PAGE 6
His Unquiet Ghost
by
“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 all the details of the enterprise, would direct the event with absolute authority and the immutability of fate. But whatever should be done, he revolted from any knowledge of it, as from any share in the act. He had risen to leave the place, all strange of aspect now, metamorphosed,–various disorderly details of the prohibited industry ever and anon surging up from the still-room below,–when a hoarse voice took cognizance of his intention with a remonstrance.
“Why, Watt Wyatt, ye can’t go out in the cove. Ye air dead! Ye will let that t’other revenue-raider ye seen into the secret o’ the bresh whisky in our wagon ef ye air viewed about whenst ‘Gene hev spread the report that ye air dead. Wait till them raiders hev cleared out of the kentry.”
The effort at detention, to interfere with his liberty, added redoubled impetus to Wyatt ‘s desire to be gone. He suddenly devised a cogent necessity. “I be feared my dad mought hear that fool tale. I ain’t much loss, but dad would feel it.”