When 'Bear Cat' Went Dry Part 21

Henderson shook his head with a sharp snap of decisiveness. "No, I'm not ready to be scared away just yet by enemies that threaten me from ambush. I mean to cross the mountain."

For a moment the old storekeeper chewed reflectively on the stem of his pipe, then he nodded his approval and went on:

"No, I didn't hardly 'low ye'd submit ter ther likes of thet without no debate." He lifted a package wrapped in newspaper which lay at his elbow on the table. "This hyar's one of them new-fangled automatic pistols and a box of ca'tridges ter fit hit. I reckon ye'd better slip hit inter yore pocket.... When I started over hyar, I borrowed a mule from Lone Stacy's house ... hit's at ther liv'ry-stable now an' ye kin call fer hit an' ride hit back."

"I usually go on foot," interrupted Henderson, but Uncle Israel raised a hand, commanding attention.

"I knows thet, but this time hit'll profit ye ter ride ther mule. He's got calked irons on his feet an' every man knows his tracks in ther mud.... They won't sca'cely aim ter lay-way yer till ye gits a good ways out from town, whar ther timber's more la'rely an' wild-like....

Word'll go on ahead of ye by them leetle deestrick telephone boxes thet ye're comin' mule-back an' they'll 'low ye don't suspicion nothin'.

They will be a-watchin' fer ther mule then ... an' ef ye starts out within ther hour's time ye kin make hit ter the head of Leetle Ivy by nightfall."

The adviser paused a moment, then went succinctly on.

"Hit's from thar on thet ye'll be in peril.... Now when ye reaches some rocky p'int whar hit won't leave no shoe-track, git down offen ther critter an' hit him a severe whack.... Thet mule will go straight on home jest as stiddy es ef ye war still ridin' him ... whilst _you_ turns inter ther la'rel on foot an' takes a hike straight across ther roughs. Hit's ther roads they'll be watchin' an' _you_ won't be on no road."

Jerry Henderson rose briskly from his chair. "Uncle Israel," he said feelingly, "I reckon I don't have to say I'm obliged to you. The quicker the start I get now, the better."

The old man settled back again with leisurely calm. "Go right on yore way, son, an' I'll tarry hyar a spell so nairy person won't connect my goin'-out with your'n."

As he pa.s.sed the cas.h.i.+er's grating Henderson nodded to Black Tom Carmichael.

"Does ye aim ter start acrost ther mounting?" politely inquired the chief lieutenant of Kinnard Towers, and Jerry smiled.

"Yes, I'm going to the livery stable right now to get Lone Stacy's mule."

"I wishes ye a gay journey then," the henchman a.s.sured him, using the stereotyped phrase of well-wis.h.i.+ng, to the wayfarer.

Gorgeous was the flaunting color of autumn as Henderson left the edges of the ragged town behind him. He drank in the spicy air that swept across the pines, and the beauty was so compelling that for a time his danger affected him only as an intoxicating sort of stimulant under whose beguiling he reared air-castles. It would be, he told himself, smiling with fantastic pleasure, a delectable way to salvage the hard practicalities of life if he could have a home here, presided over by Blossom, and outside an arena of achievement. In the market-places of modern activity, he could then win his worldly triumphs and return here as to a quiet haven. One phase would supply the plaudits of Caesar--and one the tranquil philosophy of Plato.

But with evening came the bite of frost. The same crests that had been brilliantly colorful began to close in, brooding and sinister, and the reality of his danger could no longer be disavowed.

Twilight brought the death of all color save the lingering lemon of the afterglow, and now he had come to the head of Little Ivy, where Uncle Israel had said travel would become precarious. Here he should abandon his mule and cut across the tangles, but a little way ahead lay a disk of pallid light in the general choke of the shadows--a place where the creek had spread itself into a shallow pool across the road. The hills and woods were already merged into a gray-blue silhouette, but the water down there still caught and clung to a remnant of the afterglow and dimly showed back the inverted counterparts of trees which were themselves lost to the eye.

He might as well cross that water dry-shod, he reflected, and dismount just beyond.

But, suddenly, he dragged hard at the bit and crouched low in his saddle. He had seen a reflection which belonged neither to fence nor roadside sapling. Inverted in the dim and oblong mirror of the pool he made out the shoulders and head of a man with a rifle thrust forward.

That up-side-down figure was so ready of poise that only one conclusion was feasible. The human being who stood so mirrored did not realize that he was close enough to the water's line to be himself revealed, but he was watching for another figure to be betrayed by the same agency. Henderson slid quietly from his saddle and jabbed the mule's flank with the muzzle of his pistol. At his back was a thicket into which he melted as his mount splashed into the water, and he held with his eyes to the inverted shadow. He saw the rifle rise and bark with a spurt of flame; heard his beast plunge blunderingly on and then caught an oath of astonished dismay from beyond the pool, as two inverted shadows stood where there had been one. "d.a.m.n me ef I hain't done shot acrost an empty saddle!"

"Mebby they got him further back," suggested the second voice as Jerry Henderson crouched in his hiding place. "Mebby Joe tuck up his stand at ther t'other crossin'."

Jerry Henderson smiled grimly to himself. "That was shaving it pretty thin," he mused. "After all it was only a shadow that saved me."

As he lay there unmoving, he heard one of his would-be a.s.sa.s.sins rattle off through the dry weed stalks after the lunging mule. The second splashed through the shallow water and pa.s.sed almost in arm's length, but to neither did it occur that the intended victim had left the saddle at just that point. Ten minutes later, with dead silence about him, Jerry retreated into the woods and spent the night under a ledge of s.h.i.+elding rock.

