Old man Bud Jason stood at the door of his tub-mill, leaning on the
long hickory staff which he always carried. He stood gauntly tall even
now that his once-broad shoulders sagged and his mane of hair was
white, and from his lips came a querulous mumbling as though he were
awaiting some one tardy of arrival. At last, though, he gave a grunt of
relief when the thicket far above him stirred and the figure of Bear
Cat Stacy appeared, bending under his load of grist.
He turned then into the shack and drew out a sack of meal from the
bottom of a pile, and as he finished this task a shadow fell across the
door. Turner Stacy let his burden fall and availed himself of the
opportunity to drop into a sitting posture on the step of the shanty,
resting his back against a post. His broad chest heaved and a profound
sigh of relief broke from his panting lips. The old miller stood
regarding him for a little while without words, then broke into
volcanic utterance:
"Hell's banjer! May God Almighty holp a country whar a young pa'r of
shoulders like your'n don't find no worthier use than man-powerin' good
corn acrost ther ridges ter turn hit inter bad licker."
Turner Stacy glanced up with mild surprise for the sentiment.
"I hain't nuver heered ye cavil with a man's license ter use his own
corn as he sees fit, afore, Bud," was his casual reply, and the
white-bearded one wagged his head and laughed tremulously after the
fashion of the old.
"I reckon ye don't mistrust me none, Bear Cat, even ef I does hit now,
but here of late I've cogitated a heap whilst I've been a-settin' hyar
listenin' ter ther creak of that old mill. Seems almost like ther wheel
was a-lamentin' over hits job. Thar bein' sich a sight of wickedness in
ther community whar my grand-children hes got ter be reared up is a
powerful solemn thing fer me ter study over, an' I've jes erbout
concluded thet whilst ther whiskey-makin' goes on ther killin's an
gin'ral wickedness won't hardly diminish none."
Furrows of dubious thought etched themselves on the young man's
forehead.
"Ef ye feels thet-a-way, Bud, why does yer consent ter grind corn fer
blockaders?" he demanded, and the reply was prompt:
"I don't grind hit only fer a few men thet I'm beholden to." Pausing a
moment, he became more specific. "Yore paw stood over my body onct when
I'd done been shot outen my saddle, an' fought off numerous enemies
single-handed, thereby savin' me from death in ther creekbed. I
couldn't hardly deny him ther use of my mill even ef his corn _hes_ got
sprouts in ther grain two inches long, now, could I?"
The boy looked abstractedly away, then suddenly blurted out: "I
disgusts blockadin', too, Bud, but pap 'lows hit's ther only way ter
mek a livin' hyarabouts."
"Lots of folks argues hit out in like fashion, but I don't hold with
'em." The speaker rapped the boards with his long staff and spoke with
conviction. "What these mountings needs air a mite of l'arnin' an' a
leetle common sense an' a heap of good roads. Ef prosperity ever comes
ter these hills, sonny, hit'll come along a highway--an' so long as
stills don't thrive none along highways, hit looks mightily like a
sorry chance." After a thoughtful pause he added, "Hit won't never
change, so long es hits only furriners thet aims ter alter hit.
Revenuers kain't do nothin'. Damn thar skunk hides anyhow! They're our
mortal enemies." The old man drew himself up as if he were seeing a
vision and his eyes held an almost fanatical gleam. "But mark down my
words! Some day thar'll rise up a mountain man--a man thet hain't never
met up with fear an thet's as steadfast as ther hills he sprung from.
_Thet_ man will change hit all, like ther sun changes fog. I wisht I
mout live ter see thet day."
"Hit'll tek a powerful towerin' man ter bring sich things ter pass,"
mused the listener and the oracle declared vehemently:
"Hit teks a powerful towerin' man ter lead any fight ter victory,
whether hit's a-guidin' ther Children of Israel outen thar bondage or
our benighted children outen thars."
Suddenly the miller laid a trembling hand on the boy's arm and demanded
in a hushed voice: "Why shouldn't hit be you, Bear Cat? Folks says ye
bears a charmed life, thet thar hain't enough lead in ther mountings
ter kill ye. I heered Kinnard Towers say with my own ears, thet hit war
a God's blessin' ther feud ended afore ye got yore growth--an' Kinnard
don't fear many. When a man thet's hardly nothin' but a saplin' of a
boy bears a repute like thet--hit must denote thet thar's power in him
beyond ther common!"
The boy stood silent for a moment and slowly his brow drew into a black
scowl.
"I reckon, Bud, one reason air this," he said bitterly, "thet I'm
accounted ter be a drunkard my own self an' like as not, one sich
reason es thet air plenty."
Turner glanced up to the bristling ridge which he must climb. Already
the west was kindling into a flare of richness and the skyline hills
were dyed with ashy purple.
