The post-office at Possum Trot, which serves the dwellers along the
waters of Skinflint, is housed in one corner of a shack store and the
distribution of its mail is attended with a friendly informality.
Thus no suspicion was engendered when a neighbor of Joe Stacy's dropped
in each day and regularly volunteered, with a spirit of neighborly
accommodation, "I reckon ef thar's anything fer Joe Stacy or airy other
folks dwellin' 'twixt hyar an' my house, I'll fotch hit over to 'em."
The post-master had no way of knowing that this person was an agent of
Kinnard Towers or that, when one day he handed out a letter "backed" to
Joe in the scrawl of Lone Stacy, it went not to its rightful recipient
but to the Quarterhouse.
Jerry Henderson, in due time, stepped from his day coach at Marlin
Town, equally innocent of suspicion, and was pleased to see emerging
from the raw, twilight shadows, a man, unfamiliar of face, whose elbow
cradled a repeating rifle.
"I reckon ye be Jerry Henderson, hain't ye?" inquired a suave and
amicable voice, and with a nod Jerry replied, "Yes--and you are Joe
Stacy?"
The man, slight but wiry and quick of movement, shook his head. "No--my
name's John Blackwell. Joe, he couldn't hardly git hyar hisself, so he
sent me in his stid but I reckon me an' ther boys kin put ye over ther
route, without _dee_fault."
As if in corroboration of this assurance Jerry saw shadowy shapes
materializing out of the empty darkness and as he mounted the extra
horse provided for him he counted the armed figures swinging easily
into their saddles. There were eight of them. His personal escort was
larger than that with which Towers himself traveled abroad.
But when the cortege swung at length into an unfamiliar turning Jerry
was startled and demanded sharply: "Why are we leaving the high road?
This isn't the way to Lone Stacy's house."
The man who had met him bowed with a reassuring calmness.
"No, but Joe 'lowed hit would be safer an' handier, too, fer ye ter
spend ther night at his house on Skinflint. Hit's nigher an' all these
men air neighbors of his'n. Ter-morrow you kin fare on ter Little
Slippery by daylight."
With an acquiescent nod, Henderson relapsed into silence and they rode
in the starlight without sound save the thud of cuppy hooves on muddy
byways, the straining creak of stirrup straps and a clinking of
bit-rings.
Finally the cavalcade halted at a crossing where the shadows lay in
sooty patches and its leader detached himself to engage in low-voiced
converse with someone who seemed to have been suddenly created out of
the pitchy thickness of the roadside.
Soon Blackwell rode back and, with entire seriousness, made a startling
suggestion.
"Right down thar, in thet valley, Mr. Henderson--whar ye kin see a
leetle speck of light--sets Kinnard Towers' Quarterhouse. Would hit
pleasure ye ter stop off thar an' enjoy a small dram? Hit's a
right-chillin' night."
The railroad's agent had never visited that place of whose ill repute
he had heard such bizarre tales, but in all this high, wild country, he
thought, there was no other spot of which it so well behooved his party
to ride wide. John Blackwell was lighting his pipe just then and by the
flare of the match Henderson studied the face for a glint of jesting,
but the eyes were humorless and entirely sober.
"I think we'd better give the Quarterhouse as wide a berth as
possible," he answered dryly.
"Hits fer you ter say, Mr. Henderson," was the quiet rejoinder. "But
I'll give ye Joe Stacy's message. From what his brother writ him Joe
concluded thet Lone warn't aimin' ter start no needless strife with
Kinnard Towers, but he aimed ter make hit p'intedly cl'ar thet ther
Stacys was detarmined ter pertect ye, an' thet ye'd done come back hyar
plumb open an' upstandin'."
"That's true enough," assented Jerry. "I'm not trying to hide out, but
I don't see any profit in walking into the lion's den."
The guide nodded sympathetically. He seemed imbued with the excellent
military conception of obeying orders and proffering no gratuitous
counsel.
"Joe 'lowed thet ef things looked favorable hit mout be a right-bold
sort of thing an' a right wise one, too, to stop in thar as ye rid by.
Hit's a public tavern--an' hit would prove thet ye're hyar, with a
bodyguard, neither seekin' trouble ner fearin' hit."
