_Tom Gives an Account of Himself_
"Now first of all," said Tom, when breakfast was over and the boys again
began questioning him as to his night's adventure,--"first of all if I
ever disappear again you're not any of you to worry about me. You all
say that 'little Tom knows how to take care of himself,' and I believe I
do, particularly when I have a double-barrelled shotgun with me and
forty cartridges loaded with buckshot in my belt.
"Now to explain. I was curious to find out how far the moonshiner who
'negotiated' with me at the muzzle of your magazine rifle, Doctor, was
telling the truth, and how far he was lying. So I made up my mind to
climb down the mountain, following the line of our chute, and find out
whether or not that big timber had made a wreck of an illicit still down
there. Of course it hadn't. That was only an 'explanation' invented by
the fellow for immediate use, when he was caught sneaking up here to
shoot some of us. His sole purpose was to drive us 'out'n the mountings'
as these people put it. His plan was to sneak up here behind the house
and shoot some one or other of us, and thus compel us to 'git down out'n
the mountings.' He thought we'd all be out there chopping and that after
dropping one of us he could slip away unseen and of course unrecognized.
He thought that then we'd quit. He didn't know that that cat had
scratched me so badly that the Doctor had condemned me to stay here at
the house, and so he was taken completely by surprise when I levelled
that repeating rifle at him, at less than six paces distance. So he
resorted to humanity's last resource, lying. I remember reading in a
book somewhere that Queen Elizabeth said that 'a lie is an intellectual
way of meeting a difficulty.' Well that fellow was very intellectual. He
lied 'to the queen's taste'--even Queen Elizabeth's taste. He told me
that he had come up here to ask us fellows to change the direction of
our chute, lest it demolish his still down there--though of course he
didn't admit that it was a still. I wanted to find out about that and so
I slipped away and climbed down the mountain. I found the still all
right--indeed I found three of them--on my mother's land, but there
isn't one of them in the line of our chute or within a quarter of a mile
of it. All that was a fable made up to cover the moonshiner's murderous
mission.
"Well when I found the stills in full blast I made up my mind to watch
their operations for a time. I was securely ensconced upon a ledge which
I thought inaccessible from below, but it wasn't. For presently those
fellows threw out their pickets, and one of them climbed up to my
particular ledge, to keep 'watch and ward' there. There were only two
things for me to do. Either I must shoot the fellow and take my chances
of running away over a difficult track with which the moonshiners were
familiar while I was not, or I must crouch away somewhere where the
moonshining picket was not likely to see me.
"As the more prudent of the two courses open to me, I chose the latter.
There was a sort of half cave there, a crevice in the rocks, and I
crawled into that, and there I stayed all night, with my gun at full
cock and with Little Tom every instant on the alert. My plan was to keep
myself hidden as long as I could, and if discovered to get in the first
shot, and then run as fast as I could. Fortunately I was not discovered,
and about half past six o'clock the stills ceased operations and the
pickets were called in. Then I made my way around the side of the
mountain and got back to camp.
"There, that's the whole story of Little Tom's night adventure. Now
let's get to work at our chopping, for I am well enough now to do my
share and I hereby declare my independence of the Doctor."
"That's all right," said the Doctor, "but if you break open any of those
wounds, I'll order you to bed again."
"But wait awhile," interposed Jack. "There's something serious in all
this. Obviously these people don't intend to make open war upon us.
Their plan is to sneak upon us and now and then to shoot one of us from
some hiding place, in order to drive us out of the mountains. Now we've
got to look out for that. We can do it in two ways. First we can send a
slab down the chute with a message in it asking our friends down below
to send up the revenue officers and a company of soldiers to arrest all
these men, telling the revenue people that we'll show them the stills
and the men. In other words we can 'carry the war into Africa' as the
Romans did, and put these fellows on the defensive instead of ourselves
standing in that position. Or, if we don't care to do that--and there
are reasons against it--"
"What are the reasons against it?" asked Little Tom, whose disposition
it was always to take the offensive in a righteous controversy.
"Well, not more than a dozen or twenty of these mountaineers are
actively engaged in this illicit distilling business, but all the rest
of the mountaineers are their friends and most of them are their
relatives, for these mountaineers have intermarried until almost every
one of them is the near kinsman of all the rest. Now if we call in the
assistance of the revenue officers and the troops behind them, the best
that we can hope for is to put a dozen or so of them into jail, while
possibly two or three of them will be shot in the mélee. That will leave
the rest of them to make war upon us, with the assistance of all the men
of the mountains."
"Well what's the other plan," asked Tom, who very reluctantly gave up
the idea of aggressive fighting.
"We must so place a sentinel every day that no man can come within rifle
range of us without being discovered and stopped--with a bullet if
necessary. Fortunately our camp is so placed that there are only two
points at which it can be reached, and fortunately again there is one
sheltered point--out there under the cliff--from which a sentinel can
see anybody approaching by either of the only two roads that lead into
our camp. My plan is to keep a sentinel always under the cliff out
there."
Jack had so thoroughly thought the matter out that it needed no
discussion. His plan was instantly adopted, one boy was sent to the
sentry's post under the cliff, and the rest made a late beginning of the
day's work of wood chopping.