He had lived too long in the easy security of cities to pit his woodcraft against an unknown number of pursuers whose eyes and ears were more than a match for his own in the dark. Had he known every foot of the way, night travel would have been safer, but, imperfectly familiar with the blind trails he meant to move only when he could gauge his course and pursue it cautiously step by step.

From sunrise to dark on the following day he went at the rate of a half-mile an hour through thickets that lacerated his face and tore the skin from his hands and wrists. Often he lay crouched close to the ground, listening.

He had no food and dared not show his face at any house, and since he must avoid well-defined paths, he multiplied the distance so that when he arrived on the familiar ground of his own neighborhood, his hunger had become an acute pain and his weariness amounted to exhaustion.

Incidentally, he had slipped once and wrenched his ankle. Within a radius of two miles were two houses only, Lone Stacy's and Brother Fulkerson's. The Stacy place would presumably be watched, but Brother Fulkerson would not deny him food and shelter.

Painfully, yard by yard, he crept down the mountainside to the rear of the preacher's abode. Then on a tour of reconnaissance he cautiously circled it. There were no visible signs of picketing and through one unshuttered window came a grateful glow of lamplight.

He dared neither knock on the door nor scratch on the pane, but he remembered the signal that had been Bear Cat Stacy's. He had heard the boy give it, and now he cautiously repeated, three times, the softly quavering call of the barn-owl.

It was a moonless night, but the stars were frostily clear and as the refugee crouched, dissolved in shadow, against the mortised logs of the cabin's corner, the door opened and Blossom stood, slim and straight, against the yellow background of the lamp-lit door.

She might have seemed, to one pa.s.sing, interested only in the star-filled skies and the starkly etched peaks, but in a low voice of extreme guardedness she demanded, "Bear Cat, where air ye?"

Henderson remembered that Turner, too, was "hiding out" and that this girl had the ingrained self-repression of a people inured to the perils of ambuscade. Without leaving the cancellation of the shadowed wall he spoke with a caution that equaled her own.

"Don't seem to hear me ... just keep looking straight ahead.... It's not Bear Cat.... It's Henderson ... and they are after me.... So far I've escaped ... but I reckon they're following." He had seen the impulsive start with which she heard his announcement and the instant recovery with which she relaxed her att.i.tude into one of less tell-tale significance. "Thank G.o.d," breathed the pursued man, "for that self-control!"

He detected a heart-wrenching anxiety in her voice, which belied the picture she made of unruffled simplicity as she commanded in a tense whisper, "Go on, I'm hearkenin'."

"Go back into the house," he directed evenly. "Close the window shutters ... then open the back door...."

She did not obey with the haste of excitement. She was too wise for that, but paused unhurriedly, humming an ancient ballade, as though the stresses of life had no meaning for her, before she drew back and closed the door.

Reappearing, at the window, she repeated the same convincing a.s.sumption of untroubled indolence as she drew in the heavy shutters; but a moment later she stood shaken and blanched of cheek at the rear door. "Come in hastily," she pleaded. "Air ye hurted?"

Slipping through the aperture, Henderson smiled at her. His heart had leaped wildly as he read the terror of her eyes: a terror for his danger.

"I'm not hurt," he a.s.sured her, "except for a twisted ankle, but it's a miracle of luck. Where's your father?"

No actress trained and finished in her art could have carried off with greater perfection a semblance of tranquillity than had Blossom while his safety hung in the balance. Now, with that need ended, she leaned back against the support of the wall with her hands gropingly spread; weak of knee and limp almost to collapse. Her amber eyes were preternaturally wide and her words came with gasping difficulty. She had forgotten her striving after exemplary grammar.

"He hain't hyar--he won't be back afore to-morrow noon. Thar hain't n.o.body hyar but me."

"Oh!" The monosyllable slipped from the man's lips with bitter disappointment. He knew the rigid tenets of mountain usage--an unwritten law.

A stranger may share a one-roomed shack with men, women and children, but the traveler who is received into a cabin in the absence of its men compromises the honor of its women.

"Oh," he repeated dejectedly, "I was seekin' shelter for the night. I'm famis.h.i.+n' an' weary. Kin ye give me a snack to eat. Blossom, afore I fares forth again?"

It was with entire unconsciousness that he had slipped back into the rough vernacular of his childhood. At that moment he was a man who had rubbed elbows with death and he had reverted to type as instinctively as though he had never known any other life.

"Afore ye fares forth!" In Blossom's eyes blazed the same Valkyrie fire that had been in them as she barred his path to Bear Cat Stacy's still.

"Ye hain't a-goin ter fare forth, ter be murdered! I aims ter hide ye out right hyar!"

Civilization just then seemed far away; the primal very near--and, in that mood, the hot currents of long-denied love for this woman who was defying her own laws to offer him sanctuary, mounted to supremacy. Such a love appeared as logical as a little while ago it had seemed illogical. Eagle blood should mate with eagle blood.

"But, little gal," Jerry protested, "ye're alone hyar. I kain't hardly tarry. Ef hit became known----"

"Thet's jest ther reason," she flashed back at him, "thet n.o.body won't suspicion ye _air_ hyar an' ef ye're in peril hit don't make no differ ter me what folks says nohow. I aims ter safeguard ye from harm."

His eyes, darkly ringed by fatigue and hunger, held an even deeper avidity. He looked at the high-chinned and resolute face crowned with ma.s.ses of hair which lamp-light and hearth-glow kindled into an aura and deep into amber eyes that were candid with their confession of love. Slowly Jerry Henderson put his question--a question already answered.