"Why didn't you suggest this before, Mr. Blackwell?" inquired Henderson
to whom the very effrontery of the plan carried an appeal.
"Joe didn't want me ter risk even namin' hit ter ye twell we knowed how
ther land lay over thar," came the prompt and easy response. "Ye seed
me talkin' with a man out front thar jest now, didn't ye? Wa'al thet
war one of our boys, thet come direct from ther Quarterhouse, ter bear
me ther tidin's. Thar hain't more'n a handful of men thar now--an' half
of 'em's our friends. I reckon ye hain't in no great peril nohow so
long as we're all tergither--an' full-armed."
Henderson felt that already his prestige had suffered from an
appearance of flight. Here was an opportunity ready to hand for its
complete rehabilitation. The bold course is always the best defense,
and his decision was prompt.
"Come on then. Let's go in."
At the long rack in front of the frowning stockade, as they dismounted
and hitched, were already tethered a half-dozen horses.
* * * * *
Bear Cat Stacy, impelled by Lew Turner's news, traveled in a fever of
haste. He meant to go as straight as a hiving bee to Marlin and if need
be to follow Henderson to the lowlands of Kentucky. Henderson had
compromised Blossom, by the undeviating standards of mountain code, and
he must come back and marry her even if he had to be dragged out of the
most conspicuous place in Louisville itself. Casting all considerations
of precaution and safety to the winds, the lover, whose devotion called
for self-effacement, sought only the shortest way, and the shortest way
led past the Quarterhouse.
When he was within a mile of the point where Towers' resort straddled
the state line he met a mounted man with a lantern swinging at his
pommel.
"I kain't tarry ter hev speech with ye, Sim," he said shortly, "I'm in
hot haste."
Yet as the other drawled a question, Bear Cat did tarry and a cold
moisture dewed his temples.
"Did ye know thet yore friend, Jerry Henderson, hed done come back?"
inquired Sim, and Turner's limbs trembled, then grew stiff as saddle
leather.
"Come back! When did he come? Whar is he now?" The questions tumbled
upon each other with a mounting vibrance of impetuosity.
"I war a-ridin' inter the road outen a side path a leetle spell back
when I heered hosses an' so I drawed up ter let 'em go by," the chance
traveler informed him. "I reckon they didn't hardly discern me. I
hadn't lit my lantern then, but one of 'em lighted his pipe with a
match an' I _ree_cognized two faces. One was Mr. Henderson's an' one
was Sam Carlyle's. I seed sev'ral rifles acrost ther saddles, too."
"Which way war they ridin'?"
"'Peared like most likely they war makin' fer ther Quarterhouse."
"I'm obleeged ter ye." And Bear Cat was gone again into the darkness.
When he had turned the first bend his walk broke into a run. His mind
was racing, too. So Henderson had not only come back, but come back
with a reversed allegiance. He was riding with a Towers bodyguard and
bound for a Towers stronghold! The name of Sam Carlyle indicated that
as definitely as if it had been the name of Black Tom Carmichael. In
one way this dropping of all friendly pretense by Jerry made his own
task clearer and easier--but it was the most hazardous thing he had
ever undertaken. Single handed, he must go into the place where
bloodshed was no novelty and take Henderson away, and he went at a run.
Presumably, Jerry Henderson would not stop long in the bar-room, but
would be conducted to the presence of Kinnard Towers, and, with all his
haste, Bear Cat's speed seemed to himself desperately slow.
He and his father had protected this ingrate against Towers' wrath, he
bitterly reflected, and this was their requital. Their guest had used
that hospitality to steal the love of Blossom and then to discard her.
He had deceived her, compromised her, promised her marriage and fled in
the face of danger. Lew Turner had said: "She's been pinin' round like
somebody sickenin' ter her death!" That was what her full trust had
come to--and if she had trusted that far her trust might have gone
farther! Then finally from the secure distance of the city Henderson
had made his terms with Kinnard Towers!
