In former days an Appalachian tavern was a "quarter-house"; a hostelry
where one paid a quarter for one's bed and a quarter, each, for meals.
Now the term has fallen into such disuse as to be no longer generic,
but locally it survived with a meaning both specific and malodorous.
The press of Kentucky and Virginia had used it often, coupled with
lurid stories of blood-lettings and orgies; linking with it always the
name of its proprietor, Kinnard Towers.
How could such things go on in the twentieth century? questioned the
readers of these news columns, forgetting that this ramparted isolation
lives not in the twentieth century but still in the eighteenth; that
its people who have never seen salt water still sing the ballads of
Walter Raleigh's sea-rovers, and that from their lips still fall, warm
with every-day usage, the colloquialisms of Chaucer and of Piers the
Ploughman.
The Quarterhouse stood in a cleft where the mountains had been riven.
Its front door opened into Virginia and its rear door gave into
Kentucky. Across the puncheon floor was humorously painted a stripe of
whitewash, as constantly renewed as the markings of a well-kept tennis
court--and that line was a state boundary.
Hither flocked refugees from the justice of two states, and if a
suddenly materializing sheriff confronted his quarry in the room where
each day and each night foregathered the wildest spirits of a wild
land, the hounded culprit had only to cross that white line and stand
upon his lawful demand for extradition papers. Here, therefore, the
hunted foxes of the law ran to ground. The man who presided as
proprietor was a power to be feared, admired, hated as individual
circumstance dictated, but in any case one whose wrath was not to be
advisedly stirred.
He had found it possible to become wealthy in a land where such
achievement involves battening on poverty. Cruel--suave;
predatory--charitable, he had taken life by his own hand and that of
the hireling, but also he had, in famine-times, succored the poor.
He had, in short, awed local courts and intimidated juries of the
vicinage until he seemed beyond the law, and until office-holders wore
his collar.
Kinnard Towers was floridly blond of coloring, mild of eye and urbanely
soft-spoken of voice.
Once, almost two decades ago, while the feud was still eruptive, it had
seemed advisable to him to have Lone Stacy done to death, and to that
end he had bargained with Black Tom Carmichael.
Black Tom had been provided with a double-barreled gun, loaded with
buckshot, and placed in a thicket which, at the appointed hour, the
intended victim must pass. But it had chanced that fate intervened. On
that day Lone Stacy had carried in his arms his baby son, Turner Stacy,
and, seeing the child, Black Tom had faltered.
Later in the seclusion of a room over the Quarterhouse, the employer
had wrathfully taken his churl to task.
"Wa'al, why didn't ye git him?" was the truculent interrogation. "He
passed by close enough fer ye ter hit him with a rock."
"He was totin' his baby," apologized the designated assassin
shamefacedly, yet with a sullen obstinacy, "I was only hired ter kill a
growed-up man. Ef ye'd a-give me a rifle-gun like I asked ye 'stid of a
scatter-gun I could've got him through his damned head an' not harmed
ther child none. Thet's why I held my hand."
Kinnard Towers had scornfully questioned: "What makes ye so tormentin'
mincy erbout ther kid? Don't ye know full well thet when he grows up
we'll have ter git _him_, too? Howsoever next time I'll give ye a
rifle-gun."
Like all unlettered folk the mountaineer is deeply superstitious and
prone to believe in portents and wonders. Often, though he can never be
brought to confess it he gives credence to tales of sorcery and
witchcraft.
Turner Stacy was from his birth a "survigrous" child, and he was born
on the day of the eclipse. As he came into the world the sun was
darkened. Immediately after that a sudden tempest broke which tore the
forests to tatters, awoke quiet brooks to swirling torrents, unroofed
houses and took its toll of human life. Even in after years when men
spoke of the "big storm" they always alluded to _that_ one.
An old crone who was accounted able to read fortunes and work charms
announced that Turner Stacy came into life on the wings of that storm,
and that the sun darkened its face because his birth savored of the
supernatural. This being so, she said, he was immune from any harm of
man's devising. Her absurd story was told and retold around many a
smoky cabin hearth, and there were those who accorded it an unconfessed
credence.
Later Black Tom was given a rifle and again stationed in ambush. Again
Lone Stacy, favored by chance, carried his baby son in his arms. Black
Tom, whose conscience had never before impeded his action, continued to
gaze over his gun-sights--without pressing the trigger.
