The man’s face hardened, and there came a glint into his eyes such as I had noticed in Mistress Kirby’s.
“Jedgmatically, I don’t know.”
“Excuse me! I don’t want to know, either. But let me explain just what I am driving at. People up North, and in the lowlands of the South as well, have a notion that there is little or nothing going on in these mountains except feuds and moonshining. They think that a stranger traveling here alone is in danger of being potted by a bullet from almost any laurel thicket that he passes, on mere suspicion that he may be a revenue officer or a spy. Of course, that is nonsense;[4] but there is one thing that I’m as ignorant about as any novel-reader of them all. You know my habits; I like to explore—I never take a guide—and when I come to a place that’s particularly wild and primitive, that’s just the place I want to peer into. Now the dubious point is this: Suppose that, one of these days when I’m out hunting, or looking for rare plants, I should stumble upon a moonshine still in full operation—what would happen? What would they do?”
“Waal, sir, I’ll tell you whut they’d do. They’d fust-place ask you some questions about yourself, and whut you-uns was doin’ in that thar neck o’ the woods. Then they’d git you to do some triflin’ work about the still—feed the furnace, or stir the mash—jest so ’s ’t they could prove that you took a hand in it your own self.”
“What good would that do?”
“Hit would make you one o’ them in the eyes of the law.”
“I see. But, really, doesn’t that seem rather childish? I could easily convince any court that I did it under compulsion; for that’s what it would amount to.”
“I reckon you-uns would find a United States court purty hard to convince. The judge ’d right up and want to know why you let grass go to seed afore you came and informed on them.”
He paused, watched my expression, and then continued quizzically: “I reckon you wouldn’t be in no great hurry to do that.”
“No! Then, if I stirred the mash and sampled their liquor, nobody would be likely to mistreat me?”