"I've done over-tarried," he said abruptly, as he lifted his sack from
the floor, but his face wore a glow which was not altogether from the
sinking sun. "I reckon I'd better be on my way--but I hain't denyin'
thet I've done hed thoughts like your'n myself, Bud."
But young Stacy had not gone far when that sense of intensified
woodcraft which Blossom had derided caused him to halt dead in his
tracks.
The sound that had first arrested him had been nothing more than a
laugh, but, in it, he had recognized a quality that bespoke derisive
hostility and a thickness that indicated drink.
He had left the place empty except for Old Bud Jason and no one could
have reached it, unannounced by normal sounds, so soon unless the
approach had been achieved by stealth.
Bear Cat Stacy put down his sack and worked his way back, holding the
concealment of rock and laurel; guarding each footfall against the
betrayal of a broken twig--and, as yet, denied a view of the tub-mill.
But his cars were open and doing duty for his eyes.
"Wa'al," came the miller's voice in a wrathful tremolo, "what business
brings ye hyar es ef ye war aimin' ter lay-way somebody? Folks
gin'rally comes hither upstandin'--an' open."
This time the voice of the new arrival was sneeringly truculent:
"Does they come thet-a-way when they fotches in sprouted corn thet they
dastn't take elsewhere?"
Bear Cat stiffened as he recognized the voice of Ratler Webb, whom he
had not met since their encounter in which a nose had been broken. He
knew that in the breast of this man, hitherto unchallenged as
neighborhood bully, an ugly and dangerous grudge was festering.
Now it seemed that the old miller, because of friendship for the Stacys
was to be heckled, and Bear Cat's wrath boiled. He heard Bud Jason
inquiring in tones no longer querulous but firmly indignant:
"Is thet all ye come fer? Ter blackguard me?"
Ratler answered in a voice savoring more of highwayman's coercion than
request.
"I was jest a-funnin' with ye, Old Bud, but I'd be mighty obleeged ter
ye fer a leetle dram of licker. My bottle's nigh empty an' I've got a
far way ter travel yit."
Turner Stacy had now arrived at a point from which he could see around
the hulking shoulder of sandstone and the picture which met his eye was
not reassuring.
The miller stood barring the door to his shack and the visitor,
inflamed of eye, a little unsteady on his feet, confronted him with a
swagger of lawless daredeviltry.
"I hain't got no licker. I don't never use hit," replied Jason curtly.
"So ef thet's all thet brought ye hyar, ye've already got yore answer
an' ye mout es well be farin' on."
Webb's leer darkened to malignity and his voice came in a snarl.
"Ye hain't hardly got no tolerance fer drinkin', hes ye, Bud? Albeit ye
hain't none too sanctified ter grind up all ther sprouted corn thet
other fellers fotches in ter ye."
The old fellow was alone and unarmed save for his hickory staff, but he
was vested with that authority which stiffens a man, standing on his
own threshold and facing an insolent trespasser. His manner was
choleric and crisp in its note of command.
"I don't aim ter waste no time cavilin' with a drunken carouser. I bids
ye ter leave my place. Begone!"
But the traveler, inflamed with the venom of the drunken bully, lurched
forward, whipping a revolver from its sagging pocket. With an oath he
rammed the muzzle close against the pit of the other's stomach.
Bud's level eyes did not falter. He gripped his useless hickory as if
it had been a lictor's staff of unchallengeable office. Perhaps that
steady moment saved his life, for before his assailant's flood of
obscene vilification had reached its period, Ratler Webb leaped
back--interrupted. He changed front, wheeling to protect his back
against the logs of the rude wall and thrusting his pistol before him,
while his jaw sagged abruptly in dismay.
Bear Cat stood facing him, ten yards distant, and his right hand was
thrust into his opened shirt, under the armpit, where the mountain man
carries his holster. That the position of the hand was a bluff,
covering an unarmed helplessness, Ratler Webb did not know.
"Air ye follerin' revenuin' these days, Ratler?" inquired Stacy in a
voice of such velvet softness that the other responded only with an
incoherent snarl. "Because ef ye air, numerous folks hyarabouts will be
right glad ter find out who it is that's informin' on 'em."
"Damn ye! Keep thet hand whar hit's at!" ordered the aggressor
violently and like the cornered rat he had become doubly dangerous. He
had set out only to torture a defenseless victim, and now it seemed a
question of killing or being killed, so he loaded his voice with
truculence as he went on.
"Ef ye seeks ter draw hit out or come a step frontwards, so help me
Almighty God I'll kill ye in yore tracks!"
Turner Stacy smiled. Upon his ability to do so with a semblance of
quiet contempt he was staking everything.
