CHAPTER VIII
_The Condition of the Moonshiners_
The next day the boys moved from their temporary shelter into theirpermanent winter quarters, building a fire in front of the door andmaking 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 alevel with the ground at the turn of the hill and extending with a heavyincline for twenty yards or so over the steep brow of the mountain. Itwas supported by strong hickory and oak posts and braces throughout itslength. Any piece of timber placed in its upper end and gently impelledforward would quickly traverse it to its farther end and there make atremendous leap and a long slide down the steep, into the depths below.
Little Tom, greatly to his disgust, was peremptorily ordered into bed bycommand of the Doctor, but two of the boys had volunteered to strip offthat valuable panther skin for him, salt it and stretch it out on thelogs of the cabin to dry.
It was on Saturday that the boys removed to their new quarters, and thenext day, being Sunday, was to be spent in resting. But Little Tom, ashe lay there in his broom straw bed about midday on Saturday becametroubled in his mind about the provisioning of the garrison.
"We've eaten up the last of the venison to-day," he said, "and thereisn't an ounce of fresh meat in the camp. If I didn't hurt so badly, andif the Doctor wasn't such a tyrant, with his arbitrary orders for me tolie still, I'd go out this afternoon and get something better than saltmeat for all of us to eat to-morrow. Why don't some of you other fellowsgo? If you can't get a deer, you can at any rate kill a turkey or apheasant 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 youcan."
With that the poor bed-ridden boy turned over in his bunk and soughtsleep. But Ed Parmly and Jim Chenowith acted upon his wise suggestion. Afew hours later they returned to Camp Venture bearing three hares andseven squirrels on their shoulders, and dragging a half-grown hog bywithes.
"I don't know but what we've made a mistake," said Ed to Jack; "the hogmay belong to the moonshiners, and if so, they'll present their bill ina fashion that we sha'n't want to have it presented."
"Never mind about that," called out Tom, from inside the house. "We'reat war with those people, you know, and in war you capture all you canof 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 thathe was, had only to glance at it in order to pronounce it one of thewild 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 thatmatter. They are the poorest and most starved human beings I ever saw orheard of. I passed a week as a prisoner in one of their huts once, and Inever dreamed of such poverty or such indolence. So long as they havecorn pones or anything else to distend their stomachs with, they simplywill not exert themselves to get anything better. They won't even go outand shoot a rabbit if they've got anything else to eat. You simply can'tconceive of their poverty or of the indolence that produces it. If oneof them owned a hog he'd kill it without taking the trouble to fattenit, and he'd eat it to the picking of the last bone before he wouldexert 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 backfor two weeks?"
"Yes, but tell us--"
"Well, that time I was captured by the moonshiners and held for a weekas a spy. I didn't say anything about it at home except confidentiallyto Jack, for fear mother would worry when I went hunting again. But Itell you fellows you never dreamed of the sort of poverty that those menand their families live in. I don't know whether they are poor becausethey lead criminal lives, or whether they lead criminal lives becausethey are poor. But I do know that that fellow told the truth the othernight when he said that they do not usually have enough to eat. You sawhow starved he was. That's the chronic condition of all of them; and yetthese mountains are full of game and any man of even half ordinaryindustry can feed himself well by killing it.
"The trouble is they are hopeless people. They have no ambition, noenergy, no 'go' in them. They drink too much of their illicit whiskeyfor 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 inthe 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 hisbreast, I made him promise not to follow me, and then I retreated 'ingood order' as the soldiers say, down the mountain, with both barrelscocked. But really, fellows, you can have no idea of the abject povertyor the inconceivable indolence of these people. The little energy theyhave is expended in making illicit whiskey and sneaking it down themountain without getting caught. Many of them have already served longterms in prison, but they regard that merely as a manifestation of thelaw's injustice, just as they do the hanging of one of their number nowand then, when he is caught shooting an agent of the revenue. They don'tunderstand. They are as ignorant as they are poor, and their povertyexceeds 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 tosleep.