When 'Bear Cat' Went Dry. Charles Neville Buck
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