CHAPTER IX
THE LAND OF THE LITTLE BROWN JUG
Caboose 0186, with three box-cars and a locomotive attached, lay in thesoutheastern yards at Raleigh late in the evening of the same day. Inthe observatory sat Mr. Thomas Ardmore, chatting with the conductor,while they waited for the right of way. Mr. Ardmore's pockets werefilled with papers, and he held half a dozen telegrams in his hand. Thefreight cars behind him were locked and sealed, and a number of menlounging near appeared to be watching them.
The reply of the sheriff of Dilwell County had precipitated the crisis.That official succinctly replied to Ardmore's message:
Be good and acquire grace.
While this dictum had aroused Miss Dangerfield's wrath and indignation,it calmed her fellow conspirator, and for hours Ardmore had poured forthorders by telegraph and telephone. No such messages as his had everbefore radiated from Raleigh. The tolls would have bankrupted thecommonwealth if Ardmore had not cared for them out of his private purse.His forester, with an armed posse from Ardsley, was already followingthe streams and beating the brush in search of Appleweight. One car ofArdmore's special train contained a machine gun and a supply of rifles;another abundant ammunition and commissary supplies, and the third cotsand bags. The men who loafed about the train were a detail ofstrike-breakers from a detective agency, borrowed for the occasion.Cooke, the conductor of the train, had formerly been in the governmentsecret service, and knew the Carolina hill country as he knew the palmof his hand. Ardmore had warned his manager and the housekeeper on hisestate to prepare for the arrival of Mrs. Atchison, whose private carhad come and gone, carrying Miss Geraldine Dangerfield on to Ardsley.Ardmore had just received a message from his sister at some way station,reporting all well and containing these sentences: "She is ratherdifferent, and I do not quite make her out. She has our noblebrother-in-law a good deal bewildered."
Cooke ran forward for a colloquy with the engineer over their orders;the guards climbed into one of the box-cars, and the train moved slowlyout of the Raleigh yards to the main line and rattled away towardKildare, with Mr. Ardmore, pipe in mouth, perched in the caboose cupola.
A caboose, you may not know, is the pleasantest place in the world toride. Essentially a thing of utility, it is not less the vehicle of joy.Neither the captain of a trading schooner nor the admiral of a canalfleet is more sublimely autocratic than the freight conductor in hiswatch-tower. The landscape is disclosed to him in leisurely panoramas;the springs beneath are not so lulling as to dull his senses. If heisn't whipped into the ditch by the humor of the engineer, or run downand telescoped by an enemy from behind, he may ultimately deliver hissomber fleet to its several destinations; but he is the slave of noinexorable time-table, and his excuses are as various as his cargoes.
Not Captain Kidd nor another of the dark brotherhood sailed forth withkeener zest for battle than Mr. Ardmore. Indeed, the trailing smoke ofthe locomotive suggested a black flag, and the thought of it tickled hisfancy. Above bent the bluest sky in the world; fields of corn andcotton, the brilliant crimson of German clover, and long stretches ofmixed forest held him with enchantment. In a cornfield a girl plowingwith a single steer--a little girl in a sunbonnet, who reached wearilyup to the plow handles--paused and waved to him, and he knew the delightof the lonely mariner when a passing ship speaks to him with flags. Andwhen night came, after the long mystical twilight, the train passed nowand then great cotton factories that blazed out from their thousandwindows like huge steamships.
When they sought a lonely siding to allow a belated passenger train topass, the conductor brewed coffee and cooked supper, and Ardmore calledin the detectives and trainmen. The sense of knowing real people, whosedaily occupations were so novel and interesting, touched him afresh withdelight. These men said much in few words. The taciturnity of Cooke, theconductor, in particular, struck Ardmore as very fine, and it occurredto him that very likely men who have had the fun of doing things nevertalk of their performances afterward. One of the detectives chaffedCooke covertly about some adventure in which they had been jointlyassociated.
"I never thought they'd get the lead out of you after that business inMissouri. You were a regular mine," said the detective to Cooke, andCooke glanced deprecatingly at Ardmore.
"He's the little joker, all right."
"You can't kill him," remarked the detective. "I've seen it tried."
Before the train started the detectives crawled back into their car, andCooke drew out some blankets, tossed them on a bench for Ardmore, andthrew himself down without ado. Ardmore held to his post in the tower,as lone as the lookout in a crow's-nest. The night air swept more coollyin as they neared the hills, and the train's single brakeman came downas though descending from the sky, rubbed the cinders from his eyes, andreturned to his vigil armed with a handful of Ardmore's cigars.
