The Moonshiner at Home

AT first the forestry camp was looked upon with suspicion by the mountaineers, for they knew the foresters were in some way connected with the government, and the government it is whose officials collect revenue and arrest men who make whiskey without paying it. There was something mysterious, too, in these men who went about through the woods measuring trees and making marks in little blank books. This might be some new scheme of the “ revenues ” to entrap the unwary among the moonshining population. Then the real purpose of government forestry began to dawn upon the mountain people, and we were able to see behind the veil and catch glimpses of the moonshiner’s inner life.

It was one day just after our removal to a new camp on the roaring Ocoee, near Little Frog Mountain, in the southeasternmost county of Tennessee, that our guide became communicative as to the chief interest of this mountain region. We had climbed to the top of Panther Knob to study the topography of the region, when the old man, pointing across the unbroken stretch of treetops to a cove through which rushed a stony mountain stream, said : —

“See that bunch of poplar tops? That ’s where they got my brother Silas when they sent him to the penitentiary. ”

The remark was made as indifferently as though the guide were pointing out the place where a deer had been killed or a bee tree cut. There was no apparent evidence of a sense of shame, and none of the assumed indifference of many offenders who affect to despise the hand of authority. I was surprised, and the surprise continued until I had received similar confidences from a number of sources, and knew that going to the penitentiary for moonshining is considered no disgrace.

The guide paused as if expecting the conversation would be continued. So, adopting the mountain phrase, I asked, —

“Was he ‘stillin’ ’ ? ”

“Yes.”

There was another pause. Then the old man went on, speaking slowly, in a manner so simple and straightforward as to be almost childlike: —

“They caught him when he was runnin’ off his first batch, and hit never done him a bit of good. Silas always did have powerful hard luck. He got sent to the penitentiary that time for a year. When he got out hit was n’t more ’n a month till they had him again. Hit wouldn’t been so bad if he ’d made something out of hit. When he got caught again I told him if I was in his place I ’d never go near another ‘ still.’ ”

Then, in the same slow, quiet way, he went on to tell of Silas’s first arrest, and the origin of a mountain feud which brought hatred and bloodshed to East Tennessee, and which will one day end in a battle. The story of Dave Payne’s capture and confession was told two years ago in the dailies, but not the troubles that led up to it.

“Silas and Milos Wood had been makin’ a ‘ still ’ in that ’ere cove, and Dave Payne wanted to go in with ’em. They had n’t any use for another man, and they told Dave so. Dave had been ‘stillin’ ’ over on the other side, but he ’d decided to turn revenue, and was expectin’ his commission then. Hit must have come about the time Silas got his ‘still ’ goin’, for he was drawin’ off his first batch, and had his back to the door when he heard some one yell. He looked ’round and there was Dave Payne with a shotgun pointin’ at Silas’s head. Of course Silas surrendered. Then Dave went down to the Wood place and got Milos. Milos paid his fine and got out, but Silas went to the penitentiary for a year.

“There was powerful hard feelin’s agin Dave after that. He got mad at his own uncle Bill and tried to have him arrested. Milos Wood told him he wanted him to keep to the other side of the road when he went past his place, and not to come breshin’ up agin his palin’s. This made Dave mad. The next time he got drunk he went right up to Milos’s place and shot him through the heart. Old man Wood come to the door and Dave shot him, too.”

The story of Dave Payne’s capture is old. It came about through the fact that the mountain people, despising one of their fellows who “ turns revenue, ” made up a posse and assisted in the search. Dave stayed quietly in jail until spring when he broke out. Then came commotion in the mountains. Those who had assisted in the search got out their rifles and still carry them. One or two of Dave’s relatives turned against him, but the rest remained true. Now the two parties watch each other like opposing armies. Some day when too much moonshine has been imbibed there will be a quarrel. Then rifles will crack, and when the echoes have died away there will be more deaths to avenge and new scores to wipe off the mountain slates.

