Far away in a dim recess of the deep woods, on the summit of the ridge, amidst crags and chasms and almost inaccessible steeps, the shadows had gathered about a dismal little log hut of one room—like all the other dismal little hovels of the mountain, save that in front of the door the grass was worn away from a wide space by the frequent tread of many feet; a preternaturally large wood-pile was visible under a frail shelter in the rear of the house; from the chimney a dense smoke rose in a heavy column; and the winds that rushed past it carried on their breath an alcoholic aroma. But for these points of dissimilarity and its peculiarly secluded situation, Mark Yates, dismounting from his restive steed, might have been entering his mother’s dwelling. The opening door shed no glare of firelight out into the deepening gloom of the dusk. It was very warm within, however—almost too warm for comfort; but the shutters of the glassless window were tightly barred, and the usual chinks of log-house architecture were effectually closed with clay. The darkness of the room was accented rather than dispelled by a flickering tallow dip stuck in an empty bottle in default of a candlestick, and there was an all-pervading and potent odor of spirits. The salient feature of the scene was a stone furnace, from the closed door of which there flashed now and then a slender thread of brilliant light. A great copper still rose from it, and a protruding spiral tube gracefully meandered away in the darkness through the cool waters of the refrigerator to the receiver of its precious condensed vapors.
There were four jeans-clad mountaineers seated in the gloomy twilight of this apartment; and the stories of “bar-huntin’ an’ sech” must have been very jewels of discourse to prove so alluring, as they could certainly derive no brilliancy from their unique but somber setting.
“Hy’re, Mark! Come in, come in,” was the hospitable insistence which greeted young Yates.
“Hev a cheer,” said Aaron Brice, the eldest of the party, bringing out from the darkness a chair and placing it in the feeble twinkle of the tallow dip.
“Take a drink, Mark,” said another of the men, producing a broken-nosed pitcher of ardent liquor. But notwithstanding this effusive hospitality, which was very usual at the still-house, Mark Yates had an uncomfortable impression that he had interrupted an important conference, and that his visit was badly timed. The conversation that ensued was labored, and hosts and guest were a trifle ill at ease. Frequent pauses occurred, broken only by the sound of the furnace fire, the boiling and bubbling within the still, the gurgle of the water through its trough, that led it down from a spring on the hill behind the house to the refrigerator, the constant dripping of the “doublings” from the worm into the keg below. Now and then one of the brothers hummed a catch which ran thus:—
“O, Eve, she gathered the pippins,
Adam did the pomace make;
When the brandy told upon ’em,
They accused the leetle snake!”
Another thoughtfully snuffed the tallow dip, which for a few moments burned with a brighter, more cheerful light, then fell into a tearful despondency and bade fair to weep itself away.
Outside the little house the black night had fallen, and the wind was raging among the trees. All the stars seemed in motion, flying to board a fleet of flaky white clouds that were crossing the sky under full sail. The moon, a spherical shadow with a crescent of burnished silver, was speeding toward the west; not a gleam fell from its disk upon the swaying, leafless trees—it seemed only to make palpable the impenetrable gloom that immersed the earth. The air had grown keen and cold, and it rushed in at the door as it was opened with a wintry blast. A man entered, with the slow, lounging motion peculiar to the mountaineers, bearing in his hand a jug of jovial aspect. The four Brices looked up from under their heavy brows with sharp scrutiny to discern among the deep shadows cast by the tallow dip who the newcomer might be. Their eyes returned to gaze with an affected preoccupation upon the still, and in this significant hush the ignored visitor stood surprised and abashed on the threshold. The cold inrushing mountain wind, streaming like a jet of seawater through the open door, was rapidly lowering the temperature of the room. This contemptuous silence was too fraught with discomfort to be maintained.
“Ef ye air a-comin’ in,” said Aaron Brice, ungraciously, “come along in. An’ ef ye air a-goin’ out go ’long. Anyway, jes’ ez ye choose, ef ye’ll shet that thar door, ez I don’t see ez ye hev any call ter hold open.”
