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CHAPTER VII

Because Jerry Henderson viewed the life of the hills through understanding eyes, certain paradoxes resolved themselves into the expected. He was not surprised to find under Lone Stacy's rude exterior an innate politeness which was a thing not of formula but of instinct.

"Would hit pleasure ye," demanded the host casually the next morning, "ter go along with me up thar an' see that same identical still thet I tuck sich pains yestiddy ye shouldn't see?" But Henderson shook his head, smiling.

"No, thank you. I'd rather not see any still that I can avoid. What I don't know can't get me – or anyone else – into trouble."

Lone Stacy nodded his approval as he said: "I didn't aim ter deny ye no mark of confidence. I 'lowed I'd ought ter ask ye."

Turner Stacy stood further off from illiteracy than his father. In the loft which the visitor had shared with him the night before he had found a copy of the Kentucky Statutes and one of Blackstone's Commentaries, though neither of them was so fondly thumbed as the life of Lincoln.

By adroit questioning Jerry elicited the information that the boy had been as far along the way of learning as the sadly deficient district schools could conduct him; those shambling wayside institutions where, on puncheon benches, the children memorize in that droning chorus from which comes the local name of "blab-school."

Turner had even taken his certificate and taught for a term in one of these pathetic places. He laughed as he confessed this: "Hit jest proves how pore ther schools air, hyarabouts," he avowed.

"I expect you'd have liked to go to college," inquired Henderson, and the boy's eyes blazed passionately with his thwarted lust for opportunity – then dimmed to wretchedness.

"Like hit! Hell, Mr. Henderson, I'd lay my left hand down, without begrudgin' hit, an' cut hit off at ther wrist fer ther chanst ter do thet!"

Henderson sketched for him briefly the histories of schools that had come to other sections of the hills; schools taught by inspired teachers, with their model farms, their saw-mills and even their hospitals: schools to which not only children but pupils whose hair had turned white came and eagerly learned their alphabets, and as much more as they sought.

The boy raised a hand. "Fer God's sake don't narrate them things," he implored. "They sots me on fire. My grandsires hev been satisfied hyar fer centuries an' all my folks sees in me, fer dreamin' erbout things like thet, is lackin' of loyalty."

Henderson found his interest so powerfully engaged that he talked on with an excess of enthusiasm.

"But back of those grandsires were other grandsires, Turner. They were the strongest, the best and the most American of all America; those earlier ancestors of yours and mine. They dared to face the wilderness, and those that got across the mountains won the West."

"Ours didn't git acrost though," countered the boy dryly. "Ours was them thet started out ter do big things an' failed."

Henderson smiled. "A mule that went lame, a failure to strike one of the few possible passes, made all the difference between success and failure in that pilgrimage, but the blood of those empire-builders is our blood and what they are now, we shall be when we catch up. We've been marking time while they were marching, that's all."

"Ye've done been off ter college yoreself, hain't ye, Mr. Henderson?"

"Yes. Harvard."

"Harvard? Seems ter me I've heered tell of hit. Air hit as good as Berea?"

The visitor repressed his smile, but before he could answer Bear Cat pressed on:

"Whilst ye're up hyar, I wonder ef hit'd be askin' too master much of ye ef – " the boy paused, gulped down his embarrassment and continued hastily – "ef ye could kinderly tell me a few books ter read?"

"Gladly," agreed Henderson. "It's the young men like you who have the opportunity to make life up here worth living for the rest."

After a moment Bear Cat suggested dubiously: "But amongst my folks I wouldn't git much thanks fer tryin'. Ther outside world stands fer interference – an' they won't suffer hit. They believes in holdin' with their kith an' kin."

Again Henderson nodded, and this time the smile that danced in his eyes was irresistibly infectious. In a low voice he quoted:

"The men of my own stock

 
They may do ill or well,
But they tell the lies I am wonted to,
They are used to the lies I tell.
We do not need interpreters
When we go to buy and sell."
 

Bear Cat Stacy stood looking off over the mountain sides. He filled his splendidly rounded chest with a deep draft of the morning air, – air as clean and sparkling as a fine wine, and into his veins stole an ardor like intoxication.

In his eyes kindled again that light, which had made Henderson think of volcanoes lying quiet with immeasurable fires slumbering at their hearts.