Towers was furious, but Carmichael could only shake his head in a
frightened bewilderment, as if he had seen a ghost.
"Ther brat looked at me jest as I was about to fire," he protested.
"His eyes didn't look like a human bein's. He hain't no baby--he was
born a man--or somethin' more then a man."
As affairs developed, the truce was arranged soon afterward, and also
the marked man's death became unnecessary, because he was safe in
prison on a charge of moonshining.
Neither Lone Stacy nor his son had ever known of this occurrence, and
now the Stacys and the Towers met on the road and "made their manners"
without gun-play.
But to Kinnard Towers local happenings remained vital and, for all his
crudity, few things of topical interest occurred of which he was not
duly apprised.
Into his dwelling place came one day the Honorable Abraham Towers, his
nephew, who sat in the state Legislature at Frankfort. The two were
closeted together for an hour and as the nephew emerged, at the end of
the interview, Kinnard walked with him to the hitching-post where the
visitor's horse stood tethered.
"I'm obleeged ter ye, Abe," he said graciously. "When this man
Henderson gits hyar, I'll make hit a point ter hev casual speech with
him. I aims ter l'arn his business, an' ef what ye suspicions air true,
he'll have dealin's with me--or else he won't hardly succeed."
So it happened logically enough that on the evening of Jerry's arrival,
Kinnard Towers mounted and started out over the hill trails. He rode,
as he always did when he went far abroad, under armed escort since
tyrants are never secure. Four rifle-equipped vassals accompanied him;
two riding as advance guard and two protecting the rear.
Kinnard's destination was the house of Lone Stacy on Little Slippery, a
house whose threshold he could not, in the old days, have crossed
without blood-letting; but these were the days of peace.
Arriving, he did not go direct to the door and knock, but discreetly
halting in the highway, lifted his voice and shouted aloud, "Halloo!
I'm Kinnard Towers an' I'm a-comin' in."
The door was thrown promptly open and Lone Stacy appeared, framed
between threshold and lintel, holding a lamp aloft and offering
welcome.
"Gentlemen," said the host in a matter-of-fact voice, "ef you'll excuse
me, I'll rest yore guns."
Then in observance of a quaint and ancient ceremonial, each armed
guardian passed in, surrendering his rifle at the threshold. In
retarded Appalachia so runs the rule. To fail in its fulfilment is to
express distrust for the honesty and ability of the householder to
protect his guests, and such an implication constitutes a grave
discourtesy.
Inside a fire roared on the hearth, for even in June, the mountain
nights are raw.
Henderson, watching the small cavalcade troop in, smiled inwardly. He
was not unmindful of the identity or the power of this modern baron,
and he was not without suspicion that he himself was the cause of the
visit.
"I chanced ter be farin' by, Lone," Kinnard Towers enlightened his host
easily, "an' I 'lowed I'd light down an' rest a little spell."
"Ye're welcome," was the simple reply. "Draw up ter ther fire an' set
ye a cheer."
The talk lingered for a space on neighborhood topics, but the host had
found time, between hearing the shout outside and replying to it, to
say in a low voice to his guest: "I reckon atter Kinnard Towers comes
in we won't talk no more erbout my still--jest stills in gin'ral," and
that caution was religiously observed.
The kitchen tasks had been finished now and while the men sat close to
the smoking hearth the faces of the women looked on from the shadowed
corners of the room, where they sat half obscured upon the huge
four-poster beds.
The man who had crossed Cedar Mountain lighted his pipe from the bed of
coals and then, straightening up, he stood on the hearth where his eyes
could take in the whole semicircle of listening faces. They were eyes
that, for all their seeming of a theorist's engrossment, missed little.
This house might have been a pioneer abode of two hundred years ago,
standing unamended by the whole swelling tide of modernity that had
passed it by untouched.
The leaping blaze glittered on the metal of polished rifles stacked in
a corner, and on two others hanging against the smoke-dimmed logs of
the walls. Red pods of peppers and brown leaves of tobacco were strung
along the rafters. Hardly defined of shape against one shadowy wall,
stood a spinning wheel.