I started out one afternoon to visit the scene of Silas’s capture, and the journey gave me considerable insight into moonshine methods. Up the river trail some three miles from camp is one of those rushing mountain streams which rise in the timbered coves of the Unakas. It came roaring from the rocky woods, and knew no sunlight for the boughs of laurel and rhododendron intertwining in solid mass above. There was no path upon the bank, but one could make his way up the course by stepping from stone to stone on the stream’s bottom. Half a mile of such travel and I came to a little low log building. A part of the roof had fallen in, but the furnace, made of flat slate stones, was intact. So was the trough, which led to a point some few rods up the run and brought down a stream of clear, cold mountain water, for use in the distilling. The barrels, or rather gums, for holding malt and beer, still stood about. Against one leaned the old mash stick with which the brewing liquid was stirred. With no trail save the bed of the stream, the only method of transporting hither the meal was to pack it on the shoulder. When one pictures to himself two men, bent half double with loads of meal, plodding up the rocky stream-bed, plodding down again after nights of labor with the liquid product, always watched and always watching, the pathetic smallness of the whole offense comes over him. And if he live for a time among these poor but generous mountain folk, he is very likely to go forth with a new sympathy, — almost a fellow feeling for them. I believe every one in the forestry camp felt, before the sojourn in East Tennessee was over, a sort of subconscious antipathy to revenue officials; and I doubt not that every one, when he hears of captures and killings in this bit of the mountains, will be suddenly conscious that his involuntary sympathies are with the outlaws.

Stories are numerous of revenue men who met death at the hands of the moonshiners. One hears also tales of innocent strangers, shot because their urban appearance suggested the revenue man. But in all these mountains we could learn of no such occurrence. On the other hand, the instances of captures and tales of fights tended rather to show the general harmlessness of the distiller save when in local troubles he fights his fellow mountaineer.

Before making this camp on the Ocoee we had been warned to look out for Garret Heddon, whose career has been exploited in the daily papers, and who is looked upon by both officials and mountaineers as a bad man. His name first came before the criminal world when he went across into Alabama, quarreled with a negro about a boat, and throwing the black man into the river, held him there till he was dead. For this Heddon served a term in the Alabama penitentiary. Returning to Tennessee, he was twice arrested for moonshining, but each time the evidence needed to convict was wanting. Then came the deed which made him feared among the mountains. I have the story from a nephew of Heddon; also from his best friend, to whom he made a full statement. I have it, too, from an exsheriff who investigated the case. Going to the house, he was met by Heddon who, hospitable even in strenuous times, pointed his rifle at the officer and asked him to sit down to dinner. The officer accepted the invitation, and later, with the rifle still pointing in his direction, went away without attempting to make an arrest.

Garret Heddon and his brothers, Reilly and Bill, and half a dozen other mountaineers, were at work in one of the little valleys. They had spent the greater part of the day splitting shingles, while moonshine flowed freely. Half drunk, Bill Heddon became quarrelsome. He was a hard man to get along with at his best, and now he was looking for trouble in a way that promised to end disastrously. He started to quarrel with Garret’s best friend. Garret told him to stop. Bill paid no attention, but grabbed his opponent around the neck and drew his knife. The knife was not far from the man’s throat when Garret’s rifle cracked and Bill dropped dead.

Man killing in the mountains is common, but fratricide is not, and from that time on Garret Heddon was looked upon as a dangerous man. This impression went out into the settlements, and when, some weeks later, seven revenue men stole into the neighborhood to arrest Reilly Heddon for making moonshine whiskey, they were ready to shoot Garret at sight.

Gus Heddon told me the story.

“I was in the ‘still ’ house, ” said he, “and I had n’t no idee the revenues was anywhere ’round. I was stoopin’ over a barrel of mash when some one said,

‘Throw up your hands. ’ I looked ’round and there was the revenues pointin’ their guns at me. I saw they done had me, so I give up. Then I looked up and saw Silas comin’ up the trail with a bag of meal. I yelled at him to run. That made the revenues mad, and they said if I didn’t shut up they’d kill me. Silas did n’t have sense enough to run, and come right down, so they got him. Then they marched us down to Reilly’s house, and got Reilly and his brotherin-law. They had us all handcuffed out in front of the house when some one yelled that Garret was comin’. I looked up, and sure enough there did come Garret ridin’ a mule, with a Winchester across the saddle. The revenues was powerful ’fraid of Garret because since his trouble over Bill he says he never will give up, and everybody knows he means it. They thought when they saw him comin’ that he meant to kill some one. Reilly was handcuffed to one of the revenues, and the revenue was so badly scared he tried to kill Reilly with his shotgun. He shot two shoots, holdin’ the gun in his right hand. Reilly pushed the barrel away, and the shoots went into the ground. Then the revenues jumped into the house and behind the corncrib, and begun to shoot at Garret. They shot seven or eight shoots before he moved. Then he slid off his mule and laid down behind a log.

“The revenues threatened to kill us if we did n’t go out and get Garret to go away. We told ’em we could n’t do nothin’ with Garret. So we all laid there behind the house, and Garret laid behind his log with his Winchester scarin’ the revenues powerful nigh into fits. When it got too dark to see they took us and sneaked out.”

