Under the impact of these tidings Turner Stacy came to his feet with a
sudden transformation of bearing. The poetic abstraction which had, a
moment ago, been a facial mirror for the sunset mysticism, vanished to
be harshly usurped by a spirit of sinister wrath.
For several seconds he did not speak, but stood statuesquely taut and
strained, the line of his lips straight and unbending over the angle of
a set jaw.
The yellow glow of the sinking sun seemed to light him as he stood by
the window into a ruddy kinship with bronze, awakening a glint of
metallic hardness on cheekbone, temple and dilated nostril. It was the
menacing figure of a man whose ancestors had always settled their own
scores in private reprisal and by undiscounted tally, and one just now
forgetful of all save his heritage of blood.
Then the strained posture relaxed and Bear Cat Stacy inquired in a tone
of dead and impersonal calm:
"Mr. Henderson, hev ye got a gun?"
As Jerry shook his head, Bear Cat wheeled abruptly on Jud White: "Lend
me yore weepin, Jud," he demanded with a manner of overbearing
peremptoriness.
"I'd love ter obleege ye, Bear Cat," haltingly parried the officer,
"but I kain't hardly do hit--lawfully."
Volcanic fires burst instantly in the eyes where they had been
smoldering, until from them seemed to spurt an outpouring of flame and
the voice of command was as explosive as the rending thunders that
release a flow of molten lava.
"Don't balk me, Jud," Stacy cautioned. "I'm in dire haste. Air ye goin'
ter loan me thet gun of yore own free will or hev I got ter take hit
offen ye?"
The town marshal glanced backward toward the exit, but with leopard
swiftness Bear Cat was at the door, barring it with the weight of his
body, and his breath was coming with deep intake of passion. After an
irresolute moment, White surrendered his automatic pistol.
But as Turner gripped the knob, Jerry Henderson laid a deterring hand
on his shoulder. "Just a moment, Bear Cat," he said quietly. Somewhat
to his surprise the younger man paused and, as he turned his face
questioningly to the speaker, some part of its fury dissolved.
"This is a time, Turner, when it's mighty easy to make a mistake," went
on the promoter earnestly. "If your father sent for you, it's pretty
certain that he wants to speak to you before you take any step."
"Thet's identically what he bade me caution ye, Bear Cat," echoed
White. "He 'lowed thar'd be time enough fer reprisal later on."
"Mr. White," Henderson demanded as he turned and fronted the marshal
with a questioning gaze, "before he goes over there, I want you to give
me your hand that this isn't a scheme to get Bear Cat Stacy in the jail
under false pretenses, so that he can be more easily arrested."
"An' answer thet honest," Turner warned vehemently, "because ef I don't
walk outen thet jail-house es free es I goes inter hit, you won't never
leave hit alive yoreself, Jud. How comes hit ther revenue didn't seek
ter arrest me, too?"
"So holp me Almighty God, men," the voice of the officer carried
conviction of its sincerity. "I came over hyar only bearin' tidin's
from Lone Stacy. I hain't aidin' no revenue. I heered Mark Tapper 'low
thet he hedn't no charge ter mek ergin ye jest now."
"In that case," declared Henderson, assuming the role of spokesman,
"we'll both go with you to the jail. Bear Cat will give me the gun,
since he can't go in unsearched, and you will remain with me, unarmed,
as a hostage until he comes out."
"Thet satisfies me, all right," readily agreed the town marshal.
The jail-house at Marlin Town squats low of roof and uncompromising in
its squareness to the left of the Courthouse; hardly more than a brick
pen, sturdily solid and sullenly unlovely of facade.
When father and son met in the bare room where one rude chair was the
only furnishing save for a tin basin on a soap-box, the fire of renewed
wrath leaped in Turner's eyes and he spoke with a tremor of voice:
"I reckon ye knows full well, pap, thet I don't aim ter let ye lay hyar
long. I aims ter tek ye outen hyar afore sun-up--ef I hes ter take ye
single-handed!"
