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CHAPTER I

A creaking complaint of loose and rattling boards rose under the old mountaineer's brogans as he stepped from the threshold to the porch. His eyes, searching the wooded mountain-side, held at first only that penetration which born woodsmen share with the hawk and ferret, but presently they kindled into irascibility as well.

He raised his voice in a loud whoop that went skittering off across the rocky creek bed where Little Slippery crawled along to feed the trickle of Big Slippery ten miles below, and the volume of sound broke into a splintering of echoes against the forested crags of the Old Wilderness Ridges.

"You, Turner!" bellowed the man with such a bull-like roar as might have issued from the chest of a Viking. "You, Turner, don't ye heer me a-callin' ye?"

A woman, rawboned and crone-like before her time under the merciless forcing of drudgery, appeared in the door, wiping reddened hands on a coarse cotton apron.

"I reckon he'll be hyar, presently, paw," she suggested in a high-pitched voice meant to be placating. "I reckon he hain't fared far away."

The hodden-gray figure of the man turned to his wife and his voice, as it dropped to conversational pitch, held a surprisingly low and drawling cadence.

"What needcessity did he hev ter go away a-tall?" came his interrogation. "He knowed I aimed ter hev him tote thet gryste acrost ther ridge ter the tub-mill, didn't he? He knows that hits perilous business ter leave corn like that a-layin' 'round, don't he—sprouted corn!"

A flash of poignant anxiety clouded the woman's eyes. Corn sprouted in the grain before grinding! She knew well enough what that meant—incrimination in the eyes of the Government—trial, perhaps, and imprisonment.

"Ye 'lowed a long while since, Lone," she reminded him with a trace of wistfulness in her voice, "that ye aimed ter quit makin' blockade licker fer all time. Hit don't pleasure me none ter see ye a-follerin' hit ergin. Seems like thar's a curse on hit from start ter finish."

"I don't foller hit because I delights in hit," he retorted grimly. "But what else is thar ter do? I reckon we've got ter live somehow—hain't we?" For an instant his eyes flared with an upleaping of rebellion; then he turned again on his heel and roared "Turner—you, Turner!"

"Ther boy seemed kinderly fagged out when he come in. I reckon he aimed ter slip off and rest in ther shade somewhars fer a lettle spell afore ye needed him," volunteered the boy's mother, but the suggestion failed to mollify the mounting impatience of the father.

"Fagged! What's fagged him? I hain't never disc'arned nothin' puny about him. He's survigrous enough ter go a-snortin' an' a-stompin' over ther hills like a yearlin' bull, a-honin' fer battle. He's knowed from God's Blessin' Creek ter Hell's Holler by ther name of Bear Cat Stacy, hain't he? Bear Cat Stacy! I'd hate ter take my name from a varmint—but it pleasures him."

"I don't sca'cely b'lieve he seeks no aimless quarrels," argued the mother defensively. "Thar hain't no meanness in him. He's jest like you was, Lone, when ye was twenty a-goin' on twenty-one. He's full o' sperrit. I reckon Bear Cat jest means thet he's quick-like an' supple."

"Supple! Hell's torment! Whar's he at now? He's jest about a-layin' somewhar's on his shoulder-blades a-readin' thet everlastin' book erbout Abe Lincoln—You, Turner!"

Then the figure of a young man appeared, swinging along with an effortless stride down the steep grade of the mountain which was richly mottled with the afternoon sun. He came between giant clusters of flowering laurel, along aisles pink with wild roses and white with the foaming spray of elder blossoms; flanked by masses of colossal rock, and every movement was a note of frictionless power.

Like his father, Turner Stacy measured a full six feet, but age and the yoke of hardship had not yet stooped his fine shoulders nor thickened his slenderness of girth. His face was striking in its clear chiseling of feature and its bronzed color. It would have been arrestingly handsome but for its marring shadow of surliness.

In one hand he held a battered book, palpably one used with the constancy and devotion of a monk's breviary, and a forefinger was still thrust between the dog-eared pages. "Lincoln: Master of Men,"—such was the title of the volume.

