When 'Bear Cat' Went Dry

by Charles Neville Buck

There had been, among that generation of Stacys, no such outstanding figure as old Mark Towers, the indomitable lion of the hills. Kinnard had followed Mark, bringing to the succession no such picturesque savagery—but still a bold spirit, tempered by craft. In lieu of the sledge blow he favored the smiling face with the dirk unsheathed behind his back. Times were altering and to him mere leadership meant less than enough. He was also covetous of wealth, in a land of meagerness. To clan loyalty as an abstract principle he must have added such obedience as comes only from fear—and men must know that to thwart him was dangerous. Upon that principle, he had built his dominance until men shaped even their court testimony to the pattern of his requirements. At first the Stacy clan had challenged his autocracy, but twenty years before, the truce had been made and, since no Stacy leader had arisen of sufficient caliber to wrest from him the ascendency of his guile and bold wits, he had triumphed and fattened in material wealth.

The farm that he had "heired" from his father, with its few fallow acres of river bottom, had spread gradually but graciously into something like a domain.

He might now have moved his household to a smoother land and basked in the security of fair affluence—but an invisible bond chains the mountain-born to mountain environment. Highland nostrils shut themselves against lowland air. Highland lips spit out as flat and stale that water which does not gush from the source of living brooks.

There were enemies here who hungered for his life—a contingency which he faced with open-eyed realization—enemies actuated by grievances apart from feud cleavage. Three attempts upon his life, he had already survived. Some day he would not escape. But that eventuality was more welcome, despite its endless threat, than an ease that carried with it surrender of his rude ascendency and the strong intoxication of petty might.

For several years now he had been hearing tales of a Stacy youth who bore the ear-marks of leadership, and from whom, some day, he might expect a challenge of power. If such a test came, he must combat a younger and fierier adversary when his own prime had passed.

Elsewhere in the hills waves of transition were encroaching on the old order of lethargic ignorance. The hermit blindfold was being loosened from eager eyes—and men like himself were being recognized and overthrown. So far the rock-built ridges of Cedar Mountain had been a reef, protecting his own locality—but the advent of Jerry Henderson had bespoken the imminence of a mounting tide—and whispered the warning of deluge.

The elimination of Jerry had seemed imperative, but the result promised disaster—since the wounding of Bear Cat had threatened the wrath-glutting of the Stacys.

There was only one method of discounting that danger. Bear Cat had come single-handed to his stronghold—he must now go single-handed, or escorted only by his customary body-guard, into the heart of Stacy territory, disavowing responsibility for the attack. He must, by that convincingly reckless device, appear to demonstrate that he trusted himself among them and expected in turn to be trusted by them.

He hoped with a fair degree of confidence that Jerry Henderson had not reached the minister's alive—or that at all events he had not been able to talk with a revealing fluency.

So the guileful old wolf had set out to ride boldly through an aroused and hostile country, facing a score of parlous contingencies.