Last night the boy had fought out the hardest battle of his life, and to-day he was one who had passed a definite mile-post of progress. This morning, too, a seed had dropped and a new life influence was stirring. It would take storm and stress and seasons to bring it to fulfilment, perhaps. The poplar does not grow from seed to great tree in a day – but, this morning, the seed had begun to swell and quicken.

What broke, like the fledgling of a new conception, in Bear Cat's heart, was less palpably but none the less certainly abroad in the air, riding the winds – with varied results.

That an outside voice was speaking: a voice which was dangerous to the old gods of custom, was the conviction entertained, not with elation but with somber resentment in the mind of Kinnard Towers. Upon that realization followed a grim resolve to clip the wings of innovation while there was yet time. It was no part of this crude dictator's program to suffer a stranger, with a gift for "glib speech," to curtail his enjoyment of prerogatives built upon a lifetime of stress and proven power.

Back of Cedar Mountain, where there are few telephones, news travels on swift, if unseen wings. Henderson had not been at Lone Stacy's house twenty-four hours when the large excitement of his coming, gathering mythical embellishment as it passed from mouth to mouth, was mysteriously launched.

Wayfarers, meeting in the road and halting for talk, accosted each other thus:

"I heer tell thar's a man over ter Lone Stacy's house thet's done been clar ter ther other world an' back. He's met up with all character of outlanders."

Having come back from "ther other world" did not indeed mean, as might be casually inferred, that Henderson had risen from his grave; relinquishing his shroud for a rehabilitated life. It signified only that he had been "acrost the waters" – a matter almost as vague. So the legend grew as it traveled, endowing Jerry with a "survigrous" importance.

"Folks says," went the rumor, "thet he knows ways fer a man ter make a livin' offen these-hyar tormentin' rocks. Hev ye seed him yit?"

Having come to the house of Lone Stacy, it was quite in accordance with the custom of the hills that he should remain there indefinitely. His plans for acquiring land meant first establishing himself in popular esteem and to this end no means could have contributed more directly than acceptance under a Stacy roof.

With the younger Stacy this approval was something more: it savored of hero-worship and upon Henderson's store of wisdom, Bear Cat's avid hunger for knowledge feasted itself.

Henderson saw Blossom often in these days and her initial shyness, in his presence, remained obdurate. But through it he caught, with a refreshing quality, the quick-flashing alertness of her mind and he became anxious to win her confidence and friendship.

And she, for all her timidity, was profoundly impressed and fed vicariously on his wisdom – through the enthusiastic relaying of Bear Cat Stacy's narration.

When conversation with Jerry was unavoidable, Turner noted that she was giving a new and unaccustomed care to her diction, catching herself up from vernacular to an effort at more correct forms.

"Blossom," he gravely questioned her one day, "what makes ye so mindful of yore P's and Q's when ye hes speech with Jerry Henderson?"

"I reckon hit's jest shame fer my ign'rance," she candidly replied, forgetting to be ashamed of it now that the stranger was no longer present.

"And yit," he reminded her, "ye've got more eddication now then common – hyarabouts."

"Hyarabouts, yes," came the prompt retort, touched with irony. "So hev you. Air ye satisfied with hit?"

"No," he admitted honestly. "God knows I hain't!"

One evening Kinnard Towers entered the saloon at the Quarterhouse and stood unobserved at the door, as he watched the roistering crowd about the bar. It was a squalid place, but to the foreign eye it would have been, in a sordid sense, interesting. Its walls and the eight-foot stockade that went around it were stoutly builded of hewn timbers as though it had been planned with a view toward defense against siege.

A few lithographed calendars from mail-order houses afforded the sole note of decoration to the interior. The ordinary bar-mirror was dispensed with. It could hardly have come across the mountain intact. Had it come it could scarcely have survived.

The less perishable fixtures of woodwork and ceiling bore testimony to that in their pitted scars reminiscent of gun-play undertaken in rude sport – and in deadly earnest. The shutters, heavy and solid, had on occasion done service as stretchers and cooling boards. Vilely odorous kerosene lamps swung against the walls, dimly abetted by tin reflectors, and across the floor went the painted white line of the state border. At the room's exact center were two huge letters. That east of the line was V. and that west was K.