Henderson knew that the room was pregnant with the conflict of human
elements. He realized that he himself faced possibilities which made
his mission here a thing of delicate manipulation; even of personal
danger.
The blond man with the heavy neck, who sat contemplatively chewing at
the stem of an unlighted pipe, listened in silence. He hardly seemed
interested, but Henderson recognized him for the sponsor and
beneficiary of lawlessness. He more than any other would be the logical
foe to a new order which brought the law in its wake--and the law's
reckonings.
Near to the enemy whom he had heretofore faced in pitched battle, sat
old Lone Stacy, his brogans kicked off and his bare feet thrust out to
the warmth; bearded, shrewd of eye, a professed lover of the law,
asking only the exemption of his illicit still. He, too, in the feud
days had wielded power, but had sought in the main to wield it for
peace.
And there, showing no disposition to draw aside the skirts of his
raiment in disgust, sat the preacher of the hills whose strength lay in
his ability to reconcile antagonisms, while yet he stood staunch,
abating nothing of self-sacrificial effort. It was almost as though
church and crown and commoner were gathered in informal conclave.
But luminous, like fixed stars, gleamed two other pairs of eyes. As he
realized them, Henderson straightened up with such a thrill as comes
from a vision. Here were the eyes of builders of the future--agleam as
they looked on the present! Blossom's were wide and enthralled and
Turner Stacy's burned as might those of a young crusader hearing from
the lips of old and seasoned knights recitals of the wars of the
Sepulchre.
Bear Cat Stacy saw in this stranger the prophet bearing messages for
which he had longed--and waited almost without hope. But Kinnard Towers
saw in him a dangerous and unsettling agitator.
"You said," declared Henderson, when the theme had swung back again to
economic discussion, "that your cornfield was good for a few crops and
then the rains would wash it bare, yet as I came along the road I saw
an out-cropping vein of coal that reached above my head, and on each
side of me were magnificent stretches of timber that the world needs
and that is growing scarce."
"Much profit thet does me," Lone Stacy laughed dryly. "Down at Uncle
Israel's store thar's a dollar bill thet looks like hit's a-layin' on
ther counter--but when ye aims to pick hit up ye discarns thet hit's
pasted under ther glass. Thet coal an' timber of mine air pasted ter
ther wrong side of Cedar Mounting."
"And why? Because there are few roads and fewer schools. It's less the
cost and difficulties of building wagon roads than something else that
stands in the way. It's the laurel."
"The laurel?" repeated Lone Stacy, but the preacher nodded
comprehendingly, and the visitor went on:
"Yes. The laurel. I've been in Central American jungles where men died
of fever because the thick growth held and bred the miasma. Here the
laurel holds a spirit of concealment. If there wasn't a bush in all
these hills big enough to hide a man, the country would be thrown open
to the markets of the world. It's the spirit of hiding--that locks life
in and keeps it poor."
"I presume ye means on account of ther blockade licker," replied the
host, "but thet don't tech ther root of ther matter. How erbout ther
fields thet stand on end; fields thet kain't be plowed an' thet ther
rains brings down on yore head, leavin' nuthin 'thar but ther rock?"
Henderson had the power of convincing words, abetted by a persuasive
quality of voice. As a mountain man he preached his faith in the future
of the hills. He spoke of the vineyards of Madeira where slopes as
incorrigibly steep as these were redeemed by terracing. He talked of
other lands that were being exhausted of resources and turning greedy
eyes upon the untapped wealth of the Cumberlands. He painted the
picture glowingly and fervently, and Turner Stacy, listening, bent
forward with a new fire in his eyes: a fire which Kinnard Towers did
not fail to mark.
"When ther railroad taps us," interpolated Lone Stacy, in a pause,
"mebby we kin manage ter live. Some says ther road aims ter cross Cedar
Mounting."
"Don't deceive yourself with false hopes," warned the visitor. "This
change must be brought about from inside--not outside. The coming of
the railroad lies a decade or two away. I've investigated that question
pretty thoroughly and I know. The coal-fields are so large that
railroads can still, for a long time to come, choose the less expensive
routes. Cedar Mountain balks them for the present. It will probably
balk them for the length of our lives--but this country can progress
without waiting for that."