Thus adjured the intruder closed the door, placed the jug on the floor, and looked about with an embarrassed hesitation of manner. The flare from the furnace, which Aaron Brice had opened to pile in fresh wood, illumined the newcomer’s face and long, loose-jointed figure and showed the semicircle of mountaineers seated in their rush-bottomed chairs about the still. None of them spoke. Never before since the still-house was built had a visitor stood upon the puncheon floor that one of the hospitable Brices did not scuttle for a chair, that the dip was not eagerly snuffed in the vain hope of irradiating the guest, that the genial though mutilated pitcher filled with whisky was not ungrudgingly presented. No chair was offered now, and the broken-nosed pitcher with its ardent contents was motionless on the head of a barrel. It was a strange change, and as the broad red glare fell on their stolid faces and blankly inexpressive attitudes the guest looked from one to the other with an increasing surprise and a rising dismay. The light was full for a moment upon Mark Yates’s shock of yellow hair, gray eyes, and muscular, well-knit figure, as he, too, sat mute among his hosts. He was not to be mistaken, and once seen was not easily forgotten. The next instant the furnace door clashed, and the room fell back into its habitual gloom. One might note only the gurgle of the spring water—telling of the wonders of the rock-barricaded earth below and the reflected glories of the sky above—only the hilarious song of the still, the continuous trickle from the worm, the all-pervading spirituous odors, and the shadowy outlines of the massive figures of the mountaineers.
The Brices evidently could not be relied upon to break the awkward silence. The newcomer, mustering heart of grace, took up his testimony in a languid nasal drawl, trying to speak and to appear as if he had noticed nothing remarkable in his reception.
“I hev come, Aaron,” he said, “ter git another two gallons o’ that thar whisky ez I hed from you-uns, an’ I hev brung the balance of the money I owed ye on that, an’ enough ter pay for the jugful, too. Hyar is a haffen dollar fur the old score, an’—”
“That thar eends it,” said Aaron, pocketing the tendered fifty cents. “We air even, an’ ye’ll git no more whisky from hyar, Mose Carter.”
“Wha—what did ye say, Aaron? I hain’t got the rights ’zactly o’ what ye said.” And Carter peered in great amaze through the gloom at his host, who was carefully filling a pipe. As Aaron stooped to get a coal from the furnace one of the others spoke.
“He said ez ye’ll git no more whisky from hyar. An’ it air a true word.”
The flare from the furnace again momentarily illumined the room, and as the door clashed it again fell back into the uncertain shadow.
“That is what I tole ye,” said Aaron, reseating himself and puffing his pipe into a strong glow, “an’ ef ye hain’t a-onderstandin’ of it yit I’ll say it agin—ye an’ the rest of yer tribe will git no more liquor from hyar.”
“An’ what’s the reason I hain’t a-goin’ ter get no more liquor from hyar?” demanded Moses Carter in virtuous indignation. “Hain’t I been ez good pay ez any man down this hyar gorge an’ the whole mounting atop o’ that? Look-a hyar, Aaron Brice, ye ain’t a-goin’ ter try ter purtend ez I don’t pay fur the liquor ez I gits hyar—an’ you-uns an’ me done been a-tradin’ tergither peaceable-like fur nigh on ter ten solid year.”
“An’ then ye squar’ round an’ gits me an’ my brothers a-turned out’n the church fur runnin’ of a still whar ye gits yer whisky from. Good pay or bad pay, it’s all the same ter me.”
“I never gin my vote fur a-turnin’ of ye out ’kase of ye a-runnin’ of a still.” Moses Carter trembled in his eager anxiety to discriminate the grounds upon which he had cast his ballot. “It war fur a-gittin’ drunk an’ astayin’ drunk, ez ye mos’ly air a-doin—an’ ye will ’low yerself, Aaron, ez that thar air a true word. I don’t see no harm in a-runnin’ of a still an’ a-drinkin’ some, but not ter hurt. It air this hyar gittin’ drunk constant ez riles me.”
“Mose Carter,” said the youngest of the Brice brothers, striking suddenly into the conversation, “ye air a liar, an’ ye knows it!” He was a wiry, active man of twenty-five years; he spoke in an authoritative high key, and his voice seemed to split the air like a knife. His mind was as wiry as his body, and it was generally understood on Jolton’s Ridge that he was the power behind the throne of which Aaron, the eldest, wielded the unmeaning scepter; he, however, remained decorously in the background, for among the humble mountaineers the lordly rights of primogeniture are held in rigorous veneration, and it would have ill-beseemed a younger scion of the house to openly take precedence of the elder. His Christian name was John, but it had been forgotten or disregarded by all but his brothers in the title conferred upon him by his comrades of the mountain wilds. Panther Brice—or “Painter,” for thus the animal is called in the vernacular of the region—was known to run the still, to shape the policy of the family, to be a self-constituted treasurer and disburser of the common fund, to own the very souls of his unresisting elder brothers. He had elected, however, in the interests of decorum, that these circumstances should be sedulously ignored. Aaron invariably appeared as spokesman, and the mountaineers at large all fell under the influence of a dominant mind and acquiesced in the solemn sham. The Panther seldom took part even in casual discussions of any vexed question, reserving his opinions to dictate as laws to his brothers in private; and a sensation stirred the coterie when his voice, that had a knack of finding and thrilling every sensitive nerve in his hearer’s body, jarred the air.
