The Ghosts of Poca River

THE June twilight steals softly over the dome of the jail house and envelops it in the shadow of the elm trees. Through the barred windows come the smell of the soil and the strange, mystifying voices of the farm and the forest. In the other cell block a jailbird is singing: —

‘Ghosts?’ says the prisoner they bring in that afternoon. ‘What does he know about ghosts?’

‘Ask him,’ says old Sam Johnson. ‘What do you know about them?’

‘Plenty,’ says the new guy. ‘Listen.’

I

If you boys don’t know me, it’s a cinch you ain’t posted on the whiskey traffic. Phil Allen’s the name — TwoQuart Phil from the head of Poca River. There ain’t no white moonshine at my place. No, sir! I don’t sell a drop of raw liquor in my life. All the raw whiskey at my place is buried in charred barrels for at least a year before it goes on the market.

As a distiller I don’t do bad by myself, neither. My stuff takes the top price, and I’m able to grease the palms of the law. The officers of this county, except the prosecutor, is special clients of mine, and my reputation spreads till I get customers among the best families of Charleston. A prominent man once tells me I’m an asset to any community.

I tell you fellers these things to show you I would n’t be in the jail house to-day if it wasn’t for some mighty strange occurrences. For ten years I keep open house and never once run into the law, except in the matter of tribute, and my bein’ here shows you that things can happen in this life a man don’t dream of.

It happens this way. I live at the head of Branch Lick on the Left-Hand Fork of Poca River. There ain’t no road across the mountain there, and the only way you can get to my house by automobile is to come up the valley road. I build a good dirt road up the valley to my place and make sure the cars will have to turn there, for I use the mountains above in my business. Every spring and summer I run off four and five thousand gallons of moonshine that I bury in the rocks and the sink holes for next year’s business. I know where every gallon will go before I make it, and all I have to do is to stick to business and prosper.

Things go on without a hitch, anyway, until just recently. But about two months ago I get wind that; some of the brethren has taken the matter up with the state police, and that, ain’t so good. These state cops, not bein’ in politics, is bad hombres to deal with. One of my friends sounds them out on the annual tribute, but they ain’t interested.

I think the situation over and figure I will cover up my tracks for a while till the storm blows over. This thing catches me when I’ve bought thirty sacks of cracked corn for a new run and ain’t well prepared to get them out of the way, but there’s a special cellar under the house for the still and the whiskey barrels that the grass don’t cover. I don’t get none of the stuff to the house, though, because all of a sudden I make a discovery.

Maybe you fellers have heard that durin’ the Civil War, at the time the battle is fought over at the mouth of Scary Creek, some of the Union soldiers camp at the head of Branch Lick Holler. My dad says they found a big cave up there and camped in it. This was just before the battle. I hear about this cave all my life, but I don’t see anybody that knows where it is and I go up and down the sides of them mountains for ten years without seein’ it. A cave like that is what I need in my business, but I decide somethin’ is wrong with the story.

Well, when I’m gettin’ ready to move the still down to the house, my boy says somebody is cornin’ up the road in a car, and I move out to the edge of a cliff to see who it is. It’s a customer instead of the cops, but I keep him waitin’ quite a spell while I pull myself out of a bad sink hole. This is a funny little sink hole under the edge of the cliff, and it’s covered up with wild grapevines and runnin’ ivy. I see it hundreds of times, but never give it no special attention. But now my foot slips, and just like that I pop eight feet out of the daylight.

My flash light is still workin’ when I hit bottom, and I see I sure enough discover somethin’. Lyin’ on the rock floor where I fail is a wooden ladder long enough to reach to the top. Back of that is a camp cookstove and a pile of cookin’ utensils, besides several pieces of blue uniforms and half a dozen rusty muskets. That’s enough to show me this is the cave of the Union soldiers.

Before puttin’ up the ladder I take a squint at the inside of the cave and find out why the soldiers camp there. The floor of the cave is sandy and dry as you please, but there is a fine stream of spring water close by and back of the cookstove I see a six-foot vein of coal. Nature sure makes it handy in that place, and I see the advantage of settin’ up a still with plenty of fuel and water and protection from the weather.

That gives me another idee. I put up the ladder and crawl up the hole and take another look at the thing from above. The path up there is solid rock and don’t leave a footprint. The vines across the top of the hole cover it up so nobody but an old-timer in these hills can tell there’s a sink hole there, and a man can lift the vines up and put them back without turnin’ a leaf the wrong way. By squeezin’ and chippin’ the sides a little I see I can get all my stuff down there and have the finest hidin’ place in the county.

