Part 25 (2/2)

Then turning to the chief revenue officer, for whose timid lack of sagacity he had obviously the profoundest contempt, he asked:

”What's your program now?”

”Well I'm going to clear this whole mountain of stills.”

”How long do you reckon it will take?” asked the Lieutenant.

”Well a week or two weeks perhaps.”

”And what provisions have you made for your commissariat for such a length of time?”

”What do you mean?”

”Why, I have forty men here and I'm under your orders, to do whatever you say, but every one of my forty men has a mouth to feed, and under my orders I brought only three days' rations in the haversacks. If you intend to keep us up here for a week or two, ought you not to have made some provision for a food supply?”

”Why didn't you look after that?” asked the revenue officer.

”Because it was none of my business. I'm a soldier. I obey orders. My orders were to take three days' cooked rations and march my men up here to support the revenue officers in whatever they undertook.”

”That's always the way,” said the revenue man. ”The troops always fail us at the critical moment. That's why our efforts to break up moons.h.i.+ning always come to nothing.”

”Pardon me, sir,” answered the officer rising in his wrath. ”I'll trouble you to take that back. The troops under my command have not failed you and they will not. We have nothing to do with collecting the revenue. That's your business. Ours is merely to fight anybody that resists you. That duty we are ready to do just so long as you may desire. We'll force a way for you to any part of these mountains that you may desire to visit and we'll keep it up for a year if you wish. But in the meantime somebody must provide my men with food!”

”If that's the way you look at the matter,” said the revenue officer, ”we might as well go down the mountain at once.”

”It isn't a question of how I look at the matter,” answered the lieutenant, impatiently. ”I tell you I'm ready and my men are ready for any service you may a.s.sign to us. But I tell you also that we must have something to eat, and it is your duty to arrange it.”

”But how can I?”

”Would it be impertinent in me to suggest,” asked the lieutenant, ”that you ought to have thought of that before you began your raid? If you had said to the commandant that your expedition was likely to occupy a week or two he would have ordered the commissary to furnish me with two or three weeks' provisions and the quarter-master to supply enough stout pack mules to carry them. As it was, you represented this as a two days'

trip and he ordered me to carry three days' rations in the haversacks.”

”Well, we'd better retreat at once,” answered the revenue officer.

”But why? It isn't even yet too late to repair your blunder. Why can't you send one of your men down the mountain at once to bring up a train of pack mules loaded with provisions? He can be back here in less than two days if he hurries.”

”But I don't know--” began the man.

”I don't care what you know or don't know,” answered the young West Pointer. ”I simply tell you that as soon as my men run out of rations I'll march them down the hill again. It is my duty to see that they don't starve.”

”But if I send a man down the mountain,” answered the revenue agent, ”some moons.h.i.+ner might shoot him on the way.”

”Very probably,” answered the lieutenant. ”That's a risk that men engaged in the revenue service are bound to take, I suppose. But if you request it, I will send a squad of four soldiers to guard your man on the way down and to protect the pack train on its way back.”

Manifestly the revenue officer was anxious to ”git down out'n the mountings,” but he feared the report which in that case the angry and disgusted lieutenant would probably make, even more than he feared the moons.h.i.+ners. Still he hesitated to detail one of his men to go down the mountain under escort of a corporal and three men.

This matter being still unsettled, the lieutenant said:

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