As a result of this skirmish Heddon’s name was more than ever feared. Reilly was sent to the penitentiary for one year; Gus, who had never been in court before, got merely four months in jail, while the two other men were given short terms for assisting an unlawful enterprise.

We had been warned against venturing into the Heddon settlement, but as the dime novel idea of moonshiners wore off, we were all more or less ashamed of our first fears. Dressed one day in garments that gave no opportunity for concealing weapons, and which, therefore, obviated any danger of being mistaken for a revenue official, I threw a camera across my back and started for the neighborhood. One trail, half footpath, half wagon road, led to the settlement, but to reach it I would have to go far down the river. So, following the directions of our guide, I traveled a half marked path which led first along the bank of a mountain stream, up the mountain side, and along a hard-wood covered ridge. Then crossing a valley and another hill, I saw beyond an opening in the forest. It was a strange little clearing on the hillsides. The whole might be compared to the inside of an inverted pyramid. The steep sides were cleared fields, while in the apex stood a log house and a corncrib beside a cold gushing spring, whose waters formed a rivulet, and flowed away through a cleft where one corner of the pyramid had been cut away. It was a desolate place in every sense, and in the poverty of its windowless cabin and bleak outlook I could see excuse for almost any occupation that would give a few dollars to buy clothing and ammunition.

A path led down to the cabin. Dogs barked at my approach, and a face wreathed in masses of black unkempt hair was extended fearfully from behind the door casing. Then the body appeared, and a barefoot, hungry-looking girl of eleven years stood in the doorway. Several smaller children followed.

“Will you tell me who lives here? ” I asked.

“Reilly Heddon lives here when he’s at home, " came the reply in quick accents. “But he ain’t here now. He’s in the penitentiary. He ’s my daddy.”

“Do you care if I take a picture of the house ? ”

“Mammy ain’t got no money to pay fur it. We live pretty hard since daddy got caught. There comes mammy, now. ”

A woman approached. Her feet and head were bare. She had a hoe in her hand, and came from hoeing corn on the hillside. Her hair was black, and her jet black eyes had a fierce intelligence in them. Had it not been for a haggard, worried look, the face would have been a handsome one. Like most mountain people, she was talkative, and told of her husband’s arrest, of the fight, and of the various circumstances attending his conviction. Through the story ran the characteristic mountain frankness. There was no thought of shame or disgrace in her husband’s imprisonment. It was a mere matter of course that a man who “stills ” will some time fall prey to the “revenues,” and a conviction is merely a misfortune comparable to the capture of a soldier in wartime.

Once a shade of suspicion seemed to flash across the woman’s mind. I had seen a little oven-like arrangement of stone some five feet square by four high, and thinking it might be an interesting feature of mountain life, asked what it was.

“Oh, that’s just a drier. I dry fruit in it. I tell folks hit ’s my ‘still ’ house, and some of them comes power ful nigh to believin’ hit; but hit ain’t, Hit’s just a drier my husband made before he went to the penitentiary.”

I asked the way to Garret Heddon’s, and following down the creek through the missing corner of the pyramid, I passed the place where Bill Heddon met his death, and winding with the trail to the top of a ridge, came to another little clearing set down in the prevailing woods. There, squatting beside a mountain stream, was a log cabin as old and picturesque as any in this part of Tennessee. This is the home of Garret Heddon, a man feared by revenue officials and mountaineers alike, yet loved, too, by the latter, for, as they say, he is “clever,” and will do anything in the world for a friend, a fact which was emphasized when his defense of a comrade made him a fratricide. Yet these very same men who would fight for him have a way of shaking their heads and saying that if Garret Heddon became their enemy they would move out of the country “powerful quick.”

I wanted to meet Heddon, so I climbed the fence which separates woods from clearing. Instantly three savagelooking hounds set up a baying and started toward me. At the same time a man’s haggard face appeared at a loophole in the wall.

“What d’ ye want ? ” roared a voice.

“Call off your dogs. I want to know the way to the forestry camp.”

“Follow right along that ’ere trail till you come to the river,” roared the voice again.

“I want to take a picture of your house. May I ? ”

“A what ? A picture ? ”

“Yes.”

“Do you take pictures ? ”

“Yes.”

“Will you take a picture of my little boy ? ”

“Sure! ”

“Then I reckon you ’d better come in.”

The dogs, that had stood like a firing squad awaiting orders to execute the condemned, were called back. The man with the haggard face met me at the door.