“I hev seen ye, Mose Carter,” he continued, “in this hyar very still-house ez drunk ez a fraish biled owl. Ye hev laid on this hyar floor too drunk ter move hand or foot all night an’ haffen the nex’ day at one spree. I hev seen ye’, an’ so hev plenty o’ other folks. An’ ef ye comes hyar a-jowin’ so sanctified ’bout’n folks a-gittin’ drunk, I’ll turn ye out’n this hyar still-house fur tellin’ of lies.”
He paused as abruptly as he had spoken; but before Moses Carter could collect his slow faculties he had resumed. “It ’pears powerful comical ter me ter hear this hyar Baptis’ church a-settin’ of itself up so stiff fur temp’rance, ’kase thar air an old sayin’—an’ I b’lieves it—ez the Presbyterians holler—‘What is ter be will be!—even ef it won’t be!’ an’ the Methodies holler, ‘Fire! fire! fire! Brimstun’ an’ blue blazes!’—but the Bapties holler, ‘Water! water! water! with a leetle drap o’ whisky in it!’ But ye an’ yer church’ll be dry enough arter this; thar’ll be less liquor drunk ’mongst ye’n ever hev been afore, ’kase ye air all too cussed stingy ter pay five cents extry a quart like ye’ll hev ter do at Joe Gilligan’s store down yander ter the Settlemint. Fur nare one o’ them sanctified church brethren’ll git another drap o’ liquor hyar, whar it hev always been so powerful cheap an’ handy.”
“The dryer ez ye kin make the church the better ye’ll please the pa’son. He lays off a reg’lar temperance drought fur them ez kin foller arter his words. I be a-tryin’ ter mend my ways,” Moses Carter droned with a long, sanctimonious face, “but—” he hesitated, “the sperit is willin’, but the flesh is weak—the flesh is weak!”
“I’ll be bound no sperits air weak ez ye hev ennything ter do with, leastwise swaller,” said the Panther, with a quick snap.
“He is hyar in the mounting ter-night, the pa’son,” resumed Mose Carter, with that effort, always ill-starred, to affect to perceive naught amiss when a friend is sullenly belligerent; he preserved the indifferent tone of one retailing casual gossip. “The pa’son hev laid off ter spen’ the better part o’ the night in prayer and wrestlin’ speritchully in the church-house agin his sermon ter-morrer, it bein’ the blessed Sabbath. He ’lowed he would be more sole and alone thar than at old man Allen’s house, whar he be puttin’ up fur the night, ’kase at old man Allen’s they hev seben gran’chil’ren an’ only one room, barrin’ the roof-room. Thar be a heap o’ onregenerate human natur’ in them seben Allen gran’chil’ren. Thar ain’t no use I reckon in tryin’ ter awake old man Allen ter a sense of sin an’ the awful oncertainty of life by talkin’ ter him o’ the silence an’ solitude o’ the grave! Kee, kee!” he laughed. But he laughed alone.
“Wrestlin’! The pa’son a-wrestlin’! I could throw him over my head! It’s well fur him his wrestlin’s air only in prayer!” exclaimed Painter, with scorn. “The still will holp on the cause o’ temp’rance more’n that thar little long-tongued preacher an’ all his sermons. Raisin’ the tar’ff on the drink will stop it. Ye’re all so dad-burned stingy.”
“Jes’ ez ye choose,” said Moses Carter, taking up his empty jug. “’Tain’t nuthin’ s’prisin’ ter me ter hear ye a-growlin’ an’ a-goin’ this hyar way, Painter—ye always war more like a wild beast nor a man, anyhow. But it do ’stonish me some ez Aaron an’ the t’other boys air a-goin’ ter let ye cut ’em out’n a-sellin’ of liquor ter the whole kentry mighty nigh, ’kase the brethren don’t want a sodden drunkard, like ye air, in the church a-communin’ with the saints.”
