Uncle Sam Detective

nd of violators of the law who had for years defied and intimidated the whole countryside, this course seemed even more unusual. But the wonder would have still further multiplied itself

. And Gard was a nondescript youngster who looked less than thirty, neither light nor dark, large nor small-inconspicuous, easily lost in a crowd. The careful observer might have noticed the breadth of brow and the wrinkles that come to the man who thinks, or the tenseness o

om speaks from the thickets; where the clansman sets what he considers his rights above the law of the land and stands ready to lay his life or that of any who oppose him on the altar he h

er, the mountain town at which he had stopped off. "I have been clerking in a store in Atlanta a

an you pay?

t as cheap as five dol

p here for five dolla

milk to drink and eggs and where I can tramp arou

nds. He sketched these possibilities and told of the location of each. Gard already had the map of the country well

ers and the Government as he drove his customer out

. They ain't many ideas gits into the head of a man who lives in the mountains, and when one gits set there

vernment and that whisky is no good anyhow, so whenever we find out where there is a still, we tell the revenue agents

on't never get there. Next mornin' we find his wagon standin' off to the side of th

n' every still he finds. So things goes on for two months. Then, one night, Sam was up late with one of his babies tha

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

agents were too well known to work effectually in the Cumberlands any more, so the Department of

of a rifle from a hillside to the right. Soon another gun was discharged further ahead and a thi

owed a brook. Out of the brush in this hollow stepped the form of

t there?" asked t

oarder,"

goin'?" wa

y's," ans

ker grip was carried. Without a word he opened the grip and carefully examined

in durn bad company. You can't never tell whether y

d grinned as

de the bullet that'l

indifferent sprinkling of corn and cotton. There was a crib for the corn, a ramshackle wagon, a flea-bitten gray horse and some hogs running wild in the woods. Such was the Lunsford estate, presided over by this huge mountaineer and to which his eleven children were heir. Seldom did an echo of the outside world reach this home in the woods. Not

"cold turkey," as the agents say when they lay all the cards on the table. Would Lunsford help the government in getting t

suspect?" the

me," said Lunsford, "that it is

t how you were sittin

in the opposite wall where the buckshot had lodged themselves, peppering up a surface two feet square. Thus was

e the man stood when

I looked for tracks nex

ed out a stout peg which had been driven int

up to there and s

he tracks?" asked

a stick just the length of the track.

of the gun wadding

tly load their own shells and the wads in this case had been made by cutti

had been fired. From this point to that at which the buckshot h

ts almost like a rifle. The shot at that distance are all in a bunch not bigger than your fist.

t would have placed the man with the gun too low down to see in at the window. The shot could have been fired from but the one spot. The window pane through which the shot had passed was about half way betwe

un," said the special agent. "Only a short-barreled g

a moment an

nd here who has a

as got one,

dly to you?"

evenue agents chopped up hi

ver threa

with a sore head that would soon be feelin' almigh

the Lunsford youngsters were playmates; so does the sociability of youth break down the bars set up by maturity. Lunsford had a boy of ten who was wise with the cunning of the woods and trustworthy in lending a hand in the feuds to which he was born. This boy, in playi

r of shoes in the Jones home was like unto that of the man of the sawed-off shotgun. Scraps of cut-up shoe boxes had b

e killing of Tom Reynolds. There were twenty and more makers of moonshine who had been reported or stood in danger. It was hard to determine which of the twenty were actually guilty. The suspicions again

g that his health was greatly improved but that he

ward for an escaped convict. A short, stout, curly-headed young outlaw had broken jail in South Carolina and when last hear

ers approached cautiously. The man was no less cautious. He was a short curly-headed young fellow with a stubby beard, with his clothing in shreds an

e a hungry man to six or seven dollars' worth of bread and bacon

somethin' to eat, do yu

mor, hit upon a great truth, sleuthed a primal fact to its lair. The plain truth is that I haven't had anything to ea

dizzy with the unusual wo

se where Mrs. Jones met t

, "I am needing a little something to eat. I

had spent a life in those mountains where the sympathy was all with the man whose han

ads 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

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 sm

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

ns 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

untaineers. 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 h

as high spirited and companionable, unlike most of his neighbors. His was the soul of a poet, a lover of the wilds, a patriot of the mountains. The flame o

Lunsford. He told of the determination to rid the mountains of Todd, the livery stable man, and

icions of Sam Lunsford, always advised against violence. But Jones had a boy of eighteen, a heavy-faced, dull-witted lad, who was possessed of the desire to kill, to be known among his fellows as a bad man. This younger Jones it was who had aimed his father's sawed-off shotgun at Sam Lunsford as that hul

hose health had been broken behind the ribbon counter, came back to Tenney's for another few weeks in the open. He wandered into the woods and met the fugitive from the South Carol

drone through deserted thoroughfares, not even an arc light to sputter at street crossings. There is but the occasional stamping of a horse in its stall or the baying

et beneath the dense shade of giant sycamores. It was but three blocks from the woods to Main street. Reaching this artery of the town, two of the men crouched in th

for the horses and the sheds where the wagons were stored. Overhead were bins of corn and hay and a living room where Todd slept that he might always be near his teams. About

hich a wagon might drive. Nothing interfered with their progress and no sound was heard except a sleeping horse occasionally changing feet on the board floor of his stall. Stealthily the four figures gathered in a cluster and turned up the steep stairway that led to the slee

ir

. Every hammer came down on its cap. But no r

morous voice from the barnyard that was recognized as being

rm on the bed. They approached the latter and found it to be but a dummy

ning of the barn they faced the tall form of a man they knew well, the United States m

ilding and every man who runs out of it will be shot dead. Your powder has been wet and none of you can

be fired. None would respond. The mountaineers found themselves caught in the very act of

which later proved, in the courts, to be effective, for every man arrested is now servi

ill say that you have shown remarkable intelligence in this matter. You called me in to help you. Little drops of water put in just t

Gard. "Kiss the hand of the man who