Uncle Sam, Detective

by William Atherton DuPuy

"Son," said the curly-headed one, "your instincts are clairvoyant. You have demonstrated a hypothesis, confirmed a rumor, hit upon a great truth, sleuthed a primal fact to its lair. The plain truth is that I haven't had anything to eat in so long that I have forgotten my last meal. I am the hungriest man in the world. I could eat tacks with a spoon."

"Come on," said Lem, a bit dizzy with the unusual words, but anxious to please.

He led the way to the house where Mrs. Jones met the hungry man at the door.

"Madam," said the hungry one most courteously, "I am needing a little something to eat. I have been lost in the woods and without food."

"What are they after you for, young feller?" inquired Mrs. Jones incisively, she who had spent a life in those mountains where the sympathy was all with the man whose hand was turned against authority and where many fugitives from the law had found refuge.

"Have you found me out so soon?" grinned the fugitive. "Well, if I must tell I will say that I just knocked a hole in a jail down South Carolina way, cracked the heads of a couple of armed guards together, robbed the city marshal of his horse, outran the sheriff's posse, swam the Elb river where ford there was none, and lived on a diet of blackberries for seven days. Back of that there was the little matter of cracking a safe. Other than that I assure you my conduct has been of the best."

So engaging was the manner of this young man of the rags from the great world beyond the mountains that Mrs. Jones immediately liked him. He was a perfect cataract of words and talked incessantly. She was not able to understand half he said but was pleased with all of it. He ran on glibly but always stopped short of being smart in the sense that would call forth dislike. All the time he was eating corn bread and bacon with the relish of one who has long omitted the formality of dining.

Such was the introduction of Special Agent A. Spaulding Dowling into the Cumberlands, he who played the cadet in white slave cases, the wild young man about town in the bucket shop investigations, and made love to a bank cashier's daughter to learn where the loot was hidden. For all these situations Dowling had a stream of talk that never failed to amuse and disarm. Billy Gard had asked the department for his help on the moonshiners' case and Dowling had fallen into the plan with all the enthusiasm of adventurous youth.

The features of the jail breaker for whom the reward was offered were those of Dowling. So had preparation been made for his coming. Gard had laid his plans with an understanding of the habits of the mountaineer to hide the fugitive. He had figured that such a fugitive might get into the confidence of those iron men of few words and filch from them their secrets. With the right culprits behind the bars the backbone of this defiance of the law might be broken.

Dowling's stream of talk won the friendship of Ty Jones and his sons as it had won his wife. The fugitive was tucked away in the hills and fed by the mountaineers. He came to know the intimates of the Jones family and his stream of talk entertained them for days and weeks. He hibernated with others of his kind for he found the hills full of men in hiding. He became a visitor at many a cabin and eventually struck the rock that responded to his confidence.