As Turner Stacy arrived at the house, his father's uncompromisingly stern eyes dwelt on the book and they were brimming with displeasure.

"Didn't ye know I hed work for ye ter do terday?"

The boy nodded indifferently.

"I 'lowed ye hed ther power ter shout fer me when ye war ready, I wasn't more'n a whoop an' a holler distant."

The mother, hovering in the shadowed interior of the house, listened silently, and a little anxiously. This friction of unbending temper between her husband and son was a thing to which she could never quite accustom herself. Always she was interposing herself as a buffer between their threats of clashing wills.

"Turner," said the elder man slowly, and now he spoke quietly with an effort to curb his irascibililty, "I knows thet boys often-times gits uppety an' brash when they're a-growin' inter manhood. They've got thar growth an' they feel thar strength an' they hain't acquired neither sense ner experience enough ter realize how plumb teetotally much they don't know yit. But speakin' jedgmatically, I hain't never heered tell of no Stacy afore what hain't been loyal ter his family an' ther head of his house. 'Pears like ter me hit pleasures ye beyond all reason ter sot yoreself crost-wise erginst me."

The boy's eyes grew somberly dark as they met those of his father with undeviating steadiness. An analyst would have said that the outward surliness was after all only a mask for an inner questioning—the inarticulate stress of a cramped and aspiring spirit.

"I don't know as ye hev any rightful cause fer ter charge me with bein' disloyal," he answered slowly, as if pondering the accusation. "I hain't never aimed ter contrary ye."

Lone Stacy paused for a moment and then the timbre of his voice acquired the barb of an irony more massive than subtle.

"Air yore heart in torment because ye hain't ther President of ther country, like Abe Lincoln was? Is thet why ye don't delight in nothin' save dilitary dreams?"

A slow, brick-red flush suffused the brown cheeks of Bear Cat Stacy, and his answer came with a slowness that was almost halting.

"When Abraham Lincoln was twenty years old he warn't no more President then what I be. Thar hain't many Lincoln's, but any feller kin have ther thing in him, though, thet carried Lincoln up ter whar he went. Any feller kin do his best and want ter do some better. Thet's all I'm aimin' after."

The father studied his son's suddenly animated eyes and inquired drily, "Does this book-l'arnin' teach ye ter lay around plumb ind'lent with times so slavish hard thet I've been pintedly compelled ter start ther still workin' ergin, despite my a-bein' a Christian an' a law-lover: despite my seekin' godliness an' abhorin' iniquity?"

There was in the sober expression of the questioner no cast of hypocrisy or conscious anomaly, and the younger man shook his head.

"I hain't never shirked no labor, neither in ther field ner at ther still, but——" He paused a moment and once more the rebellious light flared in his eyes and he continued with the level steadiness of resolution. "But I hates ter foller thet business, an' when I comes of age I aims ter quit hit."

"Ye aims ter quit hit, does ye?" The old mountaineer forgot, in the sudden leaping of wrath at such unfilial utterances, that he himself had a few minutes before spoken in the same tenor. "Ye aims ter defy me, does ye? Wa'al even afore ye comes of age hit wouldn't hardly hurt ye none ter quit drinkin' hit. Ye're too everlastin' good ter make blockade licker, but ye hain't none too good ter lay drunk up thar with hit."

This time the boy's flush was one of genuine chagrin and he bit off the instinctive retort that perhaps a realization of this overpowering thirst was the precise thing which haunted him: the exact urge which made him want to break away from a serfdom that held him always chained to his temptation.

"Ye thinks ye're too much like Abe Lincoln ter make blockade licker," went on the angry parent, "but ye hain't above rampagin' about these hills seekin' trouble an' raisin' up enemies whar I've done spent my days aimin' ter consort peaceable with my neighbors. Hit hain't been but a week since ye broke Ratler Webb's nose."

"Hit come about in fair fight—fist an' skull, an' I only hit him oncet."

"Nobody else didn't feel compelled ter hit him even oncet, did they?"

"Mebby not—but he was seekin' ter bulldoze me an' he hurt my feelin's. I'd done laughed hit off twic't."

"An' so ye're a-goin' on a-layin' up trouble erginst ther future. Hit hain't ther makin' of licker thet's laid a curse on these hills. Hit's drinkin' hit. Ef a man kin walk abroad nowadays without totin' his rifle-gun an' a-dreadin' ther shot from the la'rel, hit's because men like me hev sought day an' night ter bring about peace. I counseled a truce in ther Stacy-Towers war because I war a Christian an' I didn't 'low thet God favored bloodshed. But ther truce won't hardly last ef ye goes about stirrin' up ructions.

"Bear Cat Stacy!" stormed the older man furiously as his anger fed upon itself. "What air a bear cat anyways? Hit's a beast thet rouses up from sleep an' crosses a mountain fer ther pure pleasure of tearin' out some other critter's throat an' vitals. Hit's a varmint drove on by ther devil's own sperit of hatefulness.

"Even in ther feud days men warred with clean powder an' lead, but sich-like fightin' don't seem ter satisfy ye. Ye hain't got no use fer a rifle-gun. Ye wants ter tear men apart with yore bare hands an' ter plumb rend 'em asunder! I've trod ther streets of Marlin Town with ye, an' watched yore eyes burnin' like hot embers, until peaceable men drew back from ye an' p'inted ye out ter strangers. 'Thar goes ther Bear Cat,' they'd whisper. 'Give him ther whole road!' Even ther town marshal walked in fear of ye an' war a-prayin' ter God Almighty ye wouldn't start nothin'."

"I don't never seek no fight." This time Turner Stacy spoke without shame. "I don't never have no trouble save whar I'm plumb obleeged ter hev hit."

"Thet's what Kinnard Towers always 'lowed," was the dry retort, "though he's killed numerous men, and folks says he's hired others killed, too."

The boy met the accusing glance and answered quietly:

"Ye don't favor peace no more than what I do."

"I've aimed ter be both God-fearin' an' law-abidin'," continued the parent whose face and figure might have been cast in bronze as a type of the American pioneer, "yet ye censures me fer makin' untaxed licker!" His voice trembled with a repressed thunder of emotion.

"I've seed times right hyar on this creek when fer ther most part of a whole winter we hurted fer salt an' thar warn't none to be had fer love nor money. Thar warn't no money in these hills nohow—an' damn'-little love ter brag about. Yore maw an' me an' Poverty dwelt hyar tergether—ther three of us. We've got timber an' coal an' no way ter git hit ter market. Thar's jest only one thing we kin turn inter money or store-credit—an' thet's our corn run inter white licker."

He paused as if awaiting a reply and when his son volunteered none he swept on to his peroration. "When I makes hit now I takes numerous chances, an' don't complain. Some revenuer, a-settin' on his hunkers, takin' life easy an' a-waitin' fer a fist full of blood money is liable ter meet up in ther highway with some feller thet's nursin' of a grudge erginst me or you. Hit's plumb risky an' hits damn'-hard work, but hit hain't no wrong-doin' an' ef yore grandsires an' yore father hain't been above hit, I rekon you hain't above hit neither."

Turner Stacy was still standing on the porch, with one finger marking the place where he had left off reading his biography of Lincoln—the master of men.

Born of a line of stoics, heir to laconic speech and reared to stifle emotions, he was inarticulate and the somberness of his eyes, which masked a pageantry of dreams and a surging conflict in his breast, seemed only the surliness of rebellion.

He looked at his father and his mother, withered to sereness by their unrelenting battle with a life that had all been frostbite until even their power of resentment for its injustice had guttered out and dried into a dull acceptance.

His fingers gripped the book. Abraham Lincoln had, like himself, started life in a log house and among crude people. Probably he, too, had in those early days no one who could give an understanding ear to the whispering voices that urged him upward. At first the urge itself must have been blurred of detail and shadowy of object.

