We dug them out one at a time and secured their hands and feet. They were not hurt, just surface cuts, that bled. Howard worked with the rapidity and fierceness of a demon. I could see he had worked out a plan. Then the two old men begged for whiskey.
"Give it to them; they'll be easier to handle," I suggested.
He gave each the jug and while they drank glared at the younger man, the leader. He looked at the threatening clouds. It would soon be dark. He sat down where he could see the young leader's face, whose wolfish eyes were balls of animal fire. Howard Byng was the Georgia Cracker again, grim, determined and terrible.
"Eph Bradshaw," he began, with set jaw, "I know you. I never tried to hurt you. I knew you was moonshinin' here but let you alone. You hev hurt me and you hev got ter pay. Them wimmen you put outen that boat were my wimmen. Decent moonshiners nevah hurt wimmen. What did you do with 'em?" he asked, suppressed, but now actually a savage.
Bradshaw looked at the eighteen-inch steel rod I had put between his manacled hands and feet instead of a chain. Finally compelled by Byng's savage sense of injury, he blurted, "They hev our boat; we only tuk ut."
"What did you do with the wimmen?"
Bradshaw's eyes burned fiercer.
"Eph Bradshaw," began Byng, getting up, "if you don't tell what you done with them wimmen, my wimmen, I'll cut yer tongue out and feed your carcass to the dogs and buzzards."
The moonshiner believed that I would protect him as my prisoner. I could not possibly have saved him from Howard Byng, maddened by apprehension that his women folk had been injured or worse. Every corpuscle in his swarthy, rugged body was aflame, his face fiendishly illuminated.
With terrible determination, he took out a hunting knife, opened and dropped it within reach, threw the manacled moonshiner on his back, placed his boot on his neck, then, with his pistol barrel he pried his mouth open, deftly pulling out the outlaw's tongue. Dropping pistol for knife he pressed the keen edge against it and hissed, "Now will yer tell?"