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“Then come on in.” The old man held the door open. Jack entered the cabin, half expecting to see that it was piled full of pirate treasure. What he saw instead was an enormous, copper still that was steadily dripping amber liquid into a clay jug.
“Ah. I understand now,” he said as he stepped inside and went to stand beside the potbelly stove in the corner to dry off. “I think prohibition is a load of hogwash too. Making whiskey? I’ll give you a dollar for a drink. I could use a bit of liquid refreshment after the day I’ve had.”
The old man smiled, showing off a missing front tooth. “Sure, young man, I’ll take your money.”
Jack pulled his billfold from his pocket and pulled out a sodden bill. Usually, he paid a dollar for a whole bottle of bootleg whiskey, but if the old man only gave him one dram, he’d still be grateful. “Sorry it’s wet.”
“It’ll dry,” the old man said, snatching it away and laying it out on a shelf above the stove. Then he took down two tin cups from another shelf and poured a healthy dose of whiskey into both. He handed one to Jack and said, “Drink up. I like a man better when he’s sauced. I don’t trust those puritanical types. Not one bit.”
Jack took a long, deep drink and let the burning liquid warm him up from the inside. Now if he could only talk the man into giving him some food, life would truly be looking up. “I don’t suppose you’d have any food you’d be willing to share.”
The old man handed him a can of baked beans, a can opener, and a spoon. “Help yourself.”
Under the circumstances, cold beans sounded like a feast. “Thank you kindly. I’m Jack, by the way. What should I call you?”
With an absolutely straight face, the man answered, “President Woodrow Wilson,” and then grinned his gap-toothed grin.
He should have expected that. A bootlegging mountain man had plenty of reason to hide his true identity. “President Wilson it is. It’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance, Mr. President.” He raised his cup.
The president clinked cups with him. “It’s a pleasure to meet you too, Jack. I don’t get company up here too often, and usually when I do, I shoot at ’em.” He shrugged and turned to his still, checking it over with a careful eye.
Jack opened the can and started shoveling the beans into his mouth, pausing every few bites to take a sip of the whiskey. By the fourth sip, it didn’t burn half so much, and his mood was improving by the minute. He had to watch himself, though. He needed to find his way out of this place in the morning and get to a telephone so that he could go back to Constance.
“I don’t suppose you know where the nearest telephone is, do you?”
The man paused in his tinkering with the still. “I do. Why do you ask?”
“I need to call my girl and let her know I’m not dead. And then I need to figure out how to get home to her.”
“Got a girl, huh?” The president smirked.
“Yes, I do.”
“She’s real pretty, I bet.”
“Yes, she is. The prettiest.” Jack was a very lucky man.
“She the worrying type?”
Guilt churned in Jack’s gut along with the whiskey and beans. “Yes, she is.”
“That’s a shame because you aren’t going anywhere until Friday.”
Jack shook his head. The whiskey must have been getting to him. “I’m sorry. What did you say?”
“I said…” The president pulled a pistol from his overalls and leveled it at him. “You aren’t going anywhere until Friday.” With his empty hand, he picked up his tin cup and drank deep. “Now, I like you, Jack. When I don’t like a man, I shoot him on sight.”
Jack didn’t doubt it. The chilling gleam in the old man’s eyes made him shiver. What the hell had he gotten himself into?
“Don’t worry yourself. I’m not gonna shoot you as long as you cooperate. You’re going to stay here as my guest until Friday, and you’re not going to make any trouble, right?”
Jack swallowed hard. “Right.”
“And then I’m going to put a sack over your head and let my associate take you down the mountain in his truck and drop you off near a town before he makes his deliveries.”
“Near a town?” This was sounding worse and worse by the moment.
“Well, you can’t very well drop off a tied-up man with a sack over his head in the middle of town, can you? Wouldn’t last long in this business if I operated like that. The coppers would snatch me and my associate right up. But if I drop you near a train yard where no one would think to look, no one will be the wiser.”
