HOW THE BEAR DISTINGUISHED HIMSELF
If the old man of the mountain was not in his grave, where was he? He
had certainly not gone back to the world and left the buried treasure
behind him. If the grave had been empty, the soldiers might have
suspected foul play. Josiah Woodring, who had been his agent and
provider, had already been five years in his own grave at the time they
had arrived on the mountain. As long as they believed that the bones
of the old man were quietly at rest under the oak slab in the garden
spot, the condition of the hut, neglected and going to decay, was
sufficient evidence that he had died there, and that no one had
occupied it for more than five years before. With almost his last
breath Josiah had announced his death to the doctor from the
settlement; and under such solemn circumstances it was impossible to
believe that he had stated anything but the truth. He had not
mentioned, it is true, the precise time when the old man died.
After the night when the treasure was found, the three soldiers, to
thoroughly satisfy themselves, had cleared away the earth down to the
bed-rock. Indeed, the cask itself was evidence enough that the bones
of the old man were not below it, for he himself must have buried that.
If Josiah had known of its existence, it would certainly have traveled
down through the settlement in his two-steer cart, like any other
honest cask, and neither cattle nor driver would have ever come back.
After taking such a load to market, Josiah would have established
himself in luxury in his ignorant way, and probably cut a great splurge
in the "low country," with no end of pomp and vulgarity.
The three soldiers studied this problem with much care, weighing all
the evidence for and against. They even hit upon a plan of determining
when the old man came limping through the settlement of Cashiers behind
Josiah's cart, covered with dust, and staggering under the weight of
his leathern knapsack. They emptied out the little keg of gold on the
earthen floor a second time, and began a search for the latest date on
the coins. Some were remarkably old and badly worn. A few of the
guinea pieces bore the heads of the old Georges and "Dei gratia Rex,"
and 17-- this and 17-- that, and some of the figures were as smooth as
the pate, and as blind as the eyes, of the king on the coin. The
newest double-eagles--and there were quite a number of them--bore the
date 1833, so it must have been in that year or the year following that
the old man without a name had given up the world and become a hermit
on the mountain.
They decided that he must have had his own ideas about the vanity of
riches, and that after doling out his gold, or, more likely, his small
silver pieces, with exceeding stinginess to Josiah for the small
services rendered him, when he saw his end approaching, he had buried
the cask of treasure, and set up the slab above it, trusting to the
superstition with which the mountain people regarded the desecration of
a grave to protect the gold for all time. It would certainly have
protected it from any examination by the soldiers but for the strange
behavior of the bear, who had no delicate scruples. The old man had
probably told Josiah, with a cunning leer in his eyes, that the empty
grave was a blind to deceive any one who might climb to the top of the
mountain, as the hunters had done long before, and very likely he had
given him a great big silver half-dollar to wink at this little plan.
When death did really come at last to claim its own, it was evident
that Josiah, faithful to the old man's request, had either taken his
remains down the mountain or buried them somewhere on the plateau
without mound or slab to reveal the place, and, as likely as not, he
had found enough small change in the old miser's pockets to pay him for
his trouble.
Thus the mystery of the old man of the mountain was settled by the
three soldiers, after much discussion, and the cask of gold was
trundled back into the dark corner of the house, where they threw their
waste, and such guineas and double-eagles as had joggled out upon the
floor were kicked after it.
Directly after the lost envelop had turned up in the pool of lye,
Lieutenant Coleman had made his arrangements for the manufacture of
blank paper for the diary. The Blue Book was his personal property,
but before commencing its destruction he counseled with Bromley, who,
as a man of letters, he felt, under the circumstances, had an equal
interest with himself in the fate of one half of their common library.
Bromley, seated on the bank alongside the leach, was engaged at the
time in making a birch broom, and as he threw down the bunch of twigs a
shade of disappointment overspread his handsome face. He said that he
had never thoroughly appreciated the work of the learned board of
compilers until his present exile, and that it contained flights of
eloquence and scraps of poetry--if you read between the lines.
"But, putting all joking aside," said Bromley, "begin with a single
leaf by way of experiment, and let us see first what will be the effect
on the fiber of the paper; and then, if everything works well, we will
first sacrifice the index and the extracts from the Acts of that
renegade Congress whose imbecility has blotted a great nation from the
map of the world."
Lieutenant Coleman had more confidence in the result of the experiment
they were about to make than had Bromley, for the increased length of
his entry in the diary shows that he was no longer economizing paper:
"April 26, 1865. Wednesday. We have cut out ten leaves of the index
of the Blue Book, which we scattered loosely on the surface of the lye
in the cavity of the rock. After twenty minutes I removed a leaf which
had undergone no perceptible change in appearance, and washed it
thoroughly in running water. While so doing I was pleased to find that
with the lightest touch of my fingers the ink dissolved, leaving
underneath only a faint trace of the letters, which would in no way
interfere with my writing. It required much patience to cleanse the
paper of the slimy deposit of potash.
