When 'Bear Cat' Went Dry

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...

The afternoon was half spent and the sun, making its way toward the purpled ridges of the west, was already casting long shadows athwart the valleys. Along a trail which wound i...

Old man Bud Jason stood at the door of his tub-mill, leaning on the long hickory staff which he always carried. He stood gauntly tall even now that his once-broad shoulders sagg...

With a mutter of distant thunder in his ears, the young mountaineer plodded "slavishly" on under his load as night closed about him. The path twisted among heaped up bowlders wh...

"Unless they suspicions ye, 'most any man'll contrive ter take ye in an' enjoy ye somehow," his counselors had pointed out. "But thar's heaps of them pore fam'lies over thar the...

In former days an Appalachian tavern was a "quarter-house"; a hostelry where one paid a quarter for one's bed and a quarter, each, for meals. Now the term has fallen into such d...

Because Jerry Henderson viewed the life of the hills through understanding eyes, certain paradoxes resolved themselves into the expected. He was not surprised to find under Lone...

Henderson found Brother Fulkerson a preacher who, more by service and example and comforting the disconsolate than by pulpit oratory, held a strong influence upon his people, an...

Hither, when the summer had spent its heat and the hard duties of the farmer had relaxed, flocked the men and women and the children of the country side for that annual diversio...

On the river bank at the outskirts of Marlin Town that afternoon so primitive was the aspect of life that it seemed appropriate to say in Scriptural form: "A great multitude was...

Under the impact of these tidings Turner Stacy came to his feet with a sudden transformation of bearing. The poetic abstraction which had, a moment ago, been a facial mirror for...

Instead of a puzzled accountant Jerry found in the bare upper room the rosy-faced, white-haired man who had given him credentials when he first arrived in the hills, and who kep...

Two faces persisted in rising before her imagination; one, the reproachful countenance of Bear Cat, whom she ought to love whole-heartedly; the other, that of Henderson, whom sh...

The post-office at Possum Trot, which serves the dwellers along the waters of Skinflint, is housed in one corner of a shack store and the distribution of its mail is attended wi...

Kinnard Towers had spent that evening in his house at the distance of a furlong from the stockaded structure wherein the drama of his authorship was to be staged and acted. The...

Dog Tate had left his mash kettle unguarded that night, putting clan loyalty above individual interest as he hastened off to stir into action the dwellers of the Stacy cabins, a...

Bear Cat, with his hand on the latch, lingered at the door, held there by a spell which he seemed powerless to combat. His part here was played out and to remain longer was an i...

Luke Towers, the father of Kinnard, had been one of those fierce and humorless old feudists of primal animosities and exploits as engagingly bold as the feats of moss-trooping b...

As the snarling restiveness moderated to curiosity under Kinnard's uncouth forcefulness and seemingly candid words, he repeated the mendacious story of his outraged righteousnes...

When the Jews heard of a Messiah coming as a king they made ready to acclaim him, but when they found him a moralist commanding the sacrifice of their favorite sins, they surren...

Three times along the way, as the new crusader trudged on to Dog Tate's cabin, the late-setting moon glinted on queerly twisted things suspended from road-side trees--things unl...

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 Towe...

Bear Cat Stacy had gone with George Kelly to the house where his wife was awaiting him that night, and though he had remained outside while the husband went in, it was not hard...

When the door fell in, Bear Cat Stacy stepped across the splintered woodwork, unarmed save for the holstered pistol in his belt. He made a clear target for at his back was the r...

When the curtain of unconsciousness rolled up again Blossom was no longer in the cave, but was lying on the ground between the rocks outside. It was dark now, but a lantern was...

"Take a cheer an' sit down, an' light a pipe--unless ye've got a cigar." The invitation came from the Honorable William Renshaw, circuit judge, seated in the same small chamber...

The volume of the singing out there and the flare of the ruddy torches, left no doubt as to the substantial strength of the force which had swept aside such legal technicalities...

On the porch of Miss Pendleton's house that night, guitars were tinkling. From inside came the glow of shaded lamps softly amber--and outside along the hillsides where the whipp...