"You see," he said, "they have always made moonshine whisky around here and they just won't stop for nobody. They ain't many ideas gits into the head of a man who lives in the mountains, and when one gits set there, you can't get it out. They think they got a right to make whisky and whisky they are goin' to make or bust.
"Then along comes Tom Reynolds and Sam Lunsford and me and some more of us. We see that it ain't right to fight the Government and that whisky is no good anyhow, so whenever we find out where there is a still, we tell the revenue agents about it. Well, we git warnin's that we better not do it no more, but them fellers can't skeer us so we go right ahead.
"Then one night, Tom Reynolds starts home from Wheeler late in the evenin' but he don't never get there. Next mornin' we find his wagon standin' off to the side of the road and Tom is down in front of the seat dead with a load of buckshot in his head.
"Sam Lunsford has still got the idea, though, that the boys ought not to make moonshine so he goes right ahead reportin' every still he finds. So things goes on for two months. Then, one night, Sam was up late with one of his babies that had the colic. He was settin' before the fire a rockin' the baby when, bang! somebody shoots him through the winder.
"Well, that shot didn't quite get Sam. Did you ever try to shoot the head off of a chicken as it walked across the yard? Its head moves for'd and back and it is mighty hard to hit it. That's the way with Sam rockin' the baby, I reckon. Anyway, the buckshot just got Sam in the back part of his head and didn't kill him. Next day his old woman picked the buckshot out with a pocket knife because the doctor was afraid to go. Now Sam is as well as he ever was and he ain't changed his mind about the stills. Him and me reported two of them last week."
This story was about in accordance with the information Gard received from Washington. The revenue agents were too well known to work effectually in the Cumberlands any more, so the Department of Justice had taken over the case. The murderers and those who attempted murder should be apprehended.
As the wagon wound along the country road Todd called the special agent's attention to the report of a rifle from a hillside to the right. Soon another gun was discharged further ahead and a third still further on. This, the liveryman said, was a system of signals that told of their presence.
A little farther along the road wound into a hollow down which flowed a brook. Out of the brush in this hollow stepped the form of a mountaineer with a rifle across his arm. Todd drew up his team.
"What have you got there?" asked the man in the road.
"Summer boarder," said Todd.