Camp Venture: A Story of the Virginia Mountains

"Um," answered the mountaineer. "What's them there things for?" pointing to the Doctor's scientific instruments hanging about on the trees.

"They are scientific instruments, if you know what that means," answered Jack, who was beginning to grow irritable under the intruder's impertinent questioning.

"What are you goin' to do with 'em? Will they help you to chop wood?"

"No, of course not. But the Doctor here," indicating him, "is much interested in science and he has brought his instruments along so as to make our stay on the mountains as profitable as possible in the way of study."

"My friend," broke in the Doctor, addressing the mountaineer, "If you will come to our camp when we get settled I'll show you how I use these things and what they tell me. One of them tells me how high up we are and when it's going to storm or clear away; another shows how fast the wind is blowing, another how cold it is and so on."

"Which one on 'em tells the strength of whiskey and how much tax they ought to be paid on it?"

This question was asked with a peculiar tone of sneering incredulity and suspicion.

"Not one of them has any relation whatever to whiskey or taxes or anything of the sort," answered the Doctor.

By this time Jack's patience was exhausted and by common consent Jack was the leader of the party. He turned to the tree behind him, seized his shot gun, presented it at the mountaineer's breast before that worthy could bring his rifle to his shoulder, and in an angry, but still cold voice, said:

"I'll trouble you to lay down that rifle."

The man obeyed.

"Now I'll trouble you, if you please to lay down your powder horn and your bullet pouch and your cap box and everything else that pertains to that rifle." All this while Jack was holding the muzzle of his full-cocked, double barrelled shot gun in front of the man's breast, while all the other boys had seized their guns and stood ready for action. The Doctor had not a shot gun, but a repeating, magazine rifle of the latest make, long in its range, exceedingly accurate in its fire and equipped with fourteen cartridges in its magazine that could be fired as fast as their owner pleased. And the moment that the mountaineer, before he laid down his rifle, made a motion as if to bring it to his shoulder, the Doctor had stepped to Jack's side with his destructive weapon in position for instant use. After the man had laid down his arms, the Doctor stepped back, lowered his weapon and said to Jack: – "Manage the affair in your own way. Only be prudent, and above all don't lose your temper."

Jack then said to the mountaineer:

"You've asked us a number of questions. Now I want to ask you some. What do you mean by intruding upon our camp? Who are you? What right have you to ask us about ourselves and our mission in these mountains? Answer man, and answer quick or I'll put two charges of buck shot through you in less than half a minute."

"Now, don't be too hard on a feller, pard," answered the man. "I didn't mean no harm in partic'lar. But you see us fellers that lives up here in the high mountings has a hard enough time to git a livin' and we don't like to be interfered with by no revenue officers and no spies and no speculators from down below. You see if we're caught, some of the money goes to the informer, an' so we takes good keer to have no informers about, an' if they insist on stayin' we usually buries 'em. Now you've got the drap on me an' my only chance is to go way if you'll let me go. So far as I'm concerned you're welcome to go round the mounting an' chop all the railroad ties an' cordwood you choose. But there's fellers in the mountings that you ain't got no drap on, as you've got it on me, an' fellers what ain't so tender hearted as me. An' so, while I'll leave my gun an' promise never to meddle with you again if you won't shoot, at the same time my earnest, friendly, fatherly advice to you boys is to take yourselves down out'n this mounting jes' as quick as you kin. It ain't no place for people of your sort."

"We'll do nothing of the kind," answered Jack. "We've come up here on a perfectly honest and legitimate mission, and we're going to carry it out. We are not interfering with anybody and I give you warning that if anybody interferes with us it will be the worse for him. We are armed, every man of us and we are prepared to use our arms. Tom," – turning to his brother, – "take that man's rifle and discharge it into the cliff back there."

Tom obeyed the command instantly. Then Jack said to their unwelcome visitor, "Now you can take your rifle and go away. But don't intrude upon us again. If you do, you'll get the contents of our guns without any explanations or any arguments. Take your gun and go!"

The intruder took his gun and accoutrements and without a word walked away up the mountain through the timber land.

"What does it all mean, Jack?" asked all the boys at once.

"Moonshiners," broke in Tom, sententiously.

