aim ter make common cause with no revenuers. I hain't no Judas priest."

"Revenuers—hell!" exploded Bear Cat Stacy. "I don't make no common cause with 'em nuther. I'm willin' ter let ther government skin hits own skunks."

For so portentous a decision, Joe Sanders gave a disproportionately laconic reply. "All right then. Ye kin count me in es fur es ye goes."

It was a night of fitful moonlight, breaking through a scud of windy clouds, only to be swallowed again, when by the flare of a lantern the three men stood over the ruins of what had been a crude distillery—its erstwhile proprietor grinning sardonically as he surveyed the completeness of his vandalism.

"I reckon thet finishes ye up, old whiskey-snake," he commented in grim obituary. "I boughten thet piece of copper offen a feller thet murdered a revenuer ter save hit—so hit's due fer punishment."

"Thet's all right so far es hit goes," Bear Cat reminded him crisply, "but hit don't go far enough. We've got more work ter do yit. When men wakes up ter-morrer, they've got ter hev proof thet I've started out in earnest." Around the fire the three squatted on their heels, and talked in low voices.

"I knows of three more stills sca'cely more'n a whoop an' a holler distant from hyar es ye mout say," volunteered Joe Sanders. "I hain't settin' hit out fer gospel fact, but I've heered hit norated round about, thet Mark Tapper don't even try ter molest these stills on account of a deal he's made with Kinnard."

"Wa'al, Kinnard hain't got no bit in my mouth," growled Dog. "Whar air these places at, Joe?"

Sanders was now innoculated with the spirit of crusade—not so much as a reform as a new and impudent adventure—and his lips parted in a contented grin that showed his uneven teeth.

"A couple on 'em air closed down fer ther time-bein'," he enlightened, "but ther worms air thar. By ter-morrer Kinnard'll jest about hev passed on a warnin' an' they'll be watched, but ter-night hit's cl'ar sleddin'. A man kin bust 'em up single handed an' nuver be suspicioned. Hit'll tek all three of us tergether ter manage ther third one though, because thet still b'longs ter little Jake Kinnard an' Jake or his law-kin Mat Branham'll be on watch—mebby both of 'em."

Bear Cat's eyes brightened at this prospect of immediate action. "Little" Jake, so dubbed after mountain custom because his father still lived and bore the same given name, was a nephew of Kinnard Towers, and despite his diminutive title prided himself on his evil and murderous repute. He was a "notched-gun" man and high in his uncle's favor.

"Air they runnin' thet kittle in ther same place es they used to a year back?" demanded Turner, and Joe nodded as he replied. "Ther same identical spot. Hit's, as a man mout say, right in ther shadder of ther Quarterhouse hitself."

Bear Cat Stacy was on his feet and his words came with the animation of a daring plan already formulated.

"Now hearken.... You two boys look atter them idle stills.... I aims ter manage this t'other one—by myself."

Dog Tate raised a hand in remonstrance, but Turner beat down argument with a contemptuous laugh. "I'm in haste because I'm a-wearied," he explained, "an' thet's ther speediest way ter git through an' lay down. I'll be at yore house afore sun-up, an' I reckon ye kin hide me out thar fer a few hours while I sleeps, kain't ye?"

"I kin take keer of ye—ef ye gits thar alive," affirmed the first recruit. "But hit looks severely dubious ter me."

Turner tightened his belt, but as he was leaving he wheeled to direct: "This worm of your'n an' ther t'other two hes got ter be hangin' in ther highway by daylight. I aims ter hang Jake Kinnard's right up erginst ther stockade of ther Quarterhouse."

As he scuttled through the dark timber the moon broke out at intervals, making of the road a patch-work of shadow and light. Last night he was hiding out only from the revenue agent and his informers. To-night he had flung his challenge to the vested rights of tradition and forfeited clan sponsorship. Every hand was against him.

His way carried him past the Quarterhouse itself and near the hitching-rack he halted, crouched low against the naked briars and dead brush-wood. Among the several beasts fastened there was a gray horse more visible than its darker companions, which he recognized as belonging to Black Tom Carmichael. Yet Black Tom had been otherwise mounted to-day when he had ridden away from Little Slippery with Kinnard Towers.

Obviously the fresh animal stood saddled for a new journey—probably a mission of general warning. Bear Cat drew back into the invisibility of the steep hillside to watch, and it was only a short time before the door of Kinnard's own house, on the opposite slope, opened. Towers himself he only glimpsed, for the chieftain did not make a practice of offering himself as a target by night, framed in lighted doorways.

But Black Tom came down the path to mount and ride away, and Bear Cat struck off at right angles through the woods. The horseman must follow the road he had taken to the next crossing, and the pedestrian could reach the place more quickly by the footpath. Having arrived, he lay belly-down on a titanic bowlder in time to hear the cuppy thud of unshod hooves on the soft road and, a little later, to see Black Tom dismount and hitch.

Carmichael turned into the woodland trail without suspicion. He was on territory which should be safe, and he walked with a noisy carelessness that swallowed up what little sound Turner Stacy could not avoid as he followed.

By the simple device of playing shadow to the man in front Bear Cat drew so near to the still that he could both see and hear, though the last stage of the journey through the interlocked thickets he accomplished with such minute caution that Black Tom sat by the fire with a tin cup of white liquor in his hand before his follower lay ensconced a stone's throw away. It was a nest of secrecy, buried from even a near view by the tops of felled hemlock which would hold their screen of foliage throughout the winter.

Edging the narrow circle of firelight, walls of rock and naked trees were sketched flat and grotesque against the inky void beyond them. Two figures in muddied overcoats huddled close to the blaze, and Black Tom was reciting the events of the day over on Little Slippery.

"They didn't p'intedly aim ter harm Bear Cat Stacy last night—he jest run inter ther ruction. Hit war ther furriner thet Kinnard wanted kilt."

"Drink all ye craves an' tell me ther whole story," amicably invited "Little" Jake Kinnard.

"I aimed ter warn ye erbout this Bear Cat's threat ter rip out stills—albeit we deems hit ter be mostly brash talk," Carmichael explained. "We didn't invite no trouble with ther Stacys. Kinnard fixed hit with Mark Tapper ter hev old Lone jailed so thet ther thing could he done easy like—an' peaceable—but Bear Cat come a-beltin' back an' hit went awry."

The simmering fury of his blood boiled over in Turner's veins while he listened. All the duplicity of to-day now stood revealed and positive. All his suspicions were proven. With two quick shots from his rifle he could put an end to both these assassins, but he remained rigid. "No, by God," he mused. "I aims ter do hit on ther gallows-tree—not from ambush."

After a period Black Tom rose, making ready to leave, and now Turner Stacy had need to hasten. The point at which he wished to await Kinnard's second in command was the outer end of a narrow defile which served as a sort of gateway to the place. Centuries of trickling water-tongues had licked it out of the rock walls and it was so narrow that two men could not pass through it abreast.

But Carmichael paused for further converse on the edge of his departure, and Turner wailed for some minutes, shivering because he had taken off his coat, before his ears told him of the approach of a single pair of heavy feet.

The scudding raggedness of the clouds had been swept into wider tatters now and the moon was steadier though still not brightly clear. Bear Cat stooped, like a crouching panther, just outside the elbow of the rock wall, holding his coat as a matador holds the flag in the course of a charging bull. Then a bulky figure emerged and there followed a sweep of heavy cloth; an attempted outcry which ended in a stifled gurgle, and Carmichael went down, borne under the impact of an unexpected onslaught, with his breath smothered in an enmeshing tangle.

For a moment Bear Cat knelt on the prostrate figure which had been stunned by its heavy fall, twisting the coat about the face and throat; then, experimentally, he eased the suffocation—and there was no hint of attempted outcry.

A few minutes later Black Tom opened his eyes and peered through the darkness. To his dizzy eyes matters seemed confused. His mouth was securely gagged and, at his back, his wrists were so stiffly pinioned that when he struggled to free them he felt the nasty bite of metal—evidently a buckle.

Above him he made out a pair of eyes that glittered down on him with an unpleasant truculence.

"Git up an' come on," ordered a voice. "Ye'll hev ter excuse me fer takin' yore rifle-gun an' pistol."

Slowly Tom rose and went, prodded into amenability by the muzzle of a rifle in the small of his back. When he had been thus goaded to the point where his horse was hitched his captor stripped saddle, bridle and halter of their straps and ropes, and set the beast free. Some of the commandeered tethers he employed to truss his prisoner up in a manner that left him as helplessly immovable as a mummy.