The sunset was fading and in the bleak cell there was a grayness
relieved only by the dim light from a high, barred slit that served as
a window. The two men had to peer intently at each other through
widened pupils to read the expression of lips and eyes.
Old Lone Stacy smiled grimly.
"I'm obleeged ter ye, son." His response was quiet. "An' I knows ye
means what ye says, but jest now ye've got ter let _me_ decide whether
hit's a fit time ter wage war--or submit."
"Submit!" echoed the son in blank amazement. "Ye don't aim ter let 'em
penitenshery ye ergin, does ye?"
Laying a soothing hand on the arm that shook passionately, the senior
went on in a modulated voice.
"I've done studied this matter out, son, more ca'mly then you've hed
time ter do yit--an' I discerns how ye kin holp me best. Sometimes hit
profits a man more ter study ther fox then ther eagle."
The boy stood there in the half light, finding it bitter to stomach
such passive counsel, but he gulped down his rising gorge of fury and
forced himself to acquiesce calmly, "I'm hearkenin' ter ye."
"Ther revenue 'lowed thet he war plumb obleeged ter jail me," went on
the elder moonshiner evenly, "because tidin's hes done reached ther men
up above him."
"I aims ter compel Mark Tapper ter give me ther names of them damn'
tale-bearers," exploded Bear Cat violently, "an' I'm a-goin' ter settle
with him an' them, too, in due course."
But again Lone Stacy shook his head.
"Thet would only bring on more trouble," he declared steadfastly. "Mark
Tapper made admission thet he hes a weak case, an' he said thet ef I
went with him peaceable he wouldn't press hit no further then what he
war compelled ter. He 'lowed he hedn't no evi_dence_ erginst _you_. I
don't believe he's seed our still yit an' ef ye heeds my counsel, he
won't never see hit."
"What does ye counsel then? I'm a-listenin'."
Lone Stacy's voice cast off its almost conciliating tone and became one
of command. "I wants thet ye shell ride back over thar es fast es a
beast kin carry ye--an' git thar afore ther revenue. I wants thet ye
shell move thet still into a place of safe concealment erginst his
comin', I wants thet 'stid of tryin' ter carcumvent him ye sha'n't be
thar at all when he comes."
"Not be thar?" The words were echoed in surprise, and the older head
bowed gravely.
"Jist so. Ef they don't find ther copper worm ner ther kittle--an'
don't git ye ter testify ergin me, I've still got a right gay chanst
ter come cl'ar."
"Does ye 'low," demanded the son with deeply hurt pride, "that anybody
this side of hell-a-poppin' could fo'ce me ter give testimony ergin my
own blood?"
Again the wrinkled hand of the father fell on the shoulder of his son.
It was as near to a caress as his undemonstrative nature could
approach.
"I wouldn't hev ye perjure yoreself, son--an' without ye did thet--ye'd
convict me--ef ye was thar in Co'te."
Turner glanced up at the narrow slit in the brick wall through which
now showed only a greenish strip of pallid sky. His lips worked
spasmodically. "I come over hyar resolved ter sot ye free," he said
slowly, "ter fight my way outen hyar an' take ye along with me--but I'm
ready ter heed yore counsel."
"Then ride over home es fast es ye kin go--an' when ye've told yore maw
what's happened, an' hid ther still, take Lee along with ye an' go
cl'ar acrost inter Virginny whar no summons sarver kain't find ye. Stay
plumb away from hyar till I sends ye word. Tell yore maw where I kin
reach ye, but don't tell me. I wants ter swear I don't know."
Bear Cat hesitated, then his voice shook with a storm of protest.
"I don't delight none thet ye should go down thar an' sulter in jail
whilst I'm up hyar enjoyin' freedom."
The older man met this impetuous outburst with the stoic's fine
tranquillity.
