CHAPTER II 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.

ANDY TELLS THE STORY OF THE OLD MAN OF THE MOUNTAIN.
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."