When 'Bear Cat' Went Dry Part 12

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. "G.o.d Almighty, I needs thet ye should holp me now. I aims ter go dry fer all time--an' I kain't hardly compa.s.s. .h.i.t 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. .h.i.t ter ye with G.o.d 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 a.s.sured him.

Her cheeks flushed and she drooped her head as she explained. "I've been a-prayin, Turney. G.o.d'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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sion. 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.

CHAPTER VII

Because Jerry Henderson viewed the life of the hills through understanding eyes, certain paradoxes resolved themselves into the expected. He was not surprised to find under Lone Stacy's rude exterior an innate politeness which was a thing not of formula but of instinct.

"Would hit pleasure ye," demanded the host casually the next morning, "ter go along with me up thar an' see that same identical still thet I tuck sich pains yestiddy ye _shouldn't_ see?" But Henderson shook his head, smiling.

"No, thank you. I'd rather not see any still that I can avoid. What I don't know can't get me--or anyone else--into trouble."

Lone Stacy nodded his approval as he said: "I didn't aim ter deny ye no mark of confi_dence_. I 'lowed I'd ought ter ask ye."

Turner Stacy stood further off from illiteracy than his father. In the loft which the visitor had shared with him the night before he had found a copy of the Kentucky Statutes and one of Blackstone's Commentaries, though neither of them was so fondly thumbed as the life of Lincoln.

By adroit questioning Jerry elicited the information that the boy had been as far along the way of learning as the sadly deficient district schools could conduct him; those shambling wayside inst.i.tutions where, on puncheon benches, the children memorize in that droning chorus from which comes the local name of "blab-school."

Turner had even taken his certificate and taught for a term in one of these pathetic places. He laughed as he confessed this: "Hit jest proves how pore ther schools air, hyarabouts," he avowed.

"I expect you'd have liked to go to college," inquired Henderson, and the boy's eyes blazed pa.s.sionately with his thwarted l.u.s.t for opportunity--then dimmed to wretchedness.

"Like hit! h.e.l.l, Mr. Henderson, I'd lay my left hand down, without begrudgin' hit, an' cut hit off at ther wrist fer ther chanst ter do thet!"

Henderson sketched for him briefly the histories of schools that had come to other sections of the hills; schools taught by inspired teachers, with their model farms, their saw-mills and even their hospitals: schools to which not only children but pupils whose hair had turned white came and eagerly learned their alphabets, and as much more as they sought.

The boy raised a hand. "Fer G.o.d's sake don't narrate them things," he implored. "They sots me on fire. My grandsires hev been satisfied hyar fer centuries an' all my folks sees in me, fer dreamin' erbout things like thet, is lackin' of loyalty."

Henderson found his interest so powerfully engaged that he talked on with an excess of enthusiasm.

"But back of those grandsires were other grandsires, Turner. They were the strongest, the best and the most American of all America; those earlier ancestors of yours and mine. They dared to face the wilderness, and those that got across the mountains won the West."

"Ours didn't git acrost though," countered the boy dryly. "Ours was them thet started out ter do big things an' failed."

Henderson smiled. "A mule that went lame, a failure to strike one of the few possible pa.s.ses, made all the difference between success and failure in that pilgrimage, but the blood of those empire-builders is our blood and what they are now, we shall be when we catch up. We've been marking time while they were marching, that's all."

"Ye've done been off ter college yoreself, hain't ye, Mr. Henderson?"

"Yes. Harvard."

"Harvard? Seems ter me I've heered tell of hit. Air hit as good as Berea?"

The visitor repressed his smile, but before he could answer Bear Cat pressed on:

"Whilst ye're up hyar, I wonder ef hit'd be askin' too master much of ye ef--" the boy paused, gulped down his embarra.s.sment and continued hastily--"ef ye could kinderly tell me a few books ter read?"

"Gladly," agreed Henderson. "It's the young men like you who have the opportunity to make life up here worth living for the rest."

After a moment Bear Cat suggested dubiously: "But amongst my folks I wouldn't git much thanks fer tryin'. Ther outside world stands fer interference--an' they won't suffer hit. They believes in holdin' with their kith an' kin."

Again Henderson nodded, and this time the smile that danced in his eyes was irresistibly infectious. In a low voice he quoted:

"The men of my own stock They may do ill or well, But they tell the lies I am wonted to, They are used to the lies I tell.

We do not need interpreters When we go to buy and sell."

Bear Cat Stacy stood looking off over the mountain sides. He filled his splendidly rounded chest with a deep draft of the morning air,--air as clean and sparkling as a fine wine, and into his veins stole an ardor like intoxication.

In his eyes kindled again that light, which had made Henderson think of volcanoes lying quiet with immeasurable fires slumbering at their hearts.

Last night the boy had fought out the hardest battle of his life, and to-day he was one who had pa.s.sed a definite mile-post of progress. This morning, too, a seed had dropped and a new life influence was stirring.

It would take storm and stress and seasons to bring it to fulfilment, perhaps. The poplar does not grow from seed to great tree in a day--but, this morning, the seed had begun to swell and quicken.

What broke, like the fledgling of a new conception, in Bear Cat's heart, was less palpably but none the less certainly abroad in the air, riding the winds--with varied results.

That an outside voice was speaking: a voice which was dangerous to the old G.o.ds of custom, was the conviction entertained, not with elation but with somber resentment in the mind of Kinnard Towers. Upon that realization followed a grim resolve to clip the wings of innovation while there was yet time. It was no part of this crude dictator's program to suffer a stranger, with a gift for "glib speech," to curtail his enjoyment of prerogatives built upon a lifetime of stress and proven power.