Moonshiners are men who operate little unlicensed distilleries in the fastnesses of the mountains and surreptitiously sell their whiskey without paying the government tax upon it.

"But why should moonshiners object to our camping in the wood lands up here and cutting railroad ties?" asked Jim Chenowith. "I don't see the connection."

"Well, they do," answered Tom. "They are engaged in a criminal business and they don't want to be watched. If they are caught their stills and their whiskey are confiscated, they are fined heavily, and worse still they are imprisoned for very long terms. They are always on the lookout for agents of the revenue in disguise, and so they don't want any strangers in this 'land of the sky' on any pretence. They are desperate men to whom murder is a pastime and assassination an amusement."

"Then why did you anger the man as you did, Jack, and subject him to humiliation?" asked Ed Parmly. "Won't it make him and his people our enemies?"

"No," answered Jack. "They are that already. You remember that even after hearing my explanation of our purpose in coming up here, he ordered us to leave the mountain at once. Not being a pack of cowards of course we're not going to do anything of the kind. So it was just as well to let him know at once that we're going to stay, that we are fully armed, and that in the event of necessity we shall be what he would call 'quick on trigger.' I meant him to understand that clearly, and he understands it. You see men that are freest in killing other men have no more fondness than people generally for being killed themselves. Desperadoes are not heroes. They are merely bullies who take advantage of an unarmed enemy when they can and sneak away as that man did whenever an enemy 'gits the drap' on them as the fellow phrased it."

"But won't they attack us in our camp?" asked Jim Chenowith.

"Probably," answered Jack with perfect calmness. "They want us out of the mountains and they'll probably try to drive us out. But I for one am not going to be driven out, and I don't think the rest of you fellows are Molly Cottontails to be chased down the steeps."

"No!" called out little Tom. "We've got guns and we know how to use them. We're up here by right and here we'll stay. Won't we boys?"

"Yes! Yes! Yes!" answered the others in chorus.

"All right then," said Jack, "and I thank you all. But now that we know our danger we must look out for ourselves. We must never sleep without a sentinel on guard, and every fellow of us must always sleep with his gun by his side. That's what soldiers call 'sleeping on arms!'"

"All right!" called out Tom, who was always ready. "Arrange the guard detail for to-night Jack. I'll take the worst turn, which I believe begins about three o'clock – the 'dog watch' they call it on steamboats."

"Well," said Jack, meditatively. "It's now nearly ten o'clock. We'll all be up by six in the morning. That's eight hours and there are five of us; so it means one hour and thirty-six minutes apiece, of guard duty."

"Hold on," broke in the Doctor. "You've forgotten me."

"Well you see, Doctor, your health isn't good, and we don't want you to lose your sleep. We'll do all this guard duty without bothering you."

"Not if I know it," answered the Doctor. "I didn't join this party as a dead head, you may be sure of that. I'm going to share and share alike with you my comrades. I am not yet very strong after my long illness, but I'm strong enough to stay awake for my fair share of the time, and you may be sure I am strong enough to pull a trigger and empty fourteen bullets from my magazine rifle into any body that may venture to assail us. Now boys, I want you to understand my position and attitude clearly. Either I am a full member of this company in good standing, or else I do not belong to it at all. In the latter case I'll withdraw and go back down the mountain. I'm older than you boys, but not enough older to make any serious difference. I'm still a good deal of a boy, and either you must let me do a boy's part or I'll quit. If I stay with you I must be one of you. I must do my share of the cooking and all the rest of the work, and especially my fair share of all guard duty and all fighting, if fighting becomes necessary at any time. Come now! Is it a bargain? Or am I to quit your company to-morrow morning, as a man too old and unfit to share with you the work we have come up the mountain to do?"

"I move," said little Tom, who had more wit than any other member of the company, "that Doctor LaTrobe be hereby declared to be precisely sixteen years old, and fully entitled to consider himself a boy among boys!"

The motion was carried with a shout, and then Jack, who was always practical, said:

"Well then there are six of us. That means one hour and twenty minutes apiece of guard duty to-night."