"Shoot whenever ye gits ready, Ratler," he challenged. "But don't do
hit onless ye're expectin' ter die, too. When this trigger-work
commences, I aims ter _git_ ye."
"Move a hand or a foot then, an' see--" The voice was desperately high
pitched and nasal now, almost falsetto, but through its threat Bear Cat
recognized an undercurrent of sudden terror. The desperado remembered
that his horse stood hitched a quarter of a mile away. His right boot
sole had been freshly patched and left a clearly identifying mark in
the mud. He had prepared no alibi in advance, and within a few hours
after Turner fell scores of his kinsmen would be baying on the trail.
"Shoot!" taunted Bear Cat Stacy. "Why don't ye shoot?"--and then with
an effrontery which dazed his antagonist, he deliberately moved several
steps forward--halting nearer the pistol's muzzle.
"I don't aim ter kill ye onless I has ter," stormed Webb with weakening
assurance. "Halt! I'm givin' ye fa'r warnin'. Hit's self-d_ee_fense ef
ye crowds me."
Stacy spoke again, standing once more motionless.
"Ye couldn't shoot thet pistol at me ef I walked in on ye with my hands
over my head. My time hain't come yit ter die, because ther's things I
was born ter do--an' God Almighty aims ter hev me live till I've done
'em. He don't aim ter hev me hurt by no coward like you, I reckon. Ye
couldn't shoot any man noways whilst his eyes was lookin' full at ye.
Ye has need ter lay hid in ther la'rel afore ye kin pull yore trigger
finger. I dares ye to shoot!"
The white-bearded miller stood motionless, too, measuring all the
chances. For a moment he wondered whether it would be possible to
strike up the armed hand with his long staff, but he wisely repressed
the impulse. This after all was a new sort of combat, a duel of wills
rather than of weapons. He knew that Bear Cat Stacy was unarmed because
he had so recently seen the sweat-drenched shirt clinging close to the
arched chest.
Ratler Webb's hand no longer trembled with the uncertainty of
tipsiness. His eyes were no longer obfuscated and muddled with whiskey
fumes. He had reverted to the feral instincts of desperation--and was
suddenly sobered.
He gripped his out-thrust pistol in both hands for greater surety and
half-crouched with knees bent under him, ready either to spring or
brace himself against attack. His eyes, gleaming with blood-passion,
traveled shiftily so that he could keep watch on both his possible
adversaries.
The other and younger man stood upright, but his muscles, too, were
poised and balanced with all nicety of readiness and his eyes were
measuring the distance between: gauging sundry odds of life and death.
For a moment more the tableau held in silence. Both the miller and the
boy could hear the labored, almost gasping breath of the man with the
pistol and both knew that the mean temper of his heart's metal was
weakening.
Then when a squirrel barked from the timber, Ratler Webb started
violently and above the stubble of dirty beard, sweat drops began to
ooze on his face.
Why didn't Bear Cat Stacy say something? Why didn't somebody move? If
he fired now he must kill both men or leave a witness to blab deadly
information close on the heels of his flight! In his heart welled a
rising tide of panic.
Turner knew by instinct that every moment he could hold Ratler there
with his pistol leveled, was for the desperado, a moment of weakening
resolve and nerve-breaking suspense. But he also knew another thing.
When the strain of that waiting snapped Ratler would either run or
shoot. Mountain annals hold more instances of the latter decision that
the former, but that was the chance to be taken.
Webb carried a notched gun. He had forced many fights in his day, but
in all of them there had been the swift tonic of action and little time
to think. Now he dared not lower his weapon in surrender--and he was
afraid to fire. He felt that his lips were growing dry and thickening.
He thrust out his tongue to lick them, and its red tip gave, to his
ugly features, a strange grotesqueness.
Under the brown of wind and sun and the red of liquor-flush his face
paled perceptibly. Then it grew greenish yellow with a sick clamminess
of dread.
At last with a discernible quaver in his voice he broke the unendurable
silence, and his words came brokenly and disjointed:
"I didn't aim ter force no quarrel on ye, Bear Cat.... Ef ye plumb
compels me ter do hit, I've got ter kill ye, but I hain't a-hankerin'
none fer ther task."
"Thet's a lie, too. Ye come hyar a-seekin' of _evidence_ because ye're
harborin' a grudge erginst me an' ye dastn't satisfy hit no other way."
There was a pause, then Webb said slowly, and with a half-heartedness
from which all the effrontery had ebbed:
"I 'lows ter go on erbout my business now, but if either one of ye
moves from whar ye're standin' twell I'm outen range I aims ter kill ye
both."
