When 'Bear Cat' Went Dry

by Charles Neville Buck

When Joe Sanders had left Bear Cat that afternoon at the abandoned cabin, it had been with the impression that Stacy meant to take the path which he had advised; the only path that was not certainly closed to his escape, and seek refuge at Dog Tate's house. He had found an immediate opportunity to report that program to Dog himself, and Dog sought to make use of it in Bear Cat's service.

Tate, in recognition of his grievance as an outraged distiller, had been given the leadership of one of the largest of the search parties, which it was his secret purpose to lead far afield on a blind trail. Inasmuch as Bear Cat had been specifically cautioned against going in the direction of his own dwelling place, and yet since that would seem a logical goal, Dog had maneuvered his hunters into territory between the abandoned cabin and Little Slippery.

He himself had been in the woods across the waters of the suddenly swollen creek, when an outburst of rifle fire told him that something had gone wrong and brought him running back to the guidance of that musketry.

He arrived at the edge of the swirling, drift-encumbered water in time to see the silhouetted figure on the opposite bluff totter and plunge head first into the moonlit whirlpool. Dog knew that he was the only man on that side of the stream, but any effort to plunge in and try for a rescue would mean death to himself without hope of saving the man who had fallen. As he watched he made out what seemed to be the lifeless body come to the surface, to be swept in a rushing circle and, as chance would have it, to catch and hang lodged in a mass of floating dead-wood. The creek at ordinary times ran shallow and though it was gushing now beyond its normal borders it was still not wide. The deadwood swirled, raced forward, and fouled the out-jutting root of a giant sycamore.

Dog Tate crawled out along the precarious support of the slimy rootage and slowly drew the mass of drift into shallow water. It was tedious work since any violent tugging might loosen the lightly held tangle and send the body floating away unbuoyed.

The night was all a thing of blue and silver moonlight and sooty shadows, but under the muddy bulwark at the base of the overhanging sycamore the velvet denseness of impenetrable black prevailed.

Once Dog saw figures outlined on the bluff from which Bear Cat had fallen, and had to lie still for the seeming of hours, trusting to the favor of the shadow.

Eventually he succeeded in drawing the mass of flotsam shoreward until he could wade in to the shallows, chancing the quicksands that were tricky there. Then he stumbled up the bank with his burden and deposited it between two bowlders where without daylight it would hardly be found. Dog was thinking fast, now.

He did not yet know whether he had saved a living man or retrieved a dead body, but his eagerness for investigation on that score must wait. Now he must rejoin the chase and turn it away from such dangerous nearness to its quarry.

So Tate ran down the bank and shouted. Voices replied and figures became visible on the farther shore.