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This involved a personal call upon Mr. Moe Rosen, who conducted a hide, pelt, rag, junk, empty-bottle and old-iron emporium on lower Court Street, just off the Market Square. September’s hurried twilight had descended upon the town when the scouting conspirator tapped for admission at the alley entrance to the back room of Mr. Rosen’s establishment, where the owner sat amid a variegated assortment of choicer specimens culled from his collected wares. Mr. Rosen needed no sign above his door to inform the passing public of the nature of his business. When the wind was right you could stand two blocks away and know it without being told. Here at Mr. Rosen’s side door Red Hoss smacked his nostrils appreciatively. Even to one newly come from a wild-animal show, and even when smelled through a brick wall, Mr. Rosen’s place had a graphic and striking atmosphere which was all its own.

As one well acquainted with the undercurrents of community life, Red Hoss shared, with many others, the knowledge that Mr. Rosen, while ostensibly engaged in one industry, carried on another as a sort of clandestine by-product. Now this side line, though surreptitiously conducted and perilous in certain of its aspects, was believed by the initiated to be really more lucrative than his legitimatized and avowed calling. Mr. Rosen was by way of being–by a roundabout way of being–what technically is known as a bootlegger. He bootlegged upon a larger scale than do most of those pursuing this precarious avocation.

It was stated in an earlier paragraph that national prohibition had not yet come to pass. But already local option held the adjoining commonwealth of Tennessee in a firm and arid grasp; wherefore Mr. Rosen’s private dealings largely had to do with discreet clients thirstily residing below the state line. It was common rumor in certain quarters that lately this traffic had suffered a most disastrous interruption. Tennessee revenue agents suddenly had evinced an unfriendly curiosity touching on vehicular movements from the Kentucky side.

A considerable chunk of Mr. Rosen’s profits for the current year had been irretrievably swallowed up when a squad of these suspicious excisemen laid their detaining hands upon a sizable order of case stuff which–disguised and broadly labeled as crated household goods–was traveling southward by nightfall in a truck, heading toward a destination in a district which that truck was destined never to reach.

Bottle by bottle the aromatic contents of the packages had been poured into the wayside ditch to be sucked up by an unappreciative if porous soil. The truck itself had been confiscated. Its driver barely had escaped, to return homeward afoot across country bearing dire tidings to his employer, who was reported, upon hearing the lamentable news, literally to have scrambled the air with disconsolate flappings of his hands, meanwhile uttering shrill cries of grief.

Moreover, as though to top this stroke of ill luck, further activities in the direction of his most profitable market practically had been brought to a standstill by reason of enhanced vigilance on the part of the Tennessee authorities along the main highroads running north and south. Between supply and demand, or perhaps one should say between purveyor and consumer, the boundary mark dividing the sister commonwealths stretched its dead line like a narrow river of despair. It was not to be wondered at, therefore, that the sorely pestered Mr. Rosen should be at this time a prey to care so carking as to border on forthright melancholia. Never a particularly cheerful person, at Red Hoss’ soft knock upon his outer door he raised a countenance completely clothed in moroseness where not clothed in whiskers and grunted briefly–a sound which might or might not be taken as an invitation to enter. Nor was his greeting, following upon the caller’s soft-footed entrance, calculated to promote cordial intercourse.

“What you want, nigger?” he demanded, breaking in on Red Hoss’ politely phrased greeting. Then without waiting for a reply, “Well, whatever it is, you don’t get it. Get out!”