"I aimed ter come, Blossom," he breathed between his teeth, "but I've done failed!" He stepped out to look over the ledge and for a moment his figure was silhouetted in the open light. Then again the curtain of blue-black shadow was shot through with fiery threads and a rifle barked sharply, trailing a broken wake of echoes. Bear Cat Stacy's two hands went high above his head, his right still clutching his rifle. He swayed for the duration of a breath, rocking on his feet, then plunged forward and outward. The next morning, no worms were found hanging in the highway, but, back at the Quarterhouse, Kinnard Towers turned in his hand a battered hat that had been retrieved from floating drift. "Yes, I reckon thet's his hat," he commented after a close scrutiny. "I reecollect seein' thet raw-hide thong laced round hit, endurin' his speech over thar. Wa'al, he elected ter go chargin' amuck--an' he's done reaped his harvest." CHAPTER XXII The story of Turner's death at unknown hands spread in the next few days like wild fire. Whatever may have been the lack of sympathy for the young man's undertakings of reform, it was now only remembered that he was a Stacy who had been "dogged to his death" by Towers' minions, and ugly rumblings of threat awoke along the water courses where his kinsmen dwelt. It was voiced abroad that Jerry Henderson could not outlive that week: that when he died, the body of Bear Cat Stacy would be buried with him, and that, from those two graves, the Stacys would turn away to wreak a sanguinary vengeance. Yet all this was the sheerest sort of rumor. No man had proof that a Towers rifle had killed Turner--the man to whom his clan had looked for leadership. No man had seen the body which his family was said to be holding for that dramatic consignment to the earth. But in part the report found fulfilment. On Sunday afternoon Blossom leaned over the quilt-covered figure of her dying husband to realize that he was no longer dying but dead. "Speak ter me, Jerry," she cried as she dug her nails into her palms. "Speak ter me--jest one time more." She sought to call out to her father, but her lips refused the service, and as she came to her feet she stretched out her hands and crumpled, insensible, to the floor. Brother Fulkerson went that afternoon to the saw-mill at the back of Uncle Israel's store and stood by as the storekeeper himself sawed planks and knocked together the crude box which must serve Jerry Henderson as a casket. Later across the counter he bought some yards of coarse cloth cut from a bolt of black calico, which was to be his daughter's pathetic attempt at mourning dress. The afternoon of the funeral was unspeakably sullen and dismal. Clouds of leaden dreariness hung to the bristling mountains, themselves as gray as slate. Cold skies promised snow and through the bleak nakedness of the forest whined the dirge-like complaint of a gusty wind.