Now Blossom was going to be married--a heart-racking groan rumbled in
his throat. Blossom's wedding! How he had dreamed of it from his first
days of callow love-thoughts! He had fed his imagination upon pictures
of the house he had meant to build for her down there by the river! To
his nostrils now seemed to come the sweet fragrance of freshly hewn
timbers and sawed lumber; incense of home-making! A hundred times he
had visualized himself--the ceremony over--riding proudly with his
bride on a pillion behind him, as the mountain groom had always brought
his bride, from her father's house to his own--and her own!
Now her honor required that an unwilling husband should be brought to
her--her honor and her heart's bruised wish--and he, who had planned it
all differently, must see the matter accomplished--to-night!
* * * * *
Henderson and his guard had strolled with a fine assumption of
carelessness into the barn-like resort and, as the handful of loiterers
there recognized them, an abrupt silence fell and glasses, half-raised,
were held for a moment poised.
From a huge hearth-cavern at one end of the room leaped the ruddy
illumination of burning logs and fagots in the flaming proportions of a
bonfire. Wreaths of blue and brown smoke floated in foggy streamers
between the dark walls and up to the cobwebbed rafters. The lamps
guttered and flared against their tin reflectors, reeking with an oily
stench in the stagnation of the unaltered air.
Along one end of the place went the bar, backed by its shelves of
bottles and thick glassware, and in each side wall gaped a door--one
for each state. Besides a few hickory-withed chairs there were several
even ruder tables and benches, riven with axe and adze out of wide
logs, and supported by such legs as those of a butcher's block. But
these furnishings were all near the walls--and the whole center area of
the floor, with its white-painted boundary line, was as unencumbered as
a deck cleared for action.
The momentary surprise which greeted the newcomers was for the most
part fictitious--and carefully rehearsed, but of this Jerry Henderson
had no knowledge.
He walked to the bar, followed by one or two of his guardians, and
extended a general invitation. "Gentlemen, it's my treat. What will
you-all have?"
After the glasses had been filled and drained, Henderson went over and
stood for a while in the grateful warmth of the booming hearth. He was
looking on at this picture with its savor of medievalism--the ensemble
that called to mind a Hogarth prim, but soon he nodded to his guide who
slouched not far from his elbow.
"I reckon we'd better fare on, Mr. Blackwell," he suggested evenly.
"We've still got a journey ahead of us."
Blackwell seemed less impressed with the immediate urgency.
"Thar hain't no tormentin' haste," he demurred. "We're all right
stiff-j'inted from ridin'. We mout as well limber up a leetle mite
afore we starts out ergin."
Jerry's eyes clouded. He would have preferred finding a spirit of
readier obedience in his body-guard, but it was best to accept the
situation with philosophy. Accordingly he turned again to the bar,
though this time he made only a pretense of drinking. Fresh arrivals
had begun drifting in and the place now held more than a score. Among
them were already several whose voices were thickening or growing
shrill, according to their individual fashions of becoming drunk.
Jerry sought to reassure himself against the disquieting birth of
suspicion, yet when he heard one of the newcomers address Blackwell as
Sam instead of John, an ugly apprehension settled upon him and this
foreboding was not allayed as he caught the response in a low and
savage growl: "Shet up, ye fool!"
The temper of the motley outfit was rapidly growing boisterous, though
he himself seemed ignored until, in turning, he accidently jostled a
man whom he had never seen before to-night, and that individual wheeled
on him with an abusive truculence. Henderson's gorge rose, but his
realization was now fully awake to the requirement of self-control, so
with a good-natured retort he moved away.
Beckoning peremptorily to Blackwell, he started at a deliberate pace
toward the door, but before he reached it, the staggering figure of the
quarrelsome unknown overtook him and lurched drunkenly against him.
Then Henderson felt a stunning blow in the face, and under its
unexpected force he reeled back against the wall.
He was no longer in doubt. He had been beguiled here to be made the
victim of what should appear an accidental encounter, and all that
remained now was to sell his life at as punitive a rate as possible.
As he reached under his coat for the automatic pistol which was his
sole remaining dependence, he caught in a sidewise glimpse the face of
Sam Carlyle alias John Blackwell. It wore a sardonic smile and its lips
opened like a trap to shout in a staccato abandonment of disguise. "Git
him, boys! _Git_ him!"