"So ye thinks thet even without no railroad this God-forsaken land kin
still prosper somehow?" inquired the host skeptically, and the visitor
answered promptly:
"I do. I am so convinced of it that I'm here to buy property--to invest
all I have and all my mother and sisters have. I think that by
introducing modern methods of intensive farming, I can make it pay a
fair return in my own time--and when I die I'll leave property that
will ultimately enrich the younger generations. I _don't_ think it can
make me rich in my lifetime--but _some_ day it's a certainty of
millions."
"Why don't ye buy yoreself property whar ther railroad will come in
yore own day, then? Wouldn't thet pay ye better?"
The suggestion was the first contribution to the conversation that had
come from Kinnard Towers, and it was proffered in a voice almost urbane
of tone.
Henderson turned toward him.
"That's a straight question and I'll answer it straight. To buy as much
property as I want along a possible railway line would cost too much
money. I'm gambling, not on the present but on the future. I come here
because I know the railroad is _not_ coming and for that reason prices
will be moderate."
As he made this explanation the newcomer was watching the face of his
questioner almost eagerly. What he read there might spell the success
or failure of his plans. Any enterprise across which Kinnard Towers
stamped the word "prohibited" was an enterprise doomed to great
vicissitude in a land where his word was often above the law.
But the blond and florid man granted him the satisfaction of no reply.
He gazed pensively at the logs crackling on the hearth and his features
were as inscrutably blank as those of the Sphinx.
After a moment Towers did speak, but it was to his host and on another
topic.
"Lone," he said, "thet firewood of yourn's right green an' sappy,
hain't it? Hit pops like ther fo'th of July."
Brother Fulkerson spoke reflectively: "We needs two more things then
we've got in these hills--an' one thing less then we've got. We wants
roads an' schools--and the end of makin' white licker."
Henderson saw Blossom slip from the bed and flit shadow-like through
the door, and a few moments later he missed, too, the eagerly attentive
presence of the boy. Blossom had escaped from the reek of tobacco smoke
inside, to the soft cadences of the night-song and the silver wash of
the moonlight.
Turner Stacy found her sitting, with her face between her palms, under
a great oak that leaned out across the trickle of the creek, and when
he spoke her name, she raised eyes glistening with tears.
"Blossom," he began in a contrite voice, "ye're mad at me, ain't ye?
Ye've done heerd about--about last night." Then he added with moody
self-accusation, "God knows I don't blame ye none."
She turned her head away and did not at once answer. Suddenly her
throat choked and she broke into sobs that shook her with their
violence. The young man stood rigid, his face drawn with self-hatred
and at last she looked up at him.
"Somehow, Turner," she said unsteadily, "hit wouldn't of been jest ther
same ef hit had been any other time. Yestiddy--up thar on ther
ridge--ye promised me thet ye'd be heedful with licker."
"I knows I did," he declared bitterly. "Ye've got a right ter plumb
hate me."
"Ef I'd a-hated ye," she reminded him simply, "I wouldn't sca'cely have
watched ther road all day." Then irrelevantly she demanded, "How did ye
git yore shoulder hurt?"
The wish to defend himself with the palliations of last night's
desperate fatigue and the chill in his wound was a strong temptation,
but he repressed it. Knowledge of his encounter with Ratler Webb would
only alarm her and conjure up fears of unforgiving vengeance.
"Hit war just a gun thet went off accidental-like," he prevaricated. "I
wasn't harmed none, Blossom." Then in a tense voice he continued: "I
only aimed ter drink a leetle--not too much--an' then somehow I didn't
seem ter hev ther power ter quit."
He felt the lameness of that plea and broke off.
"I'd been studyin' about what you said on ther ridge," she told him
falteringly, and the tremor of her voice electrified him. Again the
mountains on their ancient foundations grew unsteady before his eyes.
"Does ye mean thet--thet despite last night--ye keers fer me?"
He bent forward, lips parted and heart pounding--and her reply was an
unsteady whisper.
"I hain't plumb dead sartain yit, Turner, but--but this mornin' I
couldn't think of nothin' else but you."
"Blossom!" exclaimed the boy, his voice ringing with a solemn
earnestness. "I don't want thet ye shall hev ter feel shame fer
me--but----"
Once again the words refused to come. The girl had risen now and stood
slender in the silver light, her lashes wet with tears. With that
picture in his eyes it became impossible to balance the other problems
of his life. So he straightened himself stiffly and turned his gaze
away from her. He was seeing instead a picture of the squat shanty
where the copper worm was at work in the shadow, and for him it was a
picture of bondage.
