When 'Bear Cat' Went Dry Part 26

"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 a.s.sa.s.sin as a s.h.i.+eld 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 fict.i.tious 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 s.h.i.+eld, snapped out his words with a resolve which appeared ready to a.s.sume 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!"

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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 G.o.d's sake boys, hold up! He means. .h.i.t!"

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 h.e.l.l's deviltry air all this?" he thundered. "Who attacked these men in my place? By G.o.d, 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, h.e.l.l!" 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 G.o.d 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."

CHAPTER XV

Kinnard Towers had spent that evening in his house at the distance of a furlong from the stockaded structure wherein the drama of his authors.h.i.+p was to be staged and acted. The cast, from princ.i.p.als to supernumeraries, having been adequately rehea.r.s.ed in lines and business, his own presence on the scene would be not only unnecessary but distinctly ill advised, and like a shrinkingly modest playwright, he remained invisible. The plot was forcible in its direct simplicity.

A chance disturbance would spring out of some slight pretext--and Henderson, the troublesome apostle of innovation, would fall, its accidental and single victim. When death sealed his lips the only version of the affair to reach alien ears would be that dictated by Towers himself: the narrative of a regrettable brawl in a rough saloon.

Against miscarriage, the arrangements seemed airtight, and there was need that it should be so for, desirable as was the elimination of Jerry's activities, that object would not have warranted recklessly fanning into active eruption the dormant crater of Stacy animosities.

However, with Lone Stacy in duress and Turner Stacy in hiding beyond the state border, the hereditary foes were left leaderless--and would hardly rise in open warfare. Moreover, Kinnard meant to insure himself against contingencies by hastening to such prominent Stacys as might be in communication with the absentees and avowing, with deep show of conviction that, of all the turbulent affairs which had ever come to focus in his tavern, nothing had so outraged him as this particular calamity. He would appear eager for active partic.i.p.ation in hunting down and punis.h.i.+ng the malefactors.

Of course, a scape-goat might be required, perhaps more than one, but there were men who could be well enough sacrificed to such a diplomatic necessity.

So during the first part of that evening, Kinnard sat comfortably by his hearth, smoking his pipe with contemplative serenity the while he waited for the rattle of firearms, which should announce the climax of the drama. He allowed to drop on his knees the sheaf of correspondence which had come to his hand through the courtesy of his nephew in the legislature. These papers bore the caption: C. and S. E. Railways Company: "_In Re_--Cedar Mountain extension," and they contained meaty information culled from underground and confidential sources.

Across the hearth from him, with bare feet spread to the blaze, sat the well-trusted Tom Carmichael--sunk deep in meditation, though his eyes were not entirely serene--nor cloudless of apprehension.

"'Pears like ther show ought ter be startin' up," complained Towers restively. "Ye seed 'em go inter ther Quarterhouse, ye said?"

Tom nodded.

"I watched 'em from ther shadders of ther roadside. They went in all right. They're inside now."

After a brief pause the lieutenant demanded querulously, "Ye've done tuck inter account thet ther killin' of this feller from Looeyville's goin' ter stir up them furriners down below, hain't ye, Kinnard? I wouldn't be none astonished ef they sent them d.a.m.n' milishy soldiers up hyar ergin."

"Ease yore mind, Tom." Towers spoke with the confidence of the strategist who has, in advance, balanced the odds of campaign. "Ther railroad will kick up hit's heels--an' snort like all h.e.l.l--but ther Co'te sets _hyar_--an' I carries ther Co'te in my breeches pocket."

After a moment he added, "The only people I'm a-fear'd of air ther Stacys--an' I've done arranged _thet_."

At last across the frosty, sound-carrying distance, came the spiteful crack of pistols, and Kinnard Towers leaned attentively forward in his chair.

"Them d.a.m.n' fools air bunglin' hit, some fas.h.i.+on," he broke out wrathfully. "Thar hain't no sort of sense in a-stringin' hit out so long."

A momentary diminuendo of the racket was followed by the sharp, repeated bark of a rifle, which brought the intriguer violently to his feet.

"h.e.l.l's fiddle!" he e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed in sudden alarm. "They hain't finished hit up yit! I cautioned 'em special not ter use no rifle-guns--jest pistols, accidental like."

Hatless and coatless, he rushed out and made for the Quarterhouse, disquieted and alarmed by the din of a howling chorus which sounded more like uncertain battle than orderly and definite a.s.sa.s.sination.

Before his panting, galloping haste brought him to the stockade he caught, above the confused pandemonium, a yell of: "Bear Cat Stacy!

_Git_ him! Git 'em both!"

"Good G.o.d!" he muttered between grinding teeth. "Good G.o.d, them fools air startin' ther war ergin! I've got ter stop hit!"

If Bear Cat fell within the four walls of that house to-morrow would dawn upon a country-side disrupted in open warfare. So Kinnard appeared in the door, his face distorted with an ashen fury and sought, too late, to a.s.sume again the role of pacifist and rescuer.

As Bear Cat had gone stumbling out, bearing his burden of wounded and misused humanity, two men started forward keyed for pursuit.

"We kin still git 'em from ther brush," hazarded one, but with a biting sarcasm the chieftain wheeled on the volunteer.

"Stand where ye're at, ye fool! Ye've done flung away ther chanst--an'