THE OLD MAN OF THE MOUNTAIN
The captain and Andy lingered by the bridgehead, and the three
boy-soldiers who were to be left behind next day, long as the march had
been, felt no inclination for sleep. They were too much interested in
watching for the first light by which they could examine this important
approach to their temporary station.
"I should like to know something more of the crazy old man who built
this crazy old bridge," said Philip, appealing to Lieutenant Coleman.
"Why not ask the guide to tell us?"
Andy was by no means loath to tell the story so far as he knew it,
which was plain enough to be seen by the deliberate way in which he
seated himself on a rock. Andy's audience reclined about him on the
dry pine-needles.
Mountaineers are not given to wasting their words, and by the extreme
deliberation of the guide's preparations it was sufficiently evident
that something important was coming.
"Thirty years back," said Andy, taking off his coonskin cap, and
looking into it as if he read there the beginning of his story, "and
for that matter down to five year ago, there was a man by the name of
Jo-siah Woodring lived all by himself in a log cabin about half-way up
this mountain, and just out o' sight of the trail we-all come up
to-night. He owned right smart of timber-land and clearin', and made a
crap o' corn every year, besides raisin' 'taters and cabbage and enions
in his garden patch. He had a copper still hid away somewhere among
the rocks, where he turned his corn crap into whisky; and when Jo-siah
needed anything in the line of store goods he hooked up his steer and
went off, sometimes to Walhalla and sometimes clean up to Asheville.
"Now about a year after Jo-siah settled on his clearin', about the time
he might have been twenty or thereabouts, when he come back from one of
those same merchandisin' trips, instid of one steer he had a yoke, and
along with him there was a little man a good thirty year older 'n
Jo-siah, an' him walkin' a considerable piece behind the cart when they
come through the settlement, same as if the two wa'n't travelin'
together. The stranger was a dark-complected man, so the old folks
say, and went just a trifle lame as he walked; and as for his clothes,
he was a heap smarter dressed than the mountain folks. Not that he
looked to care for his dress, for he didn't, not he; but through the
dust of the road, which was white on him, hit was plain that he wore
the best of store cloth.
"As the cart was plumb empty, hit would seem that the little man
fetched nothing along with him besides the clothes on his hack, and
such other toggery as he may have stowed away in the cowskin knapsack
they do say he staggered under. If he had any treasure, he must 'a'
toted hit in his big pockets, which, hit is claimed by some folks now
livin', was stuffed out like warts on an apple-tree, and made him look
as misshapen as he was small.
"Now, whether anybody heard the chinkin' o' gold or not (which I'm
bettin' free they didn't), hit looked bad for Jo-siah that this
partic'lar stranger should disappear in his company, for he was never
seen ag'in in the settlement, or anywhere else, by any human for a good
two year after the night he come trudgin' along behind the cart. Hit
was nat'ral enough that the neighbor folks in time began to suspicion
that Jo-siah had murdered the man for his money, and all the more when
he made bold to show some foreign-lookin' gold pieces of which nobody
knowed the vally.
"They say how feelin' run consid'ble high in the settlement that year,
but hit was only surmisin' like, for there was no evidence that would
hold water afore a jury of any crime havin' been committed; and hit all
ended in the valley folks avoidin' Jo-siah like his other name was
Cain--and that sort o' treatment 'peared to suit him mighty well.
Leastways, he went on with his plowin' and sowin' and stillin' his
crap, and whistled at the neglect of his neighbors, who never came to
the clearin' any more, and in that very year he built this bridge, with
or without the help of the other one.
"When the bridge was first seen, hit was stained by the weather, and
moss had come to grow on the poles, and rotten leaves filled the chinks
of the slab floor as if hit had never been new, and no one cared to ask
any questions of Jo-siah, who kept his own counsel and seemed to live
more alone than ever. The bridge was only another mystery connected
with the life of this man that everybody shunned, and nobody
suspicioned that hit had anything to do with the disappearance of the
other one, who was counted for dead.
"Now when day comes," said Andy, "you-all will see for yourselves that
there is no timber on the other side o' this here gully tall enough to
make string-pieces for a bridge of this length, and so the two
string-pieces must have been cut on this side so as to fall across the
chasm pretty much where they were wanted. Well, that was how it was;
and the story goes that the man who first saw the bridge reported,
judging by the stumps, that the right-hand timber had been cut six
months or more before the other one, which might have been just about
the time Jo-siah brought the stranger home with him, and would easily
account for his disappearance onto the summit of the mountain, for of
course you understand he was not dead, and Jo-siah the Silent had no
stain of blood on his conscience.