"Thursday, April 27, 1865. Of the leaves prepared yesterday, two,
which were less carefully washed than the others, are somewhat yellowed
by the potash and show signs of brittleness.
"April 30. We have continued our paper-making experiments, and find
that a longer bath in a weaker solution of lye has the same effect on
the ink, and is less injurious to the fiber of the paper. Philip has
burned a lot of holes in one of the cracker-boxes, in which we place
the leaves, leaving them to soak in the running water."
Thus it turned out that the dangerous envelop, by a freak of the
sportive wind, was made to play an important part in the economy of the
exiles, while the cask of gold stood neglected in the corner, and the
summer of 1865 began with no lack of paper on which to record its
events. Both Philip and the bear had been in temporary disgrace, the
one for losing the tell-tale envelop, and the other for disturbing the
sacred quiet of a grave. Both cases of misbehavior had resulted in
important discoveries, but the mishap of Philip had produced such
superior benefits that the bear was fairly distanced in the race. This
may have been the reason that prompted Tumbler to try his hand, or
rather his paw, again, for he was a much cleverer bear than you would
think to look at his small eyes and flat skull. At any rate, one hot
morning in July he put his foot in it once more, and very handsomely,
too, for the benefit of his masters.
It was Philip who caught the first view of him well up on the trunk of
the tallest chestnut on the plateau, which, growing in a sheltered
place under the northwest hill, had not been dwarfed and twisted by the
winds like its fellows higher up. At the moment he was discovered, he
was licking his paw in the most peaceful and contented way, while the
air about his head was thick with a small cloud of angry bees, darting
furiously among the limbs and thrusting their hot stings into his
shaggy coat, seeming to disturb him no more than one small gnat can
disturb an ox. The soldiers had been deprived of sweets since the last
of the sugar had been used, in the early winter, and a supply of honey
would just fit the cravings of their educated taste. Share and share
alike, bear and man, was the unwritten law of Sherman Territory, and
so, while Philip shouted for the ax, he began to throw clubs at
Tumbler, which were so much larger and more persuasive than the stings
of the bees that the bear began promptly to back his way down the trunk
of the tree.
Coleman and Bromley appeared in a jiffy, casting off their jackets and
rolling up their sleeves as they came. When the chips began to fly,
Tumbler sat down to watch, evidently feeling that some superior
intelligence was at work for his benefit, while the stupid bees kept
swarming about the hole above, except a few stray ones who had not yet
got tired of burrowing into the shaggy coat of the bear, and these now
turned their attention to the men and were promptly knocked down by
wisps of grass in the hands of Coleman and Philip, while Bromley plied
the ax. If only they had had a supply of sulphur, by waiting until the
bees were settled at night, they could have burned some in the opening
made by the ax, and with the noxious fumes destroyed the last bee in
the tree. Then, too, if they had been in less of a hurry they might
have waited until a frosty morning in November had benumbed the bees;
but in that case Tumbler would have eaten all the honey he could reach
with his paws.
As it was, the swarm extended so low that, as soon as the ax opened the
first view into the hollow trunk, the bees began to appear, and the
opening had to be stuffed with grass, and a bucket of water which
Philip brought did not come amiss before the chopping was done. All
this time Tumbler licked his jaws, and kept his beady eyes fixed on the
top of the tree, like a good coon dog, and never stirred his stumps
until, with the last blow of the ax, the old tree creaked, and swayed
at the top, and fell with a great crash down the hill.
The three soldiers ran off to a safe distance as soon as the tree began
to fall, while Tumbler, after regarding their flight with a look of
disgust, walked deliberately into the thick of the battle, and began to
crunch the dripping comb as coolly as a pig eats corn. The brittle
trunk of the old tree had split open as it fell, and for twenty feet of
its length the mass of yellow honey lay exposed to the gaze of the men,
while the infuriated bees darkened the air above it, and made a misty
halo about the head of the happy bear.
The happiness of Tumbler was not altogether uninterrupted, for the
soldiers drove him off now and again with sticks and stones; but
however far he retired from the tree, he was surrounded and defended by
such an army of bees that it was quite out of the question to capture
him. There was no end of the honey; but the worst of it was, the bear
was eating the whitest and newest of the combs, and when at last his
greedy appetite was satisfied, and he came of his own accord to the
house, he brought such disagreeable company with him that the soldiers
got out through the door and windows as best they could, leaving him in
undisputed possession--very much as his lamented mother had held the
fort on that night when her little cub, Tumbler, had slept in the ashes
the year before.
[Illustration: "THEY DROVE HIM OFF WITH STICKS AND STONES."]
