“Germany?” mused Cash when the narrative was ended. “We’re to war with Germany, hey? Sakes, but I wisht I’d knowed that yesterday! A couple of Germans went right past my shack. I could ’a’ shot ’em as easy as toad pie.”
The North America’s proprietor valued Cash Wyble’s sparse trade, as he valued that of other mountaineers who made Clayburg their semiannual port of call. If on Cash’s report these rustics should begin a guerilla warfare upon their German neighbors, more of them would presently be lodged in jail than the North America could well afford to spare from its meager customer list.
Wherefore the proprietor did some more explaining. Knowing the mountaineer brain, he made no effort to point out the difference between armed Germans and noncombatants. He merely said that the Government had threatened to lock up any West Virginian who should kill a German—this side of Europe. It was a new law, he continued, and one that the revenue officers were bent on enforcing.
Cash sighed and reluctantly bade farewell to an alluring dream that had begun to shape itself in his simple brain—a dream of “laying out” in cliff-top brush, waiting with true elephant patience until a German neighbor should stroll, unsuspecting, along the trail below and should move slowly within range of the antique Wyble rifle.
It was a sweet fantasy, and hard to banish. For Cash certainly could shoot. There was scarce a man in the Cumberlands or the Appalachians who could outshoot him. Shooting and a native knack at moon-shining were Cash’s only real accomplishments. Whether stalking a shy old stag or potting a revenue officer on the sky line, the man’s aim was uncannily true. In a region of born marksmen his skill stood forth supreme.
He felt not the remotest hatred for any of these local Germans. In an impersonal way he rather liked one or two of them. Yet, if the law had really been off——
The zest of the man hunt tingled pleasantly in the marksman’s blood. And he resented this unfair new revenue ruling, which permitted and even encouraged larger than Clayburg—which he knew to be the biggest metropolis in America—Cash set out to nail the lie by a personal inspection of Petersburg. He neglected to apply for leave, so was held up by the first sentinel he met.
Cash explained very politely his reason for quitting camp. But the pig-headed sentinel still refused to let him pass. Two minutes later a fast-summoned corporal and two men were using all their strength to pry Wyble loose from the luckless sentry. And again the guardhouse had Cash as a transient and blasphemous guest.
He was learning much more of kitchen-police work than of guard mount. At the latter task he was a failure. The first night he was assigned to beat pacing, the relief found him restfully snoring, on his back, his rifle stuck up in front of him by means of its bayonet thrust into the ground. Cash had seen no good reason why he should walk to and fro for hours when there was nothing exciting to watch for and when he had been awake since early morning. Therefore he had gone to sleep. And his subsequent guardhouse stay filled him with uncomprehending fury.
The salute, too, struck him as the height of absurdity—as a bit of tomfoolery in which he would have no part. Not that he was exclusive, but what was the use of touching one’s forelock to some officer one had never before met? He was willing to nod pleasantly and even to say “Howdy, Cap?” when his company captain passed by him for the first time in the morning. But he saw no use in repeating that or any other form of salutation when the same captain chanced to meet him a bare fifteen minutes later.