er, a boy about
fifteen, who happened to be squirrel-hunting, and he stepped into the
road to get a good view of them. He was well grown for his age, and his
single-barrelled shot-gun looked like a rifle. The revenue men halted
at once. They suspected an ambuscade. Experience had taught them that
the Moonshiners would fight when the necessity arose, and they held a
council of war. The great gawky boy, with the curiosity of youth and
ignorance combined, stood in the road and watched them. When they
proceeded toward him in a compact body, he passed on across the road.
Hearing a command to halt, he broke into a run, and endeavoured to make
his way across a small clearing that bordered the road. Several of the
deputies fired their guns in the air, but one, more reckless than the
rest, aimed directly at the fugitive, and Ab Bonner fell, shot through
and through.

Viewed in its relations to all the unfortunate events that have marked
the efforts of the Government officials to deal with the violators of
the revenue laws from a political point of view, the shooting of this
ignorant boy was insignificant enough. But it was important to Hog
Mountain. For a moment the deputy-marshals were stunned and horrified
at the result of their thoughtlessness. Then they dismounted and bore
the boy to the roadside again and placed him under the shade of a tree.
His blood shone upon the leaves, and his sallow, shrunken face told a
pitiful tale of terror, pain, and death.

The deputy-marshals mounted their horses and rode steadily and swiftly
down the mountain, and by nightfall they were far away. But there was
no need of any special haste. The winds that stirred the trees could
carry no messages. The crows flying over, though they made a great
outcry, could tell no tales. Once the boy raised his hand and cried
"Mammy!" but there was no one to hear him. And though ten thousand ears
should listen, the keenest could hear him no more He became a part of
the silence--the awful, mysterious silence--that sits upon the hills
and shrouds the mountains.

This incident in the tumultuous experience of Hog Mountain--the killing
of Ab Bonner was merely an incident--had a decisive effect upon the
movements of ex-Deputy Woodward. When Jake Cohen succeeded in turning
the revenue officials back, the mountaineers made themselves easy for
the day and night, and next morning prepared to go to their homes. Some
of them lived on one side of Hog Mountain, and some