_Two Shots that Hit_
The days passed rapidly now, as they always do when people are busily at
work, and little by little the boys sent a great number of ties and
timbers and many cords of wood down the chute.
One evening Tom and Ed were "playing on the piano." That is to say they
were grinding axes by the firelight. For when the grind-stone was
provided with a proper frame and set up in the house, Tom insisted upon
calling it the piano, though some of the boys wanted to consider it as a
sewing machine or a typewriter. One thing was certain, it must be kept
in doors. Otherwise the water would freeze upon it, rendering it
useless.
As Tom and Ed played upon the piano immediately after supper, Tom said
to the Doctor:
"Tell us some more about beans?"
"I don't clearly catch your meaning," answered the Doctor.
"Why you once began telling us how valuable beans were as human food,"
said Tom, "and as those that I ate for supper are sitting rather
heavily upon my soul, I want to be encouraged by hearing some more about
how good they are for me."
"Wait a minute," said the Doctor. Then he went to his medicine case and
put a small quantity of something white into a tin cup. After that he
opened the camp box of baking soda and added half a teaspoonful of that
article; then he dissolved the whole mixture in a cupful of water and
handed it to Tom.
"There! Drink that!" he said, "and I think you will be in better
condition to listen to what I may have to say about beans."
Tom swallowed the mixture and then insisted upon hearing about beans.
"Well," said the Doctor, "the most interesting thing I know about beans
is that without them the great whaling industry which brought a vast
prosperity to this country a generation or two ago, would have been
impossible."
"How so?" asked Jack.
"Why you see in order to make whaling voyages profitable the sailing
ships that carried on the business, had to be gone for four years at a
time, and of course they had to carry food enough to last that long. For
meats they carried corned beef and pickled pork. For vegetables they
had to carry beans because they are the only vegetable product that
will keep so long. There were no canned goods in those days, so it was
beans or no whaling."
"Didn't they get fearfully tired of four years' living on nothing but
beans and salt meats?"
"Of course. And of course they managed sometimes to pick up some fresh
food, like sea birds' eggs or the sea birds themselves--though they are
very bad eating because of their fishy flavor; and sometimes, too, the
whaling ships would stop at ports on their way to the North Pacific
whaling waters and buy whatever they could of fresher food. But in the
main the men on whaling voyages had to live on salt meat and beans, and
one of their most serious troubles was that they suffered a great deal
from scurvy. By the way, that's something that we must look out for."
"That was caused by eating too much pickled meat, wasn't it?" asked Tom.
"They thought so then," said the Doctor, "but we have another theory
now. That's a very curious point. For a long time it was confidently
supposed that there was something in the salt meats that gave men
scurvy. After a while it was discovered that it was something _left out_
of the pickled meats that produced that effect. It seems that the brine
in which meat is pickled extracts from the meat certain nutritious
principles which are necessary to health, and that it is the lack of
these nutritious principles that gives men scurvy. So an old whaling
captain, with a sound head on his shoulders, concluded that the thing
needed to prevent scurvy was for the men to consume the brine in which
the meat was pickled. He ordered that the brine should be used instead
of water in mixing up bread, cooking vegetables and the like."
"Did the thing work?"
"Yes, excellently, and the plan was adopted in all the Canada lumber
camps where scurvy was as great an enemy to success as it was on the
whaling vessels themselves. Another thing they do in the lumber camps is
to quit cooking their potatoes the moment that symptoms of scurvy
appear. Raw potatoes seem to have a specific effect in preventing and
even in curing scurvy."
"Scurvy is a sore mouth, isn't it?" asked Tom.
"Not by any means," answered the Doctor. "Sore mouth is one of the
earliest and mildest symptoms of the disease, and nobody knows what sore
mouth means till he has had a touch of scurvy. It means that the mouth
in all its membranes is afire, and that everything put into the
mouth,--even though it be a piece of ice--burns like so much molten
iron. But the mouth symptoms are only a beginning. Presently the knees
and other joints turn purple and become excruciatingly painful. Then
they suppurate, and in the end amputation becomes necessary. There are
few worse diseases than scurvy, and we boys must protect ourselves
against it by every means in our power. It threatens us with a much more
serious danger than any that the moonshiners can bring upon us."
"By the way," said Jack, "the moonshiners seem to be letting us alone
now. Perhaps they have given us up as a bad job."
"That's just what they want us to think," responded Tom. "They are lying
low, in the hope that we'll accept precisely that idea and relax our
vigilance. That is the one thing that we mustn't do on any account. That
reminds me that it's time for me to go and relieve Jim Chenowith on
guard duty."
