第47章

"The ounce o' lead that done that piece o' work," said Abe, "was better'n a horseload o' gold.A few more used with as good judgement would bring the rebellion to an end in short meter.""Yes," answered Kent, "he's one of the Chivalry; one of the main props; one of the fellows who are trying to bring about Secession in the hopes of being Dukes, or Marquises, or Earls--High Keepers of His Majesty Jeff.Davis's China Spittoons, or Grand Custodians of the Prince of South Carolina's Plug Tobacco, when the Southern Confederacy gains its independence.""Well," said Abe, raising the Rebel's hat on the point of his bayonet, and laying it across the corpse's face, "he's changed bosses much sooner than he expected.Jeff.Davis's blood-relation, who presides over the Sulphur Confederacy, will put on his shoulder-straps with a branding-iron, and serve up his rations for him red-hot.I only wish he had more going along with him to keep him company.""Save your feelings against the Secessionists for expression with your gun in the next fight, and come along.I'm getting thirstier every minute."They walked on rapidly for a couple or three hours, without finding much encouragement in their search.The rugged mountain sides were but thinly peopled, and the few poor cabins they saw in the distance they decided were not promising enough of results to justify clambering up to where they were perched.At last, almost wearied out, they halted for a little while to rest and scan the interminable waves of summits that stretched out before them.

"Ah," said Kent, rising suddenly, "let's go on.Hope dawns at last.I smell apples.That's a perfume my nose never mistakes.

We're near an orchard.Where there's an orchard there's likely to be a pretty good style of house, and where in Kentucky there's a good style of house there's a likelihood of being plenty of good whisky.Now there's a train of brilliant inductive reasoning that shows that nature intended me to be a great natural philosopher.

Come on, Abe."

The smell of apples certainly did grow more palpable as they proceeded, and Abe muttered that even if they did not get any thing to drink they would probably get enough of the fruit to make an agreeable change in their diet.

They emerged from the woods into a cleared space where a number of roads and paths focused.To the right was a little opening in the mountain-side, hardly large enough to be called a valley, but designated in the language of the region as a "hollow." At its mouth stood a couple of diminutive log-cabins, of the rudest possible construction, and roofed with "clapboards" held in place by stones and poles.A long string of wooden troughs, supported upon props, conducted the water from an elevated spring to the roof of one of the cabins, and the water could be seen issuing again from underneath the logs at one side of the cabin.A very primitive cider mill--two wooden rollers fastened in a frame, and moved by a long sapling sweep attached to one of them--stood near.The ground was covered with rotting apple pomace, from which arose the odor that had reached Kent's nose.

"Hello!" said the latter, "here's luck; here's richness! We've succeeded beyond our most sanguine expectations, as the boy said, who ran away from school to catch minnows, and caught a ducking, a bad cold and a licking.We've struck an apple-jack distillery, and as they've been at work lately, they've probably left enough somewhere to give us all that we can drink."Abe's sigh was eloquent of a disbelief that such a consummation was possible, short of the blissful hereafter.

Inside of one of the cabins they found a still about the size of a tub, with a worm of similar small proportions, kept cook by the flow from the spring.Some tubs and barrels, in which the lees of cider were rapidly turning to vinegar, gave off a fuity, spirituous odor, but for awhile their eager search did not discover a bit of the distilled product.At last, Kent, with a cry of triumph, dragged from a place of cunning concealment a small jug, stopped with a corncob.He smelled it hungrily.

"Yes, here is some.It's apple-jack, not a week old, and as rank as a Major General.Phew! I can smell every stick they burned to distil it.Abe, watch me closely while I drink.I magnanimously take the lead, out of consideration for you.If I ain't dead in five minutes, you try it.""O, stop monkeying, and drink," was the impatient answer.

Kent put the jug to his mouth and took a long draught."Shade of old Father Noah, the first drunkard," he said as he wiped the tears from his eyes, "another swig like that would pull out all the rivets in my internal pipings.Heavens! it went down like pulling a cat out of a hole by the tail.I'm afraid to wipe my mouth, lest my breath burn a hole in the sleeve of my blouse."Three-quarters of an hour later, the spirits in the jug were lowering and those in the men rising with unequal rapidity.Under the influence of the fiery stimulant, Kent's sanguine temperament boiled and bubbled over.Imagination painted the present and future in hues of dazzling radiance.Everything was as delightful as it could be now, and would become more charming as time rolled on.But with Abe Bolton drinking tended to develop moroseness into savagery.