Camp Venture: A Story of the Virginia Mountains

by George Cary Eggleston

"Well, I propose to raid some of them, to get breadstuffs. Will you go with my men and point out the stills?"

"No!" answered Tom, with emphasis on the monosyllable.

"But why not?" asked the lieutenant. "Surely you are not afraid."

"Not the least bit," answered Tom. "But I've entered into an honorable agreement with the moonshiners and I mean to keep it. I've assured them that we boys were not here to spy them out and betray them, and I've pledged them my honor that if they let us alone we would let them alone. You see this illicit distilling is none of my business, or yours either, Lieutenant. It's the business of the revenue officers. Now under our honorable agreement these people, who began by ordering us off the mountain and followed that up by shooting at us for not going, have let us alone for many weeks past, and I am going to keep my promise to let them alone in return."

"But they haven't let you alone," answered the lieutenant. "Their assault upon the camp—"

"Pardon me," answered Tom. "That was not an assault upon us, but upon the revenue officers and their military support. I do not think it absolves me from my promise. Besides that, I doubt if you have any right to raid stills except under orders of the revenue officers, and they are too badly frightened to undertake anything of the kind. You have no warrants. Your sole duty and right and privilege is to go with these revenue officers and protect them in the execution of their duty."

"That is certainly true," answered the lieutenant after a moment's pause for consideration. "I hadn't thought of it in that way."

"And still further," said Tom, "it is very certain that there isn't an illicit still now running on this mountain. The moment you fellows appeared every still was ripped off its furnace and buried somewhere, every mash tub was emptied and sent bowling down the mountain, and every scrap of evidence that there had ever been an illicit still there was completely destroyed. So, even if you find the buildings in which the business was formerly carried on, what right will you have to seize upon the meal or anything else you may find there? You might as well raid a mill and seize all that you find in it."

"But you know, Tom, and I know, that these people are lawlessly engaged in defrauding the revenue."

"Of course," said Tom. "But that doesn't justify you in violating the law and robbing them of their meal. If you could catch them in defrauding the revenue you might perhaps have a right to confiscate their materials, as the law prescribes, though as you're not a revenue officer I doubt that. Just now you can't possibly catch them doing anything of the kind. Understand me, Lieutenant, I am as much devoted as you are to law and order. I know these men to be thieves and upon occasion murderers. But neither of us has a right to convict them without proof of their guilt."