So she waited, feeling some hint of realization for the struggle his
eyes mirrored.
There would be many other wet nights up there, he reflected as his jaw
set itself grimly; many nights of chilled and aching bones with that
wild thirst creeping seductively, everpoweringly upon him out of the
darkness. There would be the clutch of longing, strangling his heart
and gnawing at his stomach.
But if he _did_ promise and failed, he could never again recover his
self-respect. He would be doomed. With his face still averted, he spoke
huskily and laboriously.
"I reckon thar hain't no way ter make ye understand, Blossom. I don't
drink like some folks, jest ter carouse. I don't oftentimes want ter
tech hit, but seems like sometimes I jest _has_ ter hev hit. Hit's most
gin'rally when I'm plumb sick of livin' on hyar withouten no chance ter
better myself."
Even in the moonlight she could see that his face was drawn and pallid.
Then abruptly he wheeled:
"Ther Stacys always keeps thar bonds. I reckons ye wants me ter give ye
my hand thet I won't never tech another drop, Blossom, but I kain't do
thet yit--I've got ter fight hit out fust an' be plumb dead sartain
thet I could keep my word ef I pledged hit----"
Blossom heard her father calling her from the porch and as she seized
the boy's arms she found them set as hard as rawhide.
"I understands, Turney," she declared hastily, "an'--an'--I'm a-goin'
ter be prayin' fer ye afore I lays down ternight!"
As Turner watched the preacher mount and ride away, his daughter
walking alongside, he did not return to the house. He meant to fight it
out in his own way. Last night when the hills had rocked to the fury of
the storm--he had surrendered. To-night when the moonlit slopes drowsed
in the quiet of silver mists, the storm was in himself. Within a few
feet of the gate he took his seat at the edge of a thick rhododendron
bush, where the shadow blotted him into total invisibility. He sat
there drawn of face and his hands clenched and unclenched themselves.
He did not know it, but, in his silence and darkness, he was growing.
There was for him a touch of Golgotha in those long moments of
reflection and something of that anguished concentration which one sees
in Rodin's figure of "The Thinker"--that bronze man bent in the
melancholy travail of the birth of thought.
When an hour later Kinnard Towers and his cortege trooped out of Lone
Stacy's house, Jerry Henderson, willing to breathe the freshness of the
night, strolled along.
The men with the rifles swung to their saddles and rode a few rods
away, but Towers himself lingered and at last with a steady gaze upon
the stranger he made a tentative suggestion.
"I don't aim ter discourage a man thet's got fine ideas, Mr. Henderson,
but hev ye duly considered thet when ye undertakes ter wake up a
country thet's been slumberin' as ye puts hit, fer two centuries, ye're
right apt ter find some sleepy-heads thet would rather be--left alone?"
"I'm not undertaking a revolution," smiled the new arrival. "I'm only
aiming to show folks, by my own example, how to better themselves."
The man who stood as the sponsor of the old order mounted and looked
down from his saddle.
"Hain't thet right smart like a doctor a-comin' in ter cure a man," he
inquired dryly, "a-fore ther sick person hes sent fer him? Sometimes
ther ailin' one moutn't take hit kindly."
"I should say," retorted Henderson blandly, "that it's more like the
doctor who hangs out his shingle--so that men can come if they like."
There was a momentary silence and at its end Towers spoke again with
just a hint of the enigmatical in his voice.
"Ye spoke in thar of havin' personal knowledge thet ther railroad
didn't aim ter come acrost Cedar Mounting, didn't ye?"
"Yes."
"Well now, Mr. Henderson--not meanin' ter dispute ye none--I don't feel
so sartain about thet."
"I spoke from fairly definite information."
The man on horseback nodded.
"I aims ter talk pretty plain. We're a long ways behind ther times up
hyar, an' thet means thet we likes ter sort of pass on folks thet comes
ter dwell amongst us."
"I call that reasonable, Mr. Towers."