It was palpably enough a signal for which they had been waiting, like
the pack-master's horn casting loose his hounds. Instantly the place
burst into an eruption of confused and frenzied tumult. Henderson had a
momentary sense of unshaven faces with lips drawn over wolfish fangs,
of the pungent reek of gunpowder in his nostrils and, in his ears, the
cracking of pistol reports--as yet sounding only in demonstration.
With a few steps more they would be swarming upon him, as a pack piles
upon its defenseless quarry. But his own weapon spat doggedly, too, and
for the brevity of an instant the rush wavered.
His assailants were crowding each other so hamperingly that the
fusillade from the front was wild and, at first, ineffective. Those at
the fore, cooled by a resolute reception and the sight of one of their
number going down, with a snarl of pain, pressed forcibly back.
For the space of one quick breath, they afforded their victim a
reprieve. He was groping, with his left hand outstretched, against the
wall toward the nearby door, when he felt that arm grow numb and drop
limp at his side. Through his left shoulder darted a sensation hardly
recognized as pain.
The two doors had not been closed. It was unnecessary. Before the
victim should reach either he would be riddled, and even if he gained
one he would fall before he could mount and ride away. Since they had
him at their mercy they could afford to toy with him.
No one saw the figure that had materialized on the threshold to which
all the backs of the yelping crowd were turned. It had come unannounced
from the outer darkness. It stood for a moment looking on and in that
moment understood the only thing necessary to comprehend: that the man
who must be married to-night, was being prematurely assassinated.
From his shadow of concealment at the door, this volunteer in the
conflict thrust forward his rifle. His lean jaws were set and his eyes
were full of a cold and very deadly light. It was the ringing voice of
his repeater that announced him as it launched into the place so swift
and fatal a sequence of messages that, to those inside, it appeared
that they were being raked by a squad's volley.
The sharp challenge of the clean-mouthed rifle, multiplied by its echo,
dominated the muffled belching of revolvers like thunder crashing
through the smother of winds, and upon the drunken mob of murderers,
the effect was both immediate and appalling. To a savage lust for
violence succeeded panic and an uncontrollable instinct of flight.
A very different performance had been rehearsed in advance. It had
contemplated a pretense of melee in which Jerry Henderson was to be
killed--and no one else was to suffer. What had been staged as a
bar-room brawl with an incidental murder had been switched without
prior notice into battle and siege, and as every head came about with
eyes starting and jaws sagging, many dropped and lay prone on the floor
to escape the scathe of flying lead. Utilizing the respite of diverted
attention, Jerry Henderson overturned a heavy table, behind which he
crouched. He was bleeding now from half a dozen wounds--and his only
thought was to die fighting.
But that moment of terror-arrested inaction would not last, and before
it was spent, Bear Cat Stacy had hurled himself with hurricane fury
into the room, his rifle clubbed and flying, flail-like, about his
head. The brief advantage of surprise must be utilized for the rush
across the floor and, if it were to succeed, it must be accomplished
before the boldest recovered their poise.
He must reach Henderson's side and the two must fight their way out
shoulder to shoulder. Henderson must not die--just yet!
Turner Stacy covered half the distance by the sheer impetuosity of his
onslaught, and reached the painted line of the state border, before a
voice from the outskirts sought to rally the dismayed and disorganized
forces with a rafter-rocking howl: "Bear Cat Stacy! _Git_ him boys! Git
'em both!"
But the new arrival was not easy to "git." He seemed an indestructible
spirit of devastation; a second Samson wielding the jaw bone of an ass
and wreaking death among his adversaries. He hurled aside his rifle
shattered against broken heads and caught up a heavy chair. He cast
away the chair, carrying a man down with it as it flew, and fought with
his hands.
The superstition of his charmed life seemed to have something more of
verity, just then, than old wives' gossip.
Then the initial spell of panic broke and those who had neither fled
nor fallen swarmed grimly upon him. The pistols broke out again in
their ragged yelping, but Bear Cat seemed everywhere at once, and
always at such close grips with one or more adversaries that lead could
not reach him save through the flesh of his assailants. And while this
deadly romp went forward, Henderson rose and ducked like a
jack-in-the-box behind his massive obstruction, sniping at such as fell
back from the core of the conflict.