Turner's lips parted under an impulse of explanation, and closed again into a more hopelessly sullen line. The older man had chafed too long in heavy harness to comprehend a new vision. Any attempt at self-expression would be futile.

So the picture he made was only that of a headstrong and wilful junior who had listened unmoved to reason, and a mounting resentment kindled in the gaze of the bearded moonshiner.

"I've done aimed ter talk reason with ye," barked the angry voice, "an' hit don't seem ter convince ye none. Ef ther pattern of life I've sot ye hain't good enough, do ye think ye're better than yore maw, too?"

"I didn't never say ye warn't good enough." The boy found himself freezing into defiant stiffness under this misconstruction until his very eagerness to be understood militated against him.

"Wa'al, I'll tell ye a thing I don't talk a heap about. Hit's a thing thet happened when ye was a young baby. I spent two y'ars in prison then fer makin' white whiskey."

"You!" Turner Stacy's eyes dilated with amazement and the older face hardened with a baleful resentment.

"Hit warn't jest bein' put in ther jail-house thet I kain't fergit ner fergive so long as I goes on livin'. Hit war ther reason. Ye talks mighty brash erbout ther sacredness of ther Revenue laws—wa'al, listen ter me afore ye talks any more." He paused and then continued, as if forcing himself to an unwelcome recital.

"I've always borne the name hyarabouts of bein' a law-abidin' citizen and a man thet could be trusted. I'd hoped ter bring peace to the mountings, but when they lawed me and sent me down to Looeyville fer trial, ther Government lawyer 'lowed thet sence I was a prominent citizen up hyar a-breakin' of the law, they had ought to make a sample of me. Because my reputation was good I got two y'ars. Ef hit hed been bad, I mout hev come cl'ar."

The son took an impulsive step forward, but with an imperious wave of the hand, his father halted him and the chance for a sympathetic understanding was gone.

"Hold on! I hain't quite done talkin' yit. In them days we war livin' over ther ridge, whar Little Ivy heads up. You thinks this hyar's a pore fashion of dwellin'-house, but thet one hed jest a single room an' na'ry a winder in all hits four walls. You're maw war right ailin' when they tuck me away ter ther big Co'te an' she war mighty young, too, an' purty them days afore she broke. Thar warn't no man left ter raise ther crops, an' you ra'red like a young calf ef ye didn't git yore vittles reg'lar.

"I reckon mebby ye hain't hardly got no proper idee how long two y'ars kin string out ter be when a man's sulterin' behind bars with a young wife an' a baby thet's liable ter be starvin' meanwhile! I reckon ye don't hardly realize how I studied down thar in prison about ther snow on these Godforsaken hillsides an' ther wind whirrin' through ther chinks. But mebby ye kin comprehend this hyar fact. You'd hev pintedly starved ter death, ef yore maw hedn't rigged up a new still in place of ther one the Government confiscated, an' made white licker all ther time I was down thar sarvin' time. She did thet an' paid off ther interest on the mortgage an' saved a leetle mite for me erginst ther day when I come home. Now air ye sich a sight better then yore maw was?"

A yellow flood of sunlight fell upon the two figures and threw into a relief of high lights their two faces; one sternly patriarchal and rugged, the other vitally young and spare of feature.

Corded arteries appeared on Bear Cat's temples and, as he listened, the nails of his fingers bit into the flesh of his palms, but his father swept on, giving him no opportunity to reply.

"My daddy hed jest shortly afore been lay-wayed an' killed by some Towers murderer, an' his property had done been parceled out amongst his children. Thar wasn't but jest fourteen of us ter heir hit an' nobody got much. When they tuck me down ter ther big Co'te I had ter hire me a lawyer—an' thet meant a mortgage. Yore maw hedn't, up ter then, been used ter sich-like slavish poverty. She could hev married mighty nigh any man in these parts—an' she tuck me.

"Whilst 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."