"Now I reckon ye'll hev ter wait fer me a leetle," said Bear Cat with brutal shortness. "Thar's still one more back thar ter attend ter."

Carrying with him bridle-reins and stirrup-straps, he disappeared again into the defile. Creeping for the second time with the best of his Indian-like stealth to the edge of the fire-lighted clearing, he saw Jake Kinnard standing, with his eyes on the embers, ten feet away from the rifle that was propped against a tree.

With a leap that sounded crashingly in the dead bushes Turner catapulted himself into the lighted area, and as the moonshiner wheeled, his hand going instinctively out toward his weapon, he found himself covered from a distance of two yards.

"Hands overhead!—an' no noise," came the sharp warning, and had he been inclined to disobey the words there was an avid glitter in the eyes of the sudden visitor discouraging to argument.

"Lay down betwixt them two saplin's thar," was the next order, and foaming with futile rage, Jake glanced about wildly—and discreetly did as he was told.

Ten minutes later Turner rose from his knees, leaving behind him a man gagged and staked out, Indian fashion, with feet harnessed to one tree-trunk and hands to another.

Lying mute and harrowed with chagrin, he saw his copper coil battered into shapelessness and his mash vat emptied upon the ground. Then he saw Bear Cat Stacy disappear into the shadows, trophy-laden.

Dawn was near once more before Turner reached the Quarterhouse, and from the hitching-rack the last mount had been ridden away. Before him, still muffled against outcry, plodded Black Carmichael, seething with a fury which would ride him like a mania until he had avenged his indignities—but for the moment he was inoffensive.

At the place where the gray horse had been tethered, Turner lashed the rider. Above his head to an over-arching sycamore branch, he swung a maltreated coil of copper tubing. Then he turned, somewhat wearied and aching of muscle, into the timber again.

"I reckon now," he said to himself, "I kin go over thar an' lay down."

CHAPTER XXI

Three times along the way, as the new crusader trudged on to Dog Tate's cabin, the late-setting moon glinted on queerly twisted things suspended from road-side trees—things unlike the fruit of either hickory or poplar.

A grim satisfaction enlivened his tired eyes, but it lingered only for a moment. Before them rose the picture of a girl sitting stricken by a bedside, and his brows contracted painfully with the memory.

From the window of Tate's cabin came a faint gleam of light, and, as he drew cautiously near, a figure rose wearily from the dark doorstep.

"I've been settin' up fer ye," announced Dog. "I mistrusted ye'd done met with mishap."

Inside the cabin crowded with sleeping and snoring figures, the host pointed to a loft under the shingles. "Ye'll hev ter bed in up thar," he said. "Don't come down ter-morrer twell I gives ye ther word. Right likely thar'll be folks abroad sarchin' fer ye. Me an' Joe aims ter blackguard ye no end fer bustin' up our still."

"Thet's what I 'lowed ter caution ye ter do," acquiesced Turner. "All I'm askin' now air a few hours of slumber."

He climbed the ladder with heavy limbs, and, falling on the floor among its litter of household effects, was instantly asleep.

It was the habit of Kinnard Towers to rise early, even for a people of early risers, and on this morning he followed his customary routine. Last night he had slept restlessly because the events of the day had been stressful and uncertain, even if, in their summary, there had been an element of satisfaction.

So Kinnard pulled on his trousers and boots, still thinking of yesterday, and crossed the hall to the room where Black Tom Carmichael slept.

Black Tom's bed had not been disturbed, and his door swung open. Towers roused two other members of his household and the three went out into the first mists of dawn to investigate. At the hitching-rack they halted in dismay and their jaws sagged.

The light was yet dim and ghostly, and at first the body that hung unconscious with hours of chilling and cramp had every appearance of lifelessness. A bitter anger broke out in Kinnard's face and for a time none of them spoke. Then from the chief's lips escaped an oath so fierce and profane that his men paused in their attempt at resuscitating the corpse-like figure, and following his eyes they saw the fresh insult which he had just discovered—a still-worm demolished and hanging high.

"Hell's clinkers!" stormed the leader. "What manner of deviltry air this?"

Restored, an hour later, by hot coffee and whiskey, Black Tom told his story, colorfully embellished with profane metaphor, and a squad went riding "hell-fer-leather" to the still of "Little" Jake Kinnard.

When the sun was fully revealed they were back again, with another man, feeble and half-frozen of body, but molten-hot of spirit to vouchsafe indignant evidence.

The cup of Towers' fury was brimming over, but before its first bitterness had been quaffed yet other heralds of tribulation arrived to pour in fresh wormwood. "Thar's still-house quiles hangin' all up an' down ther high-road," they lamented.

Kinnard looked at his henchman out of eyes somberly furious and his florid face turned a choleric purple.

"Thar hain't but one way ter treat sech a damn' pest es thet," he said slowly with the implacable manner of one passing final sentence. "He's got ter be kilt—an' kilt quick." But a sudden reflection obtruded itself, snarling the simple edict with complication. "Hold on!" he added with a less assured finality. "Hev any stills been tampered with among his own folks—or air hit jest over hyar?"

"We hain't heered much from ther yon side yit," admitted the news-bearers. "Thar's one thet Dog Tate used ter run, though, thet's hangin' high as Haaman. Dog's a kinsman of his'n but he dwells nigh ter hyar."

"Hev some fellers ride over thar an' talk with him," commanded Towers with prompt efficiency. "Ef I war sure they wouldn't all stand behind him, I'd take a crowd of men over thar an' hang him in front of his own house. Yestiddy they didn't seem ter hev much use fer him."

Of one thing, however, he failed to take adequate cognizance. That turning away of the clan, yesterday, in cool or angry repudiation had been less unanimous than it seemed. There were elders among them who had for years deplored the locked-in life of their kind and to whom this boy's effrontery secretly appealed. None of their own heritage and breed had ever before dared to raise his voice against forcible scourging out of a tolerated practice—but that did not mean that all men sanctioned it in their hearts.

So as the Stacys had scattered they had discussed the matter, guardedly save where the speaker was sure of his auditor, and Kinnard would have been astonished to know how many of them said, "I reckon mebby ther boy is fittified—but ef he could do what he seeks ter, hit would sartain sure be a God's blessin' ter these hills."

"I don't see no diff'rence atween what he aims at, an' what them damn' revenuers seeks ter do," suggested a young man who had fallen in with Joe Stacy after the gathering and rode knee to knee with him. "Myself I don't foller nuther makin' hit ner drinkin' hit. Hit kilt my daddy an' my maw raised me up ter hate ther stuff—but I'm jest tellin' how hit looks ter me."

"Sim," said Joe Stacy gravely, "I counseled Turner ter put aside this notion—because I misdoubted hit would mean his death, but ef ye don't see no difference atween him an' a revenuer ye're jest a plain idjit—an' I don't mean no offense neither. Ther revenuer works fer blood money. Bear Cat hain't seekin' no gain but ter bring profit ter his people. Ther revenuer slips up with knowledge thet he gains by busted faith an' spies. Bear Cat's done spoke out open an' deeclared hisself."

The young man reined in his horse abruptly.

"I'm obleeged ter ye fer enlightenen' me," he said with blunt directness. "I'll ask ye ter hold yore counsel about this matter. I aims ter go back thar an' work with him."

A slow smile spread over the ragged lips of Bear Cat's uncle. He made no criticism, but one might have gathered that he was not displeased.

Back at Lone Stacy's house on the morning that Kinnard Towers was awakening to conditions, were gathered a handful of men. They lounged shiftlessly as though responding to no object save casual curiosity. They were cautious to express neither approbation nor disapproval, but intangibly the threads of sympathy and hostility were unraveling. Those who were the steadier of gaze, clearer of pupil and fitter of brawn, inclined toward Bear Cat and his crusade, and, conversely, those who wore the stamp of reddened eye and puffed socket gave back sneering scowls to the mention of his name.

But all alike crowded around, when a traveler, who had elected to cross the mountain from Marlin Town by night, paused, puffed with the importance of one bearing news.

"Hev ye folks done heered ther tidin's?" he demanded, shifting to a sidewise position in his saddle. "Bear Cat Stacy's been raidin' stills. Thar's a copper worm hangin' right at ther Quarterhouse door—an' trees air bloomin' with others all along ther high road."

The murmur was half a growl—for the group was not without its blockader or two—and half pure tribute to prompt achievement.