So it was arranged, and as soon as the order in which the several members of the party should be waked for duty was arranged, the boys piled an abundance of wood on the fire, wrapped themselves in their blankets and lay down to sleep. But first little Tom manufactured a pot of fresh coffee, and set it near the fire where it would keep hot.

"The sentinel must be wide awake," he said, "and I don't know anything like good strong coffee to keep one's eyes open."

CHAPTER II

A Picket Shot

The three Ridsdale boys and their comrades lived in a thriving, bustling little town in one of the great valleys which divide the Virginia Mountains into ranges each having its own name. Their ages ranged from Jack's nineteen years down to Jim Chenowith's sixteen. Little Tom was so called not so much because he was rather shorter than his overgrown brothers, as because his father had been also Thomas Ridsdale and for the sake of distinguishing between them the family and the neighbors had from his infancy called the boy "Little Tom." He was next to Jack in age being now nearly eighteen years old, and as a voracious reader and a singularly keen observer he was perhaps better informed than any other boy in the party. He was not really little by any means, being five feet seven inches high and of unusually stalwart frame. From his tenth year till now he had spent his vacations mainly in hunting in these mountains. His knowledge of wood craft and of all that pertains to the chase was therefore superior even to Jack's.

The father of the Ridsdale boys had been the foremost young lawyer in the town, but he had died at a comparatively early age, leaving his widow a very scanty estate with which to bring up the three boys who were her treasures. The boys had helped from the earliest years in which they were capable of helping. They had chopped and sawed and split wood, worked in the hay fields, dropped and covered corn, pulled fodder and done what ever else there was to do that might bring a little wage to eke out the good mother's scant income. In brief they had behaved like the brave, manly, mother-loving fellows that they were, and they had grown into a sturdy strength that promised stalwart manhood to all of them.

Among the widow's meagre possessions was a vast tract of almost worthless timber land up there on the mountain. It was almost worthless simply because there was no market for the timber that grew upon it. But now had come the railroad enterprise, whose contractors wanted ties and bridge timbers and unlimited cordwood for use in their engine furnaces. So Jack and his brothers had decided to omit this winter's attendance upon the High school, and to devote the season to the profitable work of wood chopping on the mountain. There was an exceedingly steep descent on that side of the mountain, on which their timber lands lay, so that by building a short chute to give a headway they could send their railroad ties and the other products of their chopping by a steep slide to the valley below by force of gravity and without any hauling whatever. Two of their schoolmates – Jim Chenowith and Ed Parmly had asked to join in the expedition. An arrangement had been made with the railroad people to pay a stipulated price for every railroad tie shot down the hill, a much higher price for every piece of timber big enough for use in bridge building and a fair price for all the cordwood sent down the chute. This latter was to be made of the limbs of trees cut down for ties or bridge timbers – limbs not large enough for other uses, and which must otherwise go to waste. The two boys who did not belong to the Ridsdale family – Ed Parmly and Jim Chenowith – were to pay to Mrs. Ridsdale a small price agreed upon for each tie or timber, or cord of wood that they should cut on her land, the rest of the price going to themselves.

During the last week before their departure Dr. LaTrobe had asked the privilege of joining the expedition. He was a man of means whose home was in Baltimore, but who had come to the town in which the boys lived in search of health and strength. He was a tireless student of science, and in the course of his duty in one of the charity hospitals of Baltimore he had contracted a fever. His recovery from it was so slow and unsatisfactory that he had abandoned his work and wandered away into South Western Virginia for purposes of recuperation and had been for some months boarding with Mrs. Ridsdale. In pursuit of health and strength therefore he asked to join the Ridsdale boys in their mountain expedition.

"I have quite all the money I want," he explained, "and so the ties and timbers and cordwood that I may cut will be counted as your own. All I want is the life in the open air, the exercise, the freedom, the health-giving experience of a camping trip."

Thus it was that the party had come together. They knew perfectly that once in the mountains after winter should set in in earnest their communication with the country below must be very uncertain. They therefore, took with them on their own backs and on the backs of their pack mules those necessaries which would most certainly render them independent of other sources of supply. The Doctor had largely directed the selection of food stuffs, bringing to bear upon it an expert knowledge which the boys, of course, did not possess.

"The basis will be beans," he said.

"But why beans?" asked Jack.