“What class of people does the informing?”
“Oh, sometimes hit’s some pizen old bum who’s been refused credit. Sometimes hit’s the wife or mother of some feller who’s drinkin’ too much. Then, agin, hit may be some rival blockader who aims to cut off the other feller’s trade, and, same time, divert suspicion from his own self. But ginerally hit’s jest somebody who has a gredge agin the blockader fer family reasons, or business reasons, and turns informer to git even.”
It is only fair to present this side of the case, because there is much truth in it, and because it goes far to explain the bitter feeling against revenue agents personally that is almost universal in the mountains, and is shared even by the mountain preachers. It should be understood, too, in this connection, that the southern highlander has a long memory. Slights and injuries suffered by one generation have their scars transmitted to sons and grandsons. There is no denying that there have been officers in the revenue service who, stung by the contempt in which they were held as renegades from their own people, have used their authority in settling private scores, and have inflicted grievous wrongs upon innocent people. This is matter of official record. In his report for 1882, the Commissioner of Internal Revenue himself declared that “Instances have been brought to my attention where numerous prosecutions have been instituted for the most trivial violations of law, and the arrested parties taken long distances and subjected to great inconveniences and expense, not in the interest of the Government, but apparently for no other reason than to make costs.”
An ex-United States Commissioner told me that, in the darkest days of this struggle, when he himself was obliged to buckle on a revolver every time he put his head out of doors, he had more trouble with his own deputies than with the moonshiners. “As a rule, none but desperadoes could be hired for the service,” he declared. “For example, one time my deputy in your county wanted some liquor for himself. He and two of his cronies crossed the line into South Carolina, raided a still, and got beastly drunk. The blockaders bushwhacked them, riddled a mule and its rider with buckshot, and shot my deputy through the brain with a squirrel rifle. We went over there and buried the victims a few days later, during a snow storm, working with our holster flaps unbuttoned. I had all that work and worry simply because that rascal was bent on getting drunk without paying for it. However, it cost him his life.
“They were not all like that, though,” continued the Judge. “Now and then there would turn up in the service a man who had entered it from honorable motives, and whose conduct, at all times, was chivalric and clean. There was Hersh Harkins, for example, now United States Collector at Asheville. I had many cases in which Harkins figured.”
“Tell me of one,” I urged.
“Well, one time there was a man named Jenks [that was not the real name, but it will serve], who was too rich to be suspected of blockading. Jenks had a license to make brandy, but not whiskey. One day Harkins was visiting his still-house, and he noticed something dubious. Thrusting his arm down through the peach pomace, he found mash underneath. It is a penitentiary offense to mix the two. Harkins procured more evidence from Jenk’s distiller, and hauled the offender before me. The trial was conducted in a hotel room, full of people. We were not very formal in those days—kept our hats on. There was no thought of Jenks trying to run away, for he was well-to-do; so he was given the freedom of the room. He paced nervously back and forth between my desk and the door, growing more restless as the trial proceeded. A clerk sat near me, writing a bond, and Harkins stood behind him dictating its terms. Suddenly Jenks wheeled around, near the door, jerked out a navy revolver, fired and bolted. It is hard to say whom he shot at, for the bullet went through Harkins’s coat, through the clerk’s hat, and through my hat, too. I ducked under the desk to get my revolver, and Harkins, thinking that I was killed, sprang to pick me up; but I came up firing. It was wonderful how soon that room was emptied! Harkins took after the fugitive, and had a wild chase; but he got him.”
It was my good fortune, a few evenings later, to have a long talk with Mr. Harkins himself. He was a fine giant of a man, standing six feet three, and symmetrically proportioned. No one looking into his kindly gray eyes would suspect that they belonged to one who had seen as hard and dangerous service in the Revenue Department as any man then living. In an easy, unassuming way he told me many stories of his own adventures among moonshiners and counterfeiters in the old days when these southern Appalachians fairly swarmed with desperate characters. One grim affair will suffice to give an impression of the man, and of the times in which his spurs were won.
There was a man on South Mountain, South Carolina, whom, for the sake of relatives who may still be living, we will call Lafonte. There was information that Lafonte was running a blind tiger. He got his whiskey from four brothers who were blockading near his father’s house, just within the North Carolina line. The Government had sent an officer named Merrill to capture Lafonte, but the latter drove Merrill away with a shotgun. Harkins then received orders to make the arrest. Taking Merrill with him as guide, Harkins rode to the father’s house, and found Lafonte himself working near a high fence. As soon as the criminal saw the officers approaching, he ran for the house to get his gun. Harkins galloped along the other side of the fence, and, after a rough-and-tumble fight, captured his man. The officers then carried their prisoner to the house of a man whose name I have forgotten—call him White—who lived about two miles away. Meantime they had heard Lafonte’s sister give three piercing screams as a signal to his confederates in the neighborhood, and they knew that trouble would quickly brew.