"Nor thet hain't all by half," went on the traveler, relating with the gusto of a true climax how Black Tom had been bound to a hitching-rack and Jake Kinnard staked out by his demolished mash kettle. This was pure exploit—and whatever its motive the mountain man loves exploit.

Moreover, these sufferers from Bear Cat's wrath were men close to the hated Kinnard Towers. Faces that had brooded yesterday grinned to-day.

Kinnard's squad reached the house of Dog Tate while the morning was yet young, searching each cabin along the way, in the hope that last night's raider might be still hiding in their own terrain.

They found Joe Sanders sitting on the doorstep, with the morose aspect of a man deprived of his avocation in life. The wintry hillsides were no moodier than his eyes, and the sullen skies no more darkly lowering.

But Dog Tate himself was loquacious to a fault. He raved with a fury so unbridled that it suggested lunacy. Bear Cat had come to his place wounded and had been succored. Twenty-four hours later he had come there again treasonably to repay that service by ripping out an unguarded still. Henceforth the Stacy call might remain eternally unanswered, and be relegated to perdition for all of him.

"Dog," suggested the leader of the squad, "we've done been askin' leave ter kinderly hev a look inter dwellin' houses—in case Bear Cat's still layin' concealed over hyar. I reckon ye hain't hardly got no objection, hev ye?"

"Does ye 'low thet I'd be hidin' out ther man thet raided me?" The host put his question with a fine irony, and the reply was apologetic.

"Not sca'cely. Hit's jest so thet we kin tell Kinnard, we didn't pass no house by, thet's all."

The speaker and the ex-moonshiner were standing at the threshold of the log shack. It was a place of a single, windowless room with a lean-to kitchen—and above was the loft reached by a trap and ladder.

"Come right in then," acceded Dog Tate with disarming readiness. "I hain't got no excess of love fer Kinnard—but I've got yit less fer still-busters."

Far back where the shingle roof dropped steeply from ridge pole to edge was a murky recess hidden behind a litter of old bedding, piled up potatoes and onions. Silently listening and mercifully blotted into shadow there, Bear Cat Stacy crouched with rifle-barrel thrust forward and his finger caressing the trigger.

The squad-leader looked about the place with perfunctory eye and then, seeing the ladder, set his foot upon its lowest rung.

Dog Tate felt a sudden commotion of hammering pulses, but his lids did not flicker nor his mouth alter its line. Quite unostentatiously, however, his wife moved toward the front door and stood there blankly expressionless. Also, Dog laid his hand idly on the ladder as the visitor climbed upward. If the search proved embarrassing he meant to kick the support from under the Towers minion, and his wife meant to bar the door for siege.

But the intruder went only high enough to thrust his head into the overhead darkness while a match flared and went out. He had seen nothing, and as he stumped down again the poised finger relaxed on the rifle trigger, and the Tates breathed free.

"I'm obleeged ter ye," said the searching lieutenant. "Ef ye wants ter start up yore still ergin, I reckon ye'll be safe. He won't be runnin' wild fer long nohow."

The Quarterhouse emissaries were raking the hills with an admirable thoroughness, running like a pack in full cry on the man trail, but they did not again come so near the fringes of success as when they missed the opportunity at Dog Tate's house.

In spite of a watchfulness that gave eyes to the hills and ears to the timber, their quarry left that house and went to his own.

He had no intention of making the mad effort to remain there. The wild tangle of cliff and forest was his safest refuge now—but there were two things to be done at home. He wished to have for companionship in exile his "Lincoln, Master of Men," and he wished to learn if out of the wholesale desertion of yesterday there had not come back to him even one or two followers.

So that afternoon he slipped, undetected by his trailers, into and out of his father's house; and there followed him, though each went singly and casually to escape detection, some eight or ten men, who henceforth were to be his secret followers and, he hoped, the nucleus of a larger force.

The next morning in both Stacy and Towers territory, hickories and walnuts and sycamores burst into copper fruitage. The hills were alive with armed search-parties, liquor-incited and vowing vengeance, yet through their cordons he moved like some invisible and soundless creature, striking and escaping while they raged.

At ever-changing points of rendezvous he met and instructed his mysterious handful of faithful supporters, struck telling blows—made fresh raids and seemingly evaporated.

From all that Towers could learn, it appeared that Bear Cat Stacy was operating as a lone bandit. Yet the ground he seemed to cover single-handed was so wide of boundary and his success so phenomenal that already he was being hallowed, in country-side gossip, with legendary and heroic qualities. In that Towers read a serious menace to his own prestige; until he ground his teeth and swore sulphurously. He organized a larger force of human hounds and fired them more hotly with the incentive of liquor and greed for promised reward. The doors of Old Lone Stacy's house, tenanted now only by the wife of the prisoner and the mother of the refugee, were endlessly watched by unseen eyes. Around the cabin where Jerry Henderson lay lingering with a tenuous hold on life, lounged the men posted there by Joe Stacy, and back in the timbered slopes that frowned down upon its roof crouched yet other shapes of butter-nut brown; shapes stationed there at the behest of the Quarterhouse.

Going in and out among these would-be avengers and learning all their plans, by dint of a pretendedly bitter hatred of Bear Cat Stacy, were such men as Dog Tate and Joe Sanders, spying upon the spies.

Old Bud Jason at his little tub-mill and Uncle Israel at his general store secretly nodded their wise old heads and chuckled. They knew that, hushed and undeclared, a strong sentiment was being born for the boy who was outwitting scores of time-seasoned murder hirelings. But they shook their heads, too—realizing the deadly odds of the game and its tragic chances.

One afternoon after a day sheeted in cold rain that sometimes merged into snow, Bear Cat crept cautiously toward the sagging door of the abandoned cabin which had, on another night, housed Ratler Webb. It had been a perilously difficult day for the man upon whose head Towers had set the price of a river-bottom farm. Like a hard-run fox he had doubled back and forth under relentless pursuit and gone often to earth. The only things they needed with which to harry him further were bloodhounds.

Now in the later afternoon he came to the cabin and sought a few minutes' shelter there against the penetrating misery of rain and sloppy snow that thawed as it fell. He dared not light a fire, and must not relax the vigilance of his outlook.

Just before sunset Bear Cat saw a man edging cautiously through the timber, moving with a shadowy furtiveness—and recognized Joe Sanders.

The newcomer slipped through the rotting lintels, bringing a face stamped with foreboding.

"Ye kain't stay hyar," announced the excited voice. "I don't hardly know whar ye kin go to nuther, onlessen' ye kin make hit back ter Dog Tate's dwellin'-house by ther hill-trail."

"Tell me all ye knows, Joe," directed Stacy with a steadying calmness, and the other went on hurriedly:

"They've done picked up yore trail—an' lost hit ergin—a couple of miles back. They 'lows ye hain't fur off, an' thar's two score of 'em out huntin'—all licker-crazed but yit not disabled none. Some of 'em 'lows ter come by hyar. I'm with a bunch thet's travelin' a diff'rent route. They're spreadin' out like a turkey gobbler's tail feathers an' combin' this territory plumb close. Above all don't go to'rds home. Hit's thet way thet they's most numerous of all. I surmised I'd find ye hyar an' I slipped by ter warn ye."

"I'm obleeged ter ye, Joe. What's thet ye've got thar?" The last question was prompted by the gesture with which Saunders, as if in afterthought, thrust his hand into his coat pocket.

"Hit hain't nuthin' but a letter Brother Fulkerson bid me give ter ye—but thar hain't no time ter read hand-write now. Every minute's wuth countless letters."

But Turner Stacy was ripping the envelope. Already he had recognized the clear, precise hand which had been the fruit of Blossom's arduous efforts at self-education.

"Don't tarry, man! I cautions ye they're already makin' ready ter celebrate yore murder," expostulated the messenger, but Bear Cat did not seem to hear him. In the fading light he was reading and rereading, forgetful of all else. Joe Sanders, fixing him with a keen and impatient scrutiny, noticed how gaunt were his cheeks and how hollow-socketed his eyes. Yet as he began the letter there was a sudden and eager hopefulness in his face which faded into misery as he finished.

"A famed doctor came up from Louisville," wrote Blossom. "He's done all that could be done. He says now that only Jerry's great courage keeps life in him and that can't avail for long. He hasn't been able to talk—except for a few words. The longest speech was this: 'Send word to Bear Cat—that I'm honester than he thinks.... I want to die with his friendship ... or I can't rest afterwards....' He looked like he wanted to tell something else and he named your father and your Uncle Joe Stacy, but he couldn't finish. He keeps saying 'Stacy, you don't understand.' What is it, that you don't understand, Turney? Can't you slip over just long enough to shake hands with him? He wants you to do it—and he's dying—and I love him. For my sake can't you come? Your mother says you came once just to get a book—won't you do that much for me? Blossom Henderson."

