Mingo, and Other Sketches in Black and White

by Joel Chandler Harris

Then he carried his precious pack a little distance from the roadside, covered it with leaves, listened a moment to be sure that the deputies were not returning, and then proceeded to a. little ravine in the side of the mountain where the Moonshiners lay. He had been waiting nearly two days where the revenue men found him, and his story of the capture of Teague Poteet was concocted for the purpose of sending the posse back down the mountain the way they came. If they had gone on a mile further they would have discovered signs of the Moonshiners, and this discovery would have led to a bloody encounter, if not to the capture of the leaders.

The deputies rode down the mountain in the best of spirits. They had accomplished more than any other posse; they had frightened the Moonshiners of Hog Mountain to their hiding-places, and not a deputy had been killed, or even wounded. The clatter they made as they journeyed along attracted the attention of Ab Bonder, a boy about fifteen, who happened to be squirrel-hunting, and he stepped into the road to get a good view of them. He was well grown for his age, and his single-barrelled shot-gun looked like a rifle. The revenue men halted at once. They suspected an ambuscade. Experience had taught them that the Moonshiners would fight when the necessity arose, and they held a council of war. The great gawky boy, with the curiosity of youth and ignorance combined, stood in the road and watched them. When they proceeded toward him in a compact body, he passed on across the road. Hearing a command to halt, he broke into a run, and endeavoured to make his way across a small clearing that bordered the road. Several of the deputies fired their guns in the air, but one, more reckless than the rest, aimed directly at the fugitive, and Ab Bonner fell, shot through and through.

Viewed in its relations to all the unfortunate events that have marked the efforts of the Government officials to deal with the violators of the revenue laws from a political point of view, the shooting of this ignorant boy was insignificant enough. But it was important to Hog Mountain. For a moment the deputy-marshals were stunned and horrified at the result of their thoughtlessness. Then they dismounted and bore the boy to the roadside again and placed him under the shade of a tree. His blood shone upon the leaves, and his sallow, shrunken face told a pitiful tale of terror, pain, and death.

The deputy-marshals mounted their horses and rode steadily and swiftly down the mountain, and by nightfall they were far away. But there was no need of any special haste. The winds that stirred the trees could carry no messages. The crows flying over, though they made a great outcry, could tell no tales. Once the boy raised his hand and cried "Mammy!" but there was no one to hear him. And though ten thousand ears should listen, the keenest could hear him no more He became a part of the silence—the awful, mysterious silence—that sits upon the hills and shrouds the mountains.

This incident in the tumultuous experience of Hog Mountain—the killing of Ab Bonner was merely an incident—had a decisive effect upon the movements of ex-Deputy Woodward. When Jake Cohen succeeded in turning the revenue officials back, the mountaineers made themselves easy for the day and night, and next morning prepared to go to their homes. Some of them lived on one side of Hog Mountain, and some on the other. They called themselves neighbours, and yet they lived miles apart, and it so happened that, with few exceptions, each went in a different direction. Teague Poteet gave the signal—

"Come, Cap," he said to Woodward, "yess be a- traipsiu'. Puss'll be a-puttin' on biskits for supper before we git thar if we don't push on. Be good to yourse'f, boys, an' don't raise no fracas."

Poteet and Woodward rode off together. That afternoon, half a mile from Poteet's, they met a woman running in the road, crying and wringing her hands wildly. She moved like one distracted. She rushed past them, crying—

"They uv killed little Ab! They uv killed him. Oh, Lordy! they uv killed little Ab!"

She ran up the road a little distance and then came running back; she had evidently recognised Poteet. As she paused in the road near them, her faded calico sun-bonnet hanging upon her shoulders, her grey hair falling about her face, her wrinkled arms writhing in response to a grief too terrible to contemplate, she seemed related in some vague way to the prophets of old who were assailed by fierce sorrows. Here was something more real and more awful than death itself. Woodward felt in his soul that the figure, the attitude, the misery of this poor old woman were all Biblical.

"Oh, Teague," she cried, "they uv killed him! They uv done killed my little Ab! Oh, Lordy! that mortal hain't a-livin' that he ever done any harm. What did they kill him for?" Then she turned to Woodward: "Oh, Mister, Mister! please tell me what he done. I'm the one that made the liquor, I'm the one. Oh, Lordy! what did they kill little Ab for?"