When they vacated the boat and furtively searched for hostile signs I warned him again. Howard was right, the two older men made a "bee-line" for the demolished still, rolled a stump, lifted a rock and eagerly drank from the hidden jug. The younger one stood amid the wreck cursing the law. He brushed the jug aside, when offered him, and went down into the crater blasted out by my dynamite. He was joined by the older men, evidently planning night covering from the wreck, for the weather began to threaten in the east.

Byng's eyes glowed when I nervously touched the wires to the battery, exploding the planted charge. Dirt and debris shot high in the air as he ran swiftly to the spot where our outlaws were safely buried for the time being.

We dug them out one at a time and secured their hands and feet. They were not hurt, just surface cuts, that bled. Howard worked with the rapidity and fierceness of a demon. I could see he had worked out a plan. Then the two old men begged for whiskey.

"Give it to them; they'll be easier to handle," I suggested.

He gave each the jug and while they drank glared at the younger man, the leader. He looked at the threatening clouds. It would soon be dark. He sat down where he could see the young leader's face, whose wolfish eyes were b.a.l.l.s of animal fire. Howard Byng was the Georgia Cracker again, grim, determined and terrible.

"Eph Bradshaw," he began, with set jaw, "I know you. I never tried to hurt you. I knew you was moonshinin' here but let you alone. You hev hurt me and you hev got ter pay. Them wimmen you put outen that boat were my wimmen. Decent moonshiners nevah hurt wimmen. What did you do with 'em?" he asked, suppressed, but now actually a savage.

Bradshaw looked at the eighteen-inch steel rod I had put between his manacled hands and feet instead of a chain. Finally compelled by Byng's savage sense of injury, he blurted, "They hev our boat; we only tuk ut."

"What did you do with the wimmen?"

Bradshaw's eyes burned fiercer.

"Eph Bradshaw," began Byng, getting up, "if you don't tell what you done with them wimmen, my wimmen, I'll cut yer tongue out and feed your carca.s.s to the dogs and buzzards."

The moonshiner believed that I would protect him as my prisoner. I could not possibly have saved him from Howard Byng, maddened by apprehension that his women folk had been injured or worse. Every corpuscle in his swarthy, rugged body was aflame, his face fiendishly illuminated.

With terrible determination, he took out a hunting knife, opened and dropped it within reach, threw the manacled moonshiner on his back, placed his boot on his neck, then, with his pistol barrel he pried his mouth open, deftly pulling out the outlaw's tongue. Dropping pistol for knife he pressed the keen edge against it and hissed, "Now will yer tell?"

Although savage and game, the moonshiner gave in.

Whatever can be said against appealing to Judge Lynch in the South or elsewhere, one thing stands out on close a.n.a.lysis--that this court is seldom appealed to except for one thing. Womenfolk are sacred and the least disrespect, or violation of their rights, is sufficient cause for the summary taking of life.

Bradshaw knew with whom he had to deal and that Byng would not wait long for his answer. A few seconds and his life would go out forever.

"We just put 'em out," he panted, as soon as he came erect and had regained his breath.

"Where did you put 'em out?" shouted the fiercely burning Howard Byng.

"On the island. We didn't hurt 'em."

"What did you do to the man with 'em?"

Bradshaw lapsed again into sullenness until Byng moved toward him menacingly.

"We threw him in the river because he fit us fur the boat. It's our boat."

"You put two lone wimmen on Alligator Island and not a house fur ten miles, and threw the man in the river 'cause he wanted to take care of 'em?" Byng paused, that he might resist the vengeance that surged within him.

"Eph Bradshaw," said he, solemnly, "I'm going to look fur them wimmen, an' if a hair on their heads is hurt, I'll have yer heart. I'll smash yer skull like I would a snake." The moonshiner shrunk back and shivered.

Byng walked down to the boats. The tide had left them on the mud. He then gazed at the clouding sky as he returned to me.

"I'm goin' to get them wimmen. I wouldn't stay on Alligator Island a night like this for half of Georgia. A rain is c.u.min' from the northeast and it'll be nasty. You'll have the tide after midnight to let you out with these fellers. You can bring 'em, can't you?"

"Either dead or alive," I replied.

Byng went back to the boats, and tied the oars inside the skiff. Then, as though the boat was a c.o.c.klesh.e.l.l, he picked it up from the mud, letting the center seat rest on his shoulders, and started, rifle in hand, down through high swamp gra.s.s toward the river, three miles away.

"You'll find me along this side of the island somewhere when the tide brings you there," he called back out of the darkness.

I moved my manacled moonshiner to the highest part near their lookout stump, chained the two together, and began a watch that would end with a flood tide, eight or ten hours later. I knew what a northeast rain was like in Georgia--bad lightning and thunder. What would become of Mrs. Potter, little more than a girl with no knowledge of woods, and the frail, nervous Norma, who had been so carefully and lovingly shielded by doting parents. Then I thought of the grief and distress of her mother and father awaiting their return, with neither Byng nor myself there to offer advice and consolation.

I hoped devoutly Byng would find the girls and get them home before any serious shock should result from their exposure. Then I blamed myself for allowing the Purdues to use the moonshiners' boat.

