When 'Bear Cat' Went Dry

by Charles Neville Buck

The very name Bear Cat was beginning to fall from the lips of tow-headed children, with open-mouthed awe, like a term of witchcraft, and this candid terror of children was, of course, only a reflection of the unconfessed, yet profound impression, stamped upon the minds of their elders.

"What ails everybody hyarabouts?" rumbled Kinnard over his evening pipe. "Heretofore when a man needed killin' he's been kilt—an' thet's all thar was ter hit. This young hellion walks inter sure death traps an' walks out ergin. He falls over a clift inter a ragin' torrent—an' slips through an army of men. In Satan's name, what air hit?"

Black Tom's rejoinder was not cheering: "Ef ye asks me, I think all these stories of witchcraft, backed up by his luck, hes cast a spell on folks. They thinks Bear Cat's in league with grave-yard spooks."

Kinnard knocked the ashes out of his pipe. His lips curled contemptuously. "An' es fer yoreself—does you take stock in thet damn' foolery, too?"

"I hain't talkin' erbout myself," retorted Tom sullenly. "Ye asked erbout what folks was cogitatin' an' I'm a-tellin' ye. If ye don't believe thar's a notion thet graves opens an' ther dead fights with him, jest go out an' talk ter these benighted hill-billies yoreself. If evidence air what ye wants, ye'll git a lavish of hit."

Those who were in Bear Cat's confidence constituted a close corporation, and they were not all, like Dog and Joe, men who mixed also with the enemy, gaining information while they railed against their own leader. There was talk of secret and mysterious meetings held at midnight by oath-bound men—to whom flowed a tide of recruits.

Kinnard believed these meetings to be a part of the general myth. His crude but effective secret service could gather no tangible evidence in support of their storied sessions.

One evening report drifted in to the Quarterhouse that some one had seen Bear Cat Stacy at a point not far distant, and that he had been boldly walking the open road—unaccompanied. Within the hour a party was out, supplied with jugs and bottles enough to keep the vengeful fires well fueled throughout the night. It was an evil-looking squad, and its appearance was in no wise deceptive. Its members, all save one, had begun their evening at the Quarterhouse bar. The one exception was George Kelly, a young man recently married, who had gone there to talk other business with Towers. George had an instinctive tendency toward straightforwardness, but he had also an infirmity of character which caused him to follow where a more aggressive nature led—and he had fallen under Kinnard's domination. His small tract of tillable land was mortgaged, and Kinnard held over him the lash of financial supremacy. He could fight, but he could not argue, and when the unofficial posse was sent out that night, being in the place, he lacked the courage to refuse participation.

They had found the footprints of the fugitive and had met two men who claimed to have seen him in the flesh, but Bear Cat himself had eluded them and near midnight they halted to rest. They threw themselves down in a small rock-walled basin which was broken at one point by a narrow gorge, through which they had come. It was a good place to revel in after labor because it was so shut-in that the bonfire they kindled could not be far seen. The jugs were opened and passed around. It had set in to rain, and though they could endure that bodily discomfort while they had white liquor, their provident souls took thought against the rusting of their firearms. The guns were accordingly placed under a ledge of rock a few feet distant, all save one. Kelly lacking the buoyant courage of drunkenness, preferred to keep his weapon close at hand. He listened moodily and unresponsively to the obscene stories and ribald songs, which elicited thick peals of laughter from his companions. They had hunted hard, and now they were wassailing hard. The long march home would sober them so they need not restrain their appetites.

Some impulse led Kelly to raise his eyes from the sordid picture in the red waver of the fire and glance toward the doorlike opening of the gorge. The eyes remained fixed—and somehow the rifle on his knees did not come up, as it should have done. A figure stood there silently, contemptuously looking on, and it was as gaunt and gray as that of a foraging wolf. It was as lean and sinewy, too, and out of the face glowed a pair of eyes dangerously narrow and glittering.