"As the more prudent of the two courses open to me, I chose the latter. There was a sort of half cave there, a crevice in the rocks, and I crawled into that, and there I stayed all night, with my gun at full cock and with Little Tom every instant on the alert. My plan was to keep myself hidden as long as I could, and if discovered to get in the first shot, and then run as fast as I could. Fortunately I was not discovered, and about half past six o'clock the stills ceased operations and the pickets were called in. Then I made my way around the side of the mountain and got back to camp.
"There, that's the whole story of Little Tom's night adventure. Now let's get to work at our chopping, for I am well enough now to do my share and I hereby declare my independence of the Doctor."
"That's all right," said the Doctor, "but if you break open any of those wounds, I'll order you to bed again."
"But wait awhile," interposed Jack. "There's something serious in all this. Obviously these people don't intend to make open war upon us. Their plan is to sneak upon us and now and then to shoot one of us from some hiding place, in order to drive us out of the mountains. Now we've got to look out for that. We can do it in two ways. First we can send a slab down the chute with a message in it asking our friends down below to send up the revenue officers and a company of soldiers to arrest all these men, telling the revenue people that we'll show them the stills and the men. In other words we can 'carry the war into Africa' as the Romans did, and put these fellows on the defensive instead of ourselves standing in that position. Or, if we don't care to do that—and there are reasons against it—"
"What are the reasons against it?" asked Little Tom, whose disposition it was always to take the offensive in a righteous controversy.
"Well, not more than a dozen or twenty of these mountaineers are actively engaged in this illicit distilling business, but all the rest of the mountaineers are their friends and most of them are their relatives, for these mountaineers have intermarried until almost every one of them is the near kinsman of all the rest. Now if we call in the assistance of the revenue officers and the troops behind them, the best that we can hope for is to put a dozen or so of them into jail, while possibly two or three of them will be shot in the mélee. That will leave the rest of them to make war upon us, with the assistance of all the men of the mountains."
"Well what's the other plan," asked Tom, who very reluctantly gave up the idea of aggressive fighting.
"We must so place a sentinel every day that no man can come within rifle range of us without being discovered and stopped—with a bullet if necessary. Fortunately our camp is so placed that there are only two points at which it can be reached, and fortunately again there is one sheltered point—out there under the cliff—from which a sentinel can see anybody approaching by either of the only two roads that lead into our camp. My plan is to keep a sentinel always under the cliff out there."
Jack had so thoroughly thought the matter out that it needed no discussion. His plan was instantly adopted, one boy was sent to the sentry's post under the cliff, and the rest made a late beginning of the day's work of wood chopping.