Nothing happened before the flood tide when I got my prisoners in their boat and started. The storm was bad, the rain came in sheets. I got alongside the island about three in the morning, when the storm abated somewhat. Hugging the sh.o.r.e closely I found Howard's skiff. It told me the whole story. He had been unsuccessful, those girls had been on the island all night exposed to that fearful storm without shelter, and possibly worse.

I ran in beside the skiff, stopped my motor and listened. I heard nothing but owls that seemed to have a voice in the deadly stillness like human beings in sore distress. I examined the skiff again. It was empty with the exception of the oars. I shouted time and again at the top of my voice, only to be answered by spectral owls. I could not leave my prisoners, so had to await for daybreak, at the first sign of which I took them ash.o.r.e and chained them to a tree.

I then removed my boots to pour the water out, as they had been full since it began to rain. The prisoners begged for moonshine. They looked pitiful enough, wet to the skin, dirty and b.l.o.o.d.y. I gave them some, then filled a flask and started. The island was not wide and I went to the lower end and back, shouting repeatedly, without results.

When I did find them at the extreme upper end, Howard Byng presented a sorry spectacle, this wild Cracker man, with eyes bloodshot, clothed only with pants and shirt, for he had given the girls everything else.

He had found them in the night, completely prostrated. Mrs. Potter was paralyzed with fear and could only moan, Norma was shocked into hysterics, lying with her head on Mrs. Potter's lap. They were in white summer attire and their soaked clothes clung to their bodies.

At the sight of me and daylight and several swallows of moonshine, Mrs. Potter revived enough to give serious attention to Norma, now in sort of a deathlike coma. By vigorous rubbing and finally a stimulant, she revived. Howard carried her in his arms, talking to her as he would a child, telling her she would "soon be home to mamma," while I steadied Mrs. Potter toward the boat, a half mile away. Until Norma was delivered safely home she was his woman.

At sight of the prisoners Mrs. Potter clung to me and groaned. Howard heard and tried to keep Norma from seeing them, but did not succeed.

Her scream would have pierced any man's heart.

Mrs. Potter realized her sister's danger, braced herself, but was unable to do much more than wring her hands, moan and caress the young girl. It was an unpleasant experience, and I never want to go through it again. I know how to handle men, but drenched, starved, hysterical women were a sorry puzzle to me, to say nothing of the three prisoners upon whose delivery my reputation was staked.

Howard's problem was greater--he still held in his arms a slight, nervous child, less than fifteen, paralyzed with fear and exposure, who had again lapsed into a state of coma with attendant convulsions caused by the sight of the authors of her sad plight.

I was not wrong when I antic.i.p.ated a scene upon our arriving home. I may have been rude to Mrs. Purdue, when she indignantly and weepingly demanded an explanation. I told her there was not a doctor within twenty miles and she had better take care of her children first, and ask for explanations later. Byng did not get off so well. The "Purdue man" finally came in with a bad b.u.mp on his head, and a story calculated to excuse his desertion. He had been hit with an oar, for which I felt glad, for I saw cowardice in his face, and I always did hate a deserter.

By the time I got my men in the hands of a marshal, and on the way to Atlanta, matters had straightened out. Mamma and Papa Purdue were quite normal again. Then it was that I thought I detected a subtle change in the atmosphere.

CHAPTER VIII

"'Tain't no tarnel use of you talking of going away now," Howard exploded, when I hinted at leaving. "You've stuck your nose in them papers of your'n every minute an' I haven't had even a chance to talk.

You got away from me for five years and can never do that ag'in if I have to spend half my time on yer trail," he added, whimsically.

I spent that day with him and learned that his organization and planning were wonderful. Cabins for his men and a store for their wants, standard-gauge tracks built out into the stump land from which a giant crane plucked stumps as you would turnips and dropped them on flat cars. The plant digested stumps with relish, released the turpentine and rosin, and handed the remaining fiber, like overdone corned beef, to the beating engines of the pulp mill. A long row of cotton bales under cover waiting for a favorable market testified impressively to the general efficiency of the management.

"An' when you told me to pull 'em out and boil 'em, I thought you was half joking," Howard would mention every now and then with the glee of a boy getting the point of a joke a day or so late.

As I came through the paper mill his schooner _Canby_ was just closing her hatches over a load of paper in rolls for New York. I returned to the bungalow, sat on my end of the veranda smoking, meditating on human probabilities, when Mother Purdue waddled up from somewhere.

Perhaps waddle may be an exaggeration, but as I didn't especially want to see her then, it so seemed to me. She appeared to be in an excellent humor and I was wrong in expecting a dose of refined caustic. I offered her a chair, but she preferred the log edge of the veranda against a post, her feet just reaching the ground.

"Mr. Wood," she began rather impressively, "I wish to apologize for my rudeness when you returned that morning. I was quite beside myself. I never pa.s.sed such a night and I shudder now when I recall it. But I am indeed sorry I spoke the way I did. I know now that the children might have perished had it not been for you and Mr. Byng, and with utmost grat.i.tude I thank you." Her lips quivered as she finished.