There was nothing else to be done but to walk about for the rest of the
day; for until nightfall there was a line of bees from the house to the
tree. The soldiers secured the bear by closing the door and windows,
but it was not yet clear how they could obtain the honey. Coleman and
Bromley were city-bred, but Philip had been brought up in the country,
and he had received some other things from his uncle besides kicks and
cuffs and a knowledge of how to run a mill. He remembered the row of
hives under the cherry-trees beyond the race, and how the new swarms
had come out, and been sawed off with the limbs in great bunches, or
called out of the air by drumming on tin pans, and how at last they had
been enticed into a hive sprinkled inside with sweetened water.
So, under Philip's directions, a section of a hollow log was prepared,
covered at the top and notched at the bottom, and pierced with
cross-sticks to support the comb. As a temporary bench for it to rest
upon, they blocked up against the back wall of the house the oak slab,
which they no longer respected as a gravestone.
After it became quite dark, the bees had so far settled that a few
broken pieces of honeycomb, which had been tossed off into the grass
from the falling tree, were secured to sweeten the new hive, and it was
finally propped up on the rubber poncho in front of the thickest bunch
of bees. Tumbler was kept a close prisoner in the house, and early the
next morning the bees began crowding after their queen into their new
house, and by the afternoon they were carrying in the honey and wax on
their legs. So it was the second night after cutting the bee-tree
before the soldiers removed the hive, wrapped about with a blanket, to
the bench behind the house, and got access to the honey in the broken
log. There was so much of it that, after filling every dish they could
spare, they were forced to empty the gold on to the earthen floor, and
fill the cask with some of the finest of the combs.
What remained was given up to the bear and the bees, who got on more
pleasantly together than you can think; and in time they cleaned out
the old log and scoured the wood as if they had been so many housemaids.
During the remainder of the summer the gold lay neglected in the corner
together with certain wilted potatoes and fat pine-knots and the
sweepings of the floor. If a shining coin turned up now and then in
some unexpected place, it doubtless served to remind Coleman how handy
these small tokens of exchange might be if there were any other person
in all their world of whom they could buy an iron pot or an onion; or
it may have suggested to the clever brain of Bromley some scheme of
utilizing the pile as raw material. Worthless as the gold was in its
present form, in the hands of the soldiers so fertile of resource and
so clever in devices to accomplish their ends, it was not possible for
so much good metal to remain altogether useless. They soon saw that,
if they had the appliances of a forge, they could tip their wooden
spades with gold, and make many dishes and household goods. So after
the harvest they set to work in good earnest to build a smithy, and
equip it in all respects as well as their ingenuity and limited
resources would permit.
The first thing they did was to dig a charcoal pit, into which they
piled several cords of dry chestnut wood, setting the sticks on end in
a conical heap. Over this they placed a layer of turf and a thick
outer covering of earth, leaving an opening at the top. Several holes
for air were pierced about the base of the heap, and then some fat
pine-knots which had been laid in about the upper opening, or chimney,
were set on fire. These burned briskly at first, and then died down to
a wreath of smoke, which was left to sweat the wood for three days,
after which the holes at the base were stopped and others made half-way
up the pile. Late in November the dry, warm earth about the charcoal
pit was a favorite resort of Tumbler, and he tried several times to dig
into the smoldering mass, with results more amusing to the soldiers and
less satisfactory to himself than those of any digging he had ever
tried before.
When the smoke ceased to come out of these holes at the sides, they
were closed up and others pierced lower down, and so on until the
process was complete.
While this slow combustion was going on, a pen was built about the
fireplace of the old hut and filled in with earth to a convenient
height for the forge. The flue was narrowed down to a small opening
for the proper draft, and a practical pumping-bellows, made of two
pointed slabs of wood and the last rubber blanket, was hung in place.
Besides nailing, the edges were made air-tight with a mixture of pitch
and tarry sediment from the bottom of the charcoal pit, and the first
nozzle of the bellows was a stick of elder, which was very soon
replaced by a neat casting of gold.
Bromley was the smith, and his first pincers were rather weak
contrivances of platted wire; but after half the barrel of one of the
carbines had with the head of the hatchet been hammered out on a smooth
stone into a steel plate to cover their small anvil-block, it was
possible to make of the iron that remained a few serviceable tools.
[Illustration: MAKING A HUNDRED-DOLLAR CASTER.]
While they now had good reason to be sorry that the gold was not iron,
they were thankful for their providential supply of the softer metal,
and Bromley toiled and smelted and hammered and welded and riveted, in
the smoke of the forge and the steam of the water-vat, and turned out
little golden conveniences that would have made a barbaric king or a
modern millionaire green with envy. So it came about that, poor as
they were, the three exiled soldiers, without friends or country they
could call their own, sat on three-legged stools shod with
hundred-dollar casters, and drank spring-water from massy golden cups
fit for the dainty lips of a princess.