But preponderating numbers must ultimately prevail and neither Stacy
nor Henderson could have outlasted the minute in that inferno, had not
Sam Carlyle undertaken to hurl himself on Bear Cat when, for a moment,
the single combatant had wrenched himself free of the struggling mass.
Carlyle dived instead of standing off and shooting, and with the
swiftness of a leopard's stroke Turner whipped out his pistol and
received the Towers henchman on its muzzle.
"Hands high!" he ordered in a voice that crackled with pleasure at this
miracle of deliverance, and Carlyle, realizing too late his blunder,
stretched his arms overhead. Then giving back step by step and holding
the would-be assassin as a shield at his front, Bear Cat edged to the
corner of the table. He was bleeding, too, not in one place but in
many.
"Git behind me, Henderson," he commanded briefly, "an' make yore way
ter ther door!"
Roused to a fictitious strength by the infection of his rescuer's
prowess, the wounded promoter sought to gain his feet, but his legs
gave way under the seeming burden of tons. "I'm not just wounded," he
mused, "I'm riddled and shredded." Sinking back, he said gaspingly,
"Save yourself, Stacy.... I reckon ... I'm done for."
But Bear Cat, crouching with his pistol thrust against the breast of
his human shield, snapped out his words with a resolve which appeared
ready to assume command over death itself.
"Do what I tells ye! Ye kain't die yit--ye've got to endure fer a
spell. I hain't done with ye!"
[Illustration: Then giving back step by step, Bear Cat edged to the
corner of the table]
Pulling himself painfully up by the table's edge with his one sound
arm, Jerry made a panting and final effort, but, as he struggled, part
of his body became exposed and that was the signal for several
desultory shots. He fell back again, bleeding at the mouth, and the
spot where he collapsed was reddened with the flow from his wounds.
Bear Cat Stacy's voice ripped out again in a furious roar.
"Quit shootin'!" he yelled. "One more shoot an' I kills Sam Carlyle in
his tracks. I warns ye!"
Carlyle turned his head, too, and bellowed across his shoulder.
"Fer God's sake boys, hold up! He means hit!"
As the racket subsided, Stacy knelt, still covering his hostage and
said briefly to Jerry, "Hook yore arm round my shoulders. I'll tote
ye."
He came laboriously to his feet again with his clinging burden of
bleeding freight,--and abruptly Kinnard Towers appeared in the other
door. His voice was raised in a semblance of rage, corroborated by an
anger so well-simulated that it made his face livid.
"What manner of hell's deviltry air all this?" he thundered. "Who
attacked these men in my place? By God, I don't 'low ter hev my house
turned into no murder den." His minions, acting on his orders, knew
their chief too well to argue, and as they fell shamefacedly silent,
Kinnard shouted to Bear Cat.
"Son, let me succor ye. He looks badly hurted."
"Succor, hell!" retorted Bear Cat grimly. "You an' me will talk later.
Now ef any feller follers me, I aims ter kill this man ye hires ter do
yore murderin'."
At the hitching-rack several horses still stood tethered. There was
need for haste, for one fugitive was perhaps bleeding to death and the
other was wounded and exhausted. Some of the scattered murderers might
be already waiting, too, in the shadows of the thickets.
Then for the first time Bear Cat spoke to Henderson of the mission that
had brought him there.
"Now ye've got ter git up an' ride ter Brother Fulkerson's house," he
said, with a bitter curtness. "Ye're a-goin' ter be married ter-night."
"Married! To-night!" Jerry was hanging limp in the arms of his rescuer.
His senses were reeling with pain and a weakness which was close to
coma, but at the tone he raised his lids and met the glittering eyes
that bent close, feeling a hot breath on his cheeks. This was the face
of the man who had recklessly walked into a death trap to save him, but
in its implacable fixity of feature there was now no vestige of
friendliness.
"Married!" echoed the plunger feebly. "No, buried. I'm mortally hurt, I
tell you.... I'm dying. Just put me down and save yourself while ...
you can."
But Bear Cat Stacy was lifting him bodily to the saddle and holding him
in place.
"Dying?" he scornfully repeated. "I hopes ter God ye air, but afore ye
dies ye're agoin' ter be married. Maybe I'm dying, too--I don't
know--but I aims ter last long enough ter stand up with ye first."