importance of one bearing news.

"Hev ye folks done heered ther tidin's?" he demanded, shifting to a
sidewise position in his saddle. "Bear Cat Stacy's been raidin' stills.
Thar's a copper worm hangin' right at ther Quarterhouse door--an' trees
air bloomin' with others all along ther high road."

The murmur was half a growl--for the group was not without its
blockader or two--and half pure tribute to prompt achievement.

"Nor thet hain't all by half," went on the traveler, relating with the
gusto of a true climax how Black Tom had been bound to a hitching-rack
and Jake Kinnard staked out by his demolished mash kettle. This was
pure exploit--and whatever its motive the mountain man loves exploit.

Moreover, these sufferers from Bear Cat's wrath were men close to the
hated Kinnard Towers. Faces that had brooded yesterday grinned to-day.

* * * * *

Kinnard's squad reached the house of Dog Tate while the morning was yet
young, searching each cabin along the way, in the hope that last
night's raider might be still hiding in their own terrain.

They found Joe Sanders sitting on the doorstep, with the morose aspect
of a man deprived of his avocation in life. The wintry hillsides were
no moodier than his eyes, and the sullen skies no more darkly lowering.

But Dog Tate himself was loquacious to a fault. He raved with a fury so
unbridled that it suggested lunacy. Bear Cat had come to his place
wounded and had been succored. Twenty-four hours later he had come
there again treasonably to repay that service by ripping out an
unguarded still. Henceforth the Stacy call might remain eternally
unanswered, and be relegated to perdition for all of him.

"Dog," suggested the leader of the squad, "we've done been askin' leave
ter kinderly hev a look inter dwellin' houses--in case Bear Cat's still
layin' concealed over hyar. I reckon ye hain't hardly got no objection,
hev ye?"

"Does ye 'low thet I'd be hidin' out ther man thet raided me?" The host
put his question with a fine irony, and the reply was apologetic.

"Not sca'cely. Hit's jest so thet we kin tell Kinnard, we didn't pass
no house by, thet's all."

The speaker and the ex-moonshiner were standing at the threshold of the
log shack. It was a place of a single, windowless room with a lean-to
kitchen--and above was the loft reached by a trap and ladder.

"Come right in then," acceded Dog Tate with disarming readiness. "I
hain't g