Bear Cat Stacy had risen eruptively out of his chair. He bent over the intervening table, resting on hands in which the knuckles stood out white. "Go on!" he commanded fiercely. "What next?"
"Thet's erbout all, save thet since thet time she's done been pinin' round like somebody sickenin' ter her death. Es fer ther preacher, he just clamps his mouth shet an' won't say nothin' at all. Howsoever, he looks like he'd done been stricken."
Bear Cat straightened up and passed a hand across his forehead. He was rocking unsteadily on his feet as he reached for his hat.
"Whar air ye a-goin', Bear Cat?" asked the kinsman, with a sudden fear for the consequences of his narrative.
"Whar am I 'goin'? God, He knows! Wharever Jerry Henderson's at, thar's whar I'm 'goin'—an' no man hed better seek ter hinder me!"
CHAPTER XIV
T he post-office at Possum Trot, which serves the dwellers along the waters of Skinflint, is housed in one corner of a shack store and the distribution of its mail is attended with a friendly informality.
Thus no suspicion was engendered when a neighbor of Joe Stacy's dropped in each day and regularly volunteered, with a spirit of neighborly accommodation, "I reckon ef thar's anything fer Joe Stacy or airy other folks dwellin' 'twixt hyar an' my house, I'll fotch hit over to 'em."
The post-master had no way of knowing that this person was an agent of Kinnard Towers or that, when one day he handed out a letter "backed" to Joe in the scrawl of Lone Stacy, it went not to its rightful recipient but to the Quarterhouse.
Jerry Henderson, in due time, stepped from his day coach at Marlin Town, equally innocent of suspicion, and was pleased to see emerging from the raw, twilight shadows, a man, unfamiliar of face, whose elbow cradled a repeating rifle.