"When they tuck me afore," he said, "I left yore maw unprotected behind
me an' you was only a burden on her then. Now I kin go easy in my mind,
knowin' she's got you." The prisoner's voice softened. "She war a
mighty purty gal, yore maw, in them times. Right sensibly Blossom
Fulkerson puts me in mind of her now."
Lone Stacy broke off with abruptness and added gruffly: "I reckon ye'd
better be a-startin' home now--hit's comin' on ter be nightfall."
As Turner Stacy went out he turned and looked back. The cell was almost
totally dark now and its inmate had reseated himself, his shoulders
sagging dejectedly. "I'll do what he bids me now," Bear Cat told
himself grimly, "but some day thar's a-goin' ter be a reckonin'."
On his way to the livery stable he met Kinnard Towers on foot but, as
always, under escort. Still stinging under the chagrin of an hereditary
enemy's gratuitous intervention in his behalf and a deep-seated
suspicion of the man, he halted stiffly and his brow was lowering.
"Air these hyar tidin's true, Bear Cat? I've heerd thet yore paw's done
been jailed," demanded Kinnard solicitously, ignoring the coldness of
his greeting. "Kin I holp ye in any fashion?"
"No, we don't need no aid," was the curt response. "Ef we did we'd call
on ther Stacys fer hit."
Towers smiled. "I aimed ter show ye this a'tternoon thet I _felt_
friendly, Turner."
The manner was seemingly so sincere that the young man felt ashamed of
his contrasting churlishness and hastened to amend it.
"I reckon I hev need ter ask yore pardon, Kinnard. I'm sore fretted
about this matter."
"An' I don't blame ye neither, son. I jest stopped ter acquaint ye with
what folks says. This hyar whole matter looks like a sort of bluff on
Mark Tapper's part ter make a good showin' with ther govern_ment_. He
hain't hardly got nothin' but hearsay ter go on--unless he kin make
_you_ testify. Ef ye was ter kinderly disappear now fer a space of
time, I reckon nothin' much wouldn't come of hit."
"I'm obleeged ter ye Kinnard. Paw hes don' give me ther same counsel,"
said Bear Cat, as he hurried to the stable where he parted with Jerry
Henderson after a brief and earnest interview.
It was with a very set face and with very deep thoughts that Bear Cat
Stacy set out for his home on Little Slippery. He rode all night with
the starlight and the clean sweep of mountain wind in his face, and at
sunrise stabled his mount at the cabin of a kinsman and started on
again by a short cut "over the roughs" where a man can travel faster on
foot.
When eventually he entered the door of his house his mother looked
across the dish she was drying to inquire, "Where's yore paw at?"
He told her and, under the sudden scorn in her eyes, he flinched.
"Ye went down thar ter town with him," she accused in the high falsetto
of wrath, "an' ye come back scot free an' abandoned him ter ther
penitenshery an' ye didn't raise a hand ter save him! Ef hit hed of
been me I'd hev brought him home safe or I wouldn't of been hyar myself
ter tell of hit!"
Bear Cat Stacy went over and took the woman's wasted hands in both of
his own. As he looked down on her from his six feet of height there
came into his eyes a gentleness so winning that his expression was one
of surprising and tender sweetness.
"Does ye 'low," he asked softly, "that I'd hev done _thet_ ef he hadn't
p'intedly an' severely bid me do hit?"
He told her the story in all its detail and as she listened no tears
came into her eyes to relieve the hard misery of her face. But when he
had drawn a chair for her to the hearth and she had seated herself
stolidly there, he realized that he must go and remove the evidence
which still remained back there in the laurel thickets. He left her
tearless and haggard of expression, gazing dully ahead of her at the
ashes of the burned-out fire; the gaunt figure of a mountain woman to
whom life is a serial of apprehension.
When he came back at sunset she still sat there, bending tearlessly
forward, and it was not until he had crossed the threshold that he saw
another figure rise from its knees. Blossom Fulkerson had been kneeling
with her arms about the shrunken shoulders--but how long, he did not
know.