The air was thick with the reek of smoke and the fumes of liquor. The boisterousness was raucously profane – the general atmosphere was that of an unclean rookery.

As the proprietor stood at the threshold, loud guffaws of maudlin laughter greeted his ears and, seeking the concrete cause, his gaze encountered Ratler Webb, propped against the bar, somewhat redder of eye and more unsteady on his legs than usual. Obviously he was the enraged butt of ill-advised heckling.

"Ye hadn't ought ter hev crossed Bear Cat," suggested a badgering voice. "Then ye wouldn't hev a busted nose. He's a bad man ter fool with. Thar war witches at his bornin'."

"I reckon Bear Cat knows what's healthful fer him," snarled Webb. "When we meets in ther highway he rides plumb round me."

The speaker broke off and, with a sweeping truculence, challenged contradiction. "Air any of you men friends of his'n? Does airy one of ye aim ter dispute what I says?" Silence ensued, possibly influenced by the circumstance that Ratler's hand was on his pistol grip as he spoke, so he continued:

"Ef I sought ter be a damn' tale-bearer, I could penitenshery him fer blockadin' right now, but thet wouldn't satisfy me nohow. I aims ter handle him my own self."

Again there was absence of contradiction near about the braggart, though ripples of derisive mirth trickled in from the outskirts.

Ratler jerked out his weapon and leaned against the bar. As he waved the muzzle about he stormed furiously: "Who laughed back thar?" And no one volunteered response.

Webb squinted hazily up at one of the reflector-backed lamps. "Damn thet light," he exclaimed. "Hit hurts my eyes." There followed a report and the lamp fell crashing.

For a brief space the drunken man stood holding the smoking weapon in his hand, then he looked up and started, but this time he let the pistol swing inactive at his side and the truculent blackness of his face faded to an expression of dismay.

Kinnard Towers stood facing him with an unpleasant coldness in his eyes.

"I reckon, Ratler," suggested the proprietor, "ye'd better come along with me. I wants ter hev peaceable speech with ye."

In a room above-stairs Kinnard motioned him to a chair much as a teacher might command a child taken red-handed in some mad prank.

"Ratler, hit hain't a right wise thing ter talk over-much," he volunteered at last. "Whar air thet still ye spoke erbout – Bear Cat Stacy's still?"

Webb cringed.

"I war jest a-talkin'. I don't know nuthin' erbout no sich still."

What means of loosening unwilling tongues Kinnard Towers commanded was his own secret. A half hour later he knew what he wished to know and Ratler Webb left the place. Upon his Ishmaelite neck was firmly fastened the collar of vassalage to the baron of the Quarterhouse.

On the day following that evening Towers talked with Black Tom Carmichael.

"This man Henderson," he said musingly, "air plumb stirring up ther country. I reckon hit'd better be seen to."

Black Tom nodded. "Thet oughtn't ter be much trouble." But Towers shook his blond head with an air of less assured confidence.

"Ter me hit don't look like no easy matter. Lone Stacy's givin' him countenance. Ef I war ter run him outen these parts I reckon ther Stacys would jest about swarm inter war over hit."

"What does ye aim ter do, Kinnard?"

"So far I'm only bidin' my time, but I aims ter keep a mighty sharp eye on him. He hain't made no move yit, but he's gainin' friends fast an' a man's obleeged ter kinderly plan ahead. When ther time's ripe he's got ter go." Towers paused, then added significantly, "One way or another – but afore thet's undertook, I 'lows ter git rid of his protectors."

"Thet's a mighty perilous thing ter try, Kinnard," demurred the lieutenant in a voice fraught with anxiety. "Ye kain't bring hit ter pass without ye opens up ther war afresh – an' this time they'd hev Bear Cat ter lead 'em."

But Towers smiled easily.

"I've got a plan, Tom. They won't even suspicion I knows anything about events. I'm goin' ter foller Mr. Henderson's counsel an' do things ther new way, 'stid of ther old."

CHAPTER VIII

Henderson found Brother Fulkerson a preacher who, more by service and example and comforting the disconsolate than by pulpit oratory, held a strong influence upon his people, and commanded their deep devotion.

