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It was impossible for this lawbreaker to foresee that in about one hundred years the whole whisky business in its beverage aspects would be prohibited by law in the United States, and that the sophistry he used would be employed by multitudes in denying the eighteenth amendment to the national constitution.
Rowdies in Camp.
Sam Wiles and Zibe Turner attended to the still while the day began to wane, and shadows cast by the tall hills were lengthening over the plain.
When darkness finally came Wiles continued to replenish the fire and supply the necessary water from a running stream. His boon companion threw himself down on some cedar boughs within the cave's mouth and was soon asleep. His watch would come later on.
While this precious pair of "wildcatters" are thus employed, a good opportunity is given us to describe their retreat.
Their rendezvous was called Wind Cave, and was discovered a few years before by a young brother of Sam Wiles. The boy, Ephraim Wiles, one day was hunting stray cattle on some hills skirting the Cumberlands River, when he came to the top of a hill which was nearly bare of timber and whose southern side was a sheer perpendicular of rock for several feet down. The boy stood looking over this precipice, lost his footing, and fell down the cliff. He was unhurt, for about fifteen feet below was a level place a few feet across covered with leaves and moss and upon this he landed. When he had recovered from his surprise, he looked about him and saw that the hillside below him was very steep, with trees and bushes growing thickly in the soil. Then he turned his eyes toward the rock, and beheld an aperture of considerable size partly covered by bushes and decayed vegetation. With a boy's curiosity and daring he crawled into the opening, and found himself in a cave of moderate dimensions. Finding in it nothing but broken rocks and white walls and a small stream of water flowing along, he soon crept out, and knowing no way of escape save down the hill side, slipped over the edge, and by holding on to bushes and shrubs and checking himself against trunks of trees he finally reached the bottom, and, returning home, told of his discovery to the family.