“Are you a moonshiner?” asked Case, innocently.
“No, I’m not a moonshiner,” replied Hank. “I’m making a superior quality of aeroplanes up in the hills. When I get one finished I put it in a suit case and bring it down.”
“That means,” Alex laughed, “that the product of your factory is intended to send people up in the air!”
“Put it any way you like,” laughed Hank. “The point with us now is to find out what’s become of that boat of yours. You say you left her up at the stem of the bend?”
“Yes,” answered Case, “we left her to get a spark plug and some squirrels. That shooting, you know, may not have been at the Rambler or from the Rambler. We may be unnecessarily excited about it.”
“Young man,” declared Hank, “when you hear shooting going on like that in this vicinity, you just make up your mind that the river pirates have something to do with it.”
“Why don’t they get out and lynch these river pirates?” demanded Case.
“Sakes alive!” exclaimed Hank. “If we Kentuckians lynched all the people who make us trouble, we’d have to import telegraph poles to hang ’em on. There wouldn’t be anywhere near enough trees for the business.”
“I thought Kentucky was a law-abiding state,” remarked Alex.
“She’s the most law-abiding state you ever heard tell of,” replied Hank with a laugh. “All the trouble is,” he went on, “that sometimes we mountain people make laws of our own, and when we do that the laws have to be abided by.”