T

HE grizzled innkeeper in the little village just south of "the line" tamped his pipe with a eathery forefinger and glanced at the clock as a heavy truck flashed under the lights outside and vanished down the glistening road.

"That'll be Jake Ranett," he observed, meditatively. "He's a mite head of time to-night. Mostly there's couple of other runners gits through fust. Wonder if he's gittin' it somewheres else for a spell. He's been sayin' he needed a change of luck. Me, I allow what he needs to change is his brains. He's had all the luck one feller is enitled to, seems as though.

"Jake, he's been rich and poor three four times these last two years. He nakes a-plenty, like all o' the runners, out I allow there's something about this booze money makes it hard to hold onto. Jake, he spread his every which way-rolled the bones, played the hosses, tried to buck the market, oesides living like J. P. Morgan. Some fellers says he's lost half a million, though most like that's too high. But it's been a heap, all right. Same with most of 'em. This town would be rich if they'd hold onto it, them that don't git killed.

"Oh, yes, they's been a passel of these boys killed-three right here in the last ten months. One of 'em wasn't rightly in the booze business at all. That was another piece of Jake's luck, too, him bein' the feller that ought rightly to have got it.

"Why, yes, everybody knows it, so's they's no reason I shouldn't tell you. They's nothin' secret"-the fire hissed as he spat to emphasize the last word -"about this booze business up here. Everybody knows about it, or can find out, includin' the Gov'ment men, if they want to.

"It was along last spring. They was four boys down the road got hold of a big car, second-hand of course, but a big fast one. They kind of aimed to make a little money like the rest. You know, what with so many fellers makin' so much, and with stories goin' around even bigger than the money, the kids just natur❜ly itch to git after it. You can't hold 'em in school, and you can't git 'em to do no real work, neither. Who wants to work for three four five dollars a day when he might clean up a month's wages in one night? It's awful temptin' to the kids, what with law enough to keep the prices high and not enough to make it dangerous, much. And the real danger ain't from the law, neither.

The names and scenes of these incidents have been disguised for obvious reasons.

BY STANLEY FROST

"These was real nice boys, some of the best families down the road-folks all right. Well, they drove up to Jake's one noon and asked him could he sell them fifty cases. Of course he says 'yes,' but he ain't got it right then, and tells 'em to come back at five o'clock. They agreed and drove off, and Jake he takes a car-no use using the truck for a small job like thatand goes up across the line and gits it.

"On his way back something went wrong with his engine, and there he is stalled half a mile from home. Now, you know, they's some things they won't stand for even around here, and he didn't allow it was good jedgment to leave his booze sittin' there in the road whiles he went for his truck. Besides, he figgered he'd be late and maybe lose his sale. So he went into Frank Blanchard's and asked him for a tow. Frank got out his flivver and hauled him home-Jake and his

booze.

"There was the boys, three of 'em. One hadn't come back for some cause. Frank hauled the load around behind the ell of the house, and they all packed the stuff into the boys' car. Then one of 'em says to Jake, if he'll step inside the woodshed they'll pay him. Jake went, not suspectin' nothin', and when he got there the boy hauled out a gun and told him to stick up his hands. He said at the trial as they had planned to pay Jake soon as they turned over the stuff, but they didn't have cash, bein', as I said, just nice kids and tryin' to git a start.

"Now Jake, he's a old feller, but spry. 'Stead of puttin' up his hands he done a dive for the boy's legs, and upset him. The boy pitched down and the gun went off, and Frank, who'd sort of follered 'em in, got it right through the middle. He died next day. The two boys in the car they let her into high and went around that house like the devil was after 'em, leavin' the one that had killed Frank.

"Jake, he picked himself up and ran through the shed, grabbin' a shotgun, and he got in range and let fly just as the car was turnin' into the road. He didn't hit the boy, but it must have fussed him, for he missed the turn and went into a telephone pole. They was bottles and busted glass scattered over an acre, and a smell there for days. Good stuff, Jake handles. The driver boy, he was in the hospital for two months. When he got out, they sent the three up for eight years, all alike, the killing of Frank bein' accident like and not intended.

"I 'spose that's fair enough, and

I'm mighty sorry for Frank. But it's pretty hard on the boys, considerin' that things sort of leads 'em into temptation, as the Book says. They'll be in just durin' the years that'll count most, when they ought to be gittin' through school and gittin' started. They'll be around twenty-four when they git out. The fourth feller? Oh, they got him down State a while later and sent him along with the rest.

