Scott had never heard anything but curses for the United States marshal from the mountaineers and had formed a picture of him that was rudely shattered when he saw the reality. Instead of the shiftless, cringing old man he expected to see, he found a keen, alert, energetic man of about forty-five. He had been a sharpshooter in the Spanish War and was every inch a man.
“Now what can I do for you?” he asked briskly, when Scott had introduced himself.
“I am running a logging job on the other side of the mountain,” Scott explained, “and there is a moonshine still over there that is causing me all kinds of trouble. I thought maybe I could get you to clean it up for me. The man who is running it is an incendiary and a murderer as well as a moonshiner.”
“Sounds as though it might be Foster Wait,” the marshal said with a frown.
“It is,” Scott said.
“Then you may be able to get him in the courts for arson or murder if you can produce the evidence, but I am afraid I can’t help you much. I have put in days looking for that still, have searched every square inch of his place, but have never been able to find a trace of it. That has been a sore spot with me for several years.”
“But the still isn’t on his place,” Scott said.
“Do you mean to say that you know where it is?” the marshal cried eagerly.
“Yes,” Scott said, “I stumbled on to it in the woods one day.”
“But if it is not on his place, can you prove that it is his?” the marshal asked doubtfully.