As they sat talking of titles and authors the boy's face softened and glowed with imagination. Off through the window the peaks bulked loftily against the sunset's ash-of-rose. Both men looked toward the west and a silence fell between them, then they heard hurried footsteps and, without knocking, Jud White the town marshal, flung open the door.
"Bear Cat," he announced briefly, "yore paw bade me fotch ye ter him direct. The revenue hes got him in ther jail-house, charged with blockadin'."
CHAPTER XI
Under the impact of these tidings Turner Stacy came to his feet with a sudden transformation of bearing. The poetic abstraction which had, a moment ago, been a facial mirror for the sunset mysticism, vanished to be harshly usurped by a spirit of sinister wrath.
For several seconds he did not speak, but stood statuesquely taut and strained, the line of his lips straight and unbending over the angle of a set jaw.
The yellow glow of the sinking sun seemed to light him as he stood by the window into a ruddy kinship with bronze, awakening a glint of metallic hardness on cheekbone, temple and dilated nostril. It was the menacing figure of a man whose ancestors had always settled their own scores in private reprisal and by undiscounted tally, and one just now forgetful of all save his heritage of blood.
Then the strained posture relaxed and Bear Cat Stacy inquired in a tone of dead and impersonal calm:
"Mr. Henderson, hev ye got a gun?"
As Jerry shook his head, Bear Cat wheeled abruptly on Jud White: "Lend me yore weepin, Jud," he demanded with a manner of overbearing peremptoriness.
"I'd love ter obleege ye, Bear Cat," haltingly parried the officer, "but I kain't hardly do hit—lawfully."