_Parole_

During the next week or two after Christmas the boys made notable progress with their chopping, for even the Doctor had by this time become as expert as any of them in wielding an axe, while the other boys, who could scarcely be more expert with that implement than they were at the beginning, acquired a good deal of extra skill in the particular work they were now doing. They more readily recognized the use to which each piece of timber could be put; they acquired new deftness in shaping railroad ties to their destined use, so that the work was done more quickly and with a smaller expenditure of time and force; especially they learned and invented many devices to facilitate their handling of the great bridge timbers, of which they were now sending many down the chute.

All of them except Ed chopped all day. Ed volunteered to take the duty of camp guard upon himself all day every day, so long as his wound should incapacitate him for the hard work of chopping. There was double guard duty to do now of course, for in addition to the guarding of the camp there was the prisoner to watch. But now that the barricade with its platform was built in front of the hut, Ed was confident of his ability to watch both inside and outside, particularly as the wounded man was pretty nearly helpless still, and the boys took all the guns with them when they went chopping, except the one that Ed was using as sentinel. There was still another advantage in the fact that there was now nearly a foot of snow on the ground, and it would have been easy to see a man toiling over its white surface at a great distance.

So Ed played cook and camp guard all through the days and was excused from all night duty.

In the meantime there was no more trouble from the mountaineers, except that the wounded one in camp continually bewailed his fate and indulged in dismal forebodings of the long term he must serve in prison. Finally one Sunday, when his wounds were nearly well again, he said:

"It ain't so much for myself I care. I kin stand purty nigh anything.

What I'm thinkin' about, boys, is my wife an' my little gal. You see my wife she's consumptive like an' not much fit fer work, an' my little gal, she's only six year old. So I don't know what's to become of 'em when I'm sent up, an' that'll be mighty soon now, as I'm gettin' well enough to walk."

"Now listen to me a minute," said Tom in a voice as stern as he could make it with the tears that were in it--for the picture presented to his mind of that poor invalid wife and still more of that little six year old girl left to struggle with that mountain poverty and starvation which he knew something about, had touched all that was tender in his nature.

"Now listen to me! I'm going to have a plain talk with you. The only reason you are to go to prison is that you tried your best to kill Ed.

Why didn't you think of your wife and little girl before you committed that crime? Answer me honestly now!"

"Well, I will, Tom. You see I ain't much account. I ain't enough account to own a little share in one o' the stills that does a purty poor business up here in the mountings. So I has to live on odd jobs like, an' at best I barely manage to keep a little bread and meat in the mouths of my wife an' little gal an' a calico dress on their backs. No, that ain't edzacly the truth nother, an' as you an' me is talkin' fair an' square now, I don't want to misrepresent nothin'. I'll own up that oncet--just oncet I bought the little gal a doll down there in town, jest becase she seemed so lonely an' longin' like as she looked at it.

It cost me five cents."

By this time all the boys had business with their handkerchiefs, which they felt it necessary to go out of doors to attend to.

After awhile Tom mastered himself sufficiently to say:

"Go on! Tell us why you shot Ed?"

"Well, as I wuz a tellin' you," resumed the mountaineer, "I ain't no account an' so I has to live by odd jobs. Well, when you fellers come up here, the other fellers made up their minds that you must go back, an'

so they decided like to have you persecuted till you did go. So, as they didn't want to take the risk of the job theirselves, they come to me an'

another feller--that feller what got his arm broke in your camp--"

"Yes, I remember him," said Tom; "go on and tell us all about it."

"Well, they come to us two no 'count fellers, him an' me, an' says, says they, 'ef you two fellers'll do the job we'll see as how you an' your families will have enough, meal an' meat, to last till blackberry time.'

You see, we no 'count fellers always looked forrard to blackberry time.

Ef we kin pull through till the blackberries is ripe, we're all right for a spell. Well, nuther on us liked the job, but we didn't see no way out'n it. So he come fust an' twicet. The second time he got too bad hurt like to go on with the job, an' so then I took it up. My pard he had reasoned and argified with you an' you wouldn't listen. So the fellers what was hirin' of me says, says they, 'Bill, you've got to shoot. If you kin drap one o' them fellers without gittin' caught they'll quick enough git out'n the mountings.' That's why I shot Ed. You see yourselves as how I couldn't help it."

All that Tom had tried to tell his comrades about the squalid poverty of the poorer cla.s.s of mountaineers had made no such impression upon their minds as the prisoner's simple narrative. They were horrified at the dest.i.tution which he pictured and shocked at the dullness and perversion of his moral sense, manifested by his confident a.s.sumption that they would see that in trying to kill Ed he had done nothing wrong or unusual. Here was that degradation of mind and soul which frankly regards crime--even including the murder of innocent persons--as a legitimate means of livelihood--like the picking of blackberries--a degradation which nevertheless leaves the soul capable of emotions of affection and tender pity such as this man so manifestly felt for his invalid wife and his "little gal."

Unhappily this degradation, this perversion of the moral sense, is not confined to mountain moonshiners. There is very much of it in our great cities and it is the thing that gives the police force their hardest work. It is also the source of the most serious danger that threatens all of us.

The man had evidently finished with what he had to say, and as for the boys, they had from the first left this man's case in Little Tom's hands. Their throats ached too badly now with a pained pity, for them to make even a suggestion. So Tom took up the conversation.

