BEAR CAT STACY

Thames Star, Volume LXIII, Issue 17662, 13 August 1929, Page 3

BEAR CAT STACY

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

CHAPTER VI

But to Kinnard Towers penings remained vital and, for all his crudity,. few thinsg of topical interest occurred of which he was not

duly apprised. Into iiis dwelling place one day the Honourable Abraham Towers his

lophew, who sat in the State Legis

lnture at Frankfort. The two were closeted together for an hour, and as the nephew emerged, at the end ol the interview, Kinnard walked with him to the hitching-post where, the visitor’s horse stood tethered. “I’m obieeged ter ye, Abe,” he said

graciously. “When this man Hender son gits hvar I’ll make hit a point ter hev casual speech with him. 1 aims ter jam his business, an’ ef what ye suspicions air true, he’.ll have dealin’s with me—or else he won’t liardlv succeed.

So it happened logically enough that on th evening of Jerry’s arrival," Kinhard Towers mounted and started out over the hill trails. He rode, a-s he always did when lie went far abroad, under armed escorts since tyrants are never secure. Four rifle-equipped vassals accompanied him; two riding as advance guard and two! protecting the rear.

KinnauicTs destination was the house of Lone Stacy on Little Slippery, a house whose threshold lie could not, in the old daws, h'ave crossed without blood-letting; but these were the days of peace.

Arriving, he did not go direct to the door and knock, lint discreetly halting in the highway, lifted his voice and shouted aloud, “Halloo! I’m Kinnard Towers an’ I’m a-comin’ in.”

The door was thrown promptly open and Lono Stacy •appeared, framed between threshold and lintel, lidding a lamp aloit and offering welcome. “Gentlemen,” said the host in a matter-of-fact voice, “ef you’ll excuse ■.. e. I’ll rest your guns.” ' Then in observance of a quaint and ancient ceremonial, each armed guardian passed in, surrendering his rifle at the threshold. In retarded AppaJa , ohia so runs the rule. Tc fail in its fulfilment is to express distrust for the honesty and ability of the householder to protect his guests, and such an implication constitutes a. grave discourtesy.

Inside a fire roared on the hearth, for even in June the mountain nights are raw.

Henderson, watching the small cavalQ'ade troop in, smiled inwardly. He was not unmindful of the identity oi the power of this modern baron, and he wa s not without suspicion, that he himself was the cause of the visit. “I chanced ter he farin’ by, Lone,” Kinnard Towers enlightened his. host easily, an’ I ’lowed I’l light down and rest a little spell.” “Ye're welcome,” was the simple reply.' “Draw up. ter ther fire an" set ye a cheer.” The talk lingered for ■:> space on

rpUB SERIAL STORY iii

neighbourhood topics, but the host had found time, between hearing the shout outside and 'replying to it, to say in a low voice to lii s guest: “1 reckon atter Kinnaid Towers comes in we won’t talk no more erbout my still—jest stills in gin’ral,” and that caution was religiously observed. , The kitchen tasks had been finished now and while the men sat close to tlie smoking hearth the faces of the women looked on from the shadowed corners of the room, where they sat half-obscured upon the huge fourposter beds. The man who had crossed Cedar Mountain lighted liis pipe from the beds of ccyils and then, straightening up, he stood on the hearth where his eyes could take in the whole seinicircile of listening faces. They were eyes that, for all their seeming of a theorist’s engrossment, missed little.

This house might have be.n a pioneer abode of two hundred years ago, standing unamended by the whole swelling tide of modernity that hfid passed it by untouched.

I The leaping blaze glittered on the ; metal of polished rifle s stacked in a j corner, -and on two others hanging 1 against the smoke-dimmed logs of the I wall, lied pods of peppers and brown leaves of tobacco were strung along the rafters. Hardly defined of shape against one shadowy wall, stood a spinning wheel. Henderson knew that the room was pregnant with the conflict of human elements. He realised that he himself faced possibilities which niade his mission here a thing of delicate manipulation; even of personal danger. The blond man w.tli the heavy neck, who sat contemplatively chewing ct the stem of an alighted pipe, listened in silence. He hardly seemed interested, but Henderson recognised him for the sponsor and beneficiary of lawlessness. He more than any other would be the logical ioe to a new order which brought the law in its wake—and the lawV reckonings. Near to the enemy whom he had heretofore faced in pitched battle, ‘sat old Lone Stacy, hi s hrogans kicked off , and his bare feet thrust out to the warmth; .bearded, shrewd of eye, 1 a professed lover of the law, asking only j the exemption of bis illicit still. He, ] too, in tile feucl days had wielded I power, but had sought in the main to wield it for peace. I And there, showing no. disposition ' to draw aside the skirts of .liis raiment : in disgust, sat the preacher of tho ! hills whose strength lay in his ability i to reconcile antagonism’s, wliilg yet he stood staum h, abating nothing of; sell-sacrificial effort. It was almost as | though church and crown and common- ! er were gathered in informal con- i clave. I

But luminous, like fixed stars, j gleamed two other pairs oi eyes. As ; he realised them, Henderson straight- j cued up with such a thrill a.s comes : from a vision. Here were the eyes of • builders of the future—agleam as they j look on at the present! Blossom’s eyes I were wide and enthralled and Turner | Stacy’s burned as. might those of a ■ young crusader hearing from the lips j of old and seasoned knights recitals ■ ot the wars of tlie Sepulchre. i Bear Cat Stacy saw in this, stranger j the prophet hearing messages for j which .they longed—and waited almost j .without hope. But Kinnard Towers ! saw him in a dangerous and unsettling I agitator. <

“You saicl.” said Henderson, wnerv the theme had swung back to< economic discussion/ “that your cornfield was good for a few crops and then the irains would wash it baire, yet as I came along the road I saw an orm cropping vein of - coal that reached aljove my head, and on each side ot me were magnificent stretches of , timber that the world needs and that is growing source.”

“Much profit that does me,” Lone Stacy laughed dryly. “Down at Uncle Israel’s store thair’s a dollar hill, thet looks like hit’s a-layin’ on ther counter —but when ye aim s ter pick it up ye discarns thet hit's pasted ■: under tlier glass. Tliet coal and timber of mine air pasted ther wrong side of Cedar Mountain.” “And why? Because there are few roads and fewer schools. It’s dess the cost and difficulties of building wag an roads that something else that stands in the way. It’s the laurel.” “The. laurel?” repeated Lone Stacy, but the preacher nodded comprehendingjly, and the visitor went on: “Yes'. The laurel. I’ve been in Central African jungles where men died of fever because the thick growth held and hied the miasma. Here the laurel holds the spirit of concealment. If there wasn’t a hush in all these hills big enough to hide a. man. the country would be thrown open to .the markets of ther world. It’s the spirit of hiding—that locks life in and keeps it poor.”

(To he continued.)