My shock at seeing Howard Byng in such a place was distinctly
depressing. My soul cried out for the boy for whom I had formed a
strong attachment and I leaned against the narrow ditch entrance for a
moment, overcome. There are pigeon holes in our memories for every
sort of information, the pleasant things and the unpleasant. I had
placed Howard Byng in a warm, honest, hopeful compartment, and to
suddenly learn that I had warmed a viper produced a conflict of
emotions. They seemed a jangle of sharp, ear-splitting sounds, as
hammers played upon steel to produce discord. I was overcome for the
moment. I felt Howard Byng had done me a personal wrong as I vividly
recalled again his honest, fearless, cordial gaze, when he bade me
good-bye. I had looked into his eyes and felt sure he was clean; I
knew he had a big, tender heart. Now he had gone back, and worse--he
had become a notorious outlaw and I--I was to take him, dead or alive.
This went through my mind in seconds. How far was I to blame for not
wanting to take that boy with me there and then? I could let him
escape, but the law--it must be fulfilled. I could not neglect my duty
to the state. I don't mind confessing personal ambition, pride and
love of adventure; and for audacity and boldness, this Federal
violation had no equal. I wanted this to be my last and best work for
the Excise Department before I was transferred to the Counterfeit
Division.
It doesn't affect Howard Byng's history much how I let off a stick of
dynamite on one side of the establishment, and by a flare of light
took both men chained to their drunken sentinel in their own boat with
the copper "still" and a dozen or more jugs of moonshine for evidence.
Another heavy charge of explosive left a deep hole where the "still"
house stood.
My prisoners were sullen and uttered no sound. They knew their prison
days were at hand. I put them in their own boat, towing mine, and
hurried quickly down the creek to the river. Though manacled hand and
foot and chained to a cleet, I felt none too safe.
I knew Howard Byng was powerful, likely cunning and treacherous now,
and the strain was considerable. Three o'clock in the morning I passed
the old camp ground. The night packet, due at the county seat early in
the morning, was landing at the big plant when I got there. Why not
get my prisoners aboard it and be sure?
I ran to the landing and in a few minutes I had them on deck. The
captain fixed it with the foreman to look out for my boats. I would
came back for them on the packet's return trip that night.
Well, when I got my men in a good light on the packet, the man I
thought was Howard Byng resembled him only in physique and hair. I
was more delighted at that discovery than I was at the complete
success of my night's work. Byng had a bold, fighting aquiline nose
and a big man's ear, brain and features to back it. This man's nose
traveled down like a roller coaster, blank, horsey features, a
dish-faced, vicious animal, his ears like the flap of a tent, his eyes
burning like a cornered wolf.
Whether it was thinking so much of Howard Byng or the geography, I had
an impression of his nearness and it bothered me. I asked the
somnolent sheriff about him after delivering to him the "swamp angels"
next morning. He said he wasn't much of a traveler, never heard of any
such man and didn't even know about the big plant where I left the
boats, though only thirty miles up the river.
The packet carried me back there about ten at night, and, having no
freight, only touched to let me off. My boats were on one end of the
well-built landing wharf paralleling the river, and now at the other
end was a little schooner of perhaps two hundred tons burden. It was
all lit up and everyone was busy, paying no attention to me. Doors
wide open, I went about to satisfy my curiosity. The long,
electric-lighted building was a paper mill. The sheet it made was not
very wide, perhaps four and half feet, but it came white as snow onto
big rolls as fast as a horse could gallop. I saw some finished and
marked for a big New York newspaper. That explained the schooner
outside. "Where in the name of Heaven do they get the material to make
such paper?" I asked myself.
Back of the paper mill was a great surprise, an acre of blazing
furnaces lighted up the night and leviathan steel retorts, throbbing
with life and pressure, emitted the pleasant odor of turpentine,
served by standard-gauge tracks, and, behind them, mountain high, was
a pile of blackened pine-tree stumps with long roots, apparently
plucked from the earth. They were piled by an up-to-date derrick, with
steel arms a hundred and fifty feet in length. On a platform opposite,
paralleling the tracks, were tiered cotton bales, shining white in
the furnace lights.
I returned to the paper-machine room, thoughtful indeed. The immense
cut-over stump lands of Georgia, stretching to the horizon over the
tide-washed river, took on a distinctly different aspect.
That sheet of paper, coming down over the long row of steam-heated
dryers, through the calenders wound into perfect rolls at express
speed, dropped to the floor automatically, as sheaves of wheat from a
harvester. A giant Corliss engine, seen through the door, ponderously
and merrily answered to the life-giving ether from the roaring
boilers. Happily married to its task an electric generator beside it
suggested a sparrow, saucily singing a tune to an eagle. I leaned
against a pillar, transported to another world, the world of use, and
felt some of its joy. Then I became conscious of being observed, but
did not turn.
The paper machine, all new and perfectly geared, was so long that its
even width appeared to narrow at the far end where the sheet
originated as wet pulp. The concrete floor was like a newly planed
board. The machinery was not noisy, it sung. Every belt, gear and
bearing was timed. The place actually hypnotized. It was divine.
Divinity and usefulness are the same. The machines seemed to be
singing a hymn to some master-mind.
Behind me an order was given. There was something familiar in the
voice, the sureness of a natural commander, which I associated at once
with the wonderful operation going on before me. A stalwart back was
toward me. The lower brain, neck, shoulders and torso belonged to a
man, perhaps not quite as wide or tall as our big Highlanders. My
interest intensified until suddenly he appeared to turn at my will for
a face view. This time there could be no mistaking the delicately
chiseled, fighting, aquiline nose, marvelous jaw and chin of Howard
Byng.