II

As soon as I attend to this customer that causes me to find the place, I go back up to the cliff. My two boys help me put down the still, and the cracked corn, and the whiskey barrels, and then we seal her up again tight as a brew cap. This gives me a big laugh, and I say, ‘Well, boys, let them bring on the whole force if they want to. It will be a Black Thursday in this holler when they get Phil Allen with the goods on.’

They come on all right the very next day and give my place a thorough shakedown. There is three of them in a big automobile — a big guy and two little ones.

‘We hear you keep right smart stuff hid around here,’says the big guy, ‘and we aim to find it.’

‘Go ahead,’ says I. ‘My life is like a book open in the middle, so I’ve got a sneakin’ suspicion somebody is lyin’ about me. But convince yourselves. Anything you find around here you are welcome to with my blessin’.'

‘That’s sure kind of you,’ he comes back, ‘and we’ll take you at your word with interest. ’Pears like this is a nice road you got and it don’t go nowheres but here. That’s so’s your friends can come to see you?’

‘I’m a man,’ says I, ‘with many friends and relatives, and I like them to visit me.’

‘But you don’t expect none of them to-day.’

‘No,’ says I, ‘I don’t expect none of them to-day.’

He laughs then, because he knows I’ve sent out the high sign; and they start givin’ the place the once-over.

Well, them cops spend the whole day wanderin’ over my premises, and they find plenty of suspicious circumstances, but no evidence. I figure they will give it up as a bad job when night comes, but they stay right out in them hills and the next mornin’ they’re still at it. That afternoon they get in the car and go to Charleston, and the next mornin’ they are back again.

I soon see that for pure cussedness they has the world beat and then some. Without say in’ a word they take to comin’ into my holler through the hills, thinkin’ they’ll be able to catch me unawares, and they pretty near do it the first time, for I think they are gone for good, and some of my customers is gettin’ thirsty. I just happen to notice a few leaves kicked out of place, which don’t look right, and I spy around a little and find two of these birds sittin’ almost on top of a barrel that the grass has growed over.

They mean business, and not maybe, and I tell my customers they will have to wet their whistles with such rotten stuff as they can pick up elsewhere, for I’m a man that looks out for himself first, last, and always.

Naturally, I figure this has got to end sometime, for it ain’t right for the state to pay two men to watch one of its citizens day after day and get no results. But these dicks hears I’m a big shot among the bootleggers from some of my friends and neighbors, and they hang on and on. Every now and then I will take a gun and go out in the woods to get a turkey or a pheasant, and they’ll be right on my trail. Once I go up to them and say, ‘Well, boys, how’s it goin’? Havin’ any luck?’

‘We’ll attend to the luck,’ they come back, ‘and we don’t change our minds none, neither.’

That goes on for over a month, and in the meantime I lose money. The spring is gettin’ pretty well along and here am I with my hands tied and not a chance of saltin’ down a few barrels for the year after. Whiskey runnin’ is like any other business, A man has to stay on the job, and havin’ these birds on my trail all the time puts a crimp in my style.

Maybe you guys think I’m a fool not to handle the situation in a different, manner, but gettin’ rid of people that way ain’t in my line. There’s many a cop and prohibition man, I know, goes out in these hills and don’t come back no more, but I know, too, there’s many a man gets his neck stretched for it. Anyhow I ain’t bloodthirsty. ‘Live and let live’ is my motto.

It does warm me up, though, the way they cut into my profits, and I do some right tall thinkin’ on that subject. One day I go out turkey huntin’ again and walk around the ledge where the cave is to take another look at the hidin’ place. The vines still cover it up neat as a race-horse blanket, and I see they ain’t gettin’ nothin’ on me. Standin’ there lookin’ at the hole I get to thinkin’ how I can use that cave to do my regular work in a whole lot better than the place I use now, provided she draws right. That’s somethin’ I forget when I’m down there before. I don’t think to find out where the smoke goes. The soldiers used that place to cook and sleep in, and that don’t sound like the smoke will pull down and come out the hole where the ladder is. If that cave ventilates so the smoke goes somewhere else, I begin to sec where I can put one over on them cops they don’t dream about.

III

This idee sticks in my dome till I’m sure they are gone to Charleston for a day, and then I get down in the hole and build me a fire. Sure enough, she don’t draw a whiff through the ladder hole, but I can’t tell where the smoke goes to. I go back outside to find out about this, and then I get a real surprise. She don’t draw nowheres that I can see, and I’m satisfied she don’t draw on my premises or anywheres close to them. It’s still a mystery to me where the smoke in that cave goes to, but knowin’ what I do now about its size, I figure the smoke gets lost in the holes somewhere. I don’t know where, but I’m tellin’ you this to show you I don’t take no chances.

When I find this out I give me a big horse laugh, and says I, ‘Friends and fellow citizens, things are about to happen along the Potomac. This is a better break than I even hope for.’

