A hunter himself, the judge recognized the river patriarch. He looked at the document before him.

“Yes, Mr. Bradson. Do you wish to testify?”

“I shore do.”

“Swear him—. Now, then, Mr. Bradson?”

“I got me a Coca-Cola calendar in the kitchen an’ I jest happened to be studyin’ it this mornin’. Wa’n’t the eighteenth a Sat-day?”

“It was.”

“Well, then, Jedge, I cain’t swear I’d know deer-meat by a hair on hit, but I shore kin swear by God A’mighty that on Sat’day, May the eighteenth, this man Martin was to my house the whole day. He come soon in the mornin’ to he’p me round up some hogs an’ he worked with me to good-dark. My wife done give him a bite o’ supper, seein’ as it were so late. He didn’t have no gun nor no deer meat, nor I didn’t see no deer hairs on him. He didn’t shoot no gun on the way home, nor pick up no deer, for I went home with him ’count o’ bein’ on my way to my son’s house for Sunday.”

The record shows that the judge had to silence the roar of delight that shook the courtroom. Eph’s yellow face was white. Old Bradson’s word was unimpeachable. Mart had indeed worked for him on that day. It was only a perfunctory matter for him to testify that he had no means of telling one date from another, but that if the date named on the papers was the date he had worked for Bradson, the papers lied. Eph had made the mistake of assuming that Mart had shot the deer the same morning that he brought him the meat. The case was dismissed.

It was known generally that Mart had shot a deer out of season. Eph’s crime was greater. He had broken a frontier law more fundamental than the game rules. Yet Mart’s safe return from the hands of the law was to Florry miraculous.

Because neither knew how to change the arrangement, the two men continued to ’shine together. It was their joint livelihood. Mart worked silently, watching Eph constantly for fear of attack. Eph was surly.

“He’d shore be proud to shoot me in the back, behind a clump o’ palmeeters,” Mart told Florry, “but he ain’t got the chidlin’s.”

Chance probably played into Eph’s hands, for he would not have planned to betray Mart at the expense of losing his still. It is certain that the Federal men merely nosed out the still. Eph was heading for it when he saw the agents creeping toward the bank where the odor of the sour mash rose strong. Florry caught a glimpse of him running toward home. He did not warn Mart, as he might easily have done. Mart’s only escape would have been the river. The agents hand-cuffed him and smashed the still. They allowed him to speak with Florry before they took him away.