His quiet ministry had indeed been heard of beyond the hills and even in the black days of feudal hatred, dead lines had been wiped out for him so that he came and went freely among both factions, and no man doubted him.

Kindly, grave and steadfast, Henderson found him to be, and possessed of a natively shrewd brain, as well. Blossom was usually at the Fulkerson house when Jerry called, but she fitted silently in the background and her eyes regarded him with that shy gravity, in which he found an insurmountable barrier to better acquaintance.

One morning as he passed the Fulkerson abode he found the girl alone by the gate – and paused there.

The season's first tenderness of greenery along the slopes had ripened now to the sunburned and freckled warmth of midsummer, but the day was young enough for lingering drops of the heavy dew to remain on the petals of the morning-glories and the weed stalks along the roadside. Between the waxen delicacy and rich variety of the morning-glory petals and the bloom of the girl, Jerry fell musingly to tracing analogies.

The morning-glory is among the most plebeian of flowering things, boasting no nobility except a charm too fragile to endure long its coarse companionship with smart-weed and mullen, so that each day it comes confidently into being only to shrink shortly into disappointed death.

Blossom, too, would in the course of nature and environment, have a brief bloom and a swift fading – but just now her beauty was only enhanced by the pathos of its doom.

"Blossom," he smilingly suggested, "I'd like to be friends with you, just as I am with Turner. I'm not really an evil spirit you know, yet you seem always half afraid of me."

The girl's lashes drooped shyly, veiling her splendid eyes, but she made no immediate response to his amenities, and Henderson laughed.

"It's all the stranger," he said, "because I can't forget our first meeting. Then you were the spirit of warfare. I can still seem to see you standing there barring the path; your eyes ablaze and your nostrils aquiver with righteous wrath."

For an instant, in recollection of the incident, she forgot her timidity and there flashed into her face the swift illumination of a smile.

"Thet war when I 'lowed ye war an enemy. Folks don't show no – I mean don't show any – fear of thar enemies. Leastways – at least – mountain folks don't."

He understood that attitude, but he smiled, pretending to misconstrue it.

"Then I'm not dangerous as an enemy? It's only when I seek to be a friend that I need be feared?"

Her flush deepened into positive confusion and her reply was faltering.

"I didn't mean nothin' like thet. Hit's jest thet when I tries ter talk with ye, I feels so plumb ign'rant an' – an' benighted – thet – thet – " She broke off and the man leaning on the fence bent toward her.

"You mean that when you talk to me you think I'm comparing you with the girls I know down below, isn't that it?"

Blossom nodded her head and added, "With gals – girls I mean – that wears fancy fixin's an' talks grammar."

"Sit down there for a minute, Blossom," he commanded, and when she had enthroned herself on the square-hewn horse-block by the gate he seated himself, cross-legged at her feet.

"Grammar isn't so very hard to learn," he assured her. "And any woman who carries herself with your lance-like ease, starts out equipped with more than 'fancy fixin's.' I want to tell you about a dream I had the other night."

At once her face grew as absorbed as a child's at the promise of a fairy story.

"I dreamed that I went to a very grand ball in a city down below. The ladies were gorgeously dressed, but late in the evening an unknown girl came into the room and everybody turned to look at her, forgetting all the rest of the party." He paused a moment before adding, "I dreamed that that girl was you."

"What did they all hev ter say about me?" she eagerly demanded.

"To be perfectly frank – you see it was a dream – most of them just exclaimed: 'My God!'"

"I don't hardly censure 'em," admitted Blossom. "I reckon I cut a right sorry figger at that party."

Henderson laughed aloud.

"But don't you see, that wasn't it at all. They were all breathless with admiration. You had the things they would have given all their jewels for – things they can't buy."

For a little space she looked at him with serious, pained eyes, suspicious of ridicule, then the expression altered to bewilderment, and her question came in a lowered voice.

"Things I hev thet they lacks? What manner of things air them – I mean – those?"

"The very rare gifts of originality and an elfin personality," he assured her. "Besides that you have beauty of the freshest and most colorful sort."

For a moment Blossom flushed again shyly, then she lifted one hand and pointed across the road.

"See thet white flower? Thet's wild parsely. I always calls it the pore relation to the elder bush – but it's jest got to stay a pore relation – always – because it started out thet way."