Joe Sanders shuffled his feet in poignant disgust for the perilous procrastination. Here was a man whose life hung on instant flight, yet he stood with eyes wide and staring, holding before them a silly sheet of paper. His lips whispered, "Blossom Henderson—Henderson—not Fulkerson no more!"

Then a wave of black resentment swept Bear Cat's face and he licked his dry lips. "Joe," he said absently, "I hates him! I kain't shake his hand. I tells ye I kain't do hit."

"Whose hand?—don't shake hit, then," retorted Sanders irritably, and, with a sudden start as though he had been rudely awakened while prattling in his sleep, Bear Cat laughed bitterly.

"Hit don't make no difference," he added shortly. "I war kinderly talking ter myself. I reckon I'd better be leavin'."

Hurrying through the timber, toward Dog Tate's house, Turner's mind was in a vexed quandary and after a little he irresolutely halted. His forehead was drawn and his lips were tight. "Blossom Henderson!" he muttered. "God knows I took plentiful risks thet ye mout w'ar thet name—an' yit—yit when I reads hit, seems like hit drives me plumb ravin' mad!"

From the tangle of dead briars the cold rain dripped desolately. A single smear of lurid red was splashed across the west beyond the silhouetted ridges.

"They're aimin' ter head me off ef I goes to'rds home," he reflected in a bitter spirit. "An' he wants thet I should fight my way through all them enemies ter shake his hand—so thet he kin die easy. I reckon hit don't make no manner of diff'rence how hard I dies myself."

He covered his face with his hands and when he took them away he altered his course, setting his steps in the direction of his own house.

"She said—fer her sake," he repeated in a dazed voice, touched with tenderness. "I reckon I've got ter undertake hit."

Never before had the woods been so efficiently picketed. Never had the net of relentless pursuit been so tight-drawn and close of mesh. For a long distance he eluded its entanglement though at times, as it grew dark, he saw the glimmer of lanterns whose portent he understood.

But finally the clouds broke and a cold moon shone out to aid the pack and cut to a forlorn hope the chances of the quarry.

As Bear Cat went creeping from shadow to shadow he could hear faint sounds of pursuit closing in upon him. He came at length upon a narrow road that must be crossed and for a while he bent low, listening, then stole forward, reassured.

But as he reached the farther side, the black solidity of a hill-side broke not in one but in several tongues of flame and the bark of three rifles shattered the quiet.

Bear Cat doubled back and cut again into the timber which he had left, running now to put a margin of distance between himself and the greater numbers. That fusillade and its echoes would bring other rifles and reinforcements.

After a few pantingly stressful minutes he found himself standing at the lip of a steep bluff, and a roar of water beneath warned him that the creek, some twenty feet below, had been swollen from a trickling thread to a seething caldron.

He gazed questioningly about, gauging his chances with swift calculation, since there was no time for indecision.

"I aimed ter come, Blossom," he breathed between his teeth, "but I've done failed!" He stepped out to look over the ledge and for a moment his figure was silhouetted in the open light. Then again the curtain of blue-black shadow was shot through with fiery threads and a rifle barked sharply, trailing a broken wake of echoes.

Bear Cat Stacy's two hands went high above his head, his right still clutching his rifle. He swayed for the duration of a breath, rocking on his feet, then plunged forward and outward.

The next morning, no worms were found hanging in the highway, but, back at the Quarterhouse, Kinnard Towers turned in his hand a battered hat that had been retrieved from floating drift.

"Yes, I reckon thet's his hat," he commented after a close scrutiny. "I reecollect seein' thet raw-hide thong laced round hit, endurin' his speech over thar. Wa'al, he elected ter go chargin' amuck—an' he's done reaped his harvest."

CHAPTER XXII

T he story of Turner's death at unknown hands spread in the next few days like wild fire.

Whatever may have been the lack of sympathy for the young man's undertakings of reform, it was now only remembered that he was a Stacy who had been "dogged to his death" by Towers' minions, and ugly rumblings of threat awoke along the water courses where his kinsmen dwelt.

It was voiced abroad that Jerry Henderson could not outlive that week: that when he died, the body of Bear Cat Stacy would be buried with him, and that, from those two graves, the Stacys would turn away to wreak a sanguinary vengeance.

Yet all this was the sheerest sort of rumor. No man had proof that a Towers rifle had killed Turner—the man to whom his clan had looked for leadership. No man had seen the body which his family was said to be holding for that dramatic consignment to the earth.

But in part the report found fulfilment. On Sunday afternoon Blossom leaned over the quilt-covered figure of her dying husband to realize that he was no longer dying but dead.

"Speak ter me, Jerry," she cried as she dug her nails into her palms. "Speak ter me—jest one time more."

She sought to call out to her father, but her lips refused the service, and as she came to her feet she stretched out her hands and crumpled, insensible, to the floor.

Brother Fulkerson went that afternoon to the saw-mill at the back of Uncle Israel's store and stood by as the storekeeper himself sawed planks and knocked together the crude box which must serve Jerry Henderson as a casket. Later across the counter he bought some yards of coarse cloth cut from a bolt of black calico, which was to be his daughter's pathetic attempt at mourning dress.

The afternoon of the funeral was unspeakably sullen and dismal. Clouds of leaden dreariness hung to the bristling mountains, themselves as gray as slate. Cold skies promised snow and through the bleak nakedness of the forest whined the dirge-like complaint of a gusty wind.

To the unkempt place of briar-choked and sunken graves, crawled a dingy procession.

Blossom would have preferred going with her dead unattended save by her father, but that mountain usage forebade. A wedding or a funeral could not be so monopolized in a land where there is frugally little to break daily monotony. This funeral above all others, belonged in part to the public, made pregnant with interest by the story that two bodies instead of one would be laid to rest. The question of how Bear Cat Stacy had come to his death would be answered over his open grave, and men would know at the falling of the last clod whether they should return quietly to their homes or prepare for the sterner task of reprisal.

Kinnard Towers must know, too, what happened there, and must know it speedily, though to go himself or to send one of his recognized lieutenants was beyond the question. Yet his plans were carefully laid. Those few nondescripts who bore the repute of being Stacy sympathizers, while in fact they were Towers informers, were to be present; and along the miles of "slavish roughs" between Quarterhouse and burial-ground, like runners in a relay race, were other heralds. When the news began to come from the place it would travel fast. Sitting grimly behind the closed stockade of the Quarterhouse and surrounded now not only by a body-guard but by some scores of fighting men, the old intriguer anxiously awaited the outcome.

Long before the hour for the services had arrived men, as drab and neutral in color as the sodden skies, and women wrapped in shawls of red and blue, began to gather from hither and yon over roads mired to the prohibition even of "jolt-wagons." They came on foot or on muddied mules and horses with briar-tangled manes and tails—and having arrived, they waited, shuffling their weary feet against frost-bite and eddying in restless currents.

Two men were still at work with shovels and they had spread out their excavation so wide, in removing slabs of unbreakable rock, that the place might have been a single, double or even a triple grave.

The wind moaned as murky clouds began to spit snow, and then on the gulch-washed road which climbed steeply, a little procession was glimpsed in the distance.

The men fondled their guns, but the cortège was lost again to view behind a screen of cedars and until it turned finally on the level of the graveyard itself, its details remained invested with the suspense of expectancy.

At the fore, when it arrived, was Brother Fulkerson astride his old mare, and on a pillion behind him rode the "Widder Henderson," the whiteness of her thin face startlingly accentuated by the unrelieved lines of her black calico gown. Under her erstwhile vivid eyes lay dark rings of suffering, but she held her head rigid and gazed straight before her.

The cortège came without the proper hush of due solemnity, for the rough coffin that held Jerry Henderson's body was borne on a fodder sledge and the stolid team of oxen that drew it required constant and vociferous shouts and goading as they strained unwillingly against their yokes. After the sledge trailed a dozen neighbors, afoot and mounted; all plastered with mud—but the crowd caught its breath and broke into a low murmur. There was only one casket!

As the evangelist dismounted and lifted his daughter down, the men who were there as observers for Kinnard Towers sought places near enough to hear every syllable.

