Camp Venture Part 25

"I don't believe you do," said the officer. "You don't look it, anyhow.

But of course we mustn't take any risk of being caught in a trap. So I'll send a squad of my men with you to inspect. Here, Sergeant Malby; take a detail of four men and go with this young man to the camp yonder.

In the meantime, my boy, I'll detain that magazine rifle of yours, if you please, till I satisfy myself."

Tom handed over his gun and led the sergeant and his squad into Camp Venture. As daylight had now fully come, the soldiers had little trouble in satisfying themselves that there was no still there, and that the company consisted only of five boys and the Doctor. The sergeant so reported to the lieutenant and that officer was disposed to be satisfied. Not so the three revenue agents, however.

"It's a fishy story these fellows tell," said the chief of them, "and I for one don't intend to be drawn into a trap. There may be no still and only a small company of boys in that cabin, but who knows how many stills there may be hidden around here, or how many moonshiners may be hiding about us, ready to ma.s.sacre us?"

"All right," said the lieutenant, in some disgust at the revenue officer's timidity. "I'll settle all that. Stay here, men, and wait for orders."

With that he strode off alone to the cabin and entered it. He there explained the situation to the boys and said:

"I'm afraid I shall have to ask you fellows to go out there and stack your arms, considering yourselves under arrest till our timid friends of revenue officers can make a tour of inspection all about your camp under the armed escort of my men. They were so sure that they had surprised a still here that they can't get over the notion. So we must humor them."

The boys readily consented to the plan. They marched out to a point designated by the lieutenant and there stacked their arms, over which the lieutenant summoned two of his men to stand guard. Then he bade the revenue officers come on, and under escort of his file of soldiers they minutely scrutinized the entire camp. The felled trees not yet chopped into shape for sending down the mountain; the large quant.i.ty of ties and cordwood that were piled near the chute; the mult.i.tude of stumps from which timber had been recently cut; the great piles of brush left over from the chopping; and finally the chute itself, now nearly worn out with use--all these attested the character of the camp and indicated an industry on the part of its occupants, such as no company of moonshiners ever displayed.

At last the Lieutenant said to the chief revenue officer, with some show of impatience:

"Aren't you satisfied, yet? Why don't you look under these boys' finger nails? How do you know they haven't some stills secreted there?"

"Yes, I'm satisfied with all but one thing," answered the agent of the excise.

"What's that?" asked Jack. "Whatever it is, I'll try to satisfy you concerning it."

"Why, I don't understand, if you aren't engaged in any crooked business, what you built that fortification for. If you didn't feel the need of resisting the government agents, what need had you for a barrier like that to shoot behind?"

"We built that to protect ourselves against moonshiners," answered Jack.

"But why should moonshiners disturb you?" asked the still incredulous revenue agent.

"Because they believed when we first came up here that we were spies of the internal revenue and most of them still believe it. They began by ordering us to quit the mountains and when we wouldn't they sent men to shoot at us. One of our party is still suffering from a bullet wound received at their hands. When we found that we must defend ourselves we erected that barrier to help us. Now that you have come up here we'll need it you may be sure."

"Why?" asked the revenue officer.

"Because they'll never believe now that we didn't send for you and bring you here. They'll make ceaseless war on us now."

Meanwhile the Lieutenant was examining the fortification. Presently he turned to Jack and said:

"Will you allow me to suggest an improvement in your defensive work?"

"Certainly," answered Jack. "We shall be very glad."

"Well the top of your parapet is level. Whenever you shoot over it you must expose your head, neck and shoulders above it. Now if you raise it by ten or twelve inches and then cut embrasures or notches in the top of it to shoot through you can put up a fight with far less exposure of your persons."

The suggestion was so obviously a good one that Jack determined on the instant to adopt it.

"I'll do that, Lieutenant, as soon as you release us from arrest and let us have our guns again."

"Oh, I forgot that," answered the Lieutenant. "Here sentinel," to the man who had been posted outside, "tell Sergeant Malby to send those guns back to the house, and to withdraw you from duty here. Young men, you are released from arrest."

Then turning to the chief revenue officer, for whose timid lack of sagacity he had obviously the profoundest contempt, he asked:

"What's your program now?"

"Well I'm going to clear this whole mountain of stills."

"How long do you reckon it will take?" asked the Lieutenant.

"Well a week or two weeks perhaps."

"And what provisions have you made for your commissariat for such a length of time?"

"What do you mean?"

"Why, I have forty men here and I'm under your orders, to do whatever you say, but every one of my forty men has a mouth to feed, and under my orders I brought only three days' rations in the haversacks. If you intend to keep us up here for a week or two, ought you not to have made some provision for a food supply?"

"Why didn't you look after that?" asked the revenue officer.

"Because it was none of my business. I'm a soldier. I obey orders. My orders were to take three days' cooked rations and march my men up here to support the revenue officers in whatever they undertook."

"That's always the way," said the revenue man. "The troops always fail us at the critical moment. That's why our efforts to break up moonshining always come to nothing."

"Pardon me, sir," answered the officer rising in his wrath. "I'll trouble you to take that back. The troops under my command have not failed you and they will not. We have nothing to do with collecting the revenue. That's your business. Ours is merely to fight anybody that resists you. That duty we are ready to do just so long as you may desire. We'll force a way for you to any part of these mountains that you may desire to visit and we'll keep it up for a year if you wish. But in the meantime somebody must provide my men with food!"

"If that's the way you look at the matter," said the revenue officer, "we might as well go down the mountain at once."

"It isn't a question of how I look at the matter," answered the lieutenant, impatiently. "I tell you I'm ready and my men are ready for any service you may a.s.sign to us. But I tell you also that we must have something to eat, and it is your duty to arrange it."

"But how can I?"

"Would it be impertinent in me to suggest," asked the lieutenant, "that you ought to have thought of that before you began your raid? If you had said to the commandant that your expedition was likely to occupy a week or two he would have ordered the commissary to furnish me with two or three weeks' provisions and the quarter-master to supply enough stout pack mules to carry them. As it was, you represented this as a two days'

trip and he ordered me to carry three days' rations in the haversacks."

"Well, we'd better retreat at once," answered the revenue officer.

"But why? It isn't even yet too late to repair your blunder. Why can't you send one of your men down the mountain at once to bring up a train of pack mules loaded with provisions? He can be back here in less than two days if he hurries."

"But I don't know--" began the man.

"I don't care what you know or don't know," answered the young West Pointer. "I simply tell you that as soon as my men run out of rations I'll march them down the hill again. It is my duty to see that they don't starve."

"But if I send a man down the mountain," answered the revenue agent, "some moonshiner might shoot him on the way."

"Very probably," answered the lieutenant. "That's a risk that men engaged in the revenue service are bound to take, I suppose. But if you request it, I will send a squad of four soldiers to guard your man on the way down and to protect the pack train on its way back."

Manifestly the revenue officer was anxious to "git down out'n the mountings," but he feared the report which in that case the angry and disgusted lieutenant would probably make, even more than he feared the moonshiners. Still he hesitated to detail one of his men to go down the mountain under escort of a corporal and three men.

This matter being still unsettled, the lieutenant said: