"How do you people live up here?" asked the Doctor. "You can't grow much in the way of crops. Do you generally have enough to eat?"
"Well hardly to say generally. Sometimes we has, and more oftener we hasn't. You see our business is onsartain. That's why we don't like strangers prowlin' around in the mountings. Now I've got somethin' friendly like, to say to you fellers. Fust off I want to tell you I'm not agoin' to bother you agin. I'm a believin' that you've come up here on a straight business. But there's others that ain't got so much faith as me. They'll make trouble for you if you stay. My advice to you is to git out'n the mountings jest as quick as you kin."
"But my friend," said the Doctor, "Why should we leave the mountains? We are on land owned by the mother of my young friends here. We have come only to see if we can't get some money for her out of lands that have never paid her anything – not even earning the taxes that she has paid on them. Why shouldn't we stay here and do this? This is a free country, and – "
"They's taxes in it," said the mountaineer, gritting his teeth, "an' they's jails for them that tries to carry on business without a payin' of the taxes. I don't call that no free country."
"It would be idle to argue that question," replied the Doctor. "But we, at least, have nothing to do with the taxes. We are here to make a little money in a perfectly legitimate way, by hard work. We are not interfering with any body and we don't intend to interfere with any body. But we're going to stay here all winter and carry on our business."
"Yes!" added Jack, "and if any body interferes with us it will be the worse for him."
"Well, you're makin' of a mistake," said the mountaineer, "an' I give you friendly warnin'. As I done told you before, I believe you. I think you're dead straight. But there's them what ain't so charitable, as the preachers say. There's them that'll believe you're lyin', and 'll stick to that there belief till the cows come home, an' they'll make a mighty heap o' trouble fer you fellers ef you tries to stay here. They're men that won't be watched I tell you, and forty witnesses, all on their Bible oaths couldn't persuade 'em but what you're here to watch 'em. It's friendly advice I give you when I tells you to git out'n these mountings."
"All right," broke in little Tom, "but while you're scattering friendly advice around suppose you advise your friends to let us alone. Tell them that little Tom Ridsdale proposes to shoot next time, and to shoot his buckshot barrel at that." Tom rose to his feet and added:
"You and your people mean war. Very well. I for one, accept the issue. Hereafter it will be war, and in war every man shoots to do all the damage he can. I have a perfect right to be here on my mother's land, and here I am going to stay. If every other fellow in the party should start down the mountain this night, I would stay here alone to fight it out all winter. And every other fellow in our party feels just as I do. Go to your criminal friends and tell them that! But warn them that if they interfere with us we'll not wrestle with them, we'll shoot and we'll take no chance of missing. We'll shoot to produce effects. We'll never interfere with you or your friends, but you and your friends mustn't interfere with us. If you do, you'll get war and all you want of it. We've tried to do the right thing by you; and now I give you fair warning."
"Well, all I've got to say," said the mountaineer, as he took his departure, "is jest this: You fellers has dealt fair with me, an' I'll deal fair with you. That boy that threw me down an' broke my arm mout just as easy have shot me through the body; an' then the tender way that the Doctor done up my arm! Why even a woman couldn't 'a' been tenderer like. Now I ain't got no quarrel with you fellers, an' that's why I'm advisin' you to git down out'n the mountings as soon as you kin. There's others, I tell you, an' they ain't soft hearted like me. They'll give you a heap o' trouble if you stay here."
"Let them try it," answered little Tom. "Let them try it. Then we'll see who's who, and what's what. Now tell your friends what I've said to you. There! good night! I hope your arm will get well. If it doesn't, come over here and let the Doctor look at it."
With that defiant farewell in his ears the mountaineer took his leave.
"Was it prudent, Tom?" asked Ed Parmly, "to send that sort of defiant message to the moonshiners?"
"Yes, quite prudent. We want them to know that we are here on our own business and not on theirs, at all. We want them to know that we propose to stay here whether they want us to do so or not. And finally, we want them to understand that any interference with us on their part, will mean war. I've simply issued a Declaration of Independence, and – "
"And to it," called out Jim Chenowith, quoting, "we pledge our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor."
"Now," said Jack, "from this hour forward we'll keep a sentinel always on duty, so that we may not be caught napping. During the daytime, of course, when we're chopping ties and timbers, we'll need no sentinels. We'll keep our guns within easy reach, and so every one of us will be a sentinel, but when night comes on we mustn't let anybody 'get the drap' on us as that fellow did to-night. By the way, Tom, did you get any game?"
"Why, yes. I forgot all about that. I dropped it out there to tackle that mountaineer. I had carried and dragged it for weary miles, and I wonder at my forgetfulness."
Without questioning him further two of the boys went off into that circle of darkness which seemed impenetrably black when looked at from the fireside, but which was light enough when they got within its environment. There they found a deer, weighing perhaps a hundred and fifty pounds, which little Tom had shot high up on the mountain and had laboriously dragged, in part, and carried on his shoulders in other part, all the way to camp.
Tom was much too weary to attend to it, but there were eager hands to help, and while Tom slept, they dressed the venison, and when Tom waked in the morning, he found that he had been completely excused from sentry duty throughout the night. His toilsome hunt, his painful carrying of the deer, his nervous strain over the necessity of encountering the mountaineer, and pretty seriously injuring him, and above all, his rise in wrath and his deliverance of a new Declaration of Independence as a defiance to the mountaineers, had been decreed by unanimous vote of the party to be the full equivalent of sentry service, and so Tom had been permitted to sleep through all the hours till breakfast was served.
CHAPTER V
The Building of a Cabin
Jack routed out the entire party before daylight next morning and bade them "get breakfast quick and eat it in a hurry. We've got to begin our house to-day," he added.
They were eager enough, for, apart from the frolic of house building, they knew how badly they should need a more secure shelter than their temporary abode could furnish, should rain or snow come, as was likely now at any time.
Breakfast over, Jack took his axe and marked a number of trees for cutting. Most of them were trees nearly a foot in thickness – none under eight inches – and all were situated in the thickest growth of timber.
"Why not choose trees farther out in the open?" asked Ed Parmly, "where they would be easier to get at and get out."
"Because, if you will use your eyes, Ed, you'll see that out in the open, the trees taper rapidly from stump to top. I want trees that will yield at least one, and if possible, two logs apiece, with very little taper to them. Otherwise, our house will be lop-sided."
"But I say, Jack, what causes the difference? Why do trees in the thick woods grow so much taller and straighter and of more uniform size than trees out in the open?"
"Because every tree is continually hunting for sunlight and air," answered Jack. "Out in the open, each tree finds these easily and goes to work at once to put out its branches, about ten feet from the ground, and to make itself generally comfortable. But where the trees are crowded close together each has to struggle with all the rest for its share of sunlight and air. They do not waste their energies in putting out branches that they can do without, but just keep on growing straight up in search of the air and sunlight. So you see if you want long sticks you must go into the thick woods for them. Out there in that half open glade there isn't a single tree with a twenty-foot reach before you come to its branches, while the trees I have marked here