When 'Bear Cat' Went Dry Part 17

"Mark, right sensibly at times, ye shows signs of human discernment. I hain't seekin' no open rupture with this young tiger cat my own self. I aims ter show in this matter only es his friend. _You_ hain't overly popular with them Stacys nohow an' I've got hit all _dee_vised, ter plumb convince 'em thet ye're only actin' in ther lawful discharge of yore duty."

"That will be very nice--if you succeed," commented the proposed catspaw dryly.

"I aims ter succeed," came the prompt a.s.surance. "I aims ter demonstrate thet thar war so much talkin' goin' round thet ye war plumb obleeged ter act an' thet thar hain't no profit in resistin'. I'll tell 'em hit's a weak case atter all. They won't harm ye. Ye hain't a-goin'

ter arrest ther boy nohow--jest ther old man."

"And leave Bear Cat foot-loose to avenge his daddy! No thank you. Not for me."

Again Towers smiled. "Now don't be short-sighted, Mark. Bear Cat won't be hyar neither."

"Why won't he be here? Because you'll tell him to go?"

"I won't need ter say a word. His daddy'll counsel him ter leave fer a spell an' hide out--so thet he kain't be tuck down ter Looeyville fer a gover'_ment_ witness."

"When am I supposed to perform this highly spectacular stunt?" inquired Mark Tapper.

"I aims ter hev ye do hit this afternoon."

"This afternoon--with every foot of street and sidewalk full of wild men, ready to pull me to pieces!" The revenuer's face was hot with amazement. "Besides I have no evidence."

"Ye kin git thet later," Towers a.s.sured him calmly. "Besides we don't keer a heap if ye fails ter convict. We only wants 'em outen ther way fer a while. Es fer ther crowds, I'm fixed ter safeguard ye. I've got all my people hyar--ready--an' armed. I aims ter run things an' keep peace in Marlin Town terday!"

CHAPTER X

On the river bank at the outskirts of Marlin Town that afternoon so primitive was the aspect of life that it seemed appropriate to say in Scriptural form: "A great mult.i.tude was gathered together." The haze of Indian summer lay veil-like and sweetly brooding along the ridged and purple horizon. The mountainsides flared with torch-like fires of autumnal splendor--and the quaint old town with its s.h.i.+ngled roofs and its ox-teams in the streets, lay sleepily quiet in the mid-distance.

Toward the crudely constructed rostrum of the two preachers in long-tailed coats, strained the eyes of the throng, pathetically solemn in their tense earnestness. Men bent with labor and women broken by toil and perennial child-bearing; children whose faces bore the stupid vacuity of in-bred degeneracy; other children alert and keen, needing only the chance they would never have. It was a sea of unlettered humanity in jeans and calico, in hodden-gray and homespun--seeking a sign from Heaven, less to save their immortal souls than to break the tedium of their mortal weariness.

Henderson stood with folded arms beside the preacher whose pattern of faith differed from that of the two exhorters he had come to hear.

Blossom's cheeks were abloom and her eyes, back of their grave courtesy, rippled with a suppressed amus.e.m.e.nt. To her mind, her father exemplified true ministry and these others were interesting quacks, but to Bear Cat, standing at her elbow, they were performers whose clownish antics savored of charlatanism--and who capitalized the illiteracy of their hearers. Lone Stacy was there, too, but with a mask-like impa.s.siveness of feature that betrayed neither the trend nor color of his thought.

Not far distant, though above and beyond the press of the crowd, stood the Towers chief, and his four guardians, and s.h.i.+fting here and there, sauntered others of his henchmen, swinging rifles at their sides and watchful, through their seeming carelessness, for any signal from him.

Once for a moment Henderson caught a glimpse of Ratler Webb's skulking figure with a vindictive glance bent upon Bear Cat--but in another instant he had disappeared.

The first of the exhorters had swung into the full tide of his discourse. His arm swung flail-like. His eyes rolled in awe-provoking frenzy. His voice leaped and fell after the fas.h.i.+on of a troubled wind and through his pauses there came back to him the occasional low wail of some almost convinced sinner. Gradually, under this invocation of pa.s.sionate phrase and "holy-tone," the tide of crowd-psychology was mounting to hysteria.

Between sentences and phrases the preacher interlarded his sermon with grunts of emotion-laden "Oh's" and "Ah's."

"Fer them thet denies ther faith, oh brethren--Oh! Ah! ther pits of h.e.l.l air yawnin' wide an' red! Almighty G.o.d air jest a-bidin' His time afore He kicks 'em inter ther ragin', fiery furnace an' ther caldrons of molten brimstone, Oh! Ah!"

The speaker rolled his eyes skyward until only their whites remained visible. With his upflung fingers clawing talon-wise at the air he froze abruptly out of crescendo into grotesque and motionless silence.

Through the close-ranked listeners ran a shuddering quaver, followed by a sighing sound like rising wind which in turn broke into a shrieking chorus of "Amens!" and "Hallelujahs!"

The simple throng was an instrument upon which he played. Their naive credulity was his keyboard. Joel Fulkerson's eyes were mirrors of silent pain as he looked on and listened. "Lord G.o.d," he said in his heart, "I have toiled a lifetime in Thy service and men have hardened their hearts. Yet to these who harangue them in the market-place, they give ear--ay, and shed abundant tears."