Yet when the elderly preacher began to speak, while his daughter stood with the dull apathy of one only half realizing, the faces of the crowd mirrored a sort of sullen disappointment. For them the burial of the man who was, after all, well-nigh a stranger, was secondary in interest. It was in every material respect touching their lives and deeper interests, Bear Cat's funeral they had come to attend. But on that topic the bearded shepherd meant to give them no satisfaction. So far he had made no mention of Bear Cat, and now he was concluding with the injunction: "Let us pray."

But as he bent his head, a woman standing near the foot of the grave raised a hand that trembled with all the violence of superstitious fear. From her thin lips broke a half-smothered shriek, not loud but eerie and disconcerting, and she shrilled in terrorized notes, "Air thet a specter I sees thar?"

Many eyes followed the pointed finger and again a dismayed chorus of inarticulate sound broke from the crowd. Just behind Blossom—herself ghostlike in her white rigidness—had materialized a figure that had not been there before. It was a gaunt figure whose face these people had seen before only bronzed and aggressive. Now the cheek-bones stood out in exaggerated prominence and the flesh was bloodlessly gray. Though Bear Cat Stacy was present in the flesh his sudden materialization there might well have startled a superstitious mind into the thought that he had come not only from a bed of illness but from one of death. Ignoring the sensation he had created, he spoke in a whisper to the minister, and Brother Fulkerson made a quiet announcement.

"Hit hain't no ghost, sister. Turner Stacy hes been sore sick an' nigh ter death, but hit's pleased ther Almighty ter spare him. Let us pray."

A man near the grave began quietly working his way to the outer fringes of the gathering, and when he had escaped immediate observation, he went with hot haste. Kinnard must know of this.

He had detected an undernote in that general murmur of astonishment, which was clearly one of satisfaction. The Stacys had derived pleasure in this ocular proof that Bear Cat was not dead.

As the preacher said "Amen" Bear Cat bent tensely forward and caught both of Blossom's hands in his own. "I kain't tarry," he said, "even fer a leetle spell, but I wanted ye ter know thet I done my best ter get hyar afore."

She looked at him with dazed eyes which under the intensity of his gaze slowly began to awaken into understanding.

Turner went on eagerly, "I started over hyar as soon as I got yore letter, but I was set upon an' wounded. I've been insensible well nigh ever sence then."

"Oh, Turney!" she whispered, as the grief which had held her in its thrall of unrelieved apathy suddenly broke into an overflow of tears. "Oh, Turney, I'm glad ye tried. He kept callin' fer ye. 'Peared like he wanted to tell ye somethin'." The clods were falling dully on the grave.

The crowd held back, fretting against the edict of decorum, as the voices rose in the miserable treble of song, to which two hounds added their anguished howls. At the last words of the verse, an instant clamor of question and discussion broke in eager storm—but Bear Cat had melted into the thicket at his back. With the same mystifying suddenness that had characterized his appearance, he had now disappeared.

Excited men rushed hither and thither, calling his name. They beat the woods and tramped the roads, but with as little result as though he had, in fact, appeared out of his grave and returned again to its hiding.

The story of that funeral was going with the pervasive swiftness of wind throughout the country-side. It was being mouthed over in dark cabins where toothless grannies and white-shocked grandsires wagged their heads and recalled the manner of Bear Cat's birth.

When Joe Sanders had left Bear Cat that afternoon at the abandoned cabin, it had been with the impression that Stacy meant to take the path which he had advised; the only path that was not certainly closed to his escape, and seek refuge at Dog Tate's house. He had found an immediate opportunity to report that program to Dog himself, and Dog sought to make use of it in Bear Cat's service.

Tate, in recognition of his grievance as an outraged distiller, had been given the leadership of one of the largest of the search parties, which it was his secret purpose to lead far afield on a blind trail. Inasmuch as Bear Cat had been specifically cautioned against going in the direction of his own dwelling place, and yet since that would seem a logical goal, Dog had maneuvered his hunters into territory between the abandoned cabin and Little Slippery.

He himself had been in the woods across the waters of the suddenly swollen creek, when an outburst of rifle fire told him that something had gone wrong and brought him running back to the guidance of that musketry.

He arrived at the edge of the swirling, drift-encumbered water in time to see the silhouetted figure on the opposite bluff totter and plunge head first into the moonlit whirlpool. Dog knew that he was the only man on that side of the stream, but any effort to plunge in and try for a rescue would mean death to himself without hope of saving the man who had fallen. As he watched he made out what seemed to be the lifeless body come to the surface, to be swept in a rushing circle and, as chance would have it, to catch and hang lodged in a mass of floating dead-wood. The creek at ordinary times ran shallow and though it was gushing now beyond its normal borders it was still not wide. The deadwood swirled, raced forward, and fouled the out-jutting root of a giant sycamore.

Dog Tate crawled out along the precarious support of the slimy rootage and slowly drew the mass of drift into shallow water. It was tedious work since any violent tugging might loosen the lightly held tangle and send the body floating away unbuoyed.

The night was all a thing of blue and silver moonlight and sooty shadows, but under the muddy bulwark at the base of the overhanging sycamore the velvet denseness of impenetrable black prevailed.

Once Dog saw figures outlined on the bluff from which Bear Cat had fallen, and had to lie still for the seeming of hours, trusting to the favor of the shadow.

Eventually he succeeded in drawing the mass of flotsam shoreward until he could wade in to the shallows, chancing the quicksands that were tricky there. Then he stumbled up the bank with his burden and deposited it between two bowlders where without daylight it would hardly be found. Dog was thinking fast, now.

He did not yet know whether he had saved a living man or retrieved a dead body, but his eagerness for investigation on that score must wait. Now he must rejoin the chase and turn it away from such dangerous nearness to its quarry.

So Tate ran down the bank and shouted. Voices replied and figures became visible on the farther shore.

"I seed him fall in," came the mendacious assurance of the man who was playing two parts. "I waded in atter him—but he went floatin' on down stream."

"Did he look like he mout be alive?" was the anxious query and the reply came as promptly. "He had every seemin' of bein' stone dead."

For a while they searched the banks, until, having discovered the hat, they decided to go back and let the final hunt for the body wait until morning.

But Dog had gone home and roused Joe Sanders, who had come in about midnight from another group of searchers, and the two of them had slipped back and recovered the limp burden—to find it still alive. Between midnight and dawn they carried Bear Cat to the house of Bud Jason. The wound this time had glanced the skull, bringing unconsciousness but no fracture. The shock and the hours of lying wet in the freezing air had resulted in something like pneumonia, and for days Bear Cat had lain there in fever and delirium.

But the old miller had held grimly on despite the danger of discovery, and his woman had nursed with her rude knowledge of herbs, until the splendid reserve of strength, that had already been so prodigally taxed, proved itself still adequate. He had raved, they told him later, of shaking hands with someone whom he hated.

"Hev ye raided any more stills?" demanded Bear Cat when at last he had been able to talk, and Dog, who had been in every day, grinned:

"We 'lowed thet could wait a spell," he assured the crusader. "We had our hands right full es hit war."

But the morning following Jerry Henderson's funeral, two more coils of copper were discovered aloft, and one of the men who had composed Kinnard's relay of messengers was liberated at daybreak after spending several tedious and unsatisfactory hours lashed to a dog-wood sapling.

If Kinnard Towers had raged before, now he fumed. Heretofore, it had been a condition of open war or one of acknowledged, even if precarious, peace. This was a mongrel situation which was neither the one nor the other, and every course was a dangerous one. The Stacys held their counsel, neither sanctioning the incorrigible black sheep of their flock in open declaration, nor yet totally relinquishing their right to avenge him, if an outside hand fell upon him. Meanwhile, the fiction of this young trouble-maker's charmed life was arousing the superstitious to its acceptance as a sort of powerful fetish.

The very name Bear Cat was beginning to fall from the lips of tow-headed children, with open-mouthed awe, like a term of witchcraft, and this candid terror of children was, of course, only a reflection of the unconfessed, yet profound impression, stamped upon the minds of their elders.

"What ails everybody hyarabouts?" rumbled Kinnard over his evening pipe. "Heretofore when a man needed killin' he's been kilt—an' thet's all thar was ter hit. This young hellion walks inter sure death traps an' walks out ergin. He falls over a clift inter a ragin' torrent—an' slips through an army of men. In Satan's name, what air hit?"

Black Tom's rejoinder was not cheering: "Ef ye asks me, I think all these stories of witchcraft, backed up by his luck, hes cast a spell on folks. They thinks Bear Cat's in league with grave-yard spooks."

