Cleveland County herald., 1921-02-10
WHISKY RAIDS
 ARE BL00DLESS
Eight Stills Are Destroyed in the Mountains of Kentucky With
 out Casualty.
MAKES INTERESTING STORY
Although Numerous Shots Were Fired by Revenue Men and Mountaineers, Not Death Is Reported
 Chase Leads to Stills.

Lexington, Ky.-Raids upon moon- shine stills in the mountains of Ken lucky have become bloodless, accord ing to government agents who recent ly conducted one of the most impor- tant raids made in years.
 Whether the Shooting eye" of the mountaineer or the secret service agent has become dimmed or whether the desire for less killing has reached into the far mountain recesses is a disputed point, but the fact remains that 12 revenue agents raided and de- stmyed eight large stills in Whitley county, fired numerous shots and were fired at numerous times, but, so far as is known, not a casualty was re- corded.
 Standing in clumps of sparse shrub bery on the top of knobs along Laurel Fork, in Whitley county, sentries posted apparently by moonshiners watched the operations of federal pro- hibition officers during the recent sen- sational raid in the South America" section of Whitley county, according to members of the party. The raiders from the office of Chief Field Deputy U. G. Mcfarland were reticent about the battle reported to have ragged about the stills. "There wasn't a thing in it." they were unanimous in saying. We just went in there and destroyed [ eight stills There were a lot of shots fired, but how many of them were fired at us we don't know. That was all there was to it."
 Number of Shots Fired.
 The raiders from the local office were Steven Cornet and Charles Win frey, who were the leaders of the raid; J. H. Reynolds and Joe Caya- ! naugh. They were accompanied by Sheriff Renfro of Whitley county and seven deputies
 Steve Cornet, after some persua- sion. told of the raid. "We left Will liamsburg on the morning of December 5 and went via Holden, Tenn, the nearest railroad point, into the sec tion of Whitley county, known to the natives as South America" he said. We hunted there for stills in the hol- lows of Laurel Fork and Clean Fork, sources of the Cumberland river We destroyed eight stills in all.
 "The first still destroyed was one owned by Dewitt Gibson. We ar rested the three Gibson boys without any trouble. They were at their home. The next still we believe belonged to man named Williams. The next two destroyed were owned by persons whose names we could not ascertain. 1 We had no trouble the first day al- though number of shots were fired In the distance. I could not say posi- lively that the shots were fired at US. but think that possibly they were sig nals to warn the countryside that raiders were about. We could see men standing on the top of the knobs, where they could see the road wind ing around the banks of Laurel Fork, which, believe, is the crookedest stream in the world. Sometimes 1t is hard to tell which way it runs.
 "The second day we continued the search along Laurel Fork. It was at this time that the nearest to any real trouble occurred. We left an old man named Parsons and another man to guard the mouth of hollow while we searched it. Just after we left the guards mountaineer popped out from behind a tree, fired several shots a the guards with pistol and ran.
 Chase Leads to Stills.
 We gave chase, firing as we ran. The man fell, but when we searched we could find no trace of him. This led to one of the amusing incidents of the trip. During the chase we found two stills of which we had had no ink ling. The man led my party directly to an S0-gallon still, which we de- stroyed. Another section of the party (we had become divided during the chase) found the second still on the opposite side of the hill frop that down which the fugitive ran. We did rot find out who owned either still.
 "We then went up hollow where we found another still. This was q rough hollow, and we had to climb over powders and hang on to trees to get to the still. We then started in the opposite direction. Two miles down another rough hollow we found the last still destroyed.
 "A lot of shots were fired on the second day by both natives and our selves, but nobody was hurt"