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CAMP VENTURE
A Story of the Virginia Mountains
by
GEORGE CARY EGGLESTON
Author of "A Carolina Cavalier," "The Last of the Flatboats,"
etc., etc.
Illustrated by W. A. McCullough
Boston: Lothrop, Lee & Shepard
Company
1901
Copyright, 1901,
by Lothrop Publishing Company.
All Rights Reserved
[Illustration: TOM LEAPED UPON THE MOUNTAINEER'S BACK.]
_CONTENTS_
CHAPTER PAGE
I. On the Mountain Side 11
II. A Picket Shot 30
III. The Doctor's Plans 40
IV. A New Declaration of Independence 46
V. The Building of a Cabin 55
VI. After Supper 71
VII. A "Painter" 78
VIII. The Condition of the Moonshiners 94
IX. A Sunday Discussion 100
X. Beginning Work 108
XI. An Armed Negotiation 115
XII. A Midnight Alarm 122
XIII. A Night of Searching 129
XIV. Tom Gives an Account of Himself 136
XV. Two Shots that Hit 142
XVI. The Doctor Explains 156
XVII. Christmas in Camp Venture 165
XVIII. Parole 175
XIX. A Stress of Circumstances 188
XX. In Perilous Plight 199
XXI. An Enemy to the Rescue 205
XXII. All Night Work 211
XXIII. A Loan Negotiated 224
XXIV. In the High Mountains 232
XXV. A Difficulty 247
XXVI. The Doctor's Talk 254
XXVII. Some Features of the Situation 262
XXVIII. The Capture of Camp Venture 268
XXIX. A Puzzling Situation 285
XXX. A Point of Honor 297
XXXI. Corporal Jenkins's March 301
XXXII. The Lieutenant's Wrath 307
XXXIII. A Homing Prospect 312
XXXIV. In the Hands of the Enemy 317
XXXV. The End of Camp Venture 326
XXXVI. A Start Down the Mountain 332
XXXVII. Down the Mountain 339
XXXVIII. Old King Coal 344
XXXIX. The Doctor Sings 351
XL. Tom's Journey 358
XLI. "His Majesty the King" 366
XLII. In the Service of the King 381
XLIII. The Camp Venture Mining Company 389
XLIV. Little Tom at the End of it All 396
CAMP VENTURE
CHAPTER I
_On the Mountain Side_
"I'm tired, and the other pack mules are tired, and from the way you
move I imagine that the rest of you donkeys are tired!" called out Jack
Ridsdale, as the last of the mules and their drivers scrambled up the
bank and gained a secure foothold on the little plateau.
"I move that we camp here for the night. All in favor say 'aye.' The
motion's carried unanimously."
With that the tall boy threw off the pack that burdened his shoulders,
set his gun up against a friendly tree and proceeded in other ways to
relieve himself of the restraints under which he had toiled up the steep
mountain side since early morning, with only now and then a minute's
pause for breath.
"This is a good place to camp in," he presently added. "There's grazing
for the mules, there's timber around for fire wood and I hear water
trickling down from the cliff yonder. So 'Alabama,' which is Cherokee
eloquence meaning 'here we rest.'"
The party consisted of five sturdy boys and a man, the Doctor, not
nearly so stalwart in appearance, who seemed about twenty-eight or
thirty years old. Each member of the party carried a heavy pack upon his
back and each had a gun slung over his shoulder and an axe hanging by
his girdle. There were four packmules heavily laden and manifestly weary
with the long climb up the mountain.
As the boys were scarcely less weary than the mules they eagerly
welcomed Jack Ridsdale's decision to go no farther that day, but rest
where they were for the night.
"Now then," Jack resumed as soon as he got his breath again--a thing
requiring some effort in the rarefied atmosphere of the high mountain
peak--"we're all starved. The first thing to do is to get a fire started
and get the kettle on for supper. If some of you fellows will unload the
mules and get out the necessary things I'll chop some wood and we'll
have a fire going in next to no time."
With that he swung his axe over his shoulder and stalked off into the
nearby edge of the wood land. There with deft blows--for he was an
expert with the axe--he quickly converted some fallen limbs and dead
trees into a rude sort of fire wood which the other boys shouldered and
carried to the glade where the Doctor had started a little fire that
needed only feeding to become a great one.
During their laborious climb up the steep mountain side the party had
found the early November day rather too warm for comfort; but now that
the sun had sunk behind the mountain, and evening was drawing near,
there was a sharp feeling of coming frost in the atmosphere, and as it
would be necessary to sleep out of doors that night with no shelter but
the stars, Jack continued his chopping until a great pile of dry wood
lay near the fire ready for use during the night.
In the meantime the other boys busied themselves in getting supper
ready. Harry Ridsdale--Jack's younger brother--prepared a great pot of
coffee, while Ed Parmly fried panful after panful of salt pork, and Jim
Chenowith endeavored to boil some potatoes. "Little Tom" Ridsdale,
another brother of Jack's, employed himself in bringing the wood as fast
as his brother chopped it, and piling it near the fire. While these
things were doing the Doctor had carefully unpacked some of his
scientific instruments and hung them up on trees at points, convenient
for observation.
Presently Ed Parmly called out: "Now fellows, supper's ready--at least
the pork and the coffee are waiting for Jim Chenowith to dish up his
potatoes. Come Jim, what's the matter? Are you trying to boil those
potatoes into mush?"
"No," answered Jim, jabbing the tubers with a stick which he had
sharpened for that purpose, "but somehow the potatoes don't seem to want
to get done. Mother always boils them in from ten to twenty minutes,
according to their size, and these are about the ten minute size, yet
I've boiled them for full half an hour and they're only now beginning to
get soft."
"Your mother's potato kettle," said the Doctor, "isn't boiled at an
elevation of two thousand feet above the sea level and that," consulting
his aneroid barometer, "is about our present altitude."
"How do you find out that?"
"What has height to do with boiling potatoes?"
These questions were fired at the Doctor instantly.
"One at a time please," said the Doctor, "and as I see Jim is at last
dishing up his potatoes we'll postpone the answer to both questions, if
you don't mind, till we have satisfied our appetites."
The hungry fellows were ready enough to give exclusive attention to the
business in hand, and as they sat there on logs and other improvised
seats with tin plates before them and tin cups at hand they were a
picturesque and attractive group, such as an artist would have rejoiced
to portray.
As is usual with boys in the mountain regions of Southern Virginia, they
were very tall--the older ones nearing, and Jack exceeding, six feet in
height, while even "Little Tom" stood five feet seven in his socks with
a year or two of growth still ahead of him. They were all robust
fellows, too, lean, muscular, thin visaged, clear eyed and bronzed of
face. They wore high boots, into which the legs of their trousers were
thrust, and, over their trousers, thick woollen hunting shirts, the
whole crowned with soft felt hats. It was precisely the dress which
Washington urged upon Congress as the best service uniform that could be
devised for the use of the American army.
"Now then Doctor," said Jim Chenowith, pushing away his tin plate and
swallowing the last of the coffee from his big tin cup, "tell us why the
potatoes wouldn't cook."
"Simply because the water wasn't hot enough to cook them as quickly as
usual."
"Not hot enough? Why it was boiling like a volcano every moment of the
time," said Jim in protest.
"Yes, but the boiling of water doesn't always mean the same thing. You
see at or near the sea level water boils at a temperature of 212
degrees, Fahrenheit. But when you climb up mountains you come into a
rarer and lighter atmosphere and water boils at considerably lower
temperatures."
"But I kept my potato kettle boiling very hard--" interrupted Jim; "I
never stopped firing up under it."
"That made no difference whatever in the amount of heat in it," answered
the Doctor. "When water boils at all it is just as hot as fire can make
it, unless it is shut completely off from contact with the air, as is
the case in steamboilers. You can't make it any hotter no matter how
much you may 'fire up' under the kettle."
"Why, how's that?" asked "Little Tom," becoming interested. "The more
fire you make in a stove the hotter the stove gets, and the hotter the
room gets, too. Why isn't it the same way with a kettle of water?"
"I'll explain that," said the Doctor, "and I think I can make you
understand it. When water boils it gives off the vapor which we commonly
call steam. That is to say, some of the water is converted by heat into
vapor. It requires a great deal of heat to make the change from liquid
to vapor and so the process of giving off steam cools the water. That is
why you put a lid on a pot that you wish to boil quickly. You do it to
check the cooling process by confining the vapor and preventing a too
rapid conversion of water into steam."
"Is that the reason that you can hold your hand in the steam from a
kettle when you can't hold it in the water that the steam comes from,"
asked Jim.
"Yes. The steam is really hotter than the water, but it needs all its
own heat to keep it in the form of vapor, and so it doesn't give off
enough heat to burn your hand after it gets a little way from the pot
and begins to expand freely. Now as I was saying the harder you boil
water the more steam it gives off and the heating and cooling processes
are so exactly balanced that boiling water stands always at a uniform
temperature no matter whether it is boiling hard as we say, or only just
barely boiling. But in a dense atmosphere it requires more heat to boil
water than it does in a rarefied atmosphere like that up here on the
mountain. At Leadville and other places lying from 10,000 to 14,000 feet
above sea level in the Rocky mountains you can't boil potatoes at all
and it takes full ten minutes to boil an egg into that condition which
we call 'soft.' It all depends upon the temperature of boiling water,
and that is considerably lower here than down in the valleys where we
live."
"But Doctor," said Harry, "you promised to tell us how you find out how
high we are above the sea level."
The Doctor got up, went to a tree and took down a scientific instrument.
"This," he said, "is an aneroid barometer. It measures the atmospheric
pressure, and as that pressure steadily and pretty uniformly decreases
as we go higher up, the instrument tells us at once how high we are."
"But will it measure so accurately that you can trust it?" asked one of
the now eagerly interested boys.
"Let me show you," said the Doctor. "Make a torch, for it is growing
dark, and come with me down the hill a little way. First look where the
needle stands now."
They all carefully observed the register and then proceeded with their
mentor down the hill a little way. He there exhibited his instrument
again and it registered fifty feet lower than it had done on the plateau
above. Returning to the camp fire they found that the needle had resumed
its former pointing.
"Then you can tell by that instrument exactly how high you are at any
time?" queried Jack.
"No, not exactly. You see the atmospheric pressure varies somewhat with
the weather even if you observe it always on the same level. One has to
allow for that, but allowing for it we can tell by the instrument what
our elevation is with something closely approaching accuracy."
Just then came an interruption. A tall rough bearded, unkempt
mountaineer, rifle in hand, stalked out of the woods and approached the
camp fire. After inspecting the company and their belongings in silence
for a time, he spoke a single word of question--"Huntin'?"
"No," answered Jack, who had risen in all his length of limb.
"Trappin'?"
"No."
"Jest campin' out?"
"No," answered Jack, still adhering to that monosyllable.
"Mout I ax then, what ye're a doin' of up here in the high mountings?
You see us fellers what lives up here ain't over fond of strangers that
comes potterin' round without explainin' of their selves."
"Well" said Jack, "I don't see why I shouldn't tell you what brings us
here. My mother owns a tract of timber land a little further around the
mountain, and it is pretty much all she does own in the world. She's a
widow, and she's had a pretty hard time to bring up three boys of
us"--turning and indicating his two brothers--"and now we see a way of
helping her. They're going to build a railroad down in the valley on the
other side of this mountain, and they want railroad ties. So we have
organized a party and come up here to chop down trees, make ties and
send them down the mountain by a chute."
"Um," answered the mountaineer. "What's them there things for?" pointing
to the Doctor's scientific instruments hanging about on the trees.
"They are scientific instruments, if you know what that means," answered
Jack, who was beginning to grow irritable under the intruder's
impertinent questioning.
"What are you goin' to do with 'em? Will they help you to chop wood?"
"No, of course not. But the Doctor here," indicating him, "is much
interested in science and he has brought his instruments along so as to
make our stay on the mountains as profitable as possible in the way of
study."
"My friend," broke in the Doctor, addressing the mountaineer, "If you
will come to our camp when we get settled I'll show you how I use these
things and what they tell me. One of them tells me how high up we are
and when it's going to storm or clear away; another shows how fast the
wind is blowing, another how cold it is and so on."
"Which one on 'em tells the strength of whiskey and how much tax they
ought to be paid on it?"
This question was asked with a peculiar tone of sneering incredulity and
suspicion.
"Not one of them has any relation whatever to whiskey or taxes or
anything of the sort," answered the Doctor.
By this time Jack's patience was exhausted and by common consent Jack
was the leader of the party. He turned to the tree behind him, seized
his shot gun, presented it at the mountaineer's breast before that
worthy could bring his rifle to his shoulder, and in an angry, but still
cold voice, said:
"I'll trouble you to lay down that rifle."
The man obeyed.
"Now I'll trouble you, if you please to lay down your powder horn and
your bullet pouch and your cap box and everything else that pertains to
that rifle." All this while Jack was holding the muzzle of his
full-cocked, double barrelled shot gun in front of the man's breast,
while all the other boys had seized their guns and stood ready for
action. The Doctor had not a shot gun, but a repeating, magazine rifle
of the latest make, long in its range, exceedingly accurate in its fire
and equipped with fourteen cartridges in its magazine that could be
fired as fast as their owner pleased. And the moment that the
mountaineer, before he laid down his rifle, made a motion as if to bring
it to his shoulder, the Doctor had stepped to Jack's side with his
destructive weapon in position for instant use. After the man had laid
down his arms, the Doctor stepped back, lowered his weapon and said to
Jack:--"Manage the affair in your own way. Only be prudent, and above
all don't lose your temper."
Jack then said to the mountaineer:
"You've asked us a number of questions. Now I want to ask you some. What
do you mean by intruding upon our camp? Who are you? What right have you
to ask us about ourselves and our mission in these mountains? Answer
man, and answer quick or I'll put two charges of buck shot through you
in less than half a minute."
"Now, don't be too hard on a feller, pard," answered the man. "I didn't
mean no harm in partic'lar. But you see us fellers that lives up here in
the high mountings has a hard enough time to git a livin' and we don't
like to be interfered with by no revenue officers and no spies and no
speculators from down below. You see if we're caught, some of the money
goes to the informer, an' so we takes good keer to have no informers
about, an' if they insist on stayin' we usually buries 'em. Now you've
got the drap on me an' my only chance is to go way if you'll let me go.
So far as I'm concerned you're welcome to go round the mounting an' chop
all the railroad ties an' cordwood you choose. But there's fellers in
the mountings that you ain't got no drap on, as you've got it on me, an'
fellers what ain't so tender hearted as me. An' so, while I'll leave my
gun an' promise never to meddle with you again if you won't shoot, at
the same time my earnest, friendly, fatherly advice to you boys is to
take yourselves down out'n this mounting jes' as quick as you kin. It
ain't no place for people of your sort."
"We'll do nothing of the kind," answered Jack. "We've come up here on a
perfectly honest and legitimate mission, and we're going to carry it
out. We are not interfering with anybody and I give you warning that if
anybody interferes with us it will be the worse for him. We are armed,
every man of us and we are prepared to use our arms. Tom,"--turning to
his brother,--"take that man's rifle and discharge it into the cliff
back there."
Tom obeyed the command instantly. Then Jack said to their unwelcome
visitor, "Now you can take your rifle and go away. But don't intrude
upon us again. If you do, you'll get the contents of our guns without
any explanations or any arguments. Take your gun and go!"
The intruder took his gun and accoutrements and without a word walked
away up the mountain through the timber land.
"What does it all mean, Jack?" asked all the boys at once.
"Moonshiners," broke in Tom, sententiously.
Moonshiners are men who operate little unlicensed distilleries in the
fastnesses of the mountains and surreptitiously sell their whiskey
without paying the government tax upon it.
"But why should moonshiners object to our camping in the wood lands up
here and cutting railroad ties?" asked Jim Chenowith. "I don't see the
connection."
"Well, they do," answered Tom. "They are engaged in a criminal business
and they don't want to be watched. If they are caught their stills and
their whiskey are confiscated, they are fined heavily, and worse still
they are imprisoned for very long terms. They are always on the lookout
for agents of the revenue in disguise, and so they don't want any
strangers in this 'land of the sky' on any pretence. They are desperate
men to whom murder is a pastime and assassination an amusement."
"Then why did you anger the man as you did, Jack, and subject him to
humiliation?" asked Ed Parmly. "Won't it make him and his people our
enemies?"
"No," answered Jack. "They are that already. You remember that even
after hearing my explanation of our purpose in coming up here, he
ordered us to leave the mountain at once. Not being a pack of cowards of
course we're not going to do anything of the kind. So it was just as
well to let him know at once that we're going to stay, that we are fully
armed, and that in the event of necessity we shall be what he would call
'quick on trigger.' I meant him to understand that clearly, and he
understands it. You see men that are freest in killing other men have no
more fondness than people generally for being killed themselves.
Desperadoes are not heroes. They are merely bullies who take advantage
of an unarmed enemy when they can and sneak away as that man did
whenever an enemy 'gits the drap' on them as the fellow phrased it."
"But won't they attack us in our camp?" asked Jim Chenowith.
"Probably," answered Jack with perfect calmness. "They want us out of
the mountains and they'll probably try to drive us out. But I for one am
not going to be driven out, and I don't think the rest of you fellows
are Molly Cottontails to be chased down the steeps."
"No!" called out little Tom. "We've got guns and we know how to use
them. We're up here by right and here we'll stay. Won't we boys?"
"Yes! Yes! Yes!" answered the others in chorus.
"All right then," said Jack, "and I thank you all. But now that we know
our danger we must look out for ourselves. We must never sleep without a
sentinel on guard, and every fellow of us must always sleep with his gun
by his side. That's what soldiers call 'sleeping on arms!'"
"All right!" called out Tom, who was always ready. "Arrange the guard
detail for to-night Jack. I'll take the worst turn, which I believe
begins about three o'clock--the 'dog watch' they call it on steamboats."
"Well," said Jack, meditatively. "It's now nearly ten o'clock. We'll all
be up by six in the morning. That's eight hours and there are five of
us; so it means one hour and thirty-six minutes apiece, of guard duty."
"Hold on," broke in the Doctor. "You've forgotten me."
"Well you see, Doctor, your health isn't good, and we don't want you to
lose your sleep. We'll do all this guard duty without bothering you."
"Not if I know it," answered the Doctor. "I didn't join this party as a
dead head, you may be sure of that. I'm going to share and share alike
with you my comrades. I am not yet very strong after my long illness,
but I'm strong enough to stay awake for my fair share of the time, and
you may be sure I am strong enough to pull a trigger and empty fourteen
bullets from my magazine rifle into any body that may venture to assail
us. Now boys, I want you to understand my position and attitude clearly.
Either I am a full member of this company in good standing, or else I do
not belong to it at all. In the latter case I'll withdraw and go back
down the mountain. I'm older than you boys, but not enough older to
make any serious difference. I'm still a good deal of a boy, and either
you must let me do a boy's part or I'll quit. If I stay with you I must
be one of you. I must do my share of the cooking and all the rest of the
work, and especially my fair share of all guard duty and all fighting,
if fighting becomes necessary at any time. Come now! Is it a bargain? Or
am I to quit your company to-morrow morning, as a man too old and unfit
to share with you the work we have come up the mountain to do?"
"I move," said little Tom, who had more wit than any other member of the
company, "that Doctor LaTrobe be hereby declared to be precisely sixteen
years old, and fully entitled to consider himself a boy among boys!"
The motion was carried with a shout, and then Jack, who was always
practical, said:
"Well then there are six of us. That means one hour and twenty minutes
apiece of guard duty to-night."
So it was arranged, and as soon as the order in which the several
members of the party should be waked for duty was arranged, the boys
piled an abundance of wood on the fire, wrapped themselves in their
blankets and lay down to sleep. But first little Tom manufactured a pot
of fresh coffee, and set it near the fire where it would keep hot.
"The sentinel must be wide awake," he said, "and I don't know anything
like good strong coffee to keep one's eyes open."