Read Camp Venture: A Story of the Virginia Mountains Page 15

  CHAPTER XIV

  _Tom Gives an Account of Himself_

  "Now first of all," said Tom, when breakfast was over and the boys againbegan questioning him as to his night's adventure,--"first of all if Iever disappear again you're not any of you to worry about me. You allsay that 'little Tom knows how to take care of himself,' and I believe Ido, particularly when I have a double-barrelled shotgun with me andforty cartridges loaded with buckshot in my belt.

  "Now to explain. I was curious to find out how far the moonshiner who'negotiated' with me at the muzzle of your magazine rifle, Doctor, wastelling the truth, and how far he was lying. So I made up my mind toclimb down the mountain, following the line of our chute, and find outwhether or not that big timber had made a wreck of an illicit still downthere. Of course it hadn't. That was only an 'explanation' invented bythe fellow for immediate use, when he was caught sneaking up here toshoot some of us. His sole purpose was to drive us 'out'n the mountings'as these people put it. His plan was to sneak up here behind the houseand shoot some one or other of us, and thus compel us to 'git down out'nthe mountings.' He thought we'd all be out there chopping and that afterdropping one of us he could slip away unseen and of course unrecognized.He thought that then we'd quit. He didn't know that that cat hadscratched me so badly that the Doctor had condemned me to stay here atthe house, and so he was taken completely by surprise when I levelledthat repeating rifle at him, at less than six paces distance. So heresorted to humanity's last resource, lying. I remember reading in abook somewhere that Queen Elizabeth said that 'a lie is an intellectualway of meeting a difficulty.' Well that fellow was very intellectual. Helied 'to the queen's taste'--even Queen Elizabeth's taste. He told methat he had come up here to ask us fellows to change the direction ofour chute, lest it demolish his still down there--though of course hedidn't admit that it was a still. I wanted to find out about that and soI slipped away and climbed down the mountain. I found the still allright--indeed I found three of them--on my mother's land, but thereisn't one of them in the line of our chute or within a quarter of a mileof it. All that was a fable made up to cover the moonshiner's murderousmission.

  "Well when I found the stills in full blast I made up my mind to watchtheir operations for a time. I was securely ensconced upon a ledge whichI thought inaccessible from below, but it wasn't. For presently thosefellows threw out their pickets, and one of them climbed up to myparticular ledge, to keep 'watch and ward' there. There were only twothings for me to do. Either I must shoot the fellow and take my chancesof running away over a difficult track with which the moonshiners werefamiliar while I was not, or I must crouch away somewhere where themoonshining picket was not likely to see me.

  "As the more prudent of the two courses open to me, I chose the latter.There was a sort of half cave there, a crevice in the rocks, and Icrawled into that, and there I stayed all night, with my gun at fullcock and with Little Tom every instant on the alert. My plan was to keepmyself hidden as long as I could, and if discovered to get in the firstshot, and then run as fast as I could. Fortunately I was not discovered,and about half past six o'clock the stills ceased operations and thepickets were called in. Then I made my way around the side of themountain and got back to camp.

  "There, that's the whole story of Little Tom's night adventure. Nowlet's get to work at our chopping, for I am well enough now to do myshare and I hereby declare my independence of the Doctor."

  "That's all right," said the Doctor, "but if you break open any of thosewounds, I'll order you to bed again."

  "But wait awhile," interposed Jack. "There's something serious in allthis. Obviously these people don't intend to make open war upon us.Their plan is to sneak upon us and now and then to shoot one of us fromsome hiding place, in order to drive us out of the mountains. Now we'vegot to look out for that. We can do it in two ways. First we can send aslab down the chute with a message in it asking our friends down belowto send up the revenue officers and a company of soldiers to arrest allthese men, telling the revenue people that we'll show them the stillsand the men. In other words we can 'carry the war into Africa' as theRomans did, and put these fellows on the defensive instead of ourselvesstanding in that position. Or, if we don't care to do that--and thereare reasons against it--"

  "What are the reasons against it?" asked Little Tom, whose dispositionit was always to take the offensive in a righteous controversy.

  "Well, not more than a dozen or twenty of these mountaineers areactively engaged in this illicit distilling business, but all the restof the mountaineers are their friends and most of them are theirrelatives, for these mountaineers have intermarried until almost everyone of them is the near kinsman of all the rest. Now if we call in theassistance of the revenue officers and the troops behind them, the bestthat we can hope for is to put a dozen or so of them into jail, whilepossibly two or three of them will be shot in the melee. That will leavethe rest of them to make war upon us, with the assistance of all the menof the mountains."

  "Well what's the other plan," asked Tom, who very reluctantly gave upthe idea of aggressive fighting.

  "We must so place a sentinel every day that no man can come within riflerange of us without being discovered and stopped--with a bullet ifnecessary. Fortunately our camp is so placed that there are only twopoints at which it can be reached, and fortunately again there is onesheltered point--out there under the cliff--from which a sentinel cansee anybody approaching by either of the only two roads that lead intoour camp. My plan is to keep a sentinel always under the cliff outthere."

  Jack had so thoroughly thought the matter out that it needed nodiscussion. His plan was instantly adopted, one boy was sent to thesentry's post under the cliff, and the rest made a late beginning of theday's work of wood chopping.