Argosy All-Story Weekly — page 45: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

MOONING AMONG MOONSHINERS. This was a long way from the city, where Wambold had cut loose, and I was drawing down more money than I got in the hard- ware store, with only moderate prospect of getting plugged through the liver with a bul- let from some ex-Confederate rifle saved sixtv years for that gladsome purpose. So why should I worry if we had to put in all summer hunting that still. Wasn’t I in pretty good company, I’d ask myself as I looked at Nancy’s muddy toes and glimpsed the twinkle in her eyes when she caught me at it. The consolation of disguise which my whiskers gave me in our first few days of touring around through the hills, pretending to look for a farm to settle on, was nothing to the joy they seemed to afford my com- panions. My dad and my sister Susie— to be exact, the old deacon and Nancy— got a lot of quiet snickers out of the whis- kers of Stonewall Jackson Morrison, which was me. I was pretending to be wearing my first pair of shoes and powerful uncom- fortable in them, too, as I’d explain to the mountain folks when I’d take them off fre- quently to rest my feet, as I said. If my whiskers were funny, Susie had to admit my contortions over my shoes were clever. They were forever poking sly jokes at me about hiding behind a red flag, they being pleased to insinuate that that was the shade of my facial ornaments. When I remon- strated once they admitted that perhaps the color did incline toward pink. After that I let it go at red. We had been in the mountains two days, all our possessions in ratty old saddlebags that were part of the props we had brought along with our outlandish clothes, when the deacon and I lost Nancy, or Susie as we were calling her. We had gone ahead, send- ing her around past the place where we knew the still was located, because it seemed that a woman in the vicinity would be less likely to create suspicion than a couple of strange men. When the girl turned up missing at the rendezvous, the deacon did not manifest any of the concern that immediately seized me. “ Keep cool, young fellow,” he counseled. ‘She hit a trail or something and had to follow it. Thing for us to do is sit tight 671 and wait for her. Yonder’s a right pros- perous looking cabin—maybe they’ve got a chicken that hain’t been run bony by the hogs. I could use a little good chicken in place of this sowbelly, sowbelly, sowbelly, morning, noon and night, that we been sub- sisting on. Let’s drift over and sound out the old lady before the men come down from that tomato patch on the hills. Maybe we can talk her into giving us a shakedown for the night and we'll just rest here.” ‘“ And let that girl maybe go drifting by? Not me,” I objected, exceedingly serious. I hadn’t a thought of love for Nancy, she was too wise and independent; she scared me a little. Perhaps it was because I saw here a chance to prove she did need a man to help her out, that I was so concerned. * Hell, boy, that girl’s more’n likely to turn up to save us from trouble we don’t know we’re blundering into,” the deacon remonstrated. ‘“‘ You and me don’t need worry none about her. She knows this coun- try better’n I do and she’s better able to take care of herself in a pinch. By your own tell, it was a bump on old Wambold’s noodle from her that made a hero out of you.” I had to admit the logic of his reasoning and went along with him to interview the woman who was washing down by the branch, according to the custom of the coun- try. She had things rigged up right fine, with a stone fireplace for her boiler and a regular wringer such as few mountaineers can afford. “Can you eat us and give us a roof, missis?”” the deacon asked in the lingo of the land which was his native tongue. “ Be you-all tomato men?” she inquired, suspicious. It had been strange to me to see how many tomato canneries, little contraptions in old log cabins, we had come on in the mountains. They were run with decrepit old steam engines, the power generated with pine wood. Everywhere were tomato patches; the poor devils of farmers could sell their canned tomatoes, whereas they had to use their own corn and hogs and never had any cash from the other crops. The deacon had maintained to me, when I spoke of it, that the lowly tomato was re- COMmMICLOoOolkKs (C@