MOONSHINE LAND
I was hunting alone in the mountains, and exploring ground that was new
to me. About noon, while descending from a high ridge into a creek
valley, to get some water, I became enmeshed in a rhododendron "slick,"
and, to some extent, lost my bearings.
After floundering about for an hour or two, I suddenly came out upon a
little clearing. Giant hemlocks, girdled and gaunt, rose from a steep
cornfield of five acres, beyond which loomed the primeval forest of the
Great Smoky Mountains. Squat in the foreground sat one of the rudest log
huts I had ever seen, a tiny one-room shack, without window, cellar, or
loft, and without a sawed board showing in its construction. A thin curl
of smoke rose from one end of the cabin, not from a chimney, but from a
mere semi-circle of stones piled four feet high around a hole cut
through the log wall. The stones of this fireplace were not even
plastered together with mud, nor had the builder ever intended to raise
the pile as high as the roof to guard his premises against the imminent
risk of fire. Two low doors of riven boards stood wide open, opposite
each other. These, helped by wide crevices between the unchinked logs,
served to let in some sunlight, and quite too much of the raw November
air. The surroundings were squalid and filthy beyond anything I had
hitherto witnessed in the mountains. As I approached, wading ankle-deep
in muck that reached to the doorsill, two pigs scampered out through the
opposite door.
Within the hut I found only a slip of a girl, rocking a baby almost as
big as herself, and trying to knit a sock at the same time. She was
toasting her bare toes before the fire, and crooning in a weird minor
some mountain ditty that may have been centuries old.
I shivered as I looked at this midget, comparing her only garment, a
torn calico dress, with my own stout hunter's garb that seemed none too
warm for such a day as this.
Knowing that the sudden appearance of a stranger would startle the girl,
I chose the quickest way to reassure her by saluting in the vernacular:
"Howdy?"
"Howdy?" she gasped.
"Who lives here?"
"Tom Kirby."
"Kirby? Oh! yes, I know him--we've been hunting together. Is your father
at home?"
"No, he's out somewheres."
"Where is your mother?"
"She's in the field, up yan, gittin' roughness."
I took some pride in not being stumped by this answer. "Roughness," in
mountain lingo, is any kind of rough fodder, specifically corn fodder.
"How far is it to the next house?"
"I don't know; maw, she knows."
"All right; I'll find her."
I went up to the field. No one was in sight; but a shock of fodder was
walking away from me, and I conjectured that "maw's" feet were under it;
so I hailed:
"Hello!"
The shock turned around, then tumbled over, and there stood revealed a
bare-headed, bare-footed woman, coarse featured but of superb
physique--one of those mountain giantesses who think nothing of
shouldering a two-bushel sack of corn and carrying it a mile or two
without letting it down.
[Illustration: Moonshine Still-House Hidden in the Laurel]
She flushed, then paled, staring at me round-eyed--frightened, I
thought, by this apparition of a stranger whose approach she had not
detected. To these people of the far backwoods everyone from outside
their mountains is a doubtful character at best.
However, Mistress Kirby quickly recovered her aplomb. Her mouth
straightened to a thin slit. She planted herself squarely across my
path, now regarding me with contracted lids and a hard glint, till I
felt fairly bayoneted by those steel-gray eyes.
"Good-morning. Is Mr. Kirby about?" I inquired.
There was no answer. Instead, the thin slit opened and let out a yell of
almost yodel quality, penetrating as a warwhoop--a yell that would carry
near half a mile. I wondered what she meant by this; but she did not
enlighten me by so much as a single word. It was puzzling, not to say
disconcerting; but, charging it to the custom of a country that still
was new to me, I found my tongue again, and started to give credentials.
"My name is Kephart. I am staying at the Everett Mine on Sugar Fork----"
Another yell that set the wild echoes flying.
"I am acquainted with your husband; we've hunted together. Perhaps he
has told you----"
Yell number three, same pitch and vigor as before.