"Now I want to say something to you," he said, "and I want you to try to understand me. You and I are talking, fair and square, as you said a little while ago, aren't we?"

"That's what we is, Tom," answered the man; "an' whatever you say'll be right, I don't doubt; but you see may be I won't quite understand it, like. I'll do my best. But I ain't got no eddication like. All I know is how to write my name, and may be print a few words on paper. The sergeant major taught me that when I was in the army."

"Then you served in the army?" asked Tom, somewhat eagerly.

"Yes, I was conscripted, but after I was conscripted I thought I mout as well be a good soldier as a bad one an' so I fought all I could. I never did make it out quite clear in my head what they was a fightin'

about, but I says to myself, says I, 'Bill,' says I, 'you're in for this thing an' they's only one thing to do, an' that is fight as hard as you kin on the side yer on.'"

"Well if you were in the army," interposed Tom, "you know what a parole is?"

"Oh, yes, I know that. I had one o' them things oncet. That's how I got out'n the army. I was tooken pris'ner along with a lot of other fellers, an' after talkin' to us a lot, the officers what had us pris'ners sort o' explained the parole business to us, an' after we signed papers promisin' not to fight no more, they let us go home, tellin' us that ef we was caught fightin' agin they'd hang us. Fur a long time I was afraid the conscript officers would ketch me, an' make me fight again, but when one on 'em did ketch me at last he tole me he couldn't make me fight agin, 'cause I was a prisoner on parole. So I know mighty well what a parole means, though at first we all thought it meant a pay-roll an'

that we was to be paid for not fightin'."

"Well you understand it better now," said Tom. "You understand that when a man is paroled, he promises not to fight again, and if he does, and is caught at it, he gets shot?"

"Oh, yes, I understand all that now. I was only tellin' you how as I didn't know fust off."

"Well, now that we're 'talking fair and square,' as you say, I want to say that I think you ought to go to state prison for a long term for shooting Ed, and I intended at first to send you there. Perhaps I may do so yet. But now, if Ed will forgive you for shooting him--I'll ask him presently--I'm going to put you on parole, just because of your sick wife and your little girl. You have been in our camp for several weeks now. You know what we are here for. You know that we are not here to bother your friends or to interfere with them in any way."

"Oh, any fool could see that!" exclaimed the man.

"Very well, then. I am going to make you sign a parole and then send you home, but mind, if you violate your parole I'll go down the mountain and bring enough soldiers up here to capture the last one of your gang and send all of you to prison. I know where some of your stills are, and I can find all the others. So you had better keep your parole, and your friends had better let us alone. Are you ready to sign the parole?"

The man rose from the chair on which he was sitting and threw his arms about Tom.

His expressions of grat.i.tude were rude in the extreme, but at least they were genuine, and he finished in tears as he exclaimed:

"Oh, thank goodness I can go back now an' look after the wife an' little one, an' you kin bet your bottom dollar ef the other fellers makes any trouble fer you fellers, Bill Jones'll be here to help you agin 'em. I'm a goin' to explain things to 'em. I'm agoin' to give it to 'em straight, an' then ef they make trouble fer you, I'll be with you."

Tom drew up the parole and Jones signed it with extraordinary pride in his ability to write his own name in clumsy printing letters, with the "J" turned backwards. But strong man as he was, the tears kept coming into his eyes as he said over and over again:

"You're mighty good to me, Tom! All you fellers is mighty good to me.

An' I'm agoin' to teach that little gal o' mine when she says her 'now I lay me' to wind it up with 'G.o.d bless Tom an' the other fellers.'"

With that he wiped away his tears with the back of his hand for lack of a handkerchief.

The next morning the mountaineer insisted upon departing in spite of the Doctor's a.s.surance that he was not yet well enough to make the journey.

"I must, Doctor," he said. "You see, I don't know what's happened to my wife an' my little gal while I've been gone."

"Very well," answered the Doctor, "only I want to add a promise to your parole. I want you to promise me that if your wounds give you trouble you'll either come here yourself, or if you can't do that, you'll send for me to go to you and dress them." Then seeing that the man was about saying something emotional the Doctor quickly added:

"You see, I'm a Doctor, and it hurts my pride to have a case that I attend go bad. So if you have any trouble with your hurts you are to come to me or send for me at once."

Then after such rude adieus as the mountaineer could make, he started off up the mountain, the Doctor accompanying him a part of the way, upon pretense of wanting to see whether or not he was really fit to walk and carry his gun, which had of course been restored to him. But the Doctor had another purpose in view. Just before parting with the mountaineer he took a twenty dollar bill from his pocket and pressed it into the man's hand.

"There!" he said. "Perhaps that will keep meat and bread in your cabin till the blackberries get ripe," and with that he suddenly turned on his heel and rapidly strode back toward the camp, giving the man no chance to refuse the gift or to thank him for it.

But while the Doctor had taken every possible precaution to prevent any of his comrades from seeing what he did, the sentry on the platform saw and reported the facts. So when the Doctor returned to camp and set to work with his axe, the boys were quietly discussing a little plan of their own, talking in low tones, as they worked.

That night at supper Jack opened the subject, saying:

"Doctor, we shall be very sorry to part with you, but you have forfeited your right to remain in our camp. You have violated your parole."

"Why, how? What can you mean?" asked the Doctor in bewilderment.