“Come right in and take a cheer. The woman ’s out in the field, but she ’ll be back after a bit to fix the boy up. Reckon you ain’t in no hurry.”

He was some six feet tall, but his shoulders stooped, and he looked less the mountain bad man than the brokendown farmer. His hair had been coal black, but plentiful white streaks were making their advent. Apparently it had not been combed for days, for it stuck out in mats and tangles from under the edges of a frayed and ragged black felt hat. His beard was short and scrubby, grizzled like his hair. His eyes were bluish gray, and when he spoke there was a look in them which I have seen in the eyes of more than one politician, —a look which says, “I know you and you know me, and you know I ’m telling things which are not true because it is part of my business to do so.” Much frayed suspenders, fastened by nails, held up a pair of threadbare black trousers. A dark calico shirt hung open in front displaying a sun-browned chest. When the man walked, it was with a decided limp, the result of wearing manacles in an Alabama chain gang.

The cabin had one room. At the end was an immense stone fireplace, and on either side of this a loophole or window some six by eight inches in area. There were no other windows than these, and there was about the whole interior a gloominess which might prove disconcerting to an official coming suddenly in from the sunny outside. A table rested against one wall, and over this was a shelf on which stood half a dozen quart bottles, some tin cans, and a few dishes. In the end opposite the fireplace were two beds. At the head of one stood a brace of repeating rifles, a Marlin and a Winchester, so placed as to be within easy reach of the sleeper. The walls were as bare as the floor save for the wings and tails of some halfdozen wild turkeys which hung from nails and pegs.

My host sat down between me and the rifles.

“Powerful glad to have you come along,” he began. “I ’ve been wantin ’ for a right smart time to have a picture of my boy, but I don’t jest like to go out to town to get it. There comes the woman. She ’ll be gettin’ dinner. Take your cheer with you and let’s go out under the trees.”

I stepped outside and sat down under an oak that stood beside the creek. Heddon followed with a chair in one hand and his Winchester in the other.

“I reckoned maybe you ’d like to see my Winchester,” said he, and the twinkle in his eyes became more distinct. “That’s the best Winchester I ever saw. I killed all them turkeys with it. The sights was n’t good when I got it, but I took it to town and had that piece of silver put on in front. That’s bright enough so I can draw down fine. Jest look at it.” He handed me the gun, but that was the farthest it got from his hand. While we talked in the shade it lay across his knees. When we sat down to dinner it stood against the wall at his right hand.

Now a haggard-faced woman came along the trail with four children at her heels. The youngest was a toddling boy of two years. This was the father’s favorite, the one whose picture was to be taken. A few minutes later a smoothfaced, good-looking young mountaineer came from the other way. This was Gus Heddon, Garret’s nephew.

“Got any dram in camp ? ” asked my host, when the children had gone by. The term was new and I hesitated.

“Drink, I mean! ”

“No. There does not seem to be any one that sells it around here.”

“Maybe I’ve got a little in the house. I don’t know. Reckon maybe there’s enough for a drink.”

He limped to the house and brought out a quart bottle.

“That ’s good whiskey,” I said.

“Maybe I can get some more.” Now the eyes sparkled and shone.

“Here, Gus,” he called. “Jump on the mule and see if you can’t find us some more dram. Here’s some money to pay for it, ” and drawing a purse from his pocket he offered the young man a silver coin. All this time his eyes were saying, “This is for appearances, but of course we both understand.”

“Tell you what,” he said, turning to me. “If you all can’t get nothin’ to drink, maybe I can help you. Now, I don’t have nothin’ to do with whiskey myself, except to drink it up, but I guess maybe I can help you get a little. I ’ll tell you what I ’ll do. I ’ll come over to camp some night a little late.”

Not wanting to outstay my welcome I asked if the boy might not be ready for his picture.

“Reckon we ’ll have somethin’ to eat before you take that,” said he. “We live pretty hard up here, but I reckon you can eat one meal of our grub if we live on it all the time. ”

We had for dinner hot corn bread, bacon, fresh pork, coffee, young onions, and black honey. The honey was from a bee tree, the pork the flesh of a wild mountain hog, fattened, I doubt not, on refuse from the “still.” There was but one table knife. That came to me. Garret and Gus ate with their jackknives, and when my host finished eating, he wiped each side of the blade on his trousers leg, and then closing it put it back into his pocket. Gus and I had saucers for our coffee cups, but the rest had none. There was no sugar for the coffee and no butter for the bread.

The conversation turned to guns.