"Well, before you go, Tom," said the Doctor, "I want to suggest that you
take a day off to-morrow and get some fresh meat for us. We have lived
on salt meat for five or six days now, and a big snow may come at any
time to cut us off from fresh meat supplies. Besides our provisions are
very sharply limited in quantity and we mustn't use them up too rapidly.
We don't want scurvy in the camp and we don't want a starving time. So
boys I propose that Tom, as the best huntsman in the party, be detailed
and ordered to devote to-morrow to the duty of getting some game for our
larder."
The suggestion was instantly and unanimously accepted. Then spoke up
Harry Ridsdale:
"It'll be a hard day's work for Tom, as there's a slippery, soaplike
snow on the ground, and he needs to be fresh for it. So I volunteer to
take his turn on guard to-night and let him get in a good, straightaway
sleep."
"Good for you, Harry," said Jack. But Tom protested that he was
perfectly ready to stand his turn of guard duty and insisted upon doing
so. The others unanimously overruled him, however, and so Harry
shouldered his gun and went to relieve Jim Chenowith as picket. Before
going he said:
"Now, fellows, there is to be no more talking to-night, for when the
Doctor talks I want to listen. I've a whole catechism of questions to
bother him with, but it's bed time now and you fellows must crawl into
your bunks at once, without any further chatter. To bed, every one of
you!"
As it was full ten o'clock the boys accepted the suggestion, and in a
few minutes afterward, Camp Venture sank into silence, while Harry
stood guard out there under the cliff, and the stars glittered above
him in a wintry sky. Meantime the logs blazed and sputtered lazily in
the great fireplace, and the night wore on, with no disturbance in the
hut except when a sentinel came in, woke up his successor, replenished
the fire and crept into his broomstraw bed.
About four o'clock the boys were startled out of sleep by the crack of a
rifle, and the instant response of both barrels of a shotgun.
They were up and out in a moment, for it was their habit just then to
sleep in their clothes and even in their boots, and for each to keep his
gun by his side ready for instant use.
Running as fast as possible, they quickly joined Ed Parmly, who was on
picket at the time, and hurriedly questioned him.
He reported that the rifle shot had come from the edge of the cliff over
which the road down the mountain led. He added:
"I sent two charges of buckshot in that direction, but without aim, of
course, as it is too dark to see. I reloaded at once, and while I was
doing so I heard a groan off there. Perhaps we'd better look the matter
up."
Just then came another groan, and, at Tom's suggestion, torches were
lighted and an exploration made.
Just over the edge of the little cliff they found a mountaineer. He was
in a state of collapse, nine buckshot having passed through the fleshy
part of his thigh, cutting arteries and big veins enough to cause
profuse hæmorrhage.
"The man is badly hurt," said the Doctor. "We'll carry him to the hut at
once and see what can be done for him."
Willing hands lifted and carried the fainting man, and once in the hut
the Doctor called for all the torches that could be lighted. Hurriedly
he inspected the man's wounds, taking up an artery and putting a
compress on a severed vein as he went. Finally he said:
"Fortunately none of the buckshot struck the bone. It is only a flesh
wound though it is a very bad one. By the way"--the Doctor was seized
with a kindly thought--"Ed Parmly is probably more anxious about this
thing than any other boy in the party, and he is still out there on
picket. Suppose one of you fellows goes out there to relieve him and let
him come in to find out the amount of damage done by his shot."
The thought appealed at once to the kindly feelings of the boys and they
all instantly volunteered, but Jack, as the next in order on the sentry
list, claimed the privilege of relieving Ed.
When Ed came in he first of all wanted to hear whether or not the man
he had shot in the darkness was likely to die of his wounds.
The Doctor promptly reassured him on that point.
Then Ed said:
"Well, Doctor, if you are quite through with him, suppose you look at a
little scratch that he gave me. I didn't want to say anything about it,
but maybe it is better to have it attended to."
The Doctor turned instantly and began stripping off the boy's clothing.
He found that a bullet, striking him in the left side, had passed
between two ribs, almost penetrating the hollow of the lower chest, but
without quite doing so. It was one of those wonderful vagaries of bullet
wounds that would kill in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, but which
in the hundredth case do a minimum of damage.
The Doctor having satisfied himself that no vital organ had been
touched, carefully disinfected the wound and swathed it in bandages. As
he did so he said to the boy:
"Why didn't you tell us at the start, Ed, that you were wounded?"
"Well you see," said Ed, "I was more concerned about the other fellow.
