I war a-layin' thar in jail a-tormentin' myself with my doubtin' whether either one of ye would weather them times alive, she was a-runnin' ther still hyar in my stead. Many's the day she tromped over them hills through ther snow an' mud with you a-whimperin' on her breast an' wropped in a shawl thet she needed her own self. Many's ther night she tromped back ergin an' went hongry ter bed, so's you could have plenty ter eat, when thar warn't sca'cely enough ter divide betwixt ye. But them things she did in famine days, you're too sanctified ter relish now."
Turner Stacy trembled from head to foot. It seemed to him that he could see that grim picture in retrospect and despite his stoic's training his eyes burned with unshed tears. Loyalty to kith and kin is the cornerstone of every mountain man's religion, the very grail of his faith. Into his eyes blazed a tawny, tigerish light, but words choked in his throat and his father read, in his agitation, only a defiance which was no part of his thought.
"Now, see hyar," he went on with mounting autocracy, "I've done told ye things I don't oftentimes discuss. I've done reasoned with ye an' now I commands ye! Ye hain't of age yit and until ye do be, ye've got to do as I bids ye. Atter that, ef ye aims to turn yore back on yore family ye can do hit, an' I reckon we can go our two ways. That's all I got to say to ye. Now pick up that sack of gryste an' be gone with hit."
The boy's face blackened and his muscles tautened under the arrogant domineering of the edict. For a moment he neither spoke nor stirred from his place, though his chest heaved with the fulness of his breathing. The elder man moved ominously forward and his tone was violently truculent.
"Air ye goin' ter obey me or do I hev ter make ye? Thar's a sayin' thet come acrost ther waters thet no man kin lick his own daddy. I reckon hit still holds good."
Still the son remained as unmoving as bronze while his eyes sustained unflinchingly the wrathful gaze of a patriarchal order. Then he spoke in a voice carefully schooled to quietness.
"As to thet sayin'," he suggested evenly, "I reckon mebbe hit mought be disproved, but I hain't aimin' to try hit. Ye've done said some right-hard things to-day an' some thet wasn't hardly justified—but I aims ter fergit 'em."
Suddenly, by virtue of a leaping light in his eyes, the boy in jeans and hodden-gray stood forth strangely transfigured. Some spirit revelation seemed to have converted him into a mystifying incarnation of latent, if uncomprehended power. It was as startling as though a road-side beggar had tossed aside a drab cloak and hood of rags and revealed beneath it, the glitter of helmet and whole armor.
"I aims ter fergit hit all," he repeated. "But don't seek ter fo'ce me ner ter drive me none—fer thet's a thing I kain't hardly suffer. As fur as a man kin go outen loyalty I'll go fer you—but I've got ter go in my own fashion—an' of my own free will. Ye've done said that I went erbout seekin' trouble an' I hain't got no doubt ye believes what ye says albeit most of hit's false. Ye says I lays drunk sometimes. Thet's true an' hit's a shameful thing fer a man ter admit, but hit's a thing I've got ter fight out fer myself. Hit don't profit neither of us fer ye ter vilify me."
He broke off abruptly, his chest heaving, and to Lone Stacy it seemed that the air was electrically charged, as with the still tensity that goes, windless and breathless, before the bursting of thunder heads among the crags. Then Bear Cat spoke again somewhat gropingly and with inarticulate faultiness, as though a flood pressure were seeking egress through a choked channel. The words were crude, but back of them was a dammed-up meaning like the power of hurricane and forest fire. "Thar's somethin' in me—I don't know how ter name it—thar's somethin' in me sort of strugglin' an' a-drivin' me like a torment! Thet weakness fer licker—I hates hit like—like all hell—but I hain't all weakness! Thet thing, whatever hit be—sometimes jest when hit seems like hit ought ter raise me up—hit crushes me down like the weight of ther mountings themselves."
He wheeled suddenly and disappeared into the house where he deposited his book on the mantel-shelf and from behind the door swung a grain sack to his shoulder. Then he left the house.
Lone Stacy turned to his wife and lifted his hands with a gesture of baffled perplexity as he inquired, "Does ye understand ther boy? He's our own blood an' bone, but sometimes I feels like I was talkin' ter a person from a teetotally diff'rent world. Nobody round hyar don't comprehend him. I've even heered hit norated round amongst foolish folks thet he talks with graveyard ha'nts an' hes a witch-craft charm on his life. Air he jest headstrong, maw, or air he so master big thet we kain't comprehend him? No man hain't never called me a coward, but thar's spells when I'm half-way skeered of my own boy."
"Mebby," suggested the woman quietly, "ef ye gentled him a leetle mite he wouldn't contrary ye so much."
Lone Stacy nodded his head and spoke with a grim smile. "Seems like I've got ter be eternally blusterin' at him jest ter remind myself thet I'm ther head of this fam'ly. Ef I didn't fo'ce myself ter git mad, I'd be actin' like he was my daddy instid of me bein' his'n."
CHAPTER II
T he afternoon was half spent and the sun, making its way toward the purpled ridges of the west, was already casting long shadows athwart the valleys. Along a trail which wound itself in many tortuous twists across forested heights and dipped down to lose itself at intervals in the creek bed of Little Slippery, a mounted traveler rode at a snail-like pace. The horse was a lean brute through whose rusty coat the ribs showed in under-nourished prominence, but it went sure-footedly up and down broken stairways of slimy ledges where tiny waterfalls licked at its fetlocks and along the brinks of chasms where the sand shelved with treacherous looseness.
The rider, a man weather-rusted to a drab monotone, slouched in his saddle with an apathetic droop which was almost stupor, permitting his reins to flap loosely. His face, under an unclean bristle of beard, wore a sleepy sneer and his eyes were bloodshot from white whiskey.
As he rode, unseeing, through the magnificent beauty of the Cumberlands his glance was sluggish and his face emotionless. But at last the horse halted where a spring came with a crystal gush out of the rhododendron thickets, and then Ratler Webb's stupefaction yielded to a semi-wakefulness of interest. He rubbed a shoddy coat-sleeve across his eyes and straightened his stooped shoulders. The old horse had thrust his nose thirstily into the basin with evident eagerness to drink. Yet, after splashing his muzzle about for a moment he refused refreshment and jerked his head up with a snort of disgust. A leering smile parted the man's lips over his yellow and uneven teeth:
"So ye won't partake of hit, old Bag-o'-bones, won't ye?" he inquired ironically. "Ye hain't nobody's brag critter to look at, but I reckon some revenue fellers mought be willin' to pay a master price fer ye. Ye kin stand at ther mouth of a spring-branch an' smell a still-house cl'ar up on hits headwaters, kain't ye?"
For a while Webb suffered the tired horse to stand panting in the creek bed, while his own eyes, lit now with a crafty livening, traveled up the hillside impenetrably masked with verdure, where all was silence. Somewhere up along the watercourse was the mash-vat and coil which had contaminated this basin for his mount's brute fastidiousness: an illicit distillery. This man clad in rusty store clothes was not inspired with a crusading ardor for supporting the law. He lived among men whose community opinion condones certain offenses—and pillories the tale-bearer. But above the ethical bearing of local standards and Federal Statutes, alike, loomed a matter of personal hatred, which powerfully stimulated his curiosity. He raised one hand and thoughtfully stroked his nose—recently broken with workman-like thoroughness and reset with amateurish imperfection.
"Damn thet Bear Cat Stacy," he muttered, as he kicked his
