CHAPTER I COMPLETING THE LINE

If Andy Zachary, the guide, had not mysteriously disappeared from his home within the month which followed the events of the night of the 2d of July in the year 1864, sooner or later the postmaster in the Cove on one side and the people in the valley on the other must have learned of the presence of the little colony on the summit of the great rock.

On that particular night the cavalcade had come silently and secretly over the mountains by an unfrequented trail from the last station on Upper Bald, which towered above the Sandy River country. The troopers had followed the guide in single file along the ridges and down the stony trails, and now, when they emerged on the open Cove road for the first time, Andy fell back to the captain's side, in his butternut suit and mangy fur cap, with his long rifle slung behind his broad, square shoulders.

For that night his will was law above that of the captain; and before the three pack-mules at the end of the train had come out on the road, the head of the column had turned up a washout to the left, which presently brought the whole outfit into the shelter of a grove of pines alongside a deserted log cabin. It was just a trifle past midnight by the captain's watch, and the full moon which hung above the ridge to the west would light the Cove face of old Whiteside for yet an hour; and during the darkness which must follow in the small hours of the morning there would be ample time to steal through the sleeping settlement and find a lodgment high up on the mountain which was the objective of the expedition.

The troopers dismounted, and some lay down on the ground by the horses, while two kindled a fire in the stone chimney of the cabin and made coffee for the others. Corporal Bromley leaned a bundle of red-and-white flags against the door-post, and after turning aside with Lieutenant Coleman and Philip Welton to inspect their supplies on the pack-mules, the three joined the captain and the guide in the shadow of that end of the cabin which looked toward the singular mountain standing boldly between the Cove and the valley beyond. That it was a mighty fortress, unscalable on its western side, could be seen at a glance. The broad moonlight fell full on a huge boulder, whose mighty top, a thousand feet above the Cove, was fringed with a tall forest growth that looked in the distance like stunted berry-bushes, and whose rounded granite side was streaked with black storm-stains where the rains of centuries had coursed down. The moonlight picked out white spots underneath the huge folds which here and there belted the rock and protected its under face from the storms. These were the spots which the rills dribbled over and the torrents jumped clear of to meet their old tracks on the bulging rock below. It looked for all the world as if the smoke from huge fires had been curling against the mountain for ages, so black were the broad upward streaks and so white in the moon's light were the surrounding faces of the rock. Phil was the first to speak.

"IT WAS A MIGHTY FORTRESS, UNSCALABLE ON ITS WESTERN SIDE."
"IT WAS A MIGHTY FORTRESS, UNSCALABLE ON ITS WESTERN SIDE."

"It must have been a giant that rolled it there," he said with a sigh of relief, and looking up at Andy, the guide.

"Well, now, youngster," said Andy, "you'd 'low so if you was round these parts in the springtime, when the sun loosens the big icicles hangin' on them black ledges, an' leaves 'em fall thunderin' into the Cove bottom."

The Cove post-office, whose long white roof crowned a knoll nearly in the center of a small tract within the mountain walls, Andy said, was at such times a great resort of the mountaineers, who came that they might watch the movement of the avalanches of snow and ice.

Because of its wonderful formation this mountain was of abundant interest to all during their brief halt, but it was examined most carefully by the three young soldiers who were to be stationed on its crest. Philip Welton was the youngest of the three, only just past seventeen, and it was well known to his officers that if he had not been an orphan, without parents to object, he would never have been permitted to enlist even as a drummer-boy in the 2d Ohio, or in any capacity in any other command. The lad was of a gentle, affectionate nature, sensitive and refined, but his opportunities for education had been limited to the winter schools and the books he had read behind the flour-sacks in his uncle's mill. Some said his uncle was glad to be rid of him when he went away to the war. Like his friend and protector, Bromley, he had served with the colors on many a hard-fought field, and now the two had just been detached from their regiment and assigned to duty under the command of Frederick Henry Coleman, a second lieutenant whose regiment was the 12th United States Cavalry.

George Bromley, although the oldest of the three, was not yet twenty at the time he had enlisted at the beginning of the war, and he had left college in his junior year to enter the army.