"I'm obleeged ter ye. Now jest let's suppose thet ther railroad _did_
aim ter come in atter all an' let's jest suppose for ther fun of ther
thing, thet hit likewise aimed ter grab off all ther best coal an'
timber rights afore ther pore, ign'rant mountain-men caught on ter what
war happenin'. In sich a case, ther fust step would be ter send a man
on ahead, wouldn't hit--a mountain man, if possible--ter preach thet
ther railroad didn't aim ter come? Thet would mean bargains, wouldn't
hit?"
Jerry Henderson laughed aloud.
"Do you mean that you suspect me of such a mission?"
Glancing about to assure himself that no one heard except his single
auditor, the erstwhile hirer of assassins bent over his saddle pommel.
Into the suavity of his voice had crept a new hardness and into the
pale color of his eyes an ominous glint.
"Back in ther days of ther war with England, Mr. Henderson, I've heered
tell thet our grandsires hed a flag with a rattlesnake on hit, an' ther
words, 'Don't tread on me!' Some folks says we're right-smart like our
grandsires back hyar in ther timber."
"If that's a threat, Mr. Towers," said Henderson steadily, "I make it a
point never to understand them."
"An' I makes hit a point never ter give them more then onct. I don't
say I suspicions ye--but I do _p'intedly_ say this ter ye: Whatever
yore real project air, afore ye goes inter hit too deep--afore ye
invests all ye've got, an' all yore mother hes got an' all yore sister
hes got, hit mout be right heedful ter ride over ter my dwellin'-house
an' hev speech with me."
An indignant retort rose to Jerry's lips, but with diplomatic
forbearance he repressed it.
"When I've been here a while, I guess your suspicions will be allayed
without verbal assurances, Mr. Towers."
"Even if ye only comes preachin' ther drivin' out of licker," said
Towers slowly, "ye're treadin' on my friends. We suffers Sabbath talk
like thet from preachers, but we don't relish hit on week-days from
strangers. In thar a while back I listened. I seen ye an' Brother
Fulkerson a-stirrin' up an' onsettlin' ther young folks. I kin feel
ther restless things thet's a-ridin' in ther wind ter-night, Mr.
Henderson, an' hit hain't sca'cely right ter bring trouble on these
folks thet's shelterin' ye."
Bear Cat Stacy, unseen but eagerly listening, felt a leaping of
resentment in his veins. All the feudal instincts that had their
currents there woke to wrath as he heard his hereditary enemy warning
away his guest. It was the intolerable affront of a hint that the power
of the Stacys had dwindled and waned until it could no longer secure
the protection of its own roof-trees.
With the anger of Marmion for Angus, sternly repressed but forceful,
Bear Cat suddenly stood out revealed in the moonlight. He had only to
take a step, but the effect was precisely that of having been suddenly
materialized out of nothingness, and when his voice announced him, even
the case-hardened control of Kinnard Towers suffered a violent jolt of
surprise.
"I reckon, Kinnard Towers," said the boy with a velvety evenness of
voice, "ther day hain't hardly come yit when ther Stacys hes ter ask ye
what visitors they kin take inter thar dwellin'-houses. I reckon mebby
Mr. Henderson's ideas may suit some folks hyarabouts, even if they
don't pleasure you none. So long as he aims ter tarry hyar, an' we aims
ter enjoy him, ther man thet seeks ter harm him will hev ter come hyar
an' git him."
Never since the fend had ended in a pact of peace, had two factional
leaders come so near a rupture. Henderson could feel the ominous
tensity in the air, but Towers himself only shook his head and laughed.
It was a good-humored laugh, since this was not the time for open
enmity.
"Oh, pshaw, son! I reckon nobody don't aim no harm to Mr. Henderson. I
jest knows this country an' he ought ter realize thet my counsel mout
help him." There was a brief pause and then with an audacity of
bantering Kinnard proceeded. "I've done heered thet ye tuck yore dram
onct in a while yoreself--mebby you've got friends thet makes
licker--an' you knows how they mout feel about too much talk."
Bear Cat Stacy stood with his shoulders drawn back and his eyes
smoldering.
"Thet's my business," he retorted curtly, but the Quarterhouse baron
went on with the same teasing smile.
"Mebby so, son, but hit kinderly 'peared like ter me thet Brother
Fulkerson's gal war a-'lowin' thet hit war _her_ business, too. I
overheered yore maw say somethin' 'bout yore drinkin' some last night
an' I seed Blossom's purty eyes flash."