“Ye needn’t sorrow fur Aaron,” said Panther Brice, with a sneer that showed his teeth much as a snarl might have done, “nor fur the t’other boys nuther. We kin sell all the whisky ez we kin make ter Joe Gilligan, an’ the folks yander ter—ter—no matter whar—” he broke off with a sudden look of caution as if he had caught himself in an imminent disclosure. “We kin sell it ’thout losin’ nare cent, fur we hev always axed the same price by the gallon ez by the bar’l. So Aaron ain’t a needin’ of yer sorrow.”
“Ye air the spitefullest little painter ez ever seen this hyar worl’,” exclaimed Moses Carter, exasperated by the symmetry of his enemy’s financial scheme. “Waal—waal, prayer may bring ye light. Prayer is a powerful tool. The pa’son b’lieves in its power. He is right now up yander in the church-house, fur I seen the light, an’ I hearn his voice lifted in prayer ez I kem by.”
The four brothers glanced at one another with hot, wild eyes. They had reason to suspect that they were themselves the subject of the parson’s supplications, and they resented this as a liberty. They had prized their standing in the church not because they were religious, in the proper sense of the word, but from a realization of its social value. In these primitive regions the sustaining of a reputation for special piety is a sort of social distinction and a guarantee of a certain position. The moonshiners neither knew nor cared what true religion might be. To obey its precepts or to inconvenience themselves with its restraints, was alike far from their intention. They had received with boundless amazement the first intimation that the personal and practical religion which the “skimpy saint” had brought into the gorge might consistently interfere with the liquor trade, the illicit distilling of whisky, and the unlimited imbibing thereof by themselves and the sottish company that frequented the still-house. They had laughed at his temperance sermons and ridiculing his warnings had treated the whole onslaught as a trifle, a matter of polemical theory, in the nature of things transitory, and had expected it to wear out as similar spasms of righteousness often do—more’s the pity! Then they would settle down to continue to furnish spirituous comfort to the congregation, while the “skimpy saint” ministered to their spiritual needs. The warlike little parson, however, had steadily advanced his parallels, and from time to time had driven the distillers from one subterfuge to another, till at last, although they were well off in this world’s goods—rich men, according to the appraisement of the gorge—they were literally turned out of the church, and had become a public example, and they felt that they had experienced the most unexpected and disastrous catastrophe possible in nature.
They were stunned that so small a man had done this thing, a man, so poor, so weak, so dependent for his bread, his position, his every worldly need, on the favor of the influential members of his scattered congregations. It had placed them in their true position before their compeers. It had reduced their bluster and boastfulness. It had made them seem very small to themselves, and still smaller, they feared, in the estimation of others.
Moses Carter—himself no shining light, indeed a very feebly glimmering luminary in the congregation—looked from one to the other of their aghast indignant faces with a ready relish of the situation, and said, with a grin:
“I reckon, Painter, ef the truth war plain, ye’d ruther hev all the gorge ter know ez the pa’son war a-spreadin’ the fac’s about this hyar still afore a United States marshal than afore the throne o’ grace, like he be a-doin’ of right now.”
The Panther rose with a quick, lithe motion, stretched out his hand to the head of a barrel near by, and the thread of light from the closed furnace door showed the glitter of steel. He came forward a few steps, walking with a certain sinewy grace and brandishing a heavy knife, his furious eyes gleaming with a strange green brilliance, all the more distinct in the half-darkened room. Then he paused, as with a new thought. “I won’t tech ye now,” he said, with a snarl, “but arter a while I’ll jes’ make ye ’low ez that thar church o’ yourn air safer with me in it nor it air with me out’n it. An’ then we’ll count it even.” He ceased speaking suddenly; cooler now, and with an expression of vexation upon his sharp features—perhaps he repented his hasty threat and his self-betrayal. After a moment he went on, but with less virulence of manner than before. “Ye kin take that thar empty jug o’ yourn an’ kerry it away empty. An’ ye kin take yer great hulking stack o’ bones along with it, an’ thank yer stars ez none of ’em air bruken. Ye air the fust man ever turned empty out’n this hyar still-house, an’ I pray God ez ye may be the las’, ’kase I don’t want no sech wuthless cattle a-hangin’ round hyar.”
“I ain’t a-quarrelin’ with hevin’ ter go,” retorted Carter, with asperity. “I never sot much store by comin’ hyar nohow, ’ceptin’ Aaron an’ me, we war toler’ble frien’ly fur a good many year. This hyar still-house always reminded me sorter o’ hell, anyhow—whar the worm dieth not an’ the fire is not quenched.”
With this Parthian dart he left the room, closing the door after him, and presently the dull thud of his horse’s hoofs was borne to the ears of the party within, again seated in a semicircle about the furnace.