When 'Bear Cat' Went Dry

by Charles Neville Buck

For an irresolute moment the father hesitated, then he said briefly, "Come on."

Turner wheeled, bracing himself for the bitterest ordeal of all. He must be the spokesman for a rival whom he hated beyond superlatives—and in order that Blossom might keep her dream, which was all she could now hope to salvage out of life, he meant to tell a lie which would for all time enshrine that detestable traitor. None the less, when he had drawn her aside, he spoke with great gentleness, perjuring himself with knightly self-effacement.

He took both her hands in his own and looked with a tender consideration into her forlorn eyes, gulping down the choke that rose in his throat and threatened his power of speech. Though her gaze was fixed on his face she seemed hardly to see him, so stiff and trance-like was her posture and so tight-drawn and expressionless her features. If he could soften that paralysis of grief it was worth a self-sacrificing lie.

"Blossom," he began softly, "Mr. Henderson fell inter a murder trap an' I got thar too late ... ter fotch him out unharmed. Betwixt us we did come through, though, with ther breath still in our bodies ... an' he made me pledge myself ter git him hyar in time ... ter wed with ye afore he died."

He saw the eyes widen and soften as if the tight constriction of heart and nerve had been a little eased. Into them came even a pale hint of serenity and pride—pride for the splendid vindication of a hero whom she had tried to believe true and had been compelled to doubt. Even the bleak dreariness of widowhood could not tarnish that memory: her ideal instead of being shattered was canonized!

"I knowed he'd prove true," she loyally declared. "Despite everything I jest knowed hit deep down in my heart!"

A pallid thinning of the darkness was discernible over the eastern ridges as Brother Fulkerson, who had administered his most powerful restoratives, thrust back his medicine chest. His face became mysteriously grave as he joined the hands of his daughter and the man whose fingers were limp in their enfeebled clasp. Across the quilted four-poster stood Bear Cat Stacy, as erectly motionless as bronze. His unblinking eyes and lips, schooled into firm stoicism, might have suggested some young Indian brave going, set of purpose, to his torture. The lamp flared and sputtered toward the end of its night-long service and the fire had dwindled to an ashen desolation.

At the foot of the bed, and depressed with a dull sense of awe, was Joe Sanders, fingering his hat-brim and shifting his weight from foot to foot.

The old preacher of the hills, ordained in no recognized school of divinity, had for this occasion put aside the simple formula that the mountains knew and substituted for it such fragments as he remembered from the Church of England's more stately ritual. It was a service that he had heard infrequently and long ago, but it had stirred him with its solemn beauty and God would forgive any unmeant distortions since the intent was reverent.

"Dearly Beloved, we're gathered together hyar in ther sight of God A'mighty an' in the face of this hyar company ... to j'ine tergither this-hyar man an' this-hyar woman." There exact memory failed him and his voice broke in a pathetic quaver. Bear Cat Stacy bit his tongue until he could taste the blood in his mouth as he held his gaze rigidly fixed above the heads of the little group. God alone knew how bitter were the broken dreams in his heart, just then.