His Unquiet Ghost | Page 5

despair, shared the gradations of an appreciated sorrow that makes all
souls akin and that even lifts the beast to the plane of brotherhood, the
bond of emotional woe. He had often with no other or better reason

liberated the trophy of his snare, calling after the amazed and franticly
fleeing creature, "Bye-bye, Buddy!" with peals of his whimsical,
joyous laughter.
He was experiencing now a similar sequence of sentiments in noting
the wild-eyed eagerness with which the captured raider took obvious
heed of every minor point of worthiness that might mask the true
character of his entertainers. But, indeed, these deceptive hopes might
have been easily maintained by one not so desirous of reassurance
when, in the darkest hour before the dawn, they reached a large
log-cabin sequestered in dense woods, and he found himself an inmate
of a simple, typical mountain household. It held an exceedingly
venerable grandfather, wielding his infirmities as a rod of iron; a father
and mother, hearty, hospitable, subservient to the aged tyrant, but
keeping in filial check a family of sons and daughters-in-law, with an
underfoot delegation of grandchildren, who seemed to spend their time
in a bewildering manouver of dashing out at one door to dash in at
another. A tumultuous rain had set in shortly after dawn, with lightning
and wind,--"the tail of a harricane," as the host called it,--and a terrible
bird the actual storm must have been to have a tail of such dimensions.
There was no getting forth, no living creature of free will "took water"
in this elemental crisis. The numerous dogs crowded the children away
from the hearth, and the hens strolled about the large living-room,
clucking to scurrying broods. Even one of the horses tramped up on the
porch and looked in ever and anon, solicitous of human company.
"I brung Ben up by hand, like a bottle-fed baby," the hostess
apologized, "an' he ain't never fund out fur sure that he ain't folks."
There seemed no possible intimation of moonshine in this entourage,
and the coffin filled with jugs, a-wagoning from some distillers' den in
the range to the cross-roads' store, might well have been accounted only
the vain phantasm of an overtired brain surcharged with the vexed
problems of the revenue service. The disguised revenue-raider was
literally overcome with drowsiness, the result of his exertions and his
vigils, and observing this, his host gave him one of the big feather beds
under the low slant of the eaves in the roof-room, where the other men,

who had been out all night, also slept the greater portion of the day. In
fact, it was dark when Wyatt wakened, and, leaving the rest still torpid
with slumber and fatigue, descended to the large main room of the
cabin.
The callow members of the household had retired to rest, but the elders
of the band of moonshiners were up and still actively astir, and Wyatt
experienced a prescient vicarious qualm to note their lack of heed or
secrecy--the noisy shifting of heavy weights (barrels, kegs, bags of
apples, and peaches for pomace), the loud voices and unguarded words.
When a door in the floor was lifted, the whiff of chill, subterranean air
that pervaded the whole house was heavily freighted with spirituous
odors, and gave token to the meanest intelligence, to the most
unobservant inmate, that the still was operated in a cellar, peculiarly
immune to suspicion, for a cellar is never an adjunct to the ordinary
mountain cabin. Thus the infraction of the revenue law went on
securely and continuously beneath the placid, simple, domestic life,
with its reverent care for the very aged and its tender nurture of the
very young.
It was significant, indeed, that the industry should not be pretermitted,
however, when a stranger was within the gates. The reason to Wyatt,
familiar with the moonshiners' methods and habits of thought, was only
too plain. They intended that the "revenuer" should never go forth to
tell the tale. His comrades had evidently failed to follow his trail, either
losing it in the wilderness or from ignorance of his intention. He had
put himself hopelessly into the power of these desperate men, whom
his escape or liberation would menace with incarceration for a long
term as Federal prisoners in distant penitentiaries, if, indeed, they were
not already answerable to the law for some worse crime than illicit
distilling. His murder would be the extreme of brutal craft, so devised
as to seem an accident, against the possibility of future investigation.
The reflection turned Wyatt deathly cold, he who could not bear
unmoved the plea of a wild thing's eye. He sturdily sought to pull
himself together. It was none of his decree; it was none of his deed, he
argued. The older moonshiners, who managed