THE LAND OF THE LITTLE BROWN JUG.
Caboose 0186, with three box-cars and a locomotive attached, lay in the
south-eastern yards at Raleigh late in the evening of the same day. In
the observatory sat Mr. Thomas Ardmore, chatting with the conductor,
while they waited for the right of way. Mr. Ardmore’s pockets were
filled with papers, and he held half a dozen telegrams in his hand. The
freight cars behind him were locked and sealed, and a number of men
lounging 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
forth orders by telegraph and telephone. No such messages as his had
ever before radiated from Raleigh. The tolls would have bankrupted
the commonwealth if Ardmore had not cared for them out of his private
purse. His forester, with an armed posse from Ardsley, was already
following the streams and beating the brush in search of Appleweight.
One car of Ardmore’s special train contained a machine gun and a supply
of rifles; another abundant ammunition and commissary supplies, and
the third cots and bags. The men who loafed about the train were a
detail of strike-breakers from a detective agency, borrowed for the
occasion. Cooke, the conductor of the train, had formerly been in
the government secret service, and knew the Carolina hill country
as he knew the palm of his hand. Ardmore had warned his manager and
the housekeeper on his estate to prepare for the arrival of Mrs.
Atchison, whose private car had 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 rather different, and I do not quite make her out.
She has our noble brother-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 slowly
out of the Raleigh yards to the main line and rattled away toward
Kildare, with Mr. Ardmore, pipe in mouth, perched in the caboose cupola.
A caboose, you may not know, is the pleasantest place in the world to
ride. 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
canal fleet is more sublimely autocratic than the freight conductor
in his watch-tower. The landscape is disclosed to him in leisurely
panoramas; the springs beneath are not so lulling as to dull his
senses. If he isn’t whipped into the ditch by the humour of the
engineer, or run down and telescoped by an enemy from behind, he may
ultimately deliver his sombre fleet to its several destinations; but
he is the slave of no inexorable time-table, and his excuses are as
various as his cargoes.
Not Captain Kidd nor another of the dark brotherhood sailed forth with
keener zest for battle than Mr. Ardmore. Indeed, the trailing smoke of
the locomotive suggested a black flag, and the thought of it tickled
his fancy. Above bent the bluest sky in the world; fields of corn and
cotton, the brilliant crimson of German clover, and long stretches of
mixed forest held him with enchantment. In a cornfield a girl ploughing
with a single steer--a little girl in a sunbonnet, who reached wearily
up to the plough handles--paused and waved to him, and he knew the
delight of the lonely mariner when a passing ship speaks to him with
flags. And when night came, after the long mystical twilight, the train
passed now and then great cotton factories that blazed out from their
thousand windows like huge steamships.
When they sought a lonely siding to allow a belated passenger train to
pass, the conductor brewed coffee and cooked supper, and Ardmore called
in the detectives and trainmen. The sense of knowing real people,
whose daily occupations were so novel and interesting, touched him
afresh with delight. These men said much in few words. The taciturnity
of Cooke, the conductor, in particular, struck Ardmore as very fine,
and it occurred to him that very likely men who have had the fun of
doing things never talk of their performances afterward. One of the
detectives chaffed Cooke covertly about some adventure in which they
had been jointly associated.
“I never thought they’d get the lead out of you after that business in
Missouri. You were a regular mine,” said the detective to Cooke, and
Cooke 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,
and Cooke drew out some blankets, tossed them on a bench for Ardmore,
and threw 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 coolly in as they neared the hills, and the train’s single
brakeman came down as though descending from the sky, rubbed the
cinders from his eyes, and returned to his vigil armed with a handful
of Ardmore’s cigars.
For the greater part of the night they enjoyed a free track, and
thumped the rails at a lively clip. Shortly after midnight Ardmore
crawled below and went to sleep. At five o’clock Cooke called him.
“We’re on the switch at Kildare. One of your men is here waiting for
you.”
Big Paul, the German forester, was called in, and Ardmore made his
toilet in a pail of water while listening to the big fellow’s report.
Cooke joined in the conversation, and Ardmore was gratified to see that
the two men met on common ground in discussing the local geography. The
forester described in clear, straightforward English just what he had
done. He had distributed his men well through the hills, and they were
now posted as pickets on points favourable for observation. They had
found along the streams four widely scattered stills, and these were
being watched. Paul drew a small map, showing the homes of the most
active members of the Appleweight gang, and Ardmore indicated all these
points 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--just
about here, isn’t it, Paul? I always remember the creek, because I like
the 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 Carolina
about here. There’s Mingo County, South Carolina, you see.”
“Well, that dashes me!” exclaimed Ardmore, striking the table with his
fist. “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
on the creek to protect your timber. Some of these outlaws have been
cutting off our wood.”
“It seems to me I remember the place. There’s a log house hanging on
the creek. You took me by it once, but it never entered my head that
the state line was so close.”
“It runs right through the house! And some one, years ago, blazed the
trees along there, so it is very easy to tell when you step from one
state to another. My man left there recently, refusing to stay any
longer. These Appleweight people thought he was a spy, and posted a
notice on his door warning him to leave, so I shifted him to the other
end 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 left
town 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 to
keep any; and he’s like the rest of the people around here. They all
live 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 to
Ardmore. “He’s tolerable well off, and could make money honestly if
he didn’t operate stills, rob country stores, mix up in politics, and
steal horses when he and his friends need them.”
“I guess he has never molested us any, has he, Paul?” asked Ardmore,
not a little ashamed of his ignorance of his own business.
“A few of our cows stray away sometimes and never come back. And for
two years we have lost the corn out of the crib away over here near the
deer park.”
“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
be arrested for running a still on my place.”
“We don’t want to lose our right to the track, and we must get out
of this 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
the map; and Paul sketched roughly a new chart, marking roads and
paths so far as he knew them, and indicating clearly where the Ardsley
boundaries extended. Then Ardmore took a blue pencil and drew a
straight line.
“When we get Appleweight, we want to hurry him from Dilwell County,
North Carolina, into Mingo County, South Carolina. We will go to the
county town there, and put him in jail. If the sheriff of Mingo is
weak-kneed, we will lock Appleweight up anyhow, and telegraph the
governor of South Carolina that the joke is on him.”
“We will catch the man,” said Paul gravely, “but we may have to kill
him.”
“Dead or alive, he’s got to be caught,” said Ardmore, and the big
forester stared at his employer a little oddly; for this lord
proprietor had 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 the hills, locked himself up unaccountably in his library,
and rarely had the energy to stir up the game in his broad preserves.
“Certainly, sir; dead or alive,” Paul repeated.
Cooke came out of the station and signalled the engineer to go ahead.
“We’ll pull down here about five miles to an old spur where the company
used to load wood. There’s a little valley there where we can be hidden
all we please, so far as the main line is concerned, and it might not
be a bad idea to establish headquarters there. We have the tools for
cutting 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
down the line, and he suspects nothing.”
Paul left the caboose as the train started, and rode away on horseback
to visit his pickets. The train crept warily over the spur into the old
woodcutters’ camp, where, as Cooke had forecast, they were quite shut
in from the main line by hills and woodland.
“And now, Mr. Ardmore, if you would like to see fire-water spring out
of the 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
city topers know the way to a bar. We are now in the land of the little
brown jug, and while these boys get breakfast I’ll see if the people in
this region have changed their habits.”
It was not yet seven as they struck off into the forest beside the
cheerful little brook that came down singing from the hills. Ardmore
had rarely before in his life been abroad so early, and he kicked the
dew from the grass in the cheerfullest spirit imaginable. Within a
few days he had reared a pyramid of noble resolutions. Life at last
entertained him. The way of men of action had been as fabulous to him
as the dew that now twinkled before him. Griswold knew books, but
here at his side strode a man who knew far more amazing things than
were written in any book. Cooke had not been in this region for seven
years, and yet he never hesitated, but walked steadily on, following
the little brook. Presently he bent over the bank and gathered up a
brownish substance that floated on the water, lifted a little of it in
his palm, and sniffed it.
“That,” said Cooke, holding it to Ardmore’s nose, “is corn mash.
That’s what they make their liquor out of. The still is probably away
up yonder on that hillside. It seems to me that we smashed one there
once when I was 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 one of 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 an
old stump over which vines had grown in wild profusion.
“If you will, walk to that stump, Mr. Ardmore, and feel under the vines
on the right-hand side, your fingers will very likely touch something
smooth and cool.”
Ardmore obeyed instructions. He thrust his hand into the stump as Cooke
directed, thrust again a little deeper, and laughed aloud as he drew
out a little brown jug.
Cooke nodded approvingly.
“We’re all right. The revenue men come in here occasionally and smash
the stills and arrest a few men, but the little brown jug continues
to do business at the same old stand. They don’t even change the
hiding-places. And while we stand here, you may be pretty sure that a
freckled-faced, tow-headed boy or girl is watching us off yonder, and
that the word will pass all through the hills before noon that there
are strangers abroad in old Dilwell. If you have a dollar handy, slip
it under 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 new
one--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; and
he sat down on a boulder and drew out the stopper, while Cooke watched
him with interest.
The bit of twine was indubitably the same that he had unwound before
in his room at the Guilford House, and the cob parted in his fingers
exactly as before. On a piece of brown paper that had been part of a
tobacco 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 we have come for. What’s the point about the governor?”
“Oh, the governor’s all right,” replied Ardmore carelessly. “He
wouldn’t bother his head about a little matter like this. The powers
reserved to the states by the constitution give a governor plenty of
work without acting as policeman of the jungle. That’s the reason I
said to Governor Dangerfield, ‘Governor,’ I said, ‘don’t worry about
this Appleweight business. Time is heavy on my hands,’ I said. ‘You
stay in Raleigh and uphold the dignity of your office, and I will take
care of the trouble in Dilwell.’ And you can’t understand, Cooke,
how his face brightened at my words. Being the brave man he is, you
would naturally expect him to come 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 almost broke 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.