THE MOUNTAIN OF THE TWENTIETH RED PIN
A fortnight before the events described in the opening chapter of this
story, the topographical officer attached to General Sherman's
headquarters might have been seen leaning over a table in his tent,
busily engaged in sticking red-headed pins into a great map of the
Cumberland and Blue Ridge Mountains. The pins made an irregular line,
beginning at Chattanooga, and extending through Tennessee and North
Carolina at no great distance from the Georgia border. Altogether
there were just twenty of these pins, and each pin pierced the top of a
mountain whose position and altitude were laid down on the map. After
this officer, who was a lieutenant-colonel, had spent half the night,
by the light of guttering candles, in arranging and rearranging his
pins, he sent in the morning for the adjutant of a regiment of loyal
mountaineers. Beginning with the first pin outside of Chattanooga, he
requested the presence of a mountaineer who lived in the neighborhood
of that particular peak. When the man reported, the colonel questioned
him about the accessibility of the mountain under the first pin, its
distance from that under the second pin, and whether each peak was
plainly visible from the other. The colonel's questions, which were
put to the soldier in the shade of the fly outside the tent where the
map lay, brought out much useful information, and much more that was of
no use whatever, because half the questions were intended to mislead
the soldier and conceal the colonel's purpose. Sometimes he changed a
pin after the soldier went away; and at the end of three days of
interviewing and shifting the positions of his pins, the twentieth red
head was firmly fixed above the point laid down on the map as Whiteside
Mountain. Still a little farther along a blue-headed pin was set up,
and then the work of the topographical officer of the rank of
lieutenant-colonel was done.
These pins represented a chain of signal-stations, nineteen of which
the captain of cavalry, with Andy Zachary to guide him, had now
established one after the other, with as much secrecy as the
lieutenant-colonel had employed in selecting the positions. And now
the gray dawn was coming on the side of the twentieth mountain as Andy
finished his story. In fact, as the last word fell from his lips a
lusty cock tied on one of the pack-saddles set up a shrill crow to
welcome the coming day. Although tall pines grew thick about the
bridge-head where the troopers were still sleeping, it was light enough
to see that only low bushes and gnarled chestnuts grew on the other
bank. The noisy branch kept up its ceaseless churning and splashing
among the rocks far down in the throat of the black gorge, and the
great height and surprising length of its single span made the crazy
old bridge look more treacherous than ever. It swayed and trembled
with the weight of the captain by the time he had advanced three steps
from the bank, so that he came back shaking his head in alarm. By this
time the men were afoot, and Andy asked for an ax, which at the first
stroke he buried to its head in the rotten string-piece.
"Just what I feared," said the captain. "Do you think I am going to
trust my men on that rotten structure?"
Andy said nothing in reply as he kicked off with his boot a huge growth
of toadstools, together with the bark and six inches of rotten wood
from the opposite side of the log. Then he struck it again with the
head of the ax such a blow that the old sticks of the railing and great
sections of bark fell in a shower upon the tree-tops below. The guide
saw only consternation in the faces of the men as he looked around, but
there was a smile on his own.
"Hit may be old," said Andy, throwing down the ax, "but there is six
inches of tough heart into that log, and I'd trust hit with a yoke o'
cattle." With that he strode across to the other side, and coming back
jounced his whole weight on the center, with only the effect of
rattling another shower of bark and dry fungi into the gorge.
"Bring me one of the pack-mules," cried Andy; and presently, when the
poor brute arrived at the head of the old causeway, it settled back on
its stubborn legs and refused to advance. At this the guide tied a
grain-sack over the animal's eyes and led him safely across.
Lieutenant Coleman led over the second mule by the same device, and
Bromley the third. By this time it was broad daylight, and the captain
detailed three men to help in the unpacking. These he sent over one at
a time, so that after himself Philip was the last to cross.
Beyond was an open field where blue and yellow flowers grew in the
long, wiry grass, which was wet with the dew. This grass grew up
through a thick mat of dead stalks, which was the withered growth of
many years. Under the trees and bushes the leaves had rotted in the
rain where they had fallen, or in the hollows where they had been
tossed by the wandering winds. There was not a sign of a trail, nor a
girdled tree, nor a trace of fire, nor any evidence that the foot of
man had ever trodden there. The little party seemed to have come into
an unknown country, and after crossing the open field they continued
climbing up a gentle ascent, winding around rocks and scraggly old
chestnut-trees, until they arrived under the ledge which supported the
upper plateau. This was found to extend from the boulder face on the
Cove side across to a mass of shelving rocks on the Cashiers valley
front, and was from thirty to fifty feet in height, of a perpendicular
and bulging fold in the smooth granite. After a short exploration a
place was found where the ledge was broken by a shelf or platform
twenty feet from the ground; and just here, in the leaves and grass
below, lay the rotted fragments of a ladder which had doubtless been
used by the old man of the mountain himself.