When 'Bear Cat' Went Dry Part 15

"Possibly," the railroad magnate spoke thoughtfully, "we'd better meet his terms. The d.a.m.ned outlaw has power up there and we stand to win--or lose--a little empire of wealth."

Henderson's closed fist fell softly but very firmly on the table. His tone was smooth and determined. "Please leave me in command for a while, Mr. Wallace. I mean to beat this highbinder at his own favorite game. If we yield to him he'll emasculate our profits. You gave me five years when we first discussed this thing. In that time I can accomplish it."

"Take seven if you need them. It's worth it."

Sitting in the smoking-car of the train that was transporting him again from civilization to "back of beyond," Jerry Henderson found himself absorbed in somewhat disquieting thoughts.

He gazed out with a dulled admiration on the fertility of blue-gra.s.s farms where the land rolled with as smooth and gracious a swell as a woman's bosom. Always heretofore the Central Kentucky mansions with their colonial dignity and quiet air of pride had brought an eager appreciation to his thoughts--the tribute of one who wors.h.i.+ps an aristocracy based on wealth.

But now when he saw again the tangled underbrush and outcropping rock of the first foothills, something in him cried out, for the first time since boyhood, "I'm going home!" When the alt.i.tudes began to clamber into the loftiness of peaks, with wet streamers of cloud along their slopes, the feeling grew. The sight of an eagle circling far overhead almost excited him.

Jerry Henderson was a soldier of fortune, with Napoleonic dreams, and finance was his terrain of conquest. To its overweening ambition he had subordinated everything else. To that attainment he had pointed his whole training, cultivating himself not only in the practicalities of life but also in its refinements, until his bearing, his speech, his manners were possibly a shade too meticulously perfect; too impeccably starched.

Where other men had permitted themselves mild adventures in love and moderate indulgence in drink, he had set upon his conduct a rigid censors.h.i.+p.

His heart, like his conduct, had been severely schooled, for upon marriage, as upon all else, he looked with an opportunist's eye.

His wife must come as an ally, strengthening his position socially and financially. She must be a lady of the old aristocracy, bringing to his house cultivated charm and the power of wealth. She must be fitted, when he took his place among the financially elect, to reign with him.

So it was strange that as he sat here in the smoking-car he should be thinking of an unlettered girl across Cedar Mountain, and acknowledging with a boyish elation that on the way to Lone Stacy's house he would pa.s.s her cabin, see her--hear the lilting music of her laugh.

And when Cedar Mountain itself rose before him he swung his way with buoyant stride, up one side and down the other of the range.

Blossom was not in sight when at last he reached the Fulkerson cabin, but the door stood open and Henderson approached it stealthily. He paused for a moment, pondering how conspicuously the small house contrasted with the shabbiness of its neighborhood. It was as trim as a Swiss chalet, reflecting the personality of its mistress. Door frames and window casings were neatly painted--and he knew that was Bear Cat's labor of love. The low hickory-withed chairs on the porch were put together with an approach to a craftsman's skill--and he knew that, too, was Bear Cat's labor of love.

As he reached the porch he saw the girl herself sitting just within, and a broad shaft of sun fell across her, lighting the exquisite quality of her cheeks and the richness of her hair. She was bending studiously over a book, and her lips were drooping with an unconscious wistfulness.

Then, as his shadow fell, Blossom looked up and, in the sudden delight with which she came to her feet, she betrayed her secret of a welcome deeper than that accorded to a friendly but casual stranger.

They were still very much engrossed in each other when half an hour later Bear Cat Stacy appeared without warning in the door. For just a moment he halted on the threshold with pained eyes, before he entered.

The two men walked home together and, along the way, the younger was unaccountably silent. His demeanor had relapsed into that shadow of sullenness which it had often worn before Henderson's coming.

Finally Jerry smilingly demanded an explanation and Bear Cat Stacy turned upon him a face which had suddenly paled. He spoke with a dead evenness.

"We've been honest with each other up to now, Mr. Henderson, an' I demands thet ye be honest with me still."

"I aim to be, Turner. What is it?"

The younger man gulped down a lump which had suddenly risen in his throat, and jerked his head toward the house they had just left.

"Hit's Blossom. Does ye aim ter--ter co'te her?"

"Court her! What put such an idea into your head?"

"Never mind what put hit thar. I've got ter know! Blossom hain't never promised ter wed me, yit, but----" He broke off and for a little while could not resume though his face was expressive enough of his wretchedness. Finally he echoed: "I've got to know! Ef she'd rather marry _you_, she's got a license ter choose a-tween us. Only I hadn't never thought of thet--an'----." Once more he fell silent.

