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Around a clump of bushes we came on a gray-bearded mountaineer holding his horse by the bridle and from a covert high above two more men appeared with Winchesters. The Blight breathed forth an awed whisper: "Are they moonshiners?" I nodded sagely, "Most likely," and the Blight was thrilled.
Tie on some picks an' shovels an' put you behind the wheel, and only the guys that are in the know would ever get wise in a thousand years. "Why, look what he said about you havin' 'em all bluffed in San Berdoo! Grabbed you with a bunch uh moonshiners, and you fightin' the saps harder'n any of 'em and then, by heck, you slips the noose an' leaves 'em thinkin' you're honest but unlucky.
She said not a word, but bent and pallid, and, quaking in every muscle, stood peering beneath her hand, which still held back her hair. "It's all a mistake," he urged. "This ain't no grave. The top war dug a leetle ter turn off a revenuer's suspicions o' the moonshiners. They put that tale out." Still, evidently on the verge of collapse, she did not speak.
The Antifederalists were largely represented by men from the upland counties, belonging to a population in which there was considerable likeness all along the Appalachian chain of mountains, from Pennsylvania to the southern extremity of the range. There were among them many "moonshiners," as they were called, distillers of illicit whiskey, and they did not relish the idea of a federal excise.
Now, when four men are picked up at random in our township, it is safe to assume that at least three of them have been moonshiners themselves, and know how this sort of thing should be done. At any rate, the posse wasted no time in discussion. They went straight after that malefactor, got him, and, within an hour after the shot was fired, he was drummed out of the county for good and forever.
The trial had not proceeded beyond preliminaries when shots and shouts from the pursuing mob were heard in the distance. Immediately the room was emptied of both crowd and commissioners, who fled in all directions, leaving Harkins and Merrill to fight their battle alone. There were thirteen men in the moonshiners' mob.
His fright had been marked, he knew; a sort of surprised reflectiveness was in the manner of several of the moonshiners, and Ne-hemiah, with his ready fears, fancied that this inopportune show of terror had revived their suspicions of him.
He did not even dimly surmise that his allusion to the finances of the government could be construed as a justification of the whiskey tax, generally esteemed in the mountains a measure of tyrannous oppression; that from his supposititious advocacy of it he had laid himself liable to the suspicion of being himself of the revenue force, his mission here to spy out moonshiners; that his companion's mind was even now dwelling anew, and with a rueful difference, on that masterly drawing of himself in the stranger's sketch-book.
If I had presented a letter from some clergyman or from the President of the United States it would have been just what I was myself a curiosity: as when the puppy discovers some weird and marvelous new bug. Everyone greeted me politely but with unfeigned interest. I was welcome to sup and bed wherever I went. Moonshiners and man-slayers were as affable as common folks.
Yerby did not dare avow the true purpose of his presence after his representations to the moonshiners, and yet he could not, he would not in set phrase align himself with the illicit vocation. The boy was too young, too irresponsible, too inimical to his uncle, he reflected in a sudden panic, to be intrusted with this secret.
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