Lieutenant Coleman had graduated from West Point the summer before, the very youngest member of his class. Although the three were mere boys at the time of their enlistment, each had entered the service through the strongest motives of patriotism, and each followed the fortunes of the national arms with an interest which showed itself in accordance with his personal character.

At that time General Sherman's army was engaged in that series of battles which began at Marietta, Georgia, and, including the capture of Pine and Lost Mountains, was soon to end in the victory at Kenesaw. The army of General Sherman was steadily advancing its lines in spite of the most heroic resistance of General Johnston, and every new position gained was fortified by lines of log breastworks, sometimes thrown up in an hour after the regiments had stacked arms. These hastily constructed works, extending ten and twelve miles across the thickly wooded country, were nowhere less than four feet high, with an opening under the top log for musketry, and out in front the tree-tops were thrown into a tangled mass, almost impossible for an attacking army to pass. These peculiar and original tactics of General Sherman enabled him to hold his front with a thin line of men, while the bulk of his troops were sent around one flank or the other to turn the enemy out of his works and so gain a new position.

This was the sort of service Corporal Bromley and Philip Welton had been engaged in during the early part of the campaign; and when they remembered the long rains and the deep mud through which the soldiers marched, and the wagon-trains foundered and stuck fast, they were not sorry to be mounted on good horses and riding over hard roads.

Now that the moon had set, the troopers mounted again and moved quietly along the stony road, Andy Zachary, the guide, riding with the captain at the head of the column. The deep silence of the forest was on every hand, broken only by the clicking of iron shoes and the occasional foaming and plunging of a mountain stream down some laurel-choked gorge. The road wound and turned about, fording branches, mounting hills, and dipping down into hollows for an hour, until open fields began to appear bristling with girdled trees, and then the wooded side of the huge granite mountain shot up, towering over the left of the column. Soon thereafter the forest gave way to open country, and as the road swept round the base of the mountain it became a broad and sandy highway, so that when the horses trotted out there was only a light jangling of equipments,—sabers clicking on spurred heels, and the jingling of steel bits,—and when the pace was checked to a walk in passing some dark cabin only the creaking of the saddles was heard.

So it was that the troopers stole silently through the valley of Cashiers, with the solemn mountain-peaks standing like blind sentinels above the sparse settlement. Occasionally a drowsy house-dog roused himself to bark, and his fellow gave back an answering echo across the bushy fields; but no one of the sleepers awoke under the patchwork quilts of many colors, and the long rifles hung undisturbed over the cabin doors. Then the troopers exulted in their cleverness, and laughed softly in their beards, while the night winds blew over the roofs of the dark cabins as they passed.

After they were clear of the sandy road in the settlement, it was a long way up the mountain-side, and the iron shoes of the scrambling horses clicked on many a rolling stone, and some sleepy heads caught forty winks as they climbed and climbed. The cabins disappeared, and the fences, and the plow-steers in the hill pastures rattled their copper bells from below as the troop got higher; and so it was lonesome enough on the shaggy mountain, and every trace of the habitation of man had disappeared long before they reached the rickety old bridge which spanned the deep gorge.

Andy said that this bridge was the only possible way by which the top of the mountain could be reached, and that it had been built a great many years ago by a crazy old man who once lived on the mountain, but who was long since dead. It was still too dark to examine its condition. It could be seen that the near-by poles of the old railing had rotted away and fallen into the black chasm below. More than half of the bridge was swallowed up in the shadows of the foliage on the other bank. Away down in the throat of the gorge, where tall forest-trees grew and stretched their topmost limbs in vain to reach the level of the grass and flowers on the fields above them, a tinkling stream fell over the rocks with a far-away sound like the chinking of silver coins in a vault. The silence above and the murmur of the water below in the thick darkness were enough to make the stoutest hearts quail at the thought of crossing over by the best of bridges, so the captain prudently decided to wait for daylight; and as the distance they had gained above the settlement made the spot a safe encampment for a day, he ordered the troopers to unsaddle.

After feeding the tired horses from the sacks of oats carried in front of the saddles, the men lay down on the ground and were soon sleeping soundly under the tall pines which grew above the bridge-head.