dripping
blood from head to foot.

This tragedy had an almost comic sequel. After all danger had passed, a
sheriff appeared on the scene, who placed, not the mob-leader, but the
Federal officer under arrest. Harkins left a guard over the three men
whom he had shot, and submitted to arrest, but demanded that he be taken
to the farmhouse where he had left his horse. This the sheriff actually
refused to permit, although Harkins was evidently past all possibility
of continuing far afoot. Disgusted at such imbecility, the deputy
stalked away from the sheriff, leaving the latter with his mouth open,
and utterly obsessed.

A short distance up the road, Harkins met a countryman mounted on a
sorry old mule. "Loan me that mule for half an hour," he requested; "you
see, I can walk no further." But the fellow, scared out of his wits by
the spectacle of a man in such desperate plight, refused to accommodate
him.

"Get down off that mule, or I'll break your neck!"

The mule changed riders.

When the story was finished, I asked Mr. Harkins if it was true, as the
reading public generally believes, that moonshiners prefer death to
capture. "Do they shoot a revenue officer at sight?"

The answer was terse:

"They used to shoot; nowadays they run."

* * * * *

We have come to the time when our Government began in dead earnest to
fight the moonshiners and endeavor to suppress their traffic. It was in
1877. To give a fair picture, from the official standpoint, of the state
of affairs at that time, I will quote from the report of the
Commissioner of Internal Revenue for the year 1877-78:

"It is with extreme regret," he said, "I find it my duty to report the
great difficulties that have been and still are encountered in many of
the Southern States in the enforcement of the laws. In the mountain
regions of West Virginia, Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina,
Georgia and Alabama, and in some portions of Missouri, Arkansas and
Texas, the illicit manufacture of spirits has been carried on for a
number of years, and I am satisfied that the annual loss to the
Government from this source has been very nearly, if not quite, equal to
the annual appropriation for the collection of the internal revenue tax
throughout the whole country. In the regions of country named there are
known to exist about 5,000 copper stills, many of which at certain times
are lawfully used in the production of brandy from a