Henderson, as the summer progressed, discovered an absurd thought lurking in his mind with annoying pertinacity. He could not for long banish the fanciful picture of Blossom Fulkerson transplanted – of Blossom as she might be with fuller opportunities for development. There is an undeniable fascination in building air-castles about the Cinderella theme of human transformations and the sight of her always teased his imagination into play.

That these fantasies bore any personal relation to himself he did not admit or even suspect. Readily enough, and satisfactorily enough he explained to himself that he, who was accustomed to a life of teeming activities, was here marooned in monotony. All things are measurable by contrasts, and in her little world, Blossom stood out radiantly and exquisitely different from her colorless sisters. When he had crossed Cedar Mountain again and boarded a railroad train, more vital things would engage him, and he would promptly forget the beautiful little barbarian.

One hot afternoon in late July Jerry Henderson sat in the lounging-room of his club in Louisville. The windows were open and the street noises, after the still whispers of the mountains, seemed to beat on his senses with discordant insistence. Down the length of the broad, wainscoted hall he saw a party of young men in flannels and girls in soft muslins passing out and he growled testily.

"All cut to a single pattern!" he exclaimed. "All impeccably monotonous!" Then he irrelevantly added to himself, "I'm allowing myself to become absurd – I expect its the damned heat. Anyhow she's Bear Cat Stacy's gal!"

As Jerry sat alone he was, quite unconsciously, affording a theme of conversation for two fellow clubmen in the billiard-room.

"I see Jerry Henderson has reappeared in our midst," commented one. "I wonder what titanic enterprise is engaging his genius just now."

"Give it up," was the laconic reply. "But whatever it is, I'm ready to wager he'll emerge from it unscathed and that everybody who backs him will be ruined. That's the history of his buccaneer activities up to date."

"What's his secret? Why don't his creditors fall on him and destroy him?" inquired the first speaker and his companion yawned.

"It's the damned charm of the fellow, I suppose. He could hypnotize the Shah of Persia into Calvinism."

For a moment the speakers fell silent, watching a shot on the pool-table, then one of them spoke with languid interest.

"Whatever we may think of our friend Henderson, he's a picturesque figure, and he's running a most diverting race. He's always just a jump behind a billion dollars and just a jump ahead of the wolf and the constable."

While this conversation proceeded, a heavy-set and elderly gentleman, with determined eyes, entered the club. It was President Wallace of the C. and S-E Railways, and palpably something was on his mind.

Glancing in at the reading-room, and seeing Henderson there, he promptly disposed himself in a heavily cushioned chair at his side and inquired:

"Well, what have you to report?"

"Very little so far," rejoined Henderson with his suavest smile. "You see, there's a man up there who has an annoying capacity for seeing into things and through things. On the day of my arrival he put his finger on my actual purpose in coming."

"You mean Kinnard Towers, I presume." The railroad president drummed thoughtfully on the table-top with his fingers. "I was afraid he would try to hold us up."

Jerry nodded. "He pretends to be unalterably opposed to innovation, but I fancy he really wants to be let in on the ground floor. He has decided that unless he shares our loot, there is to be no plundering."

"Possibly," the railroad magnate spoke thoughtfully, "we'd better meet his terms. The damned outlaw has power up there and we stand to win – or lose – a little empire of wealth."

Henderson's closed fist fell softly but very firmly on the table. His tone was smooth and determined. "Please leave me in command for a while, Mr. Wallace. I mean to beat this highbinder at his own favorite game. If we yield to him he'll emasculate our profits. You gave me five years when we first discussed this thing. In that time I can accomplish it."

"Take seven if you need them. It's worth it."

Sitting in the smoking-car of the train that was transporting him again from civilization to "back of beyond," Jerry Henderson found himself absorbed in somewhat disquieting thoughts.

He gazed out with a dulled admiration on the fertility of blue-grass farms where the land rolled with as smooth and gracious a swell as a woman's bosom. Always heretofore the Central Kentucky mansions with their colonial dignity and quiet air of pride had brought an eager appreciation to his thoughts – the tribute of one who worships an aristocracy based on wealth.