Kinnard knocked the ashes out of his pipe. His lips curled contemptuously. "An' es fer yoreself—does you take stock in thet damn' foolery, too?"

"I hain't talkin' erbout myself," retorted Tom sullenly. "Ye asked erbout what folks was cogitatin' an' I'm a-tellin' ye. If ye don't believe thar's a notion thet graves opens an' ther dead fights with him, jest go out an' talk ter these benighted hill-billies yoreself. If evidence air what ye wants, ye'll git a lavish of hit."

Those who were in Bear Cat's confidence constituted a close corporation, and they were not all, like Dog and Joe, men who mixed also with the enemy, gaining information while they railed against their own leader. There was talk of secret and mysterious meetings held at midnight by oath-bound men—to whom flowed a tide of recruits.

Kinnard believed these meetings to be a part of the general myth. His crude but effective secret service could gather no tangible evidence in support of their storied sessions.

One evening report drifted in to the Quarterhouse that some one had seen Bear Cat Stacy at a point not far distant, and that he had been boldly walking the open road—unaccompanied. Within the hour a party was out, supplied with jugs and bottles enough to keep the vengeful fires well fueled throughout the night. It was an evil-looking squad, and its appearance was in no wise deceptive. Its members, all save one, had begun their evening at the Quarterhouse bar. The one exception was George Kelly, a young man recently married, who had gone there to talk other business with Towers. George had an instinctive tendency toward straightforwardness, but he had also an infirmity of character which caused him to follow where a more aggressive nature led—and he had fallen under Kinnard's domination. His small tract of tillable land was mortgaged, and Kinnard held over him the lash of financial supremacy. He could fight, but he could not argue, and when the unofficial posse was sent out that night, being in the place, he lacked the courage to refuse participation.

They had found the footprints of the fugitive and had met two men who claimed to have seen him in the flesh, but Bear Cat himself had eluded them and near midnight they halted to rest. They threw themselves down in a small rock-walled basin which was broken at one point by a narrow gorge, through which they had come. It was a good place to revel in after labor because it was so shut-in that the bonfire they kindled could not be far seen. The jugs were opened and passed around. It had set in to rain, and though they could endure that bodily discomfort while they had white liquor, their provident souls took thought against the rusting of their firearms. The guns were accordingly placed under a ledge of rock a few feet distant, all save one. Kelly lacking the buoyant courage of drunkenness, preferred to keep his weapon close at hand. He listened moodily and unresponsively to the obscene stories and ribald songs, which elicited thick peals of laughter from his companions. They had hunted hard, and now they were wassailing hard. The long march home would sober them so they need not restrain their appetites.

Some impulse led Kelly to raise his eyes from the sordid picture in the red waver of the fire and glance toward the doorlike opening of the gorge. The eyes remained fixed—and somehow the rifle on his knees did not come up, as it should have done. A figure stood there silently, contemptuously looking on, and it was as gaunt and gray as that of a foraging wolf. It was as lean and sinewy, too, and out of the face glowed a pair of eyes dangerously narrow and glittering.

Then with a scornful laugh the figure stepped forward, bending lithely from the waist, with two steel-steady hands gripping two automatic pistols at its front.

"War you boys a-sarchin' fer me?" demanded Bear Cat and the trailing voices, that had been drunkenly essaying close harmony, broke off mid-verse. "Stay right whar ye're at, every mother's son of ye!" came the sharp injunction. "The man thet stirs air a dead man. This hain't no play-party thet I've done come ter."

They sat suddenly silent, abruptly surly and helpless; all save one. George Kelly was still armed, and sitting somewhat apart. Beseechingly his companions sought by covert glance to signal him that he should avail himself of his armed advantage while they continued to distract the newcomer's attention.

Bear Cat's pistols broke out and two treasured jugs were shattered.

"Jim Towers," came the raspingly dictatorial order, "when ye goes back ter ther Quarterhouse ye kin tell Kinnard Towers thet Bear Cat Stacy hain't ter be captured by no litter of drunkards. Tell him he mout es well hire sober murderers or else quit."

As Towers sat glowering and silent, Stacy's voice continued in its stinging contempt.

"You damned murder hirelings, does ye think thet I'm ter be tuck prisoner by sneakin' weasels like you?"

George Kelly had sat silent. Now he rose to his feet, and Stacy ordered curtly, "Lay down thet gun, George. Ye're ther only man I'm astonished ter see hyar. I 'lowed ye war better then a hired assassin."

From someone came thick-tongued exhortation, "Git him, Kelly, you've got a gun. Git ther damn' parson."

In the momentary centering of Bear Cat's attention upon George, some one slipped with a cat-like furtiveness of motion back into the thicker darkness—toward the cached rifles.

Then a strange thing happened.

George Kelly wheeled, ignoring the order to drop his weapon, but instead of pointing it at the lone invader he leveled it across the fire-lit circle.

"Stop thet!" he yelled. "Leave them rifle-guns be or I aims ter shoot."

Surprise was following on surprise, and the half-befuddled faces of the drinkers went blank with perplexity and incredulity.

"What ther hell does ye mean? What did ye come out with us fer?" demanded a shrill voice, and Kelly's response spat back at him viciously. "I means thet what Bear Cat says are true es text. I mean thet 'stid of seekin' ter kill him, I'm a-goin' along with him. I've done been a slave ter Kinnard Towers long enough—an' right now I aims ter quit."

"Shell we tell Kinnard thet?" demanded Jim Towers dryly.

"Tell him any damn' thing ye likes. I'm through with him," and turning toward the astonished Stacy, he added, "I reckon we've done all we needs ter do hyar. We've busted thar bottles—an' thet's ter say we've busted thar hearts. Let's leave."

But Bear Cat's face was still grim and his words came with a clear-clipped sharpness. "Not yit.... They've still got some guns over thar.... I'll hold 'em where they're huddled, steady es a bird-dog. You git them guns."

George Kelly went circumspectly around the circumference of the fire and started back again, bearing an armful of rifles. At one point he had to pass so close to the dejectedly hulking shoulders of a seated figure that his knee brushed the coat—and at that instant the man swept out his hand and jerked violently at the passing ankle.

Kelly did not go down, but he lunged stumblingly, and scattered weapons broke from his grasp. Even then he had the quickness of thought to throw them outward toward Bear Cat's feet and leaped side-wise himself, still clinging to one that had not fallen.

Taking advantage of the excitement Jim Towers sought to recover his feet—and almost succeeded. But with a readier agility Bear Cat leaped and his right hand, still gripping the pistol, swept outward in an arc. Under a blow that dropped him unconscious and bleeding from a face laid open as if by a shod hoof, Towers collapsed, scattering red embers as he fell.

Two others were on their feet now, but, facing Stacy's twin pistols and the rifle in the hands of their deserter, they gauged the chances and without a word stretched their hands high above their heads.

"Now well tek up a collection—of guns—once more," directed Stacy, "an' leave hyar."

As two men backed through the gorge into darkness, out of which only one had come, a murder party, disarmed and mortified, shambled to its respective feet and busied itself with a figure that lay insensible with its head among the scattered embers.

"George," said Turner a half hour later, "ye come ter me when I needed ye right bad—but hit's mighty unfortunate thet ye hed ter do hit jest thet way. Ye're ther only man I've got whose name is beknownst ter Kinnard Towers—an' next ter me, thar won't be a man in ther hills harder dogged. Ye hain't been married long—an' ye dastn't go home now."

George Kelly shook his head. "I'm in hit now up ter my neck—an' thar hain't no goin' back. Afore they hes ther chanst ter stop me though, I'm goin' by home ter see my woman, an' bid her fare over ter her folks in Virginny."

CHAPTER XXIII

Bear Cat Stacy had gone with George Kelly to the house where his wife was awaiting him that night, and though he had remained outside while the husband went in, it was not hard to guess something of what took place. The wife of only a few months came out a little later with eyes that were still wet with tears, and with what things she was going to take away with her, wrapped in a shawl. She stood by as George Kelly nailed slats across the door. Already she had put out the fire on the hearth, and about her ankles a lean cat stropped its arched back.

Bear Cat had averted his face, but he heard the spasmodic sob of her farewell and the strange unmanning rattle in the husband's throat.

It was a new house, of four-squared logs, recently raised by the kindly hands of neighbors, amid much merry-making and well-wishing and it had been their first home together.

Now it was no longer a place where they could live. For the man it would henceforth be a trap of death, and the wife could not remain there alone. It stood on ground bought from Kinnard Towers—and not yet paid for.