So the next mornin’, after notin’ that my love birds is back again, I take a shotgun unconcerned-like and start up the mountain. I don’t need a brass horn to tell me they are on my tracks as usual, but that don’t worry me. I cater-comer up the mountain till I get above where the cave is, and then come down to the path under the cliff. They are on the other side of the ledge from me there and can’t see me, and quicker than a nigger horsefly I pop up the vines and drop out of sight.

What they say when they come around there and find me gone ain’t a matter of record.

The first thing I do is to get the mash barrels in shape, and then I fill them with cracked corn and put in the water. I don’t have to tell you fellers I don’t need a fire that day, for the mash has got to set till she’s right. It takes me all day to get the barrels fixed, and I wait around for a long time after dark, not takin’ no chances. But along about ten o’clock I sneak out and find everything O.K.

I’m a man that’s mighty particular about havin’ things right, so the next day I figure I better see how the mash is workin’. I get my gun and start back up the mountain again same as I do the day before, but I don’t get halfway up till these hellhounds is right with me, and they sound mighty friendly. They give me a heavy onceover for ropes, or pulleys, or somethin’, and they say, ‘How’s the turkeys?’

‘Fine,’ says I. ‘I got two yesterday.’

‘Yeah?’ says they. ‘That’s certainly surprisin’. We did n’t hear the shots, so we suppose you kill them with a bow and arrow.’

It ain’t no use arguin’ about the turkeys, so I say, ‘You boys don’t seem to be havin’ much luck up here. Of course I don’t know what you hang around for, and you don’t come to me for help, but I suppose that’s your business. I do want you to know, though, that my heart’s with you, and if there’s anything I can do to aid you in whatever it is you’re lookin’ for, why, I’ll be glad to do it.’

‘We understand that,’ they say, ‘and we appreciate your generous attitude. But it so happens there ain’t nothin’ we want right now only to go along with you on this turkey hunt. We pine to see some of these fine turkeys you get so easy.’

I tell the boys that’s O.K. by me, and I lead them over some mighty rough country lookin’ for turkeys. But we don’t find any. Seems like the turkeys just naturally take a vacation now and then. Finally they tumble to the idea that I ain’t goin’ to point out where the stuff is, and, bein’ well-nigh wore out from climbin’ the cliffs and the mountains, they leave me. I work my way back to the cave till I get them in the same place they are the day before, and then I take a look at the mash barrels.

IV

This time I know they get sore, for when I come out the next mornin’ somethin’ is wrong, and it don’t take me long to spot it. I can smell a bloodhound as far as he can smell me, and these is bloodhounds.

In my time I learn to have all due respect for bloodhounds, and I get to thinkin’ the cops win this Derby. Then I remember somethin’ else. That ledge, where the cave is, is a round ledge, and by climbin’ over the back of it a man will walk out a circle.

I get closer to the ledge all the time while I think about this, and when I get there I do somethin’ that maybe is mighty foolish. First, I walk around the path under the ledge, keepin’ close to the outer edge near the hole, and go past the hole to the other end of the ledge. Then I climb the back of the ledge and come around on the other side, makin’ a complete circle. By this time I figure they won’t be in no hurry to catch up with me, on account of the bloodhounds, and the second time I come around I pull up the vines and drop inside.

Down at the bottom of the hole I wait for them, and pretty soon, sure enough, here they come with the bloodhounds bayin’ like two-year-old steers, and right around the ledge they go on a hot trail. In a couple of minutes back they come again the same way, but this time I come close to a nervous prostration because one of them hounds comes within an ace of failin’ down the hole. I don’t think of this before, for I travel that way for ten years and only fall in this hole once, but I see now I put myself in a tough spot. With all that runnin’ around up there, one of the dogs or one of the cops is liable to fall in on top of me. This thought puts a crimp in my merriment and I hunt a dark spot back in the cave. But none of them fall down, and pretty soon I go back to the hole and can’t hear them.

I find the mash is now right and it’s time for me to get the fire workin’ and the still ready. So I build me a good fire and fill up the tank with water and am gettin’ ready to empty the mash barrels when I hear a strange noise. It ain’t a bloodhound and it ain’t a man coinin’ down the ladder hole. It sounds like somebody is diggin’ coal.

I’m back in this cave so far I can’t hear anything outside, and I begin to think these cops has spotted my smoke from somewhere I don’t know about and are tryin’ to dig their way into the cave. So I scoot down to the hole and climb the ladder and find the cops sittin’ under a tree not fifty feet away. The dogs is tired and mighty puzzled. I duck quick to keep them from spottin’ me and go back to the still. Pretty soon I hear the sound again. Click, click, click — like the noise of a coal pick.