By this time I was quite nonplussed. I waited for her to speak; but
never a word did the woman deign. So there we stood and stared at each
other in silence--I leaning on my rifle, she with red arms akimbo--till
I grew embarrassed, half wondering, too, if the creature were demented.
Suddenly a light flashed upon my groping wits. This amazon was on
picket. Her three shrieks had been a signal to someone up the branch.
Her attitude showed that there was no thoroughfare in that direction at
present. Circumstances, whatever they were, forbade explanation.
Clearly, the woman thought that I could not help seeing how matters
stood. Not for a moment did she suspect but that her yells, her
belligerent attitude, and her refusal to speak, were the conventional
way, this world over, of intimating that there was a _contretemps_. She
considered that if I was what I claimed to be, an acquaintance of her
husband and on friendly footing, I would be gentleman enough to retire.
If I was something else--an officer, a spy--well, she was there to stop
me until the captain of the guard arrived.
For one silly moment I was tempted to advance and see what this martial
spouse would do if I tried to pass her on the trail. But a hunter's
instinct made me glance forward to the upper corner of the field. There
was thick cover beyond the fence, with a clear range of a hundred and
fifty yards between it and me--too far for Tom to recognize me, I
thought, but deadly range for his Winchester, I knew. One forward step
of mine would put me in the status of an armed intruder. So I concluded
that common sense would better become me at this juncture than a bit of
fooling that surely would be misinterpreted, and that might end
ingloriously.
"Ah, well!" I remarked, "when your husband gets back, tell him, please,
that I was sorry to miss him; though I did not call on any special
business--just wanted to say 'Howdy?' you know. Good day!"
I turned and went down the valley.
All the way home I speculated on this queer adventure. What was going on
"up yan"?
A month before, when I had started for this wildest nook of the Smokies,
a friend had intimated that I was venturing into a dubious
district--Moonshine Land. It is but frank to confess that this prospect
was not unpleasant. My only fear had been that I might not find any
moonshiners, or that, having found them, I might not succeed in winning
their confidence to the extent of learning their own side of an
interesting story. As to how I could do this without getting tarred with
the same stick, I was by no means clear; but I hoped that good luck
might find a way. And now it seemed as if luck had indeed favored me
with an excuse for broaching the topic to some friendly mountaineer, so
I could at least see how he would take it.
And it chanced (or was it chance?) that I had no more than finished
supper, that evening, when a man called at my lonely cabin. He was the
one that I knew best among my scattered neighbors. I gave him a rather
humorous account of my reception by Madame Kirby, and asked him what he
thought she was yelling about.
There was no answering smile on my visitor's face. He pondered in
silence, weighing many contingencies, it seemed, and ventured no more
than a helpless "Waal, now I wonder!"
It did not suit me to let the matter go at that; so, on a sudden
impulse, I fired the question point-blank at him: "Do you suppose that
Tom is running a still up there at the head of that little cove?"
The man's face hardened, and there came a glint into his eyes such as I
had noticed in Mistress Kirby's.
"Jedgmatically, I don't know."
"Excuse me! I don't want to know, either. But let me explain just what I
am driving at. People up North, and in the lowlands of the South as
well, have a notion that there is little or nothing going on in these
mountains except feuds and moonshining. They think that a stranger
traveling here alone is in danger of being potted by a bullet from
almost any laurel thicket that he passes, on mere suspicion that he may
be a revenue officer or a spy. Of course, that is nonsense;[4] but there
is one thing that I'm as ignorant about as any novel-reader of them all.
You know my habits; I like to explore--I never take a guide--and when I
come to a place that's particularly wild and primitive, that's just the
place I want to peer into. Now the dubious point is this: Suppose that,
one of these days when I'm out hunting, or looking for rare plants, I
should stumble upon a moonshine still in full operation--what would
happen? What would they do?"
