Part 7 (2/2)

”Seriously, yes,” answered the Doctor. ”But not dangerously, I think.

You're going to have a good long rest in one of our beds over there in the new house, but surgery is now so exact a science that I think I can promise you an entirely certain recovery within a few days, or a few weeks at furthest, if you'll be a good boy and obey my instructions.”

”I say, boys,” called out Tom, ”how fortunate we've been in bringing a Doctor along, even if we did have to resolve half his age away! Doctor, I never met any other boy of only sixteen years old who knew half as much as you do! Now, I'm tired. I'm going to sleep. Call me when it comes my turn for guard duty.”

And with that the boy sank to sleep. But there was no call upon him that night or for many nights yet to come, for sentinel service.

CHAPTER VIII

_The Condition of the Moons.h.i.+ners_

The next day the boys moved from their temporary shelter into their permanent winter quarters, building a fire in front of the door and making themselves as comfortable as they could under the circ.u.mstances.

Meantime the Doctor and Jack had got the chute ready. It was a strong, rough structure of stout poles, forming a sort of trough, beginning on a level with the ground at the turn of the hill and extending with a heavy incline for twenty yards or so over the steep brow of the mountain. It was supported by strong hickory and oak posts and braces throughout its length. Any piece of timber placed in its upper end and gently impelled forward would quickly traverse it to its farther end and there make a tremendous leap and a long slide down the steep, into the depths below.

Little Tom, greatly to his disgust, was peremptorily ordered into bed by command of the Doctor, but two of the boys had volunteered to strip off that valuable panther skin for him, salt it and stretch it out on the logs of the cabin to dry.

It was on Sat.u.r.day that the boys removed to their new quarters, and the next day, being Sunday, was to be spent in resting. But Little Tom, as he lay there in his broom straw bed about midday on Sat.u.r.day became troubled in his mind about the provisioning of the garrison.

”We've eaten up the last of the venison to-day,” he said, ”and there isn't an ounce of fresh meat in the camp. If I didn't hurt so badly, and if the Doctor wasn't such a tyrant, with his arbitrary orders for me to lie still, I'd go out this afternoon and get something better than salt meat for all of us to eat to-morrow. Why don't some of you other fellows go? If you can't get a deer, you can at any rate kill a turkey or a pheasant or two, or some partridges or squirrels, or, as a last resort, some rabbits. Oh, how my head aches! Go, some of you, and get what you can.”

With that the poor bed-ridden boy turned over in his bunk and sought sleep. But Ed Parmly and Jim Chenowith acted upon his wise suggestion. A few hours later they returned to Camp Venture bearing three hares and seven squirrels on their shoulders, and dragging a half-grown hog by withes.

”I don't know but what we've made a mistake,” said Ed to Jack; ”the hog may belong to the moons.h.i.+ners, and if so, they'll present their bill in a fas.h.i.+on that we sha'n't want to have it presented.”

”Never mind about that,” called out Tom, from inside the house. ”We're at war with those people, you know, and in war you capture all you can of the enemy's supplies. But why can't you let a fellow see your game?”

The boys dragged the shoat into the hut, and Tom, expert huntsman that he was, had only to glance at it in order to p.r.o.nounce it one of the wild hogs of the mountains, and anybody's property.

”Don't you see,” he said, ”that although it is only a half-grown shoat, it has tusks already. No domesticated hog ever developed in that way.

And besides, the moons.h.i.+ners haven't any hogs or anything else, for that matter. They are the poorest and most starved human beings I ever saw or heard of. I pa.s.sed a week as a prisoner in one of their huts once, and I never dreamed of such poverty or such indolence. So long as they have corn pones or anything else to distend their stomachs with, they simply will not exert themselves to get anything better. They won't even go out and shoot a rabbit if they've got anything else to eat. You simply can't conceive of their poverty or of the indolence that produces it. If one of them owned a hog he'd kill it without taking the trouble to fatten it, and he'd eat it to the picking of the last bone before he would exert himself to procure another morsel of food.”

”When was it, Tom, that you learned all this?” asked Harry.

”A year ago. You remember the time I went hunting and didn't get back for two weeks?”

”Yes, but tell us--”

”Well, that time I was captured by the moons.h.i.+ners and held for a week as a spy. I didn't say anything about it at home except confidentially to Jack, for fear mother would worry when I went hunting again. But I tell you fellows you never dreamed of the sort of poverty that those men and their families live in. I don't know whether they are poor because they lead criminal lives, or whether they lead criminal lives because they are poor. But I do know that that fellow told the truth the other night when he said that they do not usually have enough to eat. You saw how starved he was. That's the chronic condition of all of them; and yet these mountains are full of game and any man of even half ordinary industry can feed himself well by killing it.

”The trouble is they are hopeless people. They have no ambition, no energy, no 'go' in them. They drink too much of their illicit whiskey for one thing, I suppose, but I don't think that's the bottom trouble.

They seem to be people born without energy. They like to sit still in the suns.h.i.+ne, unless there is a revenue officer to hunt down and shoot.

I suppose they are what somebody in the newspapers calls 'degenerates'--people that are run down even before they are born.”

”But tell us, Tom,” broke in Harry, ”how did you get away from them?”

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