Shifting his revolver to his right hand and feeling behind him with his
left, he began backing away, still covering his retreat and edging a
step at a time toward the corner of the shack, but at the second step,
with a swiftness which vindicated his name, the Bear Cat sprang.
The old miller shook his head, but made no outcry. He heard the thud of
two bodies and the grunt driven from a chest by the impact of charging
shoulders. He saw two figures go down together while a tongue of flame
and a muffled roar broke belatedly from the mouth of the pistol.
Whether the bullet had taken effect or, if so, who was its victim, he
could not at first distinguish. Two human beings, muscled like
razor-backs were writhing and twisting in a smother of dust, their
limbs clinched and their voices mingled in snarling and incoherent
savagery. The mountain ethics of "fist and skull" impose no Queensbury
restrictions. Tooth and knee, heel and knuckle may do their best--and
worst.
But the pistol itself flew clear and the old miller picked it up,
turning again to observe the result of the encounter.
The fighters had struggled up again to their feet and were locked in a
bone-breaking embrace of hatred. For the moment the advantage seemed to
rest with Webb, who was clutching Turner's head in the distressing
chancery of his powerful right arm and doing his utmost to break the
neck. Bear Cat's breathing was a hoarse and strangling agony, but his
fists battered like unremitting flails against the ribs and kidneys of
his antagonist. As they swayed and tottered their brogans were
ploughing up the hard soil and, totally blinded by sweat and rage, they
wavered perilously close to the edge of the huge rock--with its
ten-foot drop to the mill race.
Even as Old Bud gave his warning cry, they went down together--and fell
short of the brink, escaping that danger. Stacy writhed free from the
neck-grip, and both came up again, leaping into a fresh embrace of
panthers, with eyes glaring insanely out of blood-smeared faces.
Then it all ended abruptly. Bear Cat wrenched himself free and sent a
chance blow, but one behind which went all his weight and passion, to
the other's mouth. The smitten head went back with a jerk. Webb reeled
groggily for an instant, then crumpled, but before he had quite fallen
Stacy, with an insensate fury, was dragging him to his feet and
clutching at the throat which his fingers ached to strangle.
At that instant, the old miller seized his arms.
"Hold on thar, Bear Cat," he cried with his quavering voice. "He's
already licked. You'll kill him ef ye hain't heedful."
"I _aims_ ter kill him," panted the boy, casting off the interference
of aged arms with the savagery of a dog whose fangs have been pried too
soon from the throat of its victim.
But Bud Jason clung on, reiterating: "Fer shame, son! Thet hain't
_yore_ manner of conduct. Fer shame!"
Unsteadily, then, with a slow dawning of reason Bear Cat Stacy
staggered back and leaned heavily against the wall of the tub-mill,
breathing in sob-like gasps. His shirt was half torn from his body and
for the first time the miller saw the ugly gash where a pistol bullet
had bitten its grazing course along his left shoulder. Grime and blood
stained him and for a while he stood gazing down on the collapsed
figure at his feet--a figure that stirred gropingly.
"I reckon," he said slowly, "I'd jest about hev finished him, ef hit
hadn't a-been fer _you_, Bud. I'm beholden ter ye. I reckon I was
seein' red."
Together they lifted Ratler Webb and gave him water from the gourd that
hung by the door. When he was able to stand, dourly resentful, baleful
of eye but mute as to tongue, Bear Cat spoke briefly with the victor's
authority:
"I aims ter keep thet pistol o' your'n fer a spell, Ratler. I don't
hardly trust ye with hit jest yit. When ye wants hit, come by my house
and ask fer hit."
The bully turned sullenly away. He spoke no word of farewell and
offered no protest, but when he was out of sight the miller shook his
head and his voice was troubled.
"Of course ye knows, son, thet he hain't never agoin' ter fergit hit?
So long as ther two of ye lives ye've got ter keep on watchin' him."
Turner nodded. He was bathing his shoulder and spreading cobwebs on its
grazed wound.
"I've done wasted a heap of time," he said irrelevantly. "An' hit's
comin' on to rain, too. I reckon I'll be benighted afore I gets over
ter ther still."
Starting away, he paused and turned shamefacedly back for a moment.
"Hit won't profit us none to norrate this matter abroad," he suggested.
"I've got enough name already fer gittin' into ructions. Paw don't like
hit none."
Gazing after the retreating figures the old man wagged his head and his
expression was one of foreboding.
"Meanness an' grudge-nursin' kin bring on a heap of pestilence," he
mused. "This Ratler will nurse his on ther bottle, an' he won't never
wean hit--an' some day----! But it don't profit a feller ter borry
trouble. These hills hes got enough misfortunes withouten thet."
Already twilight was settling over the valleys and the ridges were
starkly grim as their color died to the neutrality of night, and the
murk of a gathering storm.