"Waal, sir, I'll tell you whut they'd do. They'd fust-place ask you some
questions about yourself, and whut you-uns was doin' in that thar neck
o' the woods. Then they'd git you to do some triflin' work about the
still--feed the furnace, or stir the mash--jest so 's 't they could
prove that you took a hand in it your own self."
"What good would that do?"
"Hit would make you one o' them in the eyes of the law."
"I see. But, really, doesn't that seem rather childish? I could easily
convince any court that I did it under compulsion; for that's what it
would amount to."
"I reckon you-uns would find a United States court purty hard to
convince. The judge 'd right up and want to know why you let grass go to
seed afore you came and informed on them."
He paused, watched my expression, and then continued quizzically: "I
reckon you wouldn't be in no great hurry to do _that_."
"No! Then, if I stirred the mash and sampled their liquor, nobody would
be likely to mistreat me?"
"Shucks! Why, man, whut could they gain by hurtin' you? At the wust,
s'posin' they was convicted by your own evidence, they'd only git a
month or two in the pen. So why should they murder you and get hung for
it? Hit's all 'tarnal foolishness, the notions some folks has!"
"I thought so. Now, here! the public has been fed all sorts of nonsense
about this moonshining business. I'd like to learn the plain truth about
it, without bias one way or the other. I have no curiosity about
personal affairs, and don't want to learn incriminating details; but I
would like to know how the business is conducted, and especially how it
is regarded from the mountain people's own point of view. I have already
learned that a stranger's life and property are safer here than they
would be on the streets of Chicago or of St. Louis. It will do your
country good to have that known. But I can't say that there is no
moonshining going on here; for a man with a wooden nose could smell it.
Now what is your excuse for defying the law? You don't seem ashamed of
it."
The man's face turned an angry red.
"Mister, we-uns hain't no call to be ashamed of ourselves, nor of ary
thing we do. We're poor; but we don't ax no favors. We stay 'way up hyar
in these coves, and mind our own business. When a stranger comes along,
he's welcome to the best we've got, such as 'tis; but if he imposes on
us, he gits his medicine purty damned quick!"
"And you think the Government tax on whiskey is an imposition."
"Hit is, under some sarcumstances."
My guest stretched his legs, and "jedgmatically" proceeded to enlighten
me.
"Thar's plenty o' men and women grown, in these mountains, who don't
know that the Government is ary thing but a president in a biled shirt
who commands two-three judges and a gang o' revenue officers. They know
thar's a president, because the men folks's voted for him, and the women
folks's seed his pictur. They've heered tell about the judges; and
they've seed the revenuers in flesh and blood. They believe in
supportin' the Government, because hit's the law. Nobody refuses to pay
his taxes, for taxes is fair and squar'. Taxes cost mebbe three cents on
the dollar; and that's all right. But revenue costs a dollar and ten
cents on twenty cents' worth o' liquor; and that's robbin' the people
with a gun to their faces.
"Of course, I ain't so ignorant as all that--I've traveled about the
country, been to Asheville wunst, and to Waynesville a heap o'
times--and I know the theory. Theory says 't revenue is a tax on luxury.
Waal, that's all right--anything in reason. The big fellers that
makes lots of money out o' stillin', and lives in luxury, ought to pay
handsome for it. But who ever seen luxury cavortin' around in these
Smoky Mountains?"
[Illustration: MOONSHINE MILL--SIDE VIEW
The trails that lead hither are blind and rough. Behind the mill rises
an almost precipitous mountain-side. Much of the corn is brought in on
men's backs at the dead of night.]
He paused for a reply. Even then, with my limited experience in the
mountains, I could not help wincing at the idea. Often, in later times,
this man's question came back to me with peculiar force. Luxury! in a
land where the little stores were often out of coffee, sugar, kerosene,
and even salt; where, in dead of winter, there was no meal, much less
flour, to be had for love or money. Luxury! where I had to live on
bear-meat (tough old sow bear) for six weeks, because the only side of
pork that I could find for sale was full of maggots.
