CHAPTER XVI
With the news of the event, a flame of wrath swept through the coves. Everywhere, the men gathered in parties, to hunt, rifle in hand, for some trace of the outlaw. There was none to give him favor, save the outcasts numbered among his dependants. The usual sympathy for the illicit distiller ceased utterly, destroyed by hatred for the criminal’s final offense. For the first time in the history of the mountains, there was no voice raised to protest—nor any rifle pointed in the laurel—against the Federal officers, who wandered at will in the wild places. In execration of Dan Hodges for his sin against the peace and dignity of the community, the people forgot for the nonce their ancient enmity against the Government. With one accord, the folk of the mountains joined in abhorrence of Hodges, sullenly anxious to bring about his punishment, to avenge his victim at least, if too late to save her.
Seth Jones turned from the joys of the belated honeymoon to give every aid in his power. His counsel and the comfort of his presence were boons 180 to Uncle Dick. The veteran had learned from his bride concerning the disfavor in which Zeke was held, and the reason for it. It seemed to him the part of wisdom, in this crisis, to feign ignorance, and he blandly suggested, on the return of the two from the fallen poplar, that they should ride to Joines’ store in the evening, there, over the telephone, to dispatch a telegram to Zeke in New York. It was the psychological moment for success. There was not even a flicker of resentment aroused. Uncle Dick remembered that the Quaker school-teacher spy had been saved by Zeke from Dan Hodges. In his new mood, that fact was enough to overcome all rancor against the lad. Moreover, he realized the tragedy of Plutina’s fate to her lover, and he was moved to compassion. He accepted the veteran’s suggestion without a word of remonstrance.
It was Seth Jones, too, who broke down the old man’s last prejudice by persuading him to summon Marshal Stone. Uncle Dick yielded with an odd mingling of emotions—shame and relief: shame over such trafficking with the “revenuers,” whom he had consistently fought and despised through three generations; relief that he had gained the strong arm of the law to his side. He had been greatly heartened when Stone answered over the wire that he would set out with a posse at midnight for the Siddon cabin, so that, after a conference there, the 181 active work of searching could be begun promptly at dawn.
Thus, it came about that, for the first time in history, Uncle Dick Siddon welcomed the sound of hoofbeats pounding up the trail through the darkness. Where, aforetime, he would have leaped to wind a blast of warning to the moonshiners above against the coming of the “revenuers,” the old man now hastened to the cabin door, and flung it wide, and went forth on the porch to give grateful greeting.
When a council had been held, three parties set forth. Seth Jones was the guide for one, which went to the northeast, through the Bull Head Mountain region, whither, in all likelihood, the outlaw would make his way, if he meant to escape out of the country. The marshal, with one companion, skirted Stone Mountain. Uncle Dick led two of the posse to the yellow poplar where the struggle had occurred, after which they would follow the general direction of the tracks. The marshal expected to make a circuit of the mountain rapidly enough to effect a junction with Uncle Dick’s party by noon, at the Woodruff Gate. The veteran and his two men, who would have by far the roughest going, were not to report until sundown at the Siddon cabin.
From the poplar, Uncle Dick and the deputies 182 were able, with great difficulty, to follow the tracks of the outlaw and his prisoner toward the south for a full mile. But at this point, an expanse of outcropping rock baffled them completely. Search as they would, there was no least sign of footsteps anywhere. After an hour of futile questing, they gave up in despair, and hurried to the rendezvous at the Woodruff Gate.
The marshal and his men had already reached the gate, and Stone had wherewith to give the distraught grandfather new hope.
“I came on their tracks a mile below where you lost them,” he explained. “They still keep to the south. We followed as far as the sand bar below Sandy Creek Falls.”