Kelly and his wife paused by the log foot-bridge which spanned the creek at their yard fence. In the gray cheerlessness, before dawn, the house with its stark chimney was only a patch of heavier shadow against ghostly darkness. They looked back on it, with wordless regret, and then a mile further on the path forked, and the woman clutched wildly at her husband's shoulders before she took one way and he the other.

"Be heedful of yoreself, George," was all she said, and the man answered with a miserable nod.

So Kelly became Turner's companion in hiding, denied the comfort of a definite roof, and depending upon that power of concealment which could only exist in a forest-masked land, heaped into a gigantic clutter of cliffs and honey-combed with natural retreats.

But two days after his wife's departure, he was drawn to the place that had been his home by an impulse that outweighed danger, and looked down as furtively as some skulking fox from the tangled elevation at its back.

Then in the wintry woods he rose and clenched his hands and the muscles about his strong jaw-bones tightened like leather.

The chimney still stood and a few uprights licked into charred blackness by flame. His nostrils could taste the pungent reek of a recent fire upon whose débris rain had fallen. For the rest there was a pile of ashes, and that surprising sense of smallness which one receives from the skeleton of a burned house, seemingly at variance with the dignity of its inhabited size.

"Hit didn't take 'em long ter set hit," was his only comment, but afterward he slipped down and studied upon the frozen ground certain marks that had been made before it hardened. He found an empty kerosene can—and some characteristics, marking the tracks of feet, that seemed to have a meaning for him. So Kelly wrote down on the index of his memory two names for future reference.

It had occurred to Mark Tapper, the revenue agent, that the activities of Bear Cat Stacy constituted a great wastage, bringing no material profit to anyone. He himself was left in the disconcerting attitude of a professional who sees his efforts fail while an amateur collects trophies. Before long the fame of recent events would cease to be local. The talk would be borne on wayfaring tongues to the towns at the ends of the rails and some local newspaper correspondent, starving on space rates, would discover in it a bonanza. Here ready-made was the story of an outlaw waging a successful war on outlawry. It afforded an intensity of drama which would require little embellishment.

If such a story went to press there would be news editors quick to dispatch staff correspondents to the scene and from somewhere on the fringes of things these scribes would spill out columns of saffron melodrama. All these matters worked through the thoughts of Mark Tapper as preliminary and incidental. His part in such publicity would be unpleasant. His superiors would ask questions, difficult to answer, as to why he, backed—in theory—with the power of the government had failed where this local prodigy had made the waysides bloom with copper.

Decidedly he must effect a secret coalition with Bear Cat Stacy. If he could make some such arrangement as he already had with Towers, it might work out to mutual satisfaction. It might be embarrassing for Bear Cat to raid his kinsmen. It was equally so for Tapper to raid Towers' favorites. But by exchanging information they could both obtain results as harmonious as the arrangement of Jack Spratt and his wife. It was all a very pretty scheme for double-and-triple-crossing—but the first difficulty was in seeing Bear Cat himself.

Finally Mark decided to mail a letter to his man. For all his hiding out it was quite likely that there was a secret line of communication open between his shifting sanctuary and his home. He wrote tactfully inviting Turner to meet him across the Virginia line where he would be safe from local enemies. He gave assurance that he had no intention of serving any kind of summons and that he would come to the meeting place unaccompanied. He held out the bait of using his influence toward a dismissal of the prosecution against Bear Cat's father. Then he waited.

In due time he received a reply in Bear Cat's own hand.

"Men that want to see me must come to me. I don't go to them," was the curt reply. "I warn you that it will be a waste of time, but if you will come to the door of the school-house at the forks of Skinflint and Little Slippery at nine o'clock Tuesday night there will be somebody to meet you, and bring you to me. If you are not alone or have spies following you, your trouble will be for naught. You won't see anybody. Bear Cat Stacy."

At the appointed time and in strict compliance with the designated conditions Mark Tapper stood at the indicated point.

At length a shadow, unrecognizable in the night, gradually detached itself from the surrounding shadows and a low voice commanded, "Come on."

Mark Tapper followed the guide whose up-turned collar and down-drawn hat would have shielded his features even had the darker cloak of the night not done so. After fifteen minutes spent in tortuous twisting through wire-like snarls of thorn, the voice said: "Stand quiet—an' wait."

Left alone, the revenuer realized that his guide had gone back to assure himself that no spies were following at a distance. Tapper knew this country reasonably well, but at the end of an hour he confessed himself lost. Finally he came out on a narrow plateau-like level and heard the roar of water far below him. He saw, too, what looked like a window cut in the solid night curtain itself. Then the shadow-shape halted. "Go on in thar," it directed, and with something more like trepidation than he cared to admit, Tapper groped forward, felt for the doorstep with his toe and rapped.

"Come in," said a steady voice, and again he obeyed.

He stood in an empty cabin and one which had obviously been long tenantless. A musty reek hung between the walls, but on the hearth blazed a hot fire. The wind sent great volumes of choking smoke eddying back into the room from the wide chimney and gusts buffeted in, too, through the seams of the rotting floor.

Bear Cat Stacy stood before the hearth alone and seemingly unarmed. He had thrown aside his coat and his arms were folded across a chest still strongly arched. His eyes were boring into the visitor with a gimlet-like and disconcerting penetration.

"Wa'al," came his crisp interrogation, "what does ye want of me?"

"I wanted to talk things over with you, Stacy," began the revenuer, and the younger man cut him short with an incisive interruption.

"Don't call me Stacy. Call me Bear Cat. Folks round hyar gave me thet name in derision, but I aims ter make hit ther best knowed an' ther wust feared name in ther hills. I aims ter be knowed by hit henceforth."

"All right, Bear Cat. You and I are doing the same thing—from different angles." The visitor paused and drew closer to the fire. He talked with a difficult assumption of ease, pointing out that since Bear Cat had recognized and declared war on the curse of illicit distilling, he should feel a new sympathy for the man upon whom the government imposed a kindred duty. He had hoped that Bear Cat would make matters easier by joining in the talk, but as he went on, he became uncomfortably aware that the conversation was a monologue—and a strained one.

Stacy stood gazing at him with eyes that seemed to punch holes in his sham of attitude. When the revenuer paused silence lay upon the place until he himself broke it.

Finally Tapper reached a lame conclusion, but he had not yet dared to suggest the thing he had come to broach, the arrangement whereby the two of them were to divide territory, and swap betrayals of confidence.

"Air ye done talkin' now?" The question came with the restrained iciness of dammed-up anger.

"Well—I guess so. Until you answer what I've already said."

"Then I'll answer ye right speedily. I'm bustin' stills like a man blasts up rock thet bars a road: ter make way fer highways an' schools. You raid stills like Kinnard Towers' men commit murder—fer hire. I reckon thar hain't no common ground thet we two kin stand on. Ye lives by treachery an' blood money. Yore saint air Judas Iscariot an' yore God air Gain. I hunts open, an'—though ye won't skeercely comprehend my meanin'—thar's a dream back of what I'm doin'—a big dream."

Mark Tapper flushed brick red, and rose.

"Bear Cat," he said slowly. "Your father lies in jail waiting trial. I can do a heap to help him—and a heap to hurt him. You'd better think twice before you turn me away with insults."

Turner's voice hardened and his eyes became menacing slits.

"Yes—he lays in jail because Kinnard Towers bartered with ye ter jail him, but I hain't a-goin' ter barter with ye ter free him. Ye talks of turnin' ye away with insult—but I tells ye now hit's all I kin do ter turn ye away without killin' ye."

Stacy was unarmed and Mark's own automatic pistol was in his coat pocket. He should have known better, but the discovery that somehow Bear Cat Stacy had learned his complicity in a murder plot blinded him with an insane fury of fear and the hand leaped, armed, from its pocket.

"Ef I war you," suggested Bear Cat, who had not moved the folded arms on his chest, "I wouldn't undertake no vi'lence—leastways tell I'd looked well about me. Hev a glance at that trap overhead—an' them two doors."

Already the officer, with deep chagrin, recognized his folly. The open trap of the loft bristled with rifle mouths. The two doors which had a moment before been closed were now open and showed other muzzles peeping through, but who the men behind the guns might be, there was no indication—and there had been no sound.

"I didn't need ter show them guns—jest fer you," said Bear Cat slowly. "A man don't hardly need ter call his folks tergether ter fight a skunk—but I knowed thet ye'd go back ter Kinnard Towers, an' I'd jest as lief hev ye name hit ter him, thet ye didn't find me hyar all by myself." He paused and then the cold contempt of his manner gave way to a more explosive anger.

