THE MASTER BUILDERS
The road running into the south lands crosses the Valley River at two
places,--at the foot of Thornberg's Hill and twenty miles farther on at
Horton's Ferry. At the first crossing, the river bed is piled with
boulders, and the river boils through, running like a millrace, a swift,
roaring water without a ford. At Horton's Ferry the river runs smooth
and wide and deep, a shining sheet of clear water, making a mighty bend,
still ford-less, but placid enough to be crossed by a ferry, running
with a heavy current when swollen by the rains, except in the elbow of
the bend where it swings into a tremendous eddy.
Over the river, where the road meets it first, is a huge wooden bridge
with one span. It is giant work, the stone abutment built out a hundred
feet on either side into the bed of the plunging water, neither rail nor
wall flanking this stone causeway, but the bare unguarded width of the
road-bed leading up into the bridge.
On the lips of the abutment, the builders set two stone blocks, smooth
and wide, and cut places in them for the bridge timbers. It was a piece
of excellent judgment, since the great stones could not be broken from
the abutment, and they were mighty enough to bear the weight of a
mountain. The bridge rests on three sills, each a log that, unhewn, must
have taken a dozen oxen to drag it. I have often wondered at the
magnitude of this labour; how these logs were thrown across the boiling
water by any engines known to the early man. It was a work for Pharaoh.
On these three giant sleepers the big floor was laid, the walls raised,
and the whole roofed, so that it was a covered road over the Valley.
The shingle roof and the boarded sides protected the timber framework
from the beating of the elements. Dry, save for the occasional splash of
the hissing water far below, the great bones of this bridge hardened and
lasted like sills of granite. The shingle roof curled, cracked, and
dropped off into the water; the floor broke through, the sides rotted,
and were all replaced again and again. But the powerful grandsires who
had come down from the Hills to lay a floor over the Valley were not
intending to do that work again, and went about their labour like the
giants of old times.
Indeed, a legend runs that these sills were not laid by men at all, but
by the Dwarfs. As evidence of this folklore tale, it is pointed out that
these logs have the mark of a rough turtle burned on their under surface
like the turtle cut on the great stones in the mountains. And men differ
about what wood they are of, some declaring them to be oak and others
sugar, and still others a strange wood of which the stumps only are now
found in the Hills. It is true that no mark of axe can be found on them,
but this is no great wonder since the bark was evidently removed by
burning, an ancient method of preserving the wood from rot.
We swung down Thornberg's Hill in a long trot, and on to the bridge. The
river was swollen, a whirling mass of yellow water that surged and
pounded and howled under the timber floor as though the mad spirits of
the river still resented the work of the Dwarfs. It was the Valley's
business to divide the land, and it had done it well, leaving the sons
of Eve to bite their fingers until, on a night, the crooked people came
stumbling down to take a hand in the matter.
We clattered through, and down a long abutment. It almost made one dizzy
to look over. A rail or a tree limb would ride down into this devil's
maw, or a log would come swimming, its back bobbing in the muddy water,
and then strike the smooth nose of a boulder and go to splinters.
Beyond the mad river the mild morning world was a land of lazy quiet.
The sky was as blue as a woman's eye, and the sun rose clear in his
flaming cart. Along the roadside the little purple flowers of autumn
peeped about under the green briers. The fields were shaggy with ragweed
and dead whitetop and yellow sedge. The walnut and the apple trees were
bare, and the tall sycamore stood naked in its white skin. Sometimes a
heron flapped across the land, taking a short cut to a lower water, or a
woodpecker dived from the tall timber, or there boomed from the distant
wooded hollow the drum of some pheasant lover, keeping a forgotten
tryst.
It was now two hours of midday, and the October sun was warm. Tiny
streaks of dampness were beginning to appear on the sleek necks of the
Cardinal and El Mahdi, and the Bay Eagle was swinging her head, a clear
sign that the good mare was not entirely comfortable.
I turned to Ump. "There's something wrong with that bridle," I said.
"Either the brow-band or the throat-latch. The mare's fidgety."
He looked at me in astonishment, like a man charged suddenly with a
crime, and slid his long hand out under her slim throat, and over her
silk foretop; then he growled. "You don't know your A, B, C's, Quiller.
She wants water; that's all."
