Old Jephthah narrowed his eyes and chuckled in luxurious enjoyment of the situation.
“To be shore they air. To be shore they air,” he repeated with unction. “Ain’t you done a favour to the both of ’em? Is they anything a man will hate you worse for than a favour? If they is I ain’t met up with it yet.”
“That’s what I say,” iterated Jim Cal. “What’s the use o’ tryin’ to he’p folks to law and order when they don’t want it, and you’ve got to buy ’em to behave? When you git to be a married man with chaps, like me, you’ll keep yo’ money in yo’ breeches pocket and let other folks fix it up amongst themselves about their cows an’ sech.”
“I had hoped to get a chance to do something that amounted to more than settling small family fusses,” Creed said in a discouraged tone. “I hoped to have the opportunity to talk to many a gathering of our folks about the desirability of good citizenship in a general way. This thing of blockaded stills keeps us forever torn up with a bad name in the valley and the settlement.”
Old Jephthah stirred not a hair; Jim Cal sat just as he had; yet the two were indefinably changed the moment the words “blockaded still” were uttered.
“Do you know of any sech? Air ye aimin’ to find out about em?” quavered the fat man finally, and his father looked scornfully at him, and the revelation of his terror.
“No. I don’t mean it in that personal way,” Creed answered impatiently. “Mr. Turrentine, I wish you’d tell me what you think about it. You’ve lived all your life in the mountains; you’re a man of judgment—is there any way to show our people the folly as well as the crime of illicit distilling?”
Jephthah surveyed with amusement the youth who came to an old moonshiner for an opinion as to the advisability of the traffic. He liked the audacity of it. It tickled his fancy.
“Well sir,” he said finally, “the guv’ment sets off thar in Washington and names a-many a thing that I shall do and that I shan’t do. Howsomever, they is but one thing hit will come here and watch out to see ef I keep rules on—and that’s the matter o’ moonshine whiskey. Guv’ment,” he repeated meditatively but with rising rancour, “what has the guv’ment ever done fer me, that I should be asked to do so much for hit? I put the case thisaway. That man raises corn and grinds it to meal and makes it into bread. I raise corn and grind hit to meal and make clean, honest whiskey. The man that makes the bread pays no tax; guv’ment says I shall pay a tax—an’ I say I will not, by God!”
The big voice had risen to a good deal of feeling before old Jephthah made an end.