My friend continued: "Whiskey means more to us mountain folks than hit
does to folks in town, whar thar's drug-stores and doctors. Let ary
thing go wrong in the fam'ly--fever, or snake bite, or somethin'--and we
can't git a doctor up hyar less'n three days; and it costs scand'lous.
The only medicines we-uns has is yerbs, which customarily ain't no good
'thout a leetle grain o' whiskey. Now, th'r ain't no saloons allowed in
all these western counties. The nighest State dispensary, even, is sixty
miles away.[5] The law wunt let us have liquor shipped to us from
anywhars in the State. If we git it sent to us from outside the State it
has to come by express--and reg-lar old pop-skull it is, too. So, to be
good law-abiding citizens, we-uns must travel back and forth at a heap
of expense, or pay express rates on pizened liquor--and we are too
durned poor to do ary one or t'other.
"Now, yan's my field o' corn. I gather the corn, and shuck hit and grind
hit my own self, and the woman she bakes us a pone o' bread to eat--and
I don't pay no tax, do I? Then why can't I make some o' my corn into
pure whiskey to drink, without payin' tax? I tell you, _'taint fair_,
this way the Government does! But, when all's said and done, the main
reason for this 'moonshining,' as you-uns calls it, is bad roads."
"Bad roads?" I exclaimed. "What the----"
"Jest thisaway: From hyar to the railroad is seventeen miles, with two
mountains to cross; and you've seed that road! I recollect you-uns said
every one o' them miles was a thousand rods long. Nobody's ever measured
them, except by mountain man's foot-rule--big feet, and a long stride
between 'em. Seven hundred pounds is all the load a good team can haul
over that road, when the weather's good. Hit takes three days to make
the round trip, less'n you break an axle, and then hit takes four. When
you do git to the railroad, th'r ain't no town of a thousand people
within fifty mile. Now us folks ain't even got wagons. Thar's only one
sarviceable wagon in this whole settlement, and you can't hire it
without team and driver, which is two dollars and a half a day. Whar one
o' our leetle sleds can't go, we haffter pack on mule-back or tussle it
on our own wethers. Look, then! The only farm produce we-uns can sell is
corn. You see for yourself that corn can't be shipped outen hyar. We can
trade hit for store credit--that's all. Corn _juice_ is about all we can
tote around over the country and git cash money for. Why, man, that's
the only way some folks has o' payin' their taxes!"
"But, aside from the work and the worry," I remarked, "there is the
danger of being shot, in this business."
"Oh, we-uns don't lay _that_ up agin the Government! Hit's as fair for
one as 'tis for t'other. When a revenuer comes sneakin' around, why,
whut he gits, or whut we-uns gits, that's a 'fortune of war,' as the old
sayin' is."
There is no telegraph, wired or wireless, in the mountains, but there is
an efficient substitute. It seemed as though, in one night, the news
traveled from valley to cove, and from cove to nook, that I was
investigating the moonshining business, and that I was apparently
"safe." Each individual interpreted that word to suit himself. Some
regarded me askance, others were so confiding that their very frankness
threatened at times to become embarrassing.
Thereafter I had many talks and adventures with men who, at one time or
other, had been engaged in the moonshining industry. Some of these men
had known the inside of the penitentiary; some were not without
blood-guilt. I doubt not that more than one of them could, even now,
find his way through night and fog and laurel thicket to some "beautiful
piece of copper" that has not yet been punched full of holes. They knew
that I was on friendly terms with revenue agents. What was worse, they
knew that I was a scribbler. More than once I took notes in their
presence while interviewing them, and we had the frankest understanding
as to what would become of those notes.
My immunity was not due to any promises made or hostages given, for
there were none. I did not even pose as an apologist, but merely
volunteered to give a fair report of what I heard and saw. They took me
at my word. Had I used such representations as a mask and secretly
played the spy or informer--well, I would have deserved whatever might
have befallen me. As it was, I never met with any but respectful
treatment from these gentry, nor, to the best of my belief, did they
ever tell me a lie.