Jud grinned like a bronzed Bacchus. "The queen might wear Spanish
needles in her shirt," he said, "an' be damned. But the Bay Eagle will
never wear a tight throat-latch or a pinchin' brow-band, or a rough bit,
or a short headstall, while old Mr. Ump warms the saddle seat."
The hunchback was squirming around, craning his long neck. If the Bay
Eagle were dry, water must be had, and no delay about it. Love for this
mare was Ump's religion. I laughed and pointed down the road. "We are
almost at Aunt Peggy's house. Don't stop to dig a well." And we broke
into a gallop.
Aunt Peggy was one of the ancients, a carpet-weaver, pious as Martin
Luther, but a trifle liberal with her idioms. The tongue in her head
wagged like a bell-clapper. Whatever was whispered in the Hills got
somehow into Aunt Peggy's ears, and once there it went to the world like
the secret of Midas.
If one wished to publish a bit of gossip, he told Aunt Peggy, swore her
to secrecy, and rode away. But as there is often a point of honour about
the thief and a whim of the Puritan about the immoral, Aunt Peggy could
never be brought to say who it was that told her. One could inquire as
one pleased. The old woman ran no farther than "Them as knows." And
there it ended and you might be damned.
The house was a log cottage covered with shingles and whitewash, set by
the roadside under a great chestnut tree, its door always open in the
daytime. As we drew rein by this open door, the old woman dropped her
shuttle, tossed her ball of carpet rags over into the weaving frame, and
came stumbling to the threshold in her long linsey dress that fell
straight from her neck to the floor.
She pulled her square-rimmed spectacles down on her nose and squinted up
at us. When she saw me, she started back and dropped her hands. "Great
fathers!" she ejaculated, "I hope I may go to the blessed God if it
ain't Quiller gaddin' over the country, an' Mister Ward a-dyin'."
It seemed to me that the earth lurched as it swung, and every joint in
my body went limber as a rag. I caught at El Mahdi's mane, then I felt
Jud's arm go round me, and heard Ump talking at my ear. But they were a
long distance away. I heard instead the bees droning, and Ward's merry
laugh, as he carried me on his shoulder a babbling youngster in a little
white kilt. It was only an instant, but in it all the good days when I
was little and Ward was father and mother and Providence, raced by.
Then I heard Ump. "It's a lie, Quiller, a damn lie. Don't you remember
what Patsy said? Not to believe anything you hear? Do you think she ran
that horse to death for nothin'? It was to tell you, to git to you first
before Woodford's lie got to you. Don't you see? Oh, damn Woodford!
Don't you see the trick, boy?"
Then I saw. My heart gave a great thump. The sunlight poured in and I
was back in the road by the old carpet-weaver's cottage.
The old woman was alarmed, but her curiosity held like a cable.
"What's he sayin'," she piped; "what's he sayin'?"
"That it's all a lie, Aunt Peggy," replied Jud.
She turned her squint eyes on him. "Who told you so?" she said.
"Who told you?" growled Ump.
"Them as knows," she said. And the curiosity piped in her voice. "Did
they lie?"
"They did," said Ump; "Mister Ward's hurt, but he ain't dangerous."
"Bless my life," cried the old woman, "an' they lied, did they? I think
a liar is the meanest thing the Saviour died for. They said Mister Ward
was took sudden with blood poison last night, an' a-dyin', the
scalawags! I'll dress 'em down when I git my eyes on 'em."
"Who were they, Aunt Peggy?" I ventured.
She made a funny gesture with her elbows, and then shook her finger at
me. "You know I can't tell that, Quiller," she piped, "but the blessed
God knows, an' I hope He'll tan their hides for 'em."
"I know, too," said Ump.
The old woman leaned out of the door. "Hey?" she said; "what's that? You
know? Then maybe you'll tell why they come a-lyin'."
"Can you keep a secret?" said Ump, leaning down from his saddle.
The old woman's face lighted. She put her hand to her ear and craned her
neck like a turtle. "Yes," she said, "I can that."
"So can I," said Ump.
The old carpet-weaver snorted. "Humph," she said, "when you git dry
behind the ears you won't be so peart." Then she waved her hand to me.
"Light off," she said, "an' rest your critters, an' git a tin of
drinkin' water."
After this invitation she went back to her half-woven carpet with its
green chain and its copperas-coloured widths, and we presently heard the
hum of the wooden shuttle and the bang of the loom frame. We rode a few
steps farther to the well, and Jud dismounted to draw the water. The
appliance for lifting the bucket was of the most primitive type. A post
with a forked top stood planted in the ground. In this fork rested a
long, slender sapling with a heavy butt, and from the small end, high in
the air, hung a slim pole, to the lower end of which the bucket was
tied.
