Scott Burton in the Blue Ridge

by Edward G. Cheyney

He did not know where the trail started so there was nothing for him to do but to go up on the ridge to the place where the old pig had scared him so badly. He found the place without any difficulty and looked around a little nervously to make sure that the old sow was not still on guard. She was nowhere in sight and he dropped down the slope unmolested in search of the trail. He was surprised to see how far down it was.

When he came to the tunnel into the laurel he found some fresh tracks and listened anxiously. He was determined to see the still, but he did not want any one to see him, partly because he knew that these men would not hesitate to shoot any one they found spying around their still, and partly because he did not want any one to know that he had found it.

He could see nothing. He looked down the trail and made a careful survey of the woods behind him. There was no one there who might cut off his retreat. Everything seemed safe enough and he cautiously entered the narrow tunnel. It was longer than he had imagined and the turns in it gave him an uncomfortable feeling of being shut in. He stopped every two feet to listen and then crawled slowly forward again. It seemed as though he would never get to the end of it.

When he did get to the end he saw something that astonished him even more than the length of the tunnel. He found himself in a small opening about four rods across, and in the middle of it was a tiny log cabin. He had covered over half the distance to the cabin when a noise inside made his heart stand still.

Some one was fumbling with the latch on the inside. After the first instant of paralysis Scott took in the situation at a glance. If he tried to return to the tunnel he would be in direct line with the door and would be in sight for some distance even after he had entered the tunnel. This all passed through his mind like a flash. His only chance was to hide around the corner of the cabin. He did not know how many people there were in there or whether there were windows in the end, or possibly another door, but it was his best chance. In two jumps he was around the corner.

The latch clicked up almost the instant he started, and long before he reached the corner he heard the door swinging open on its rusty hinges. A glance showed him that there were no windows in that end of the cabin. He was hidden for the moment unless he had been discovered before he reached there.

He turned and peeped anxiously through a crack between the ends of the logs. For what seemed to Scott like an age no one appeared. He looked nervously behind him and half expected to see a rifle pointing at him from the other corner of the cabin. But there was no one there.

He was beginning to wonder whether he had really heard anything at all, or just imagined it, when there was a knock against the log wall that made him jump almost out of his skin, and Foster Wait staggered out of the door with a big earthenware jug in one hand and his long rifle in the other. He swayed uncertainly and took a step or two in Scott’s direction. Scott shrank back against the wall and prepared to sneak around the cabin, but Foster changed his course back toward the cabin door.

He stood there mumbling for an instant and seemed to be talking to some one inside, but there was no answer. He laboriously turned again and started for the tunnel. He had considerable trouble in getting the jug and the rifle both into the opening, but finally succeeded. “They’ll never do it, they’ll never do it,” he called back angrily over his shoulder.

Scott was sure then that there was some one else in the cabin. He had visions of hiding there behind that corner till dark, for the door had been left open and he would not dare try to sneak out in front of it. He could still hear Foster fumbling and mumbling his way through the tunnel, but he had not caught any sound from within.