When 'Bear Cat' Went Dry. Charles Buck

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СКАЧАТЬ ye won't partake of hit, old Bag-o'-bones, won't ye?" he inquired ironically. "Ye hain't nobody's brag critter to look at, but I reckon some revenue fellers mought be willin' to pay a master price fer ye. Ye kin stand at ther mouth of a spring-branch an' smell a still-house cl'ar up on hits headwaters, kain't ye?"

      For a while Webb suffered the tired horse to stand panting in the creek bed, while his own eyes, lit now with a crafty livening, traveled up the hillside impenetrably masked with verdure, where all was silence. Somewhere up along the watercourse was the mash-vat and coil which had contaminated this basin for his mount's brute fastidiousness: an illicit distillery. This man clad in rusty store clothes was not inspired with a crusading ardor for supporting the law. He lived among men whose community opinion condones certain offenses – and pillories the tale-bearer. But above the ethical bearing of local standards and Federal Statutes, alike, loomed a matter of personal hatred, which powerfully stimulated his curiosity. He raised one hand and thoughtfully stroked his nose – recently broken with workman-like thoroughness and reset with amateurish imperfection.

      "Damn thet Bear Cat Stacy," he muttered, as he kicked his weary mount into jogging motion. "I reckon I'll hev my chance at him yit. I'm jest a-waitin' fer hit."

      A half-mile further on, he suddenly drew rein and remained in an attitude of alert listening. Then slipping quietly to the ground, he hitched his horse in the concealment of a deep gulch and melted out of sight into the thicket. Soon he sat crouched on his heels, invisible in the tangled laurel. His place of vantage overlooked a foot-path so little traveled as to be hardly discernible, but shortly a figure came into view around a hulking head of rock, and Ratler Webb's smile broadened to a grin of satisfaction. The figure was tall and spare and it stooped as it plodded up the ascent under the weight of a heavy sack upon its shoulders. The observer did not move or make a sound until the other man had been for several minutes out of sight. He was engaged in reflection.

      "So, thet's how ther land lays," he ruminated. "Bear Cat Stacy's totin' thet gryste over to Bud Jason's tub-mill on Little Ivy despite ther fact thet thar's numerous bigger mills nigher to his house. Thet sack's full of sprouted corn, and he dasn't turn it in at no reg'lar mill. Them Stacys air jest about blockadin' up thet spring-branch."

      He spat at a toad which blinked beadily up at him and then, rising from his cramped posture, he commented, "I hain't plumb dead sartin yet, but I aims ter be afore sun-up ter-morrer."

      Bear Cat Stacy might have crossed the ridge that afternoon by a less devious route than the one he followed. In so doing he would have saved much weariness of leg and ache of burdened shoulder, but Ratler Webb's summing up had been correct, and though honest corn may follow the highways, sprouted grain must go by blinder trails.

      When he reached the backbone of the heights, he eased the jute sack from his shoulders to the ground and stretched the cramp out of his arms. Sweat dripped from his face and streamed down the brown throat where his coarse shirt stood open. He had carried a dead weight of seventy pounds across a mountain, and must carry back another as heavy.

      Now he wiped his forehead with his shirt-sleeve and stood looking away with a sudden distraction of dreaminess. A few more steps would take him again into the steamy swelter of woods where no breath of breeze stirred the still leafage, and even in the open spaces the afternoon was torridly hot. But here he could sweep with his eyes league upon league of a vast panorama where sky and peak mingled in a glory of purple haze. Unaccountably the whole beauty of it smote him with a sense of undefined appreciation and grateful wonderment. The cramp of heart was eased and the groping voices of imagination seemed for the time no longer tortured nightmares of complaint.

      There was no one here to censor his fantasies and out of the gray eyes went their veiling sullenness and out of the lips their taut grimness. Into eyes and lips alike came something else – something touched with the zealousness of aspiration.

      "Hit's right over thar!" he murmured aloud but in a voice low pitched and caressing of tone. "I've got ter get me money enough ter buy thet farm offen Kinnard Towers."

      He was looking down upon a point far below him where through a cleared space flashed the shimmer of flowing water, and where in a small pocket of acreage, the bottom ground rolled in gracious amenability to the plow and harrow.

      Again he nodded, and since he was quite alone he laughed aloud.

      "She 'lows thet's ther place whar she wants ter live at," he added to himself, "an' I aims ter satisfy her."

      So after all some of his day-dreams were tangible!

      He realized that he ought to be going on, yet he lingered and after a few moments he spoke again, confiding his secrets to the open woods and the arching skies – his only confidants.

      "Blossom 'lowed yestiddy she was a-goin' over ter Aunt Jane Colby's this mornin'. 'Pears like she ought ter be passin' back by hyar about this time."

      Cupping his hands at his lips, he sent out a long whoop, but before he did that he took the precaution of concealing his sack of sprouted grain under a ledge. Then he bent listening for an answer – but without reward, and disappointment mantled in his gray eyes as he dropped to the age-corroded rock and sat with his hands clasped about his updrawn knees.

      It was very still there, except for the industrious hammering of a "peckerwood" on a decayed tree trunk, and the young mountaineer sat almost as motionless as his pedestal.

      Then without warning a lilting peal of laughter sounded at his back and Turner came to his feet. As he wheeled he saw Blossom Fulkerson standing there above him and her eyes were dancing with the mischievous delight of having stalked him undiscovered.

      "It's a right happy thing fer you, Turner Stacy, that I didn't aim ter kill ye," she informed him with mock solemnity. "I've heered ye brag thet no feller hereabouts could slip up on ye in the woods, unbeknownst."

      "I wasn't studyin' erbout nobody slippin' up on me. Blossom," he answered calmly. "I hain't got no cause ter be a-hidin' out from nobody."

      She was standing with the waxen green of the laurel breaking into pink flower-foam at her back and through the oak and poplar branches showed scraps of blue sky – the blue of June.

      A catch came into Turner's voice and he said somewhat huskily, "When they christened ye Blossom they didn't misname ye none."

      Blossom, he thought, was like a wild-rose growing among sun-flowers. When the evening star came up luminous and dewy-fresh over the darkening peaks, while twilight still lingered at the edges of the world, he always thought of her.

      But the charm was not all in his own eye: not all the magic endowment of first love. The mountain preacher's daughter had escaped those slovenly habits of backwoods life that inevitably coarsen. Her beauty had slender strength and flower freshness.

      Now she stood holding with one hand to the gnarled branch of a dogwood sapling. A blue sunbonnet falling back from her head left the abundance of her hair bared to the light so that it shimmered between brown and gold.

      She was perhaps sixteen and her heavily lashed eyes were brownish amber and just now full of a mirthful sparkle.

      "Ye seemed ter be studyin' about somethin' almighty hard," she insisted teasingly. "I thought for a minute that mebbe ye'd done growed thar."

      Turner Stacy smiled again as he looked at her. In his eyes was unveiled and honest worship.

      "I was a'studyin' about you, Blossom. I don't know no way ter do that save almighty hard. Didn't ye hear me whoop?"

      The girl's head nodded.

      "Why СКАЧАТЬ