This time I know that sound don’t come from the outside, but it don’t comfort me none to know it comes from the inside. I have n’t gone to the back of the cave before this, but it’s plain to me somebody is right there in that cave with me and is diggin’ coal hot and heavy.

Well, I ain’t more superstitious than the next man, for all the ghosts I see has two legs and they are right good at usin’ them, but nevertheless that diggin’ gripes me. I know there ain’t nobody in Branch Lick Holler but me and my boys knows about this cave, and I know my boys ain’t diggin’ coal there in back. In the first place they are too lazy, and in the second place they are both in Charleston.

‘This don’t sound right at all,’ says I to myself, thinkin’ it over, ‘and I don’t hardly know what to make of it. But whoever or whatever it is, it don’t do nothin’ but dig coal. I’m in a bad spot and I’ll have to find out about it.’

V

So I get me my coal pick and the flash light and, not wantin’ to give myself away, start back in the dark to where I think the sound is comin’ from. It’s so dark you can’t see your hand before you, so I go easy to keep from runnin’ into somethin’. More than anything else I’m afraid I will fall in a water hole and drown; but the bottom is flat and dry and I don’t fall in no holes. Pretty soon I come to a wall and make a turn and see that whoever it is he can’t see my fire, because I can’t see it myself.

All the time I can hear that click, click, click, like a pick fallin’, but it don’t get nearer. Instead, the farther I go the more the sound seems to go away from me, and I well-nigh strain my ears try in’ to keep up with it.

I keep goin’ and goin’, bumpin’ my head into walls and scratchin’ my hands and face on the hangin’ rocks, for hours and hours. By my figurin’ I’m miles away from the mouth of the cave and still followin’ the noise of the coal pick. Then all of a sudden I don’t hear it no more. That puzzles me, and I’m wonderin’ if I can find my way back again, and flashin’ the light around to see the way, when it starts in again close to me. The light tells me there’s a wall between me and it, so I pick my way down to a comer and turn it easy.

You won’t believe what I tell you I see there, for I can’t hardly believe it myself, but it’s the God’s truth just the same. Away off to the front I see a fire that goes high in the air, and in the middle of the fire is a kettle bigger than a still boiler. Around this kettle I see the outlines of three old women.

Tryin’ to figure out what these old gals are up to, I hunt me a dark place and watch their shadows on a flat wall. The fire brightens up every now and then and I see their tall hats and their hands movin’ like they are sayin’ a prayer of some kind, but that don’t tell me nothin’. I can still hear the noise of that coal pick too, and another funny, little gurglin’ noise that sounds like a baby. A baby several miles underground in a place that ain’t known to nobody don’t sound right to me.

All of a sudden the fire shoots up bright as day, and I get a look at the old women. They are all mighty old and toothless-lookin’, and it seems like they get excited. When the fire bobs up they start hollerin’ and screamin’ and duckin’ tins way and that way. One of them kind of goes down headfirst somewheres, and when she comes up, as sure as there’s a God in Heaven, she holds over her head a little baby!

This is too much for me and I figure I’ll do somethin’. I ain’t got no weapon but the coal pick, but I start forward with that. Then I don’t know what happens. Just like that, there is a sound like you set off a stick of dynamite. The fire goes out quick as a whistle. Everything is black as midnight, but I hear screams and runnin’ feet. Some of them runnin’ feet sounds like they are comin’ in my direction, and I don’t stop to make no inquiries. My legs gets up and moves. Where they move to I don’t know and I don’t much care, but after I pretty near brain myself on the walls about a hundred times I come back all of a sudden to my own fire and the mash barrels. Even then I don’t stop for formalities. There is a ladder hole in front of me to the daylight and I run for it. Of course the cops are still waitin’ outside, but I am mighty glad to see them, and I throw my arms around their necks and say, ‘For God’s sake, boys, take me somewheres! I don’t care where, but take me away from here!’

VI

‘And now,’ says Phil Allen, ‘maybe you see why I ask what that feller knows about ghosts. Rememberin’ that what I tell you is the God’s truth and I’m in the jail house now on account of it, what do you make of it?’

’I don’t claim to be no judge in such matters,’ says Sam Johnson, ‘but since you ask my opinion I’m bound to give it. There’s only one of two solutions I can see. Either you’re nutty, or else there is actually ghosts or witches or some other animals on Poca River. Which is it?’

‘Personally,’ says Phil Allen, ‘I incline to view Number One. The cops go in there afterward, you see, and find a still blowed up. Then I remember that Allie Briscoe lives straight across the mountain from me with his wife and baby and his three grandmothers. It’s just puttin’ three and one together to figure out that the grandmothers look out for his still and tend the baby at the same time.’