"The mountain folks, however, thought different at that time, and
looked cross-eyed at the painted cart drawed by the two slick critters
on hits way to the low country. They was quick to take notice, too,
when Jo-siah come back, that the cart carried more kegs than what hit
had taken away, besides some mysterious-lookin' boxes and packages.
Now this havin' continued endurin' several half-yearly trips, hit was
the settled idee in the valley that Jo-siah was a-furnishin' of his
cabin at a gait clear ahead of the insolence like of drivin' two steers
to his cart when honest mountain folks couldn't afford but one. Hit
was suspicioned, moreover, that he was a-doin' this with the ill-got
gold of the old man he had murdered, and the gals shrugged their
shoulders as he passed, for no one of the gals as knew his goin's-on
would set a foot in his cabin. It leaked out some way that Jo-siah had
been investin' in books, which was the amazin' and crownin'
extravagance of all, for hit was knowed that he could scarcely read a
line of print or much more 'n write his own name.
[Illustration: ANDY TELLS THE STORY OF THE OLD MAN OF THE MOUNTAIN.]
"These unjust suspicions of murder and robbery against an innocent man
continued to rankle in the minds of the valley folks for more than two
years, until a most surprisin' event took place on the mountain, to the
great disappointment and annoyance of those gossips who had been
loudest in their charges against Jo-siah Woodring. Hit happened that
two bear-hunters from the settlement found themselves belated in the
neighborhood of this very bridge one September night, and, bein' worn
out with the chase, they sat down to rest in the shadow of an old
chestnut, where they soon fell asleep. They awoke just before
mid-night, and were about to start on down the mountain when they heard
footsteps coming up the trail, and presently, dark as the night was,
they saw a man with a keg on his shoulder a-walkin' toward the bridge.
The man was Jo-siah; and after restin' his burden on a stump and wipin'
the sweat from his forehead, he shouldered hit again and tramped on
over the bridge.
"The hunters were bold men and well armed, and, having had a good rest,
they followed the man at a safe distance until he came to the ledge of
rocks which you-all will view for yourselves by sun-up, and there he
was met by a man with a ladder, who stood out on the rocks above. The
hunters noticed that the stranger was a small man, and just then the
moon came out from behind a cloud, and they knew him for the little old
man who was supposed to have been murdered.
"When the hunters told what they'd seen on the mountain, you may
believe," said Andy, "there was right smart excitement in Cashiers, and
some disappointment to find that Jo-siah was neither a murderer nor a
robber. They went on hating him all the same for driving two steers to
his cart and for having deceived them so long about the man on the
mountain, and then they started the story that he was feedin' his
prisoner on whisky, and that it was only a slow murder, after all.
After that, one day, when Jo-siah had gone away to market, half a dozen
of the valley men, with the two hunters to guide them, went up the
mountain for the purpose of liberating that poor prisoner o' Jo-siah's.
"They carried a ladder along, and when they had climbed up the ledge
they found a little log shelter not fit for a sheep-hovel; and as for
the prisoner, he kept out of their way, for it was a pretty big place,
with plenty of trees and rocks to hide among. Well, as the years went
on, Jo-siah brought back less and less of suspicious packages in his
cart when he came up from the low country; but it was known that he
still went up the mountain on certain dark nights with a keg on his
shoulder. The strange old man himself was seen at a distance from time
to time, but at last his existence on the mountain came to be a settled
fact, and the people ceased to worry about him.
"Well, five years ago, as I said," continued Andy, "Jo-siah took sick
with a fever, and come down into the settlement to see the doctor; and
he was that bad that the doctor had to go back with him to drive the
cattle. He rallied after that so as to be about again, and even out at
night; but three months from the time he took the fever he died. The
doctor was with him at the time, and the night before he breathed his
last he told the doctor that the little man on the mountain was dead.
After the funeral another party went up to the top of the mountain,
and, sure enough, there was the grave, just outside of the miserable
shelter he had lived in so long; and it looks like he did, sure enough,
drink himself to death, for there was no sign about the hovel that he
ever cooked or ate ordinary food.
"The strangest thing about the whole strange business," said Andy,
getting on to his feet, "is that there was nothing in Jo-siah's poor
cabin worth carrying away; and if the old man didn't build this here
bridge with his own hands thirty year ago, hit stands to reason that he
helped Jo-siah."