But now when he saw again the tangled underbrush and outcropping rock of the first foothills, something in him cried out, for the first time since boyhood, "I'm going home!" When the altitudes began to clamber into the loftiness of peaks, with wet streamers of cloud along their slopes, the feeling grew. The sight of an eagle circling far overhead almost excited him.

Jerry Henderson was a soldier of fortune, with Napoleonic dreams, and finance was his terrain of conquest. To its overweening ambition he had subordinated everything else. To that attainment he had pointed his whole training, cultivating himself not only in the practicalities of life but also in its refinements, until his bearing, his speech, his manners were possibly a shade too meticulously perfect; too impeccably starched.

Where other men had permitted themselves mild adventures in love and moderate indulgence in drink, he had set upon his conduct a rigid censorship.

His heart, like his conduct, had been severely schooled, for upon marriage, as upon all else, he looked with an opportunist's eye.

His wife must come as an ally, strengthening his position socially and financially. She must be a lady of the old aristocracy, bringing to his house cultivated charm and the power of wealth. She must be fitted, when he took his place among the financially elect, to reign with him.

So it was strange that as he sat here in the smoking-car he should be thinking of an unlettered girl across Cedar Mountain, and acknowledging with a boyish elation that on the way to Lone Stacy's house he would pass her cabin, see her – hear the lilting music of her laugh.

And when Cedar Mountain itself rose before him he swung his way with buoyant stride, up one side and down the other of the range.

Blossom was not in sight when at last he reached the Fulkerson cabin, but the door stood open and Henderson approached it stealthily. He paused for a moment, pondering how conspicuously the small house contrasted with the shabbiness of its neighborhood. It was as trim as a Swiss chalet, reflecting the personality of its mistress. Door frames and window casings were neatly painted – and he knew that was Bear Cat's labor of love. The low hickory-withed chairs on the porch were put together with an approach to a craftsman's skill – and he knew that, too, was Bear Cat's labor of love.

As he reached the porch he saw the girl herself sitting just within, and a broad shaft of sun fell across her, lighting the exquisite quality of her cheeks and the richness of her hair. She was bending studiously over a book, and her lips were drooping with an unconscious wistfulness.

Then, as his shadow fell, Blossom looked up and, in the sudden delight with which she came to her feet, she betrayed her secret of a welcome deeper than that accorded to a friendly but casual stranger.

They were still very much engrossed in each other when half an hour later Bear Cat Stacy appeared without warning in the door. For just a moment he halted on the threshold with pained eyes, before he entered.

The two men walked home together and, along the way, the younger was unaccountably silent. His demeanor had relapsed into that shadow of sullenness which it had often worn before Henderson's coming.

Finally Jerry smilingly demanded an explanation and Bear Cat Stacy turned upon him a face which had suddenly paled. He spoke with a dead evenness.

"We've been honest with each other up to now, Mr. Henderson, an' I demands thet ye be honest with me still."

"I aim to be, Turner. What is it?"

The younger man gulped down a lump which had suddenly risen in his throat, and jerked his head toward the house they had just left.

"Hit's Blossom. Does ye aim ter – ter co'te her?"

"Court her! What put such an idea into your head?"

"Never mind what put hit thar. I've got ter know! Blossom hain't never promised ter wed me, yit, but – " He broke off and for a little while could not resume though his face was expressive enough of his wretchedness. Finally he echoed: "I've got to know! Ef she'd rather marry you, she's got a license ter choose a-tween us. Only I hadn't never thought of thet – an' – ." Once more he fell silent.

"My God, Turner," exclaimed Jerry, with a sudden realization of the absurdity of such an idea, "I could have no thought of marrying her."

"Why couldn't ye?" For an instant the gray eyes narrowed and into them came a dangerous gleam. "Hain't she good enough – fer you or any other man?"

Jerry Henderson nodded with grave assent.

"She's good enough for any man alive," he declared. "But I can't think of marriage at all now. All my plans of life prohibit that." Bear Cat Stacy drank in the clear air in a long breath of joyous relief.

"That's all I needs ter know," he said with entire sincerity. "Only," his voice dropped and he spoke very gently, "only, I reckon ye don't realize how much yore eddycation counts with us thet wants hit an' hain't got hit. Don't let her misunderstand ye none, Mr. Henderson. I don't want ter see her hurt."