"I aims ter furnish ye with a lantern an' one of my men will start ye on yore road.... I wants ter see thet lantern goin' over ther hill-top plumb outen sight—an' I don't want ter see hit hesitate whilst hit goes. Ef hit does pause—or ef ye ever comes back ter me ergin with any proffer of partnership, so holp me God Almighty, I'll send yore scalp ter Washin'ton with my regards ter ther government." He pointed a peremptory finger to the front door. "Now, damn ye, begone an' go swiftly!"

Outside Tapper saw a lantern moving, but revealing no face. He knew that it was attached to a long pole and that one side was masked—the hill device of men who need light for their footsteps yet seek to avoid becoming conspicuous—and he followed its glimmer until a voice said, "I reckon ye kin go yore own route from hyar—yon way lies ther high road. Ye kin tek ther lantern with ye."

Blossom who, until a few weeks ago, had been thought of as a lovely child, was now the "Widder Henderson" to all who spoke her name. The people she met accosted her with a lugubrious sympathy which was hard to bear, so that she hastened by with a furtive shyness and an anxiety to be left alone. Every day she made her pilgrimage to the graveyard to lay freshly cut evergreens on the grave there, and the rabbit that had its nest deep under the thorns sat on its haunches regarding her with a frank curiosity devoid of fear. He seemed to recognize a kinship of shy aloofness between them which need not set even his most timorous of hearts into a flutter.

Yet although she was the "Widder Henderson," who had experienced the bitter fate of so many mountain wives, she was after all, in years and in experience, a child.

Until a little while ago—a very little while—she had sung with the birds and her spirits had sparkled with the sunshine that flashed back from woodland greenery. Life had seemed a simple thing with the rainbow promise of romance lying somewhere ahead. Then Turner had awakened her to a conception of adult love—a conception which might have satisfied all her dreams had not Jerry Henderson come to dazzle her and alter her standards of comparison. Henderson had, as even his critic at the club admitted, that "damned charm" that is seductively indefinable yet potent, and what had been "damned charm" to the clubman's sophistication was a marvelous and prodigal wonder to the mountain girl. He had wooed her passionately in the shadow of death. He had come back to her through the shadow of death, and left her to go, not only into its shadow, but its grimly mysterious reality. Now he was not only her hero but also her martyr.

Mountain children know little of Christmas, except that it is often a period of tragedy, since then men ride wildly with pistol and jug, and hilarity turns too often to homicide. But one Christmas legend the children do know: that on the night and at the hour of the Saviour's birth the cattle kneel in homage and the sere elder bushes, for a brief matter of miraculous minutes, break into a foam of bloom.

Blossom clung to that beautiful parable, even now finding comfort in its sentiment, as she stood among the untended graves.

"I wonder now," she speculated, nodding her head wistfully toward the inquisitive cotton-tail that sat wriggling its diminutive nose, "I wonder now ef it would be wrong to put some elder branches here Christmas eve so thet—that—if they does bloom—I mean do bloom—they'd be nigh him?"

"Howdy, Blossom," accosted a voice and the girl looked up startled. Lone Stacy's wife stood at the thicketed edge of the burial-ground, gazing at her, with eyes less friendly than their former wont.

The girl-widow came slowly forward, trying to smile, but under that unblinking stare she felt unhappy, and the older woman went on with a candid bluntness.

"La! Ye've done broke turrible, hain't ye? An' ye used ter be ther purtiest gal hyarabouts, too."

"It's been—hard times fer me," Blossom answered faintly.

"Hit's done been right hard times fer all of us, I reckon," came the uncompromising rejoinder, "but thet hain't no proper cause ter ketch yore death of grave-yard damp," and with that admonition, Mrs. Stacy went on her way.

Blossom stood silently looking after her, wondering vaguely why that almost resentful note of hardness had rasped in her voice.

"I haven't done nothin'—anything, I mean," she murmured in distress. "Why did she look at me that way, I wonder." Then suddenly she understood. That was just it. She had not done anything. The old woman was alone; her husband in prison and her son hunted from hiding place to hiding place like some beast dogged to death, and she, the girl who had always been like a daughter in that house, had been too stunned by her own sorrow to take account of her neighbor's distress.

Mrs. Stacy had always expected that Blossom's children would be her grandchildren. Turner had been wounded in defense of Jerry Henderson. Into the girl's memory flashed a picture with a vivid completeness which had failed to impress her in its just proportions at the time of its reality. Then her eyes had been engrossed with one figure in the group to the exclusion of all others. Now in retrospect she could visualize the trio that had stumbled through the door of her house, when they brought Jerry Henderson in. She could see again the way Bear Cat had reeled and braced himself against the wall, and the stricken wretchedness of his face.

Slowly the tremendous self-effacement of his generosity began to dawn upon her, and to sting her with self-reproach.

So long as she lived she felt that her heart was dead to any love save that for the man in the grave, but to the old comradeship—to the gratitude for such a friendship as few women had ever had—she would no longer be recreant. No wonder that Turner's mother looked at her with tightly pressed lips and hostile eyes. She would go over there and do what she could to make amends and alleviate the loneliness of a house emptied of its men; a house over which hung the unlifting veil of terror, which saw in the approach of every passer-by a possible herald of tragedy.

Uncle Israel Calvert sat alone by the small red-hot stove of his way-side store late in the afternoon. He was half dozing in his hickory-withed chair, and it was improbable that any customer would arouse him. A wild day of bellowing wind was spending itself in gusty puffs and the promise of blizzard, while a tarnished sun sank into lurid banks of cloud-threat.

Uncle Israel's pipe had gone out, though it still hung precariously between his clean-shaven jaws and his white poll fell drowsily forward from time to time. He listened between cat-naps to the voice of the storm and mumbled to himself. "I reckon nobody won't come in ter-night—leastways nobody thet hain't hurtin' powerful bad fer some plumb needcessity."

Then he fell again to dozing.

The rush of wind through a door suddenly opened, and closed, roused him, and seeing the figure of a man on the threshold, Uncle Israel came to his feet with a springy quickness of amazement.

"Bear Cat!" he exclaimed. "Hell's blazes, man, whar did ye drap from?" But at the same moment he went discreetly to the window and, since the shutters hinged from outside, hastily hung two empty jute sacks across the smeared panes.

"Uncle Israel," Bear Cat spoke with the brevity of one in haste, as he tossed a wet rubber poncho and black hat to the counter, "hev ye got any black cloth on them shelves?"

The storekeeper went ploddingly around the counter and began inspecting his wares, rubbing his chin as he peered through the dim lamp-light.

"Wa'al now," he pondered, "let's see. I've got jest what ye mout call a scant remainder of this hyar black domestic. I don't keep no great quantity because thar hain't no severe call fer hit—save fer them women-folks thet affects mournin'. Ther Widder Henderson bought most of what I had a few days back."

Bear Cat Stacy flinched a little, but the old man had his face to his shelves and did not see that.

"Ye'd better lay in a stock then," said Turner curtly. "Henceforth thar's liable ter be more demand."

Something in the tone made Uncle Israel turn sharply. "Does ye mean fer mournin'?" he demanded, and the reply was enigmatical.

"Mebby so—but fer another kind of mournin' then what ye hev in mind, I reckon. These hills has a plenty ter mourn about. I reckon ye'll heer tell of this black cloth again."

It was a night when cabin doors were tight-barred and when families huddled indoors, drawing close to the fires that roasted their faces while their backs were cold from wind hissing through the chinks in wall and puncheon flooring.

Even the drag net of Kinnard Towers' search lay idle to-night in the icy grip of the storm.

Through the wildness of shrieking winds, lashing the tree-tops, some men said that they heard ghostly incantations like the chant of a great company of restless spirits.

Jim Towers, who had been knocked sprawling into his own bonfire before the eyes of his myrmidons, was feeling somewhat appeased in spirit to-night. He dwelt in a two-story house so weatherproof that, for him, the tempest remained an external matter. To-night he had with him some half-dozen friends who had come for counsel earlier in the day and whom the storm had interned there for the night. They were all men who had been with him on the expedition that had gone awry when George Kelly had deserted. Now, as then, the company was defeating tedium with wassail. The drab woman who was Jim's wife, and his slave, had fed them all to repletion with "side-meat" and corn pone and gravy, and had withdrawn to a chair apart, where she sat forgotten.