"Blossom," he said that evening as he was starting away into banishment
across the Virginia boundary, "I don't know how long I'm a-goin' ter be
gone, but I reckon you knows how I feels. I've done asked Mr. Henderson
ter look atter ye, when he comes back from Louisville. He aims ter see
ter hit that paw gits ther best lawyers ter defend him while he's
thar."
"I reckon then," replied the girl with a faith of hero-worship which
sent a sharp paroxysm of pain into Bear Cat's heart, "thet yore paw
will mighty sartain come cl'ar."
They were standing by the gate of the Stacy house, for Blossom meant to
spend that night with the lone woman who sat staring dully into the
blackened fireplace. To the lips of the departing lover rose a
question, inspired by that note of admiration which had lent a thrill
to her voice at mention of Jerry Henderson, but he sternly repressed
it.
To catechize her love would be disloyal and ungenerous. It would be a
wrong alike to her whom he trusted and to the man who was his loyal
friend--and hers. But in his heart, already sore with the prospect of
exile, with the thought of that dejectedly rocking figure inside and
the other figure he had left in the neutral grayness of the jail cell,
awakened a new ache. He was thinking how untutored and raw he must seem
now that his life had been thrown into the parallel of contrast with
the man who knew the broad world of "down below" and even of over-seas.
If to Blossom's thinking he himself had shrunken in stature, it was not
a surprising thing--but that did not rob the realization of its cutting
edge or its barb.
"Blossom," he said, as his face once more became ineffably gentle,
"thar's ther evenin' star comin' up over ther Wilderness Ridges." He
took both her hands in his and looked not at the evening star but into
the eyes that she lifted to gaze at it. "So long es I'm away--so long
es I lives--I won't never see hit withouten I thinks of _you_. But hit
hain't only when I see _hit_ thet I thinks of ye--hit's _always_. I
reckon ye don't sca'cely realize even a leetle portion of how much I
loves ye." He fell for a space silent, his glance caressing her, then
added unsteadily and with an effort to smile, "I reckon thet's jest got
ter be a secret a-tween ther Almighty, Who knows everything--an' me
thet don't know much else but jest _thet_!"
She pressed his hands, but she did not put her arms about him nor offer
to kiss him, and he reflected rather wretchedly that she had done that
only once. Though it might be ungenerous to think of it, save as a
coincidence, that one time had been before Jerry Henderson had been on
the scene for twenty-four hours.
Bear Cat Stacy, with the lemon afterglow at his back and only the
darkness before his face, was carrying a burdened spirit over into old
Virginia, where for the first time in his life he must, like some
red-handed murderer, "hide out" from the law.
Kinnard Towers felt that his plans had worked with a well-oiled
precision until the day after Lone Stacy's arrest, when he awoke to
receive the unwelcome tidings that Jerry Henderson had taken the train
at four o'clock that morning for Louisville.
For a moment black rage possessed him, then it cleared away into a more
philosophical mood as his informant added, "But he 'lowed ter several
folks thet he aimed ter come back ergin in about a week's time."
* * * * *
On that trip to Louisville Jerry Henderson saw to it that old Lone
Stacy should face trial with every advantage of learned and
distinguished counsel.
Jerry and President Williams of the C. and S.-E. Railways knew, though
the public did not, that the expenses of that defense were to be
charged up to the road's accounts under the head of "Incidentals--_in
re_ Cedar Mountain extension."
Old Lone had been an unconscious sponsor during these months and his
friendship warranted recognition, not only for what he had done, but
also for what he might yet do.
But the promoter's stay in the city was not happy since he found
himself floundering in a quandary of mind and heart which he could no
longer laugh away. He had heretofore boasted an adequate strength to
regulate and discipline his life. Such a power he had always regarded
as test and measure of an ambitious man's effectiveness. Its failure,
total or partial, was a flaw which endangered the metal and temper of
resolution.
