ted 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.

To the unkempt place of briar-choked and sunken graves, crawled a dingy
procession.

Blossom would have preferred going with her dead unattended save by her
father, but that mountain usage forebade. A wedding or a funeral could
not be so monopolized in a land where there is frugally little to break
daily monotony. This funeral above all others, belonged in part to the
public, ma