For the greater part of the night they enjoyed a free track, and thumpedthe rails at a lively clip. Shortly after midnight Ardmore crawled belowand went to sleep. At five o'clock Cooke called him.
"We're on the switch at Kildare. One of your men is here waiting foryou."
Big Paul, the German forester, was called in, and Ardmore made histoilet in a pail of water while listening to the big fellow's report.Cooke joined in the conversation, and Ardmore was gratified to see thatthe two men met on common ground in discussing the local geography. Theforester described in clear, straight-forward English just what he haddone. He had distributed his men well through the hills, and they werenow posted as pickets on points favorable for observation. They hadfound along the streams four widely scattered stills, and these werebeing watched. Paul drew a small map, showing the homes of the mostactive members of the Appleweight gang, and Ardmore indicated all thesepoints as nearly as possible on the county map he had brought with him.
"Here's Raccoon Creek, and my own land runs right through there--justabout here, isn't it, Paul? I always remember the creek, because I likethe name so much."
"You are right, Mr. Ardmore. The best timber you have lies along there,and your land crosses the North Carolina boundary into South Carolinaabout here. There's Mingo County, South Carolina, you see."
"Well, that dashes me!" exclaimed Ardmore, striking the table with hisfist. "I never knew one state from another, but you must be right."
"I'm positive of it, Mr. Ardmore. One of my men has been living there onthe creek to protect your timber. Some of these outlaws have beencutting off our wood."
"It seems to me I remember the place. There's a log house hanging on thecreek. You took me by it once, but it never entered my head that thestate line was so close."
"It runs right through the house! And some one, years ago, blazed thetrees along there, so it is very easy to tell when you step from onestate to another. My man left there recently, refusing to stay anylonger. These Appleweight people thought he was a spy, and posted anotice on his door warning him to leave, so I shifted him to the otherend of the estate."
"Did you see the sheriff at Kildare?"
"I haven't seen him. When I asked for him yesterday I found he had lefttown and gone to Greensboro to see his sick uncle."
Ardmore laughed and slapped his knee.
"Who takes care of the dungeon while he's away?"
"There are no prisoners in the Kildare jail. The sheriff's afraid tokeep any; and he's like the rest of the people around here. They alllive in terror of Appleweight."
"Appleweight is a powerful character in these parts," said Cooke,pouring the coffee he had been making, and handing a tin cupful toArdmore. "He's tolerable well off, and could make money honestly if hedidn't operate stills, rob country stores, mix up in politics, and stealhorses when he and his friends need them."
"I guess he has never molested us any, has he, Paul?" asked Ardmore, nota little ashamed of his ignorance of his own business.
"A few of our cows stray away sometimes and never come back. And for twoyears we have lost the corn out of the crib away over here near the deerpark."
/> "They've got the juice out of it before this," remarked Cooke.
"That would be nice for me, wouldn't it?" said Ardmore, grinning--"to bearrested for running a still on my place."
"We don't want to lose our right to the track, and we must get out ofthis before the whole community comes to take a look at us," said Cooke,swinging out of the caboose.
Ardmore talked frankly to the forester, having constant recourse to themap; and Paul sketched roughly a new chart, marking roads and paths sofar as he knew them, and indicating clearly where the Ardsleyboundaries extended. Then Ardmore took a blue pencil and drew astraight line.
"When we get Appleweight, we want to hurry him from Dilwell County,North Carolina, into Mingo County, South Carolina. We will go to thecounty town there, and put him in jail. If the sheriff of Mingo isweak-kneed, we will lock Appleweight up anyhow, and telegraph thegovernor of South Carolina that the joke is on him."
"We will catch the man," said Paul gravely, "but we may have to killhim."
"Dead or alive, he's got to be caught," said Ardmore, and the bigforester stared at his employer a little oddly; for this lord proprietorhad not been known to his employees and tenants as a serious character,but rather as an indolent person who, when he visited his estate in thehills, locked himself up unaccountably in his library and rarely had theenergy to stir up the game in his broad preserves.
"Certainly, sir; dead or alive," Paul repeated.
Cooke came out of the station and signaled the engineer to go ahead.