On these keen and bracing days, as he walked briskly along the streets
of the city, he found himself instinctively searching for a face not to
be found; the face of Blossom Fulkerson and always upon realization
followed a pang of disappointment. Unless he watched himself he would
be idiotically falling in love with her, he mused, which was only a
vain denial that he was already in love with her.
It was in their half-conscious pervasiveness, their dream-like
subtlety, that these influences were strongest. When they emerged into
the full light of consciousness he laughed them away. Such fantasies
did not fit into his pattern of life. They were suicidally dangerous.
Yet they lingered in the fairy land of the partially realized.
He wished that her ancestors had been among those who had won through
to the promised land of the bluegrass, instead of those who had been
stranded in the dry-rot of the hills. In that event, perhaps, her
grandmothers would have been ladies in brocade and powdered hair
instead of bent crones dipping snuff by cabin hearth-stones. All their
inherent fineness of mind and charm, Blossom had--under the submerging
of generations. The most stately garden will go to ragged and
weed-choked desolation if left too long untended.
But he could hardly hope to make his more fashionable world see that.
The freshness of her charm would be less obvious than the lapses of her
grammar; the flash of her wit less marked than her difficulties with a
tea-cup.
Blossom, too, of late had been troubled with a restlessness of spirit,
new to her experience. Until that day last June upon which so many
important things had happened the gay spontaneity of her nature had
dealt little with perplexities. She had acknowledged a deep and
unsatisfied yearning for "education" and a fuller life, but even that
was not poignantly destructive of happiness.
Then within a space of twenty-four hours, Henderson had made his
appearance, bringing a sense of contact with the wonder-world beyond
the purple barriers; she had prayed through the night for Turner and he
had come to her at dawn with his pledge--and finally, she had confessed
her love.
In short she had matured with that swift sequence of happenings into
womanhood, and since then nothing had been quite the same. But of all
the unsettling elements, the disturbing-in-chief was Jerry Henderson.
He had flashed into her life with all the startling fascination of
Cinderella's prince, and matters hitherto accepted as axiomatic
remained no longer certain.
"Gittin' education" had before that meant keeping pace with Turner's
ambition. Now it involved a pathetic effort to raise herself to
Henderson's more complex plane.
She had sought as studiously as Jerry himself to banish the absurd idea
that this readjustment of values was sentimental, and she had as
signally failed.
These changes in herself had been of such gradual incubation that she
had never realized their force sufficiently to face and analyze
them--yet she had sent young Stacy away without a caress!
"I'm jest the same as plighted to Bear Cat," she told herself
accusingly, because loyalty was an element of her blood. "I ain't
hardly got ther right to think of Mr. Henderson." But she did think of
him. Perhaps she was culpable, but she was very young. Turner had
seemed a planet among small stars--then Jerry had come like a flaming
comet--and her heart was in sore doubt.
When, on his return, Henderson dropped from the step of the rickety
day-coach to the cinder platform of the station at Marlin Town, he met
Uncle Israel Calvert who paused to greet him.
"Wa'al howdy, stranger," began the old man with a full volumed
heartiness, then he added swiftly under his breath and with almost as
little movement of his lips as a ventriloquist. "Don't leave town
withouten ye sees me fust--hit's urgent. Don't appear ter hev much
speech with me in public. Meet me at ther Farmers' Bank--upsta'rs--one
hour hence."
Jerry Henderson recognized the whispered message as a warning which it
would be foolhardiness to ignore. Probably even as he received it he
was under surveillance, so instead of setting out at once on foot, he
waited and at the appointed time strolled with every appearance of
unconcern into the Farmers' Bank.
At the same time Black Tom Carmichael happened in to have a two-dollar
bill changed into silver, and overheard the cashier saying in a
matter-of-fact voice, "Thar's been some little tangle in yore balance,
Mr. Henderson. Would ye mind steppin' up to the directors' room an'
seein' ef ye kin straighten it out with the bookkeeper. She's up thar."
With a smile of assent Henderson mounted the narrow stairs and Black
Tom lighted his pipe and loafed with inquisitive indolence below.