Jud grasped the pole and lowered the bucket into the well, and then,
while one watched by the door, the others watered the horses in the old
carpet-weaver's bucket. It was the only thing to drink from, and if Aunt
Peggy had caught us with the "critters'" noses in it we should doubtless
have come in for a large share of that "dressing down" which she was
reserving for Lemuel Marks.
She came to the door as we were about to ride away and looked over the
sweaty horses. "Sakes alive," she said, "you little whelps ride like
Jehu. You'll git them horses ga'nted before you know it."
"You can't ga'nt a horse if he sweats good," said Ump; "but if he don't
sweat, you can ga'nt him into fiddle strings."
"They're pretty critters," said the old woman, running her eyes over the
three horses. "Be they Mister Ward's?"
"We all be Mister Ward's," answered Ump, screwing his mouth to one side
and imitating the old carpet-weaver's voice.
"Bless my life," said the old woman, looking us up and down, "Mister
Ward has a fine chance of scalawags."
We laughed and the old woman's face wrinkled into smiles. Then she
turned to me. "Which way did you come, Quiller?" she asked.
"Over the bridge," said I. Now there was no other way to come, and the
old carpet-weaver turned the counter with shrewd good-nature.
"Maybe you know how the bridge got there," she said.
"I've heard that the Dwarfs built it," said I, "but I reckon it's talk."
"Well, it ain't talk," said the old woman. "A long time ago, folks lived
on the other side of the river, and the Dwarfs lived on this side, an'
the folks tried to git acrost, but they couldn't, an' they talked to the
Dwarfs over the river, an' asked them to build a bridge, an' the Dwarfs
said they couldn't build it unless the river devils was bought off. Then
the folks |asked how to buy off them river devils, an' the Dwarfs said
to throw in a thimble full of human blood an' spit in the river. So, one
night the folks done it, an' next morning them logs was acrost."
The spectacles of the old woman were fastened around her head with a
shoestring. She removed them by lifting the shoestring over her head,
polished them for a moment on her linsey dress and set them back on her
nose.
"Then," she went on, "the devilment was done. Just like it allers is
when people gits smarter than the blessed God. The Dwarfs crost over an'
rid the horses in the night an' sucked the cows, an' made faces at the
women so the children was cross-eyed. An' the folks tried to throw down
the bridge an' couldn't do it because the Dwarfs had put a spell on them
logs."
She stopped and jerked her thumb toward the river. "Did you ever hear
tell of old Jimmy Radcliff?" she asked.
We had heard of the old-time millwright, and said so.
"Well," she went on, "they was a-layin' a floor in that bridge oncet,
an' old Jimmy got tight on b'iled cider, an' 'low'd he'd turn one of
them logs over. So he chucked a crowbar under one of 'em an' begun
a-pryin', an' all at oncet that crowbar flew out of his hand an' old
Jimmy fell through, an' the men cotched him by his wampus an' it took
four of 'em to pull him up, because, they said, it felt like somethin'
was a-holdin' his legs."
"I reckon," said Ump, "it was the cider in Jimmy's legs. If there had
been anything holdin', they could have seen it."
"'Tain't so certain," said Aunt Peggy, wagging her head, "'tain't so
certain. There's many a thing a-holdin' in the world that you can't
see." And she turned around in the door and went stumping back to her
loom.
We rode south in no light-hearted mood. Again we had met the far-sighted
cunning of Hawk Rufe, in a trap baited by a master, and had slipped from
under it by no skill of ours. Had we missed those last words of Patsy,
flung back like an angry taunt, I should have believed the tale about my
brother and hurried north, if all the cattle in the Hills had gone to
the devil. It was a master move, that lie, and I began to see the
capacity of these dangerous men. This was merely an outpost strategy,
laid as they passed along. What would it be when we came to the serious
business of the struggle?
And how came that girl on Thornberg's Hill? Cynthia was shoulder to
shoulder with Woodford. We had seen that with our own eyes. Had Patsy
turned traitor to Cynthia?
I looked over at Ump. "What did that little girl mean?" I said.
"I give it up," said he.
"I don't understand women," said I.
"If you did," said he, "they'd have you in a side-show."