“Reckon you’ve seen these rifles that shoot steel bullets ? ” asked Garret. “Well, I ain’t got no use for them. Had seven men shootin’ at me with ’em one day ’bout a year ago, and they never touched me.”

“How was that? ” I asked.

Then followed an account of the fight at Reilly’s house. Garret said he had been riding past on his way to the river, when, before he saw them, the men began shooting at him. He told the story much as Gus had told it. There was no bragging of his own part in the affair, and the whole tone of the narrative smacked more of a great joke on the “ revenues ” than of a feat creditable to himself.

“Why didn’t you shoot back?” I ventured.

“Reckoned it wasn’t much use,” said he. “I couldn’t see ’em because they got behind the house and corncrib. And then I knew that if I went to shootin’ for luck they ’d kill the boys they had handcuffed. So I jest laid behind the log with my Winchester and kep’ ’em scared.

“Reilly ain’t havin’ such a powerful hard time in the penitentiary. He can’t eat what they give ’em there, so they let him buy whatever grub he wants. We send him money to do it. I send him five dollars a month, and the old man sends him a little. He says he weighs thirty pounds more than he did when he went. But he did hate powerful to go.”

Dinner over, the four children were taken out to be photographed. There was a pretty little girl of ten, two quiet boys of six and eight, besides the two year old favorite. This spoiled child refused to have his face washed.

“Let him come without washin’,” said the father. “You see we can’t make him do anything. He ’s the worst little skunk you ever saw. When he gets mad at anybody he ’ll take a knife and say, ‘ I ’ll cut your neck.’ I lick all of ’em but him. I want to see how he ’ll come out and grow up without lickin’.”

Why is this boy the favored child of his father? May there not be in the baby that takes a knife and, toddling across the floor, threatens to cut his sister’s “neck ” the same wild instinct which led the father to shoot his brother and drown his enemy ? Perhaps this common instinct is the subtle link of sympathy between father and boy. There are strange things in human nature. One of these is the development of a man who really does what the rest of us would like to do in our worst moments, but which we do not, a man whose finger is steady on the trigger when a touch means murder, and whose unimaginative eye does not see the awful consequences in time to check the criminal impulse. Garret Heddon is such a man. In his neighborhood are other men who have killed their fellows, but they fear to quarrel with Garret Heddon because, as they all say, “he ’ll do jest what he says he ’ll do, no matter if he has to kill his whole family.”

Pathetic in the extreme is the outlook for these children. They must spend their childhood in the midst of alarms. Their father’s hand is ever near a rifle. His eye is always on the trail. Some day he will walk out of the cabin never to come back. If he is the man his neighbors believe, he will die with a smoking rifle in his hands and the lust of battle in his heart.

But, however he may die, his children grow up to carry weapons and distill forbidden liquors. The gospel of their people teaches them to hate the revenue man as their natural enemy. There will come years of work in hidden mountain distilleries, arrests, prison walls, battles, murders, and who can tell what else? Yet through it all they will be following the precepts that came to them in the cradle, — living the best life they know.

My host said he would show me the way to camp, but before we started he took out his pocketbook and asked how much he should pay me for the pictures. When I declined to accept money a pained look came into his eyes, and he said, —

“I want to pay. We live pretty hard up here, but we can pay what we owe. ”

I explained that since I was not taking pictures for money I would no sooner allow him to pay for a photograph of his children than he would allow me to pay for my dinner.

Now he was satisfied, and going into the house, brought out the beard of a wild turkey.

“Reckon you don’t have many turkeys like that up North. That beard came off of the biggest gobbler I ever saw. Won’t you take it along? ”

I was pleased to accept the gift, for the beard would make a pretty trophy for the wall of a far-off den. Then I asked if I might not take my host’s picture.

“No,” said he with emphasis. “I don’t let anybody take mine.” For reasons which seemed sufficient I did not insist.

Then he spoke a few words with Gus. The latter went into the house, and from a bin in the loft took down a sack of corn. This he shouldered, and then started down a side trail toward a mill, — a little water mill with a capacity of some dozen bushels a day. I could mentally follow that corn from the drying place in the loft to the mill, and thence to the distillery. Now Garret threw the Winchester over his shoulder and said, —

“I ’ll show you the way to camp.”

We went down the stream, climbed the ridge, and walked to a point where our path branched.

“That trail will take you to camp,” he said. “Reckon I ’d better not go any farther. Remember, I ’m comin’ over to camp one of these nights a little late.”

When I looked back from the bottom of the ridge he still stood leaning on his rifle at the forks of the trail.

Leonidas Hubbard, Jr.