It isn't a pleasant thing to kill a man, even when you've got to do it
in self defence. So as I knew by his groans that he was worse hurt than
I was, I didn't say anything about what his bullet had done till you
were through with the job of dressing his wounds."
"Will you permit me to remark," said the Doctor, "quite casually and in
parentheses as it were, that you, Ed Parmly, are a hero? I haven't met a
great many heroes in my time, but you are one of the few. Now you're
going to bed, and I'm going to play tyrant over you till this wound gets
well. But upon my word, I never knew two shots fired in darkness that
did their work so effectively as yours and that mountaineer's did."
With the instinct of his science the Doctor had no thought of
questioning the wounded moonshiner. But Tom had no scientific training
and no particular scruples concerning the matter. So he turned to the
mountaineer, who was occupying his bed, and asked in a peremptory voice:
"Why did you shoot Ed? What harm had he done you? What right had you to
shoot at him."
"Well, you see," said the mountaineer, taking up the familiar parable,
"we fellers what lives up here in the mountings can't afford to have no
intruders around. You fellers is intruders, and we're agoin' to drive
you out'n the mountings. You mout as well make up your minds to that
fust as last. We's done give you notice to quit, fair and square. You
won't quit. So all they is fer it is to kill you an' that's what we've
set out to do."
"But, my friend," said the Doctor, whose training had taught him to
regard reason as the ultimate court of appeals in human affairs, "we are
here with a perfect right to be here. We have in no way interfered with
you or your friends. You have absolutely no right to interfere with us."
"All that don't make no difference whatsomever," answered the
mountaineer. "We fellers what lives up here in the mountings don't want
no spies an' nobody else up here. You fellers has got to get out'n the
mountings an' that's all about it."
"But what right have you?" asked the Doctor, "to drive us out?"
"Well, we ain't a discussin' of rights now," answered the mountaineer.
"We're a talkin' business. You fellers has got to git out'n the
mountings."
Here Tom broke in, with his hot temper:
"So that's your last word, is it? Well, now let me give you our last
word. We are going to stay here. We are going to defend ourselves in our
rights, and now that you've threatened to kill us, and tried to kill us,
we've a perfect right to do a little shooting on our own account, and I
give you warning that if any one of you is caught in this camp, or
anywhere near it, we'll understand that he has come here to carry out
your threats, and we'll shoot him without waiting to ask any questions.
As for you, we ought to send you to jail for shooting one of our party.
I for one vote to do that. We can lock you up in the penitentiary for
that offense, and we're going to do it. Just as soon as the Doctor says
you're able to travel, I'm going to take you down the mountains at the
muzzle of a gun, and put you in jail. I'm tired of this thing."
This aspect of the case had not presented itself to the minds of the
other boys, but they approved Tom's plan instantly. The right thing is
always and obviously to appeal to the law for redress where a wrong has
been done, and perhaps the jailing of the mountaineer, under a charge of
"assault with intent to kill"--an offense punishable by a long term of
imprisonment,--might deter the others from like offenses.
"Well, it's pretty hard," said the mountaineer. "I've just got out only
three months ago, after a year in prison, for nothin' but helpin' some
other fellers to make a little whiskey without a payin' of the tax; an'
now I've got to go back to grindin' stove lids for nothin' but shootin'
at people that stays in the mountings in spite of all our warnin's."
Obviously the man was utterly incapable of realizing the nature or the
atrocity of his crime. Obviously, also, he was incapable, as his
comrades were, of seeing that anybody but themselves had a right to stay
in the mountains when they objected.
But Tom was bent upon carrying out his idea of taking the man down the
mountain and bringing him to trial for shooting Ed, and the other boys
fully sanctioned it.
"It may teach these people," said Jack, "that there are other people in
the world who have rights. That will be a civilizing lesson."
"Yes," said Tom, "and besides that, it will lock up a man who seems to
know how to shoot straight even in the dark. Anyhow, I've made up my
mind. As a 'law-abiding and law-loving citizen' I'm going to put that
fellow into jail, and send him afterwards to the penitentiary for a ten
years' term, if I can, for shooting Ed Parmly with intent to kill him.
It will be a wholesome reminder to the rest of these moonshiners that
they had better not shoot at us fellows. So, just as soon as the Doctor
says he's able to travel, I'm going to escort him down the mountain and
deliver him to the sheriff of the county. In the meantime, daylight is
breaking and it's time for you fellows who have the job in charge to
begin the preparation of breakfast."
So, after all, Tom did not get much sleep as a preparation for his game
hunting trip of the coming day.