"We'll pull down here about five miles to an old spur where the companyused to load wood. There's a little valley there where we can be hiddenall we please, so far as the main line is concerned, and it might not bea bad idea to establish headquarters there. We have the tools forcutting in on the telegraph, and we can be as independent as we please.I told the agent we were carrying company powder for a blasting job downthe line, and he suspects nothing."
Paul left the caboose as the train started, and rode away on horsebackto visit his pickets. The train crept warily over the spur into the oldwood-cutters' camp, where, as Cooke had forecast, they were quite shutin from the main line by hills and woodland.
"And now, Mr. Ardmore, if you would like to see fire-water spring out ofthe earth as freely as spring water, come with me for a little stroll.The thirsty of Dilwell County know the way to these places as citytopers know the way to a bar. We are now in the land of the little brownjug, and while these boys get breakfast I'll see if the people in thisregion have changed their habits."
It was not yet seven as they struck off into the forest beside thecheerful little brook that came down singing from the hills. Ardmore hadrarely before in his life been abroad so early, and he kicked the dewfrom the grass in the cheerfullest spirit imaginable. Within a few dayshe had reared a pyramid of noble resolutions. Life at last entertainedhim. The way of men of action had been as fabulous to him as the dewthat now twinkled before him. Griswold knew books, but here at his sidestrode a man who knew far more amazing things than were written in anybook. Cooke had not been in this region for seven years, and yet henever hesitated, but walked steadily on, following the little brook.Presently he bent over the bank and gathered up a brownish substancethat floated on the water, lifted a little of it in his palm and sniffedit.
"That," said Cooke, holding it to Ardmore's nose, "is corn mash. That'swhat they make their liquor out of. The still is probably away up yonderon that hillside. It seems to me that we smashed one there once when Iwas in the service; and over there, about a mile beyond that pine tree,where you see the hawk circling, three of us got into a mix-up, and oneof our boys was killed."
He crossed the stream on a log, climbed the bank on the opposite shore,and scanned the near landscape for a few minutes. Then he pointed to anold stump over which vines had grown in wild profusion.
"If you will walk to that stump, Mr. Ardmore, and feel under the vineson the right-hand side, your fingers will very likely touch somethingsmooth and cool."
Ardmore obeyed instructions. He thrust his hand into the stump as Cookedirected, thrust again a little deeper, and laughed aloud as he drew outa little brown jug.
Cooke nodded approvingly.
"We're all right. The revenue men come in here occasionally and smashthe stills and arrest a few men, but the little brown jug continues todo business at the same old stand. They don't even change thehiding-places. And while we stand here, you may be pretty sure that afreckled-faced, tow-headed boy or girl is watching us off yonder, andthat the word will pass all through the hills before noon that there arestrangers abroad in old Dilwell. If you have a dollar handy, slip itunder the stump, so they'll know we're not stingy."
Ardmore was scrutinizing the jug critically.
"They're all alike," said Cooke, "but that piece of calico is a newone--just a fancy touch for an extra fine article of liquor."
"I'll be shot if I haven't seen that calico before," said Ardmore; andhe sat down on a boulder and drew out the stopper, while Cooke watchedhim with interest.
The bit of twine was indubitably the same that he had unwound before inhis room at the Guilford House, and the cob parted in his fingersexactly as before. On a piece of brown paper that had been part of atobacco wrapper was scrawled:
This ain't yore fight, Mr. Ardmore. Wher's the guvner of North Carolina?
"That's a new one on me," laughed Cooke. "You see, they know everything.Mind-reading isn't in it with them. They know who we are and what wehave come for. What's the point about the governor?"
"Oh, the governor's all right," replied Ardmore carelessly. "He wouldn'tbother his head about a little matter like this. The powers reserved tothe states by the constitution give a governor plenty of work withoutacting as policeman of the jungle. That's the reason I said to GovernorDangerfield, 'Governor,' I said, 'don't worry about this Appleweightbusiness. Time is heavy on my hands,' I said. 'You stay in Raleigh anduphold the dignity of your office, and I will take care of the troublein Dilwell.' And you can't understand, Cooke, how his face brightened atmy words. Being the brave man he is, you would naturally expect him tocome down here in person and seize these scoundrels with his own hands.I had the hardest time of my life to get him to stay at home. It almostbroke his heart not to come."
And as they retraced their steps to the caboose, it was Ardmore who led,stepping briskly along, and blithely swinging the jug.