The mounted man waved his hand and rode away, his escort falling in at
front and rear, but when the cavalcade had turned the angle of the road
Kinnard Towers beckoned Black Tom Carmichael to his side and spoke
grimly.
"Thar's trouble breedin', Tom, an' this young Bear Cat Stacy's in ther
b'ilin'. Ye played ther fool when yer failed ter git him as a kid. Hit
war only a-layin' up torment erginst ther future."
Henderson lay long awake that night in the loft which he shared with
Bear Cat. He heard the snores of the man and woman sleeping below, but
the unmoving figure beside him had not relaxed in slumber. Henderson
wondered if he were reflecting upon that talk by the gate and all the
dark possibilities it might presage.
It was almost dawn, when Bear Cat slipped from under his quilt, drew on
his shoes and trousers and left the loft-like attic, his feet making no
sound on the rungs of the ladder.
What furtive mission was taking him out, pondered Henderson, into the
laurel-masked hills at that hour?
But out in the creek-bed road, with the setting moon on his face, Bear
Cat Stacy paused and drank in a long breath.
"He seen Blossom's eyes flash, he said," murmured the boy with his
hands clenched at his sides, then he threw back his shoulders and spoke
half aloud and very resolutely: "Wa'al they won't never hev ter flash
no more fer thet cause." After a little while, his gaze fixed on the
myriad stars, he spoke again. "God Almighty, I needs thet ye should
holp me now. I aims ter go dry fer all time--an' I kain't hardly
compass hit withouten ye upholds me."
Wheeling abruptly, he went with long strides around the turn of the
road. A half hour later he was noiselessly opening the gate of the
preacher's house. He meant to wait there until Blossom awoke, but
prompted by habit he gave, thrice repeated, the quavering and perfectly
counterfeited call of a barn owl. Since she had been a very small girl,
that had been their signal, and though she would not hear it now, it
pleased him to repeat it.
Then to his astonishment he heard, very low, the whining creak of an
opening door, and there before him, fully dressed, intently awake,
stood the girl herself.
"Blossom," said Bear Cat in a low voice that trembled a little,
"Blossom, I came over ter wail hyar till ye woke up. I came ter tell
ye--thet I'm ready ter give ye my hand. I hain't never goin' ter tech a
drap of licker no more, so long es I lives. I says hit ter ye with God
Almighty listenin'."
"Oh, Turney----!" she exclaimed, then her voice broke and her eyes swam
with tears. "I'm--I'm right proud of ye," was all she could find the
words to add.
"Did I wake ye up?" demanded the boy in a voice of self-accusation. "I
didn't aim to. I 'lowed I'd wait till mornin'."
Blossom shook her head. "I hain't been asleep yit," she assured him.
Her cheeks flushed and she drooped her head as she explained. "I've
been a-prayin, Turney. God's done answered my prayer."
Turner Stacy took off his hat and shook back the dark lock of hair that
fell over his forehead. Beads of moisture stood out on his temples.
"Did ye keer--thet much, Blossom?" he humbly questioned, and suddenly
the girl threw both arms about his neck. "I keers all a gal _kin_ keer,
Turney. I wasn't sartain afore--but I knowed hit es soon as I begun
prayin' fer ye."
Standing there in the pallid mistiness before dawn, and yielding her
lips to the pressure of his kiss, Blossom felt the almost religious
solemnity of the moment. She was crossing the boundary of acknowledged
love--and he had passed through the stress of terrific struggle before
he had been able to bring her his pledge. His face, now cool, had been
hot with its fevered passion. But she did not know that out of this
moment was to be born transforming elements of change destined to shake
her life and his; to quake the very mountains themselves; to rend the
old order's crust, and finally, after tempest and bloodshed--to bring
the light of a new day. No gift of prophecy told her that, of the
parentage of this declaration of her love and this declaration of his
pledge, was to be born in him a warrior's spirit of crusade which could
only reach victory after all the old vindictive furies had been roused
to wrath--and conquered--and the shadow of tragedy had touched them
both.
And had Bear Cat Stacy, holding her soft cheek pressed to his own, been
able to look even a little way ahead, he would have gone home and
withdrawn the hospitality he had pledged to the guest who slept there.