THE MOONSHINER'S WIFE.

Evening Post, Volume XLVII, Issue 88, 14 April 1894, Page 2 (Supplement)

THE MOONSHINER'S WIFE.

At midnight there came a sudden knocking at the door of the mountaineer's cabin. " Who's thar ?" " Open the door, Bush ! I have five men with me, and it's no use for you to resist. If we have to fire into the windows some of your family will be killed." "I'll come out. What ails yo' all, anyway?" "It's for moonshining, Bush." "Huh! I'm not skeart of that. Yo' all would a-showed more sense to come by daylight. Keub Bush han't been a-hidin 1 from nobody." A deputy United States marshal and posse on the one side, and the owner of a 20 acre farm on the other. There's a still hidden away jn some gorse on the mountain, but the marshal's men have spent days and days in a vain search. Some one has given information that Heub Bush is a moonshiner, however, and he is to be carried off to gaol in hope that a case may be worked up against him. In tea minutes the mountaineer is ready to go with the posse. He botrays neither indignation nor surprise. . His wife has few questions to ask and no tears to shed. His three children have been aroused from sleep, but they rub their eyep, and stare blankly at the officers, and utter no word. " Who all did it, Reub?" queries the wife, in a whisper. "Dan Meachem, I reckon," he replies. " Him went to town to-day on his mewl. Him's jest that onery." They handcuff him and hurry him away. The children drop back on their pillows and fall asleep again, and the woman blows out the oandle and seeks her bed. Dan Meachem is a constable at the cross-roads hamlet, three miles away. The woman could recall two or three other cases in which he was believed to be guilty of giving information, and as her heart hardened, she said aloud : — " If they all let Eeub go it will be all right, but if they put him in prison Dan Meachem shall die." There was no more thinking, or wondering, or planning. 'She had said she would do thus and she would. Her resolution was unchangeable. She hoped her husband would return that day, but he did not. Days passed, and at the end of a week a j neighbour told her that the GovernI ment had a case against Eeub, anc I would hold him for trial. She did ! not fling herself down and weep. , Her eyes were not even moist as she , turned to her children and said :—: — j {i Children, yo'r pop's gwine ter , be shet up in gaol for a right smart ; while, and it's no use to look for him." " What's gaol ?" asked one, in a dreamy way. " Place fur pore folks who try to make a livin'. Scatter off to bed now, 'cause yo'r mam wants to think." She sat down in front of the log fire with her elbow on her knee and her chin on her hand until they were fast asleep. Then she rose, and reached down the long-barrelled rifle from its resting-place on the deer horns. It was loaded. She drew the charge, wiped the barrel clean, and reloaded. Her face had worn an expression of sadness as she sat looking into the fire. She had no sooner taken down the rifle than a dangerous gleam came to her eyes, and she shut her teeth so hard that her breathing was laboured. " They all ar* gwine to hang to Keub," she said, as she replaced the gun, " and to-morror I'll ambush I Dan Meachem." That settled it. She was abed and asleep 20 minutes later. In the morning she would shoot the' man who betrayed her husband to the officers. Why not ? An eye for an eye had always been her maxim. Of course she would shoot him. He no doubt expected her to do so. She nevor slept more soundly than on this night. After breakfast next morning she Baid to her children :—: — " Mam's gwine to the crossroads. Yo' all kin keep the cabin while I'm gone." Dan Meachem was hoeing corn in a field half a mile from his house. At 10 o'clock, as he reached the west end of a row and leaned on his hoe to rest for a moment, a tongue of

flame darted out of the bushes, a rifle cracked, and the man fell back dead, shot through the heart.' '•I said I would, and I hey," whispered Reub Bush's wife as she stood up and looked over the hazel Pushes at the man ljing on his hack three rods away. " I Jan was onery. Him give Keub up Him deserved it." At noon she wnß at home with her children. '1 hey were not observing children, or they would have noticed her pale face and compressed lips. She had work to do, but she laid it aside and sat down on the doorstep with her pipe. She had shot a man. She was waiting for men to come and arrest her for the crime. She had been seen on the highway with the rifle on her shoulder, and no doubt she would at once be suspected. Very well, let them come. An hour before sunset an officer drove up. " Howdy, Mrs Bush ? " " Howdy, Tom ?" " Got to go with me for shootin' Dan Meachem." " Yaas." She put on her sunbonnet, refilled and lighted her pipe, and was ready. The children betrayed no curiosity — asked no questions. As she followed the officer out to the waggon she said: — " Yo' all shet up the cabin an' go over to Uncle Jim's. They all is swine to hang yo'r mam fur shootin' Dan Meachem." She climbed over the wheel (to a seat on the waggon and was driven away, never once glancing backward—not a word to the man who was driving her to her death. — Chicago Times.