§ 159 It Wasn’t His Move, Either
A venerable mountaineer residing near the boundary between Tennessee and North Carolina sat one bright afternoon on the stile in front of his cabin, busily engaged in following his regular occupation of doing nothing at all. At the edge of the clearing, fifty yards away, suddenly appeared an individual in flannel shirt and laced boots who aimed at the old gentleman a round-barreled instrument mounted on a tripod, which the native naturally mistook for a new kind of repeating rifle. Up went both his hands.
“Don’t shoot!” he shouted. “I surrender.”
“I’m not fixing to shoot,” said the stranger, drawing nearer. “I belong to an engineering crew. We’re surveying the state line.”
“Shuckins, son,” said the old man, “you’re away off. The line runs through the gap nearly half a mile down the mounting below here.”
“That’s where it used to run,” said the engineer, “but it seems there was a mistake in the original job. According to the new survey it’ll pass about fifty feet from your house, on the upper side of the hill.”
“Say, look a-here, boy,” stated the old man, “won’t that throw me from Tennessee clear over into North Carolina?”
“Yep, that’s what it’ll do.”
“Well, that won’t never do,” demurred the mountaineer. “I was born and raised in Tennessee. I’ve always voted thar. It looks to me like you fellows ain’t got no right to be movin’ me plum’ out of one state into another.”
“Can’t help it,” said the surveyor. “We have to go by the corrected line.”
“Wall,” said the old man resignedly, “come to think it over, I don’t know but what it’s a good thing, after all. I’ve always heered tell North Carolina was a healthier state than Tennessee anyhow.”