Then the long-coated, long-haired preacher having exhausted the dramatic value of the pause, launched himself afresh.

"Ther Lord hes said thet ef a man hes faith, even so sizeable es a mustard seed, he sh.e.l.l say ter thet mounting, 'move' an' hit'll plumb move! Oh-Ah!"

Once more the tone dwindled to a haunting whisper, then vaulted into sudden thunder.

"Brethren, I _hev_ sich faith! Right now I could say ter thet thar mounting thet's stood thar since ther commencement of time, 'Move,' an'

hit would roll away like a cloud afore ther wind! Right now afore ye all, I could walk down ter thet river an' cross. .h.i.ts deep waters dry-shod!"

Jerry Henderson, looking with amus.e.m.e.nt about the overwrought crowd, saw no spirit of skepticism on any untutored face, only a superst.i.tiously deep earnestness everywhere.

Now even the hysterical "Amens!" which had been like responses to a crazed litany were left unspoken. The hearers sat in a strained silence; a voicelessness of bated breath--as if awed into a trance.

That stillness held hypnotically and long.

Then like a bomb bursting in a cathedral came a clear voice, frankly scornful and full of challenge from somewhere on the fringe of the congregation.

"All right--let's see ye do hit! Let's see ye walk over ther waters dry-shod!"

Petrified, breathlessly shocked, men and women held for a little s.p.a.ce their stunned poses, so that a margin of silence gave emphasis to the sacrilege. Then, gradually gathering volume, from a gasp to a murmur, from a murmur to a sullen roar, spoke the voice of resentment. Some indignant person, wanting full comprehension and seeking only a Biblical form of expression, shouted loudly: "Crucify him!" and following that, pandemonium drowned out individual utterances.

Kinnard Towers did not share in the general excitement. He only bit liberally from his tobacco plug and remarked: "I reckon Bear Cat Stacy's drunk ergin." But Bear Cat Stacy, standing at the point from which he had interrupted the meeting, looked on with blazing eyes and said nothing.

"Now ye've done gone an' made another d.a.m.n' fool of yourself!"

whispered his father hoa.r.s.ely in his ear. "Ye've done disturbed public wors.h.i.+p--an' as like es not hit'll end in bloodshed."

Turner made no reply. His fingers were tense as they gripped biceps equally set. The fury of his face died into quiet seriousness. If the howling mob destroyed him he had, at least, flung down the gauntlet to these impostors who sought to victimize the helplessness of ignorance.

About him surged a crowd with shuffling feet and murmuring undertones; a crowd that moved and swayed like milling cattle in a corral, awaiting only leaders.h.i.+p for violence. Then abruptly a pistol shot ripped out, followed instantly by another, and the edges of the throng began an excited eddying of stampede.

The babel of high voices, questioning, volunteering unreliable information, swelling into a deep-throated outcry, became inarticulate.

The first impression was that some one in a moment of fanaticism had conceived himself called upon to punish sacrilege. The second had it that Bear Cat Stacy himself, not satisfied with his impious beginnings, was bent on carrying his disturbance to a more sweeping conclusion.

Neither a.s.sumption was accurate.

A few moments before Bear Cat's outbreak, Kinnard Towers had whispered to Black Tom Carmichael, indicating with a glance of his eye the skulking figure of Ratler Webb, "Watch him."

Nodding in response to that whisper, Black Tom had strolled casually over, stationing himself directly behind Bear Cat. His face wore a calm benignity and his arms were crossed on his breast so peacefully that one would hardly have guessed the right hand caressed the grip of an automatic pistol and that the pistol had already been drawn half free from its hidden holster.

It happened that Ratler's hand, in his coat pocket, was also nursing a weapon. Ratler was biding his time. He had read into every face a contemptuous mockery for his surrender of the road to Turner Stacy that morning. In his disordered brain a fixed idea had festered into the mandate of a single word: "Revengeance."

Then when Bear Cat had drawn down on himself the wrath of an outraged camp-meeting Ratler thought his opportunity knocked. The crowd began to s.h.i.+ft and move so that the focus of men's impressions was blurred.

Availing himself of that momentary confusion, he stole a little nearer and s.h.i.+fted sidewise so that he might see around Black Tom Carmichael's bulking shoulders. He glanced furtively about him. Kinnard Towers was looking off abstractedly--another way. No one at front or back seemed to be noticing him.

Ratler Webb's arm flashed up with a swiftness that was sheer slight-of-hand and Black Tom's vigilant eye caught a dull glint of blue metal. With a legerdemain superlatively quick, Carmichael's hand, too, flashed from his breast. His pistol spoke, and Ratler's shot was a harmless one into the air. When the startled faces turned that way Ratler was staggering back with a flesh wound and Black Tom was once more standing calmly by. On the ground between his feet and Bear Cat Stacy's, as near to the one as the other, lay a smoking pistol.

"Bear Cat's done shot Ratler Webb!" yelled a treble voice, and again the agitated crowd broke into a confused roar.

Turner bent quickly toward Blossom and spoke in a tense whisper. "Leave hyar fer G.o.d's sake. This hain't no place fer _you_ right now!"

The girl's eyes leaped into instant and Amazonian fire and, as her chin came up, she answered in a low voice of unamenable obduracy: