_The Condition of the Moonshiners_
The next day the boys moved from their temporary shelter into their
permanent winter quarters, building a fire in front of the door and
making themselves as comfortable as they could under the circumstances.
Meantime the Doctor and Jack had got the chute ready. It was a strong,
rough structure of stout poles, forming a sort of trough, beginning on a
level with the ground at the turn of the hill and extending with a heavy
incline for twenty yards or so over the steep brow of the mountain. It
was supported by strong hickory and oak posts and braces throughout its
length. Any piece of timber placed in its upper end and gently impelled
forward would quickly traverse it to its farther end and there make a
tremendous leap and a long slide down the steep, into the depths below.
Little Tom, greatly to his disgust, was peremptorily ordered into bed by
command of the Doctor, but two of the boys had volunteered to strip off
that valuable panther skin for him, salt it and stretch it out on the
logs of the cabin to dry.
It was on Saturday that the boys removed to their new quarters, and the
next day, being Sunday, was to be spent in resting. But Little Tom, as
he lay there in his broom straw bed about midday on Saturday became
troubled in his mind about the provisioning of the garrison.
"We've eaten up the last of the venison to-day," he said, "and there
isn't an ounce of fresh meat in the camp. If I didn't hurt so badly, and
if the Doctor wasn't such a tyrant, with his arbitrary orders for me to
lie still, I'd go out this afternoon and get something better than salt
meat for all of us to eat to-morrow. Why don't some of you other fellows
go? If you can't get a deer, you can at any rate kill a turkey or a
pheasant or two, or some partridges or squirrels, or, as a last resort,
some rabbits. Oh, how my head aches! Go, some of you, and get what you
can."
With that the poor bed-ridden boy turned over in his bunk and sought
sleep. But Ed Parmly and Jim Chenowith acted upon his wise suggestion. A
few hours later they returned to Camp Venture bearing three hares and
seven squirrels on their shoulders, and dragging a half-grown hog by
withes.
"I don't know but what we've made a mistake," said Ed to Jack; "the hog
may belong to the moonshiners, and if so, they'll present their bill in
a fashion that we sha'n't want to have it presented."
"Never mind about that," called out Tom, from inside the house. "We're
at war with those people, you know, and in war you capture all you can
of the enemy's supplies. But why can't you let a fellow see your game?"
The boys dragged the shoat into the hut, and Tom, expert huntsman that
he was, had only to glance at it in order to pronounce it one of the
wild hogs of the mountains, and anybody's property.
"Don't you see," he said, "that although it is only a half-grown shoat,
it has tusks already. No domesticated hog ever developed in that way.
And besides, the moonshiners haven't any hogs or anything else, for that
matter. They are the poorest and most starved human beings I ever saw or
heard of. I passed a week as a prisoner in one of their huts once, and I
never dreamed of such poverty or such indolence. So long as they have
corn pones or anything else to distend their stomachs with, they simply
will not exert themselves to get anything better. They won't even go out
and shoot a rabbit if they've got anything else to eat. You simply can't
conceive of their poverty or of the indolence that produces it. If one
of them owned a hog he'd kill it without taking the trouble to fatten
it, and he'd eat it to the picking of the last bone before he would
exert himself to procure another morsel of food."
"When was it, Tom, that you learned all this?" asked Harry.
"A year ago. You remember the time I went hunting and didn't get back
for two weeks?"
"Yes, but tell us--"
"Well, that time I was captured by the moonshiners and held for a week
as a spy. I didn't say anything about it at home except confidentially
to Jack, for fear mother would worry when I went hunting again. But I
tell you fellows you never dreamed of the sort of poverty that those men
and their families live in. I don't know whether they are poor because
they lead criminal lives, or whether they lead criminal lives because
they are poor. But I do know that that fellow told the truth the other
night when he said that they do not usually have enough to eat. You saw
how starved he was. That's the chronic condition of all of them; and yet
these mountains are full of game and any man of even half ordinary
industry can feed himself well by killing it.
"The trouble is they are hopeless people. They have no ambition, no
energy, no 'go' in them. They drink too much of their illicit whiskey
for one thing, I suppose, but I don't think that's the bottom trouble.
They seem to be people born without energy. They like to sit still in
the sunshine, unless there is a revenue officer to hunt down and shoot.
I suppose they are what somebody in the newspapers calls
'degenerates'--people that are run down even before they are born."
"But tell us, Tom," broke in Harry, "how did you get away from them?"
"Why, I watched my chance," answered Tom, "till one day I 'got the drap'
on my jailer, to employ their own language. With a cocked gun at his
breast, I made him promise not to follow me, and then I retreated 'in
good order' as the soldiers say, down the mountain, with both barrels
cocked. But really, fellows, you can have no idea of the abject poverty
or the inconceivable indolence of these people. The little energy they
have is expended in making illicit whiskey and sneaking it down the
mountain without getting caught. Many of them have already served long
terms in prison, but they regard that merely as a manifestation of the
law's injustice, just as they do the hanging of one of their number now
and then, when he is caught shooting an agent of the revenue. They don't
understand. They are as ignorant as they are poor, and their poverty
exceeds anything that it is possible for us to conceive."
By this time Tom's scant strength was exhausted, and after muttering:
"That's anybody's wild hog," he turned himself over in bed and went to
sleep.