BEAR CAT STACY

Thames Star, Volume LXIII, Issue 17661, 12 August 1929, Page 3

BEAR CAT STACY

By CHARLES NE VILLE BUCK. (Author of “The Call of the Cumberlands,” etc.)

CHAPTER V. Henderson had no wish to he drawn, sq soon, into any conflict of local opinion, yet lie realised that a candid reply w'as expected. “My opinion is that of theory only,” he responded seriously. “But I 1 agree with Brother Fulkerson. A community with secrets to hide is a hermit community—and one of the strangers that is frightened away—is Prosperity.”. Bear Cat Stacy, brooding silently in his place, looked (suddenly up. Hitherto he had seen only the sweet wistfulness of Blossom’s eyes. Now he remembered the words of the old miller.

“Some tiny a mountain man will rise up as steadfast las the hills he sprung from—ae’ he'll change hit all like ther sun -changes fog!” Perhaps Turner Stacy was ripe for hero-wor-ship.

Ovee the mountain top appeared the beacon of the evening stj'.r—luminous but pale. As if saduting it the timber became wistful with the call of whippoorwills and firefliesi began ijo flit against the sooty curtain of night. Something stirred in the boy, as though the freshening breeze brought a new message of an awakening. Here was the talk of wise men. concurring with the voices of. his dreams! But at that moment his mother appeared in the doorway and announced: “You men kin come in an’ eat, now.”

CHAPTER VI. In former days an Appalachian tavern was a “qularter-house”; a hostelry -where one paid a quarter for one’s' bed and a quarter each for meals. Now the term has fallen into such disuse as to be no longer generic, but locally it -survived with a meaning both specific and npdodoious. The press of Kentucky and Virginia had used it often, coupled with lurid stories of blood-lettings and orgies; linking with it always the name of its proprietor. Kinnnrd To we re. How could such things go. on in the twentieth century? questioned the readers of these new columns, forgetting that this ramparted isolation lives not- in the twentieth centuiy, but still in the eighteenth; that its people who have never seen salt wfiter still cling to the ballads of Walter Raleigh’s sea-roveVs, and that from their lips still fall, warm with every-dav usuvige, the colloquialisms of Chaucer and of Piers the Ploughman. The Quatrterhouse stood in a cleft where the mountains had been riven. Its front door opened into Virginia and its rear door gave into Kentucky. Across the puncheon floor was humorously painted a stripe of whitewash, as constantly renewed as the markings of a well-kept tennis court—and that line wan .state boundary. Hither flocked refugees from the justice of two states, and if a suddenly materializing sheriff confronted his quarry in the room where each day and each night foregathered the wildest- spirits of a wild land, the hounded culprit had only to cross that white line and stand upon his lawfijJ. demand

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for extradition papers. Here, therefore, the limited" foxes of the Saw ran to ground. The man who presided r«s -proprietor was a power to be feared, admired, hated as individual circumstance indicateed, but in any Case one whose wrath was not to lie advisedly stirred. He had found it possible to become wealthy in a land where .such achievement involves battening on poverty. Cruel—suave; predatory l —charitable, he had taken life by his own hand and that of the hireling, but also l he had, in famine-times, succoured the pool’. He had, in short, (awed local courts and Intimidated juries, of the vicinage

until he seemed beyond the law, and until office-bearer,< wore his collar. Kir.mud Towers wj;s floridly lflond of colouring, mild of eye and urbanely soft-spoken of voice. , Once, almost two decades, ago, while

the feud was still eruptive, it had seemed advisable to him to have Lone Stacy done to death, and to that end he had bargained with Black Tom Carmichael. Black Tom had been provided,, with a double-barrelled gun, loaded with buckshot, and placed in a thicket which, at the appointed hour the intended victim must pass. But it had chanced that Fate, intervened. On that day Lone Stacy had carried in his arms his baby son. Turner Stacy, and, seeing the child, Black Tom had faltered..

Later in the seclusion of a room over the Quarterhouse, the employer had wrathfully taken his churl to task. “Wa’al, why didn’t you get him?” wins the truculent interrogation. “He passed by close enough for yer ter hit him with a rock.”

“He was totin’ his baby,” apologised the designated assassin shamefacedly, yet with a sullen obstinacy. “I was only hired ter kill a growed-up man. Ef you’d a-give me a rifle-gun like I asked ye for, instead of a scat-ter-gun I could’ve got him through his damned head an’ not harmed ther child none. Thet’s why I held my hand.”

ICinnurd Towers had scornfully questioned: “What makes ye >?o tormentin’ mincy erbout ther kid? Don’t ye know full well thet when lie grows up we’ll have ter git him, too ? Howsoever, next time I’ll give you a rifle-gum” Like all unlettered folk the mountaineer is deeply superstitious and prone to .believe in portents and wonders. Often, though he eftn never he brought to -confess it, he give*? credence to tales of sorcery aqcl witchcraft.

Turner Stacy was from birth a- “survigrous” child, and he was born on the day of the eclipse. As he came into the world th sun was darkened. Immediate after that a sudden ’tempest broke which tore the forests to tatters, awoke quiet brooks to swirling torrents, unroofed house*? and took its toll of human life. Even iii after yertrs when men spoke of the “big storm” they always alluded to that one. An old crone who was accounted ,able to read fortunes and work char mo announced that Turner Stncv came into life or the wings of that storm, and that the sun darkened its face because his birth savoured of the supernatural. This being ,so, she said, he whs immune from any harm of man’s devising. Her absurd story was was told and retold around many (a smofiv Cabin hearth, and there were those who Recorded it an unconfessed credence.

Later Black Tom was again given a rifle and >again stationed in ambush. Again Lone Stacy, favoured by chance, carried his baby son in his arms. Black Tom, whose conscience had never befolre impeded his action, con-

tinned to gaze over his gun-sights—• without pressing the trigger.

Towers was furious, but Carmichael could only shake his head in a flighten,ed bewilderment, as if he had seen a ghost.

“Ther brat looked at me iest as 1 wjas about to fire,” he protested. “His eye s didn’t look like a human bain's. He hain’t no baby—he was born a man—or something more than a man.” As affairs developed, the truce was arranged soon afterward, and also the marked man’s death became unnecessary because lie was safe in prison on a charge of moonshining. Neither Lone Stacy nor his son had ever known of this occurrence, and now the Stacyg and the Towers met on the road and “made their manners” without gunplay.

(To be continued.)