Judith of the Cumberlands

								

"I'll set my old rooster on the jail man, an' hit'll claw 'im," announced
Beezy, reckless of distance and likelihood. "My old rooster can claw dest
awful, ef he ain't got but one leg."
Nancy chuckled. These grandchildren were the delight of her heart.
The rain had ceased for the moment; the old man moved to the porch edge,
sighting at the sky.
"I don't know whar Blatch is a-keepin' hisself," he observed. "Mebbe I
better be a-steppin'."
But even as he spoke a tall young mountaineer swung into view down the
road, dripping from the recent rain, and with that resentful air the best
of us get from aggressions of the weather. Blatchley Turrentine, old
Jephthah's nephew, was as brown as an Indian, and his narrow, glinting,
steel-grey eyes looked out oddly cold and alien from under level black
brows, and a fell of stiff black hair.
When the orphaned Judith, living in her Uncle Jephthah's family, was
fourteen, the household had removed from the old Turrentine place--which
was rented to Blatchley Turrentine--to her better farm, whose tenant had
proved unsatisfactory. Well hidden in a gulch on the Turrentine acres
there was an illicit still, what the mountain people call a blockade
still; and it had been in pretty constant operation in earlier years.
When Jephthah abandoned those stony fields for Judith's more productive
acres, he definitely turned his own back upon this feature, but Blatch
Turrentine revived the illegal activities and enlisted the old man's boys
in them. Jeff and Andy had a tobacco patch in one corner where the ground
suited, and in another field Jim Cal raised a little corn. Aside from
these small ventures, the place was given over entirely to the secret
still. The father held scornfully aloof; his attitude was
characteristic.
"Ef I pay no tax I'll make no whiskey," he declared. "You-all boys will
find yourselves behind bars many a time when you'd ruther be out
squirrel-huntin'. Ef you make blockade whiskey every fool that gits mad
at you has got a stick to hold over you. You are good-Lord-good-devil to
everybody, for fear they'll lead to yo' still; or else you mix up with
folks about the business and kill somebody an' git a bad name. These here
blockaded stills calls every worthless feller in the district; most o'
the foolishness in this country goes on around 'em when the boys gits
filled up. I let every man choose his callin', but I don't choose to be
no moonshiner, and ef you boys is wise you'll say the same."
As Blatchley came up now and caught sight of the animals tethered at the
fence he began irritably:
"What in the name of common sense did Andy and Jeff leave they' mules
here for? I can't haul any corn till I get the team and the waggon
together."
"Looks like you've hauled too many loads of corn that nobody knows the
use of," broke out the irrepressible Nancy. "Andy and Jeff's in jail, and
some fool has tuck my little Pone along with the others."