"The next feller to git it was Ed Simmons. Ed, he'd been workin' on a new bridge for the railway, when some feller hit him with a hot bolt and he quit. He was just marrieda mighty nice girl, too, and ambitious to git ahead-and he got him a job with the customs. But he couldn't live on what they paid him-about three and a half a day. You know a man can't live on that with prices what they are and taxes what they are and beer a dollar a bottle.

"Anyway, pretty quick Ed learned the ropes and sort of stretched his pay by takin' his five dollars a case for not bein' there when the runners went through, or for tellin' 'em when and where there wouldn't be no one. That's the reg'lar price—no more, no less.

"Ed, he made a right nice stake at that and saved his money. He was fixin' to go to runnin' himself as soon as he had enough. But they fired him before he quite got it and they put in another feller who did the same thing. He's runnin' now. That's the way a sight of the boys gets their start, you know that five dollars a case. With some of the trucks runnin' as high as a hundred fifty cases, some nights is right profitable.

"But here Ed was without quite enough to start with. It takes real money to handle a load of booze, you know, but two loads doubles your stake. One sure thing was that Ed couldn't finish makin' his stake at day wages. So after a while he took a flier with the hold-up fellers. That was pretty easy pickin', because when one of the runners got held up he couldn't scarcely kick, because he was breakin' the law himself, technically, anyway. So the hold-up boys was pretty bold for a while. There was nights they'd search every car and truck headed south-even in daylight, sometimes.

"Ed, he did pretty well, and they say it was his last job-that he'd have enough to start for himself next day. But you never can tell whether them stories is true or not. Anyway, it seems some fellers that had been held up was so mad they'd risked goin' to the officers, and word was passed out

that if anything-happened to a hold-up man there wouldn't be too much asked about who done it.

"So when Ed tackled this car some feller began shootin' right off. Ed, he got forty-seven shot in him and he was dead when they got to him. The fellers in the car, they run. One of 'em lives about two mile down the road here, and he give himself up pretty soon, but they let him go. The other feller kept away for a while, but he's back now. Folks didn't seem to think no more of Ed than if he was a dog. I s'pose he had been kind of interferin' with business. But it ain't right, in

that kind of dealin's, for the law to stand by one feller and turn another down. They's all in the same bar'l, seems as though.

"Oh, yes, it did sort of stop the hold-up business and make it safer for the runners. You can figger that's an advantage or not, just accordin' to how you figger it. The hold-up fellers did a heap more than the customs men ever did in enforcin' that law."

The old man leaned toward the big Franklin and stirred up the fire, got his pipe going, and settled back as if his story were done.

"That only makes two men killed,"

I reminded. "You said there were three."

"Oh, yes. Him? That was Frank Bronson, a reg'lar runner. Why, one night he was comin' down with a load, near a hundred cases, and a feller jumped out in the road with a gun. Frank, he natur'ly thought it was one of the hold-up fellers and that he likely wouldn't shoot, so he just stepped on her. But, by gum, it was some new customs man, and he did an, an shoot.

"That's one trouble with this run nin' business-you can't never be sure when some feller'll cross up the game."

COTTON TO CATTLE

BY JOHN A. HAESELER Montgomery Chamber of Commerce. "We are always glad to have young Yankees come to Alabama. We want them to have a chance to imbibe some of the culture of Montgomery and carry it back to the North to civilize the people there. Montgomery County has some of the richest soil in the

country, the finest system of county roads in the South, and the best sys tem of rural schools in America There is no doubt about it being one of the best places in the world."

We smiled skeptically. The Judge and the Secretary had all the enthu siasm of Western pioneers founding a boom city. We enjoyed their enthusi asm, but belief could come only from first-hand experience. This the Saga cious Secretary realized, and he was not satisfied until we had traveled over nearly every road in the county, visited stock farms, and inspected the new school buildings. Thus we were won to the faith, and have abandoned agnosticism to carry the gospel of Montgomery County to the unenlight ened.

The keystone of Montgomery Coun ty's prosperity and prospects, as in all agricultural regions, lies in its land: Montgomery County is one of the counties through which the famous Black Belt of Alabama passes. Starting in northern Mississippi and Alabama, this belt of black soil sweeps southward half the length of those two States, and then swings eastward over the south central part of the State. A hundred years ago the planters trekking westward with their slaves selected this black soil from all the vast stretches of virgin land in the South on which to establish their plantations. In their home States the planters had grown little but cotton, and they transferred their system of cotton culture to the new area. The soil was rich, cotton grew easily, and the planters prospered. They acquired more slaves, and thus the Negroes came to be segregated on the darker soils. The poorer farmers who lacked slaves or had only a few settled on the less fertile lands. Thus the area be came known as the Black Belt for the color of its population as well as for the color of its earth.

The first flush of virgin fertility