"My G.o.d, Turner," exclaimed Jerry, with a sudden realization of the absurdity of such an idea, "I could have no thought of marrying her."

"Why couldn't ye?" For an instant the gray eyes narrowed and into them came a dangerous gleam. "Hain't she good enough--fer you or any other man?"

Jerry Henderson nodded with grave a.s.sent.

"She's good enough for any man alive," he declared. "But I can't think of marriage at all now. All my plans of life prohibit that." Bear Cat Stacy drank in the clear air in a long breath of joyous relief.

"That's all I needs ter know," he said with entire sincerity. "Only,"

his voice dropped and he spoke very gently, "only, I reckon ye don't realize how much yore eddycation counts with us thet wants. .h.i.t an'

hain't got hit. Don't let her misunderstand ye none, Mr. Henderson. I don't want ter see her hurt."

CHAPTER IX

Marlin Town lies cradled in the elbow of the river and about its ragged edges the hills stand beetling, hemming it in.

Had it been located in Switzerland, it would have been acclaimed in guide-book and traveler's tales for the sheer beauty of its surroundings.

Hither, when the summer had spent its heat and the hard duties of the farmer had relaxed, flocked the men and women and the children of the country side for that annual diversion which combined with the ardor of religious pilgrimage a long-denied hunger for personal intercourse and excitement. Then, in fine, came "big-meeting time."

The clans gathered from "'way over on t'other side of nowhars." They trooped in from communities which the circuit rider visited so rarely that it was no disgrace for a man and a maid to dwell together as man and wife until a child had been born to them before opportunity came to have the marriage rites solemnized. They flocked from localities so remote that in them sometimes the dead lay buried without funeral until an itinerant minister chanced by to hold obsequies over all delinquent graves in common. It is even told how occasionally a widowed husband wept over the mortal remains of his first and second wife--at a sermon held for both.

So while the magnet which draws them out of their deep-burrowed existence is the Camp-meeting with its hymns and discourse, the occasion holds also the secular importance of county-fair and social conclave.

Brother Fulkerson left his cabin before daylight one morning for the journey to town, riding his old mare, with his daughter on a pillion behind him. With them started Lone Stacy, Bear Cat and Henderson, though since these three must travel with only two mules, the younger men followed the ancient custom of "riding and tying"--alternating in the saddle and on foot.

The air held the heady bouquet of autumn now with the flavor of cider presses and of ripened fox-grapes for the delight of the nostril and the dreamy softness of hazy horizons for the eye.

Oak and poplar flaunted their carnival color along the hillsides.

Maples threw out scarlet and orange banners against the sedate tone of the pines and cedars. Among the falling acorns of the woods, mast-fed razor-backs were fattening against the day of slaughter, when for a little while the scantily supplied cabin-dwellers would be abundantly provisioned with pork and cider.

Bear Cat's eyes dwelt steadfastly on Blossom, and Jerry Henderson's turned toward her oftener than he meant them to. There was, in the air, a pervasive holiday spirit.

Roads usually so bare of travel were full now, full with a rude procession of wayfarers; men trudging along with trailing families at their heels; calico-clad women riding sideways on bony steeds, sometimes bizarre in fanciful efforts at finery; tow-headed children with wide-staring eyes.

Then at last they were in Marlin Town, rubbing shoulders with all the narrow mountain world. There was Kinnard Towers riding among his rifle-armed henchmen. He sat stiff in his saddle, baronially pleased as men pointed him out,--and Jerry thought it a safe wager that Kinnard had not come as a convert to the mourners' bench.

Towers nodded affably and shouted his salutation in pa.s.sing.

But among all the strange types foregathered here with a tone of the medieval about them and over them, none were more fantastic than the two preachers who were to conduct the revival. Brother Fulkerson and his party encountered this pair as they pa.s.sed the Court-house. Both were tall, cadaverous and preternaturally solemn of visage. Both wore rusty Prince Albert coats faded to a threadbare green. One had a collar and no necktie; the other a necktie and no collar. Between the frayed bottoms of shrunken trousers and the battered tops of crude brogans each showed a dusty and unstockinged shank.

"Who are these preachers we're going to hear?" inquired Jerry Henderson, and Brother Fulkerson shook his head dubiously.

"I heer tell thet they're some new sect," was the guarded reply. "I don't hold with them none, myself."

"They are sensational exhorters, I take it," hazarded Jerry, and again the preacher from across the mountain tempered his criticism with charity:

"Folks say so. I don't aim ter jedge 'em though--leastways not till I've sat under th'ar discourse first."