CHAPTER XXIII STARVATION

Following their first visit, the three soldiers returned during four successive days to the deserted house and the field surrounding it. By this time they had carried home the last of the books by pailfuls, making the long journey through the cave of the bats by torch-light; but they had arrived no nearer to the solution of the riddle of the cattle. In fact, so long as any part of the library remained where they had found it, they had come to wander hopelessly in the early morning along the ledges which upheld the smaller plateau, and then retire to the cool house to read.

After the books had been removed by the soldiers to their own side of the dividing cliff, they found it so hard to leave them that they stopped at home for a whole week, reading by turns and worrying themselves thin about the bones of the cattle. They had abundant need at this time to keep their flesh and spirits, for two more of the nine sacks of corn had been ground in the mill, and the prospect for the future was more dismal than ever. The end of this week of inaction, however, found the three soldiers in the early morning again standing by the deserted house.

Lieutenant Coleman had a systematic, military mind, and, now the diverting books were out of their reach, he stated the problem to his companions in this direct and concise way:

"We know that two cattle have lived and died on this field."

"Undoubtedly," replied Bromley and Philip.

"We have examined three sides of the field, and found that the cattle could not have come from either of those directions. Is not that so?"

"It is absolutely certain," said the others.

"Therefore," continued Lieutenant Coleman, "they must have come by the fourth side."

This conclusion was admitted to be logical; but it provoked a storm of argument, in the course of which the soldiers got wild-eyed and red in the face. In the end, however, they consented to trim out the bushes which formed a thicket along the base of the ledge. It seemed to Lieutenant Coleman that they must find some passage here, and, sure enough, not far from the middle of this natural wall they came upon a low-browed opening, which presently narrowed down to a space not much more than five feet square. The farther end of this tunnel was closed by a pile of loose earth, which was spread out at the base, and had every appearance of having been thrown in from the other side of the ledge. The rusty shovel was brought from the fireplace of the house, and after a few minutes of vigorous digging, a ray of light broke through the roots and grass near the roof of the hole. The soldiers gave a wild cheer, and rushed out into the fresh air to cool off.

"That settles it," said Lieutenant Coleman. "Hezekiah Wallstow was the old man of the mountain, and after Josiah Woodring buried him he filled up this passage. The treasure he was searching for was the very cask of gold we dug out of the fake grave—thanks to the sacrilegious behavior of the bear."

"But how about the cattle?" said Bromley, still skeptical.

"Easy enough," said Coleman, triumphantly. "They brought two young calves up the ladders."

This hitherto unsuspected passage through the ledge made everything clear. It had evidently been wide open during all the years the old man had lived on the mountain. It might have been screened by bushes so that any chance visitors, like the hunters who came over the bridge, would be easily deceived, and not disposed to look farther than the ruined cabin and the non-committal gravestone.

It was not strange that the three soldiers had never suspected that there was an opening here through the rocks, for a four-pronged chestnut had taken firm root in the grassy bank which Josiah had thrown up, and the old man had been dead six years when they first arrived on the mountain. How soon after the burial the passageway had been closed, it was not so easy to determine, but numerous hollows which were afterward found near certain trees and rocks on the smaller plateau made it look as if Josiah had spent a good many moonlight nights in digging for the treasure before he gave it up altogether. According to the story of Andy, the guide, Josiah himself must have died soon after his strange patron, and most likely he closed the entrance to the passage in despair when he felt his last illness approaching. There was still much for the soldiers to learn about the motive of the hermit in burying his surplus gold. The comforts with which he had surrounded himself would indicate that he was no miser, and his devotion to the cause of the slave made it extremely probable that he had willed his treasure to some emancipation society, which had not succeeded in reclaiming it before the war, and which, for plenty of reasons, had not been able to secure it since.

After the soldiers had reopened the passage through the dividing cliff so that they could pass readily from one plateau to the other, they suspended further investigation and yielded to the luxury of reading, which had been denied them so long. The more they read of this peculiar literature from the library left by Hezekiah Wallstow, the more interested they became in the cause of the slave who, they believed, had been made free on paper by the impotent proclamation of Abraham Lincoln, only to have his fetters more firmly riveted than ever by the success of the Confederate arms.

Among the other books there was one entitled "Two-fold Slavery of the United States." This book had been published in London in the year 1854, and contained as a frontispiece a black-and-white map, which, so far west as it extended, was remarkably like the one which hung on the wall of their house. Philip shed new tears over the pathetic lives of Uncle Tom and little Eva, and Lieutenant Coleman and George Bromley grew more and more indignant as they read of the sufferings of the Rev. Elijah P. Lovejoy, and the self-confessed cruelties of Captain Canot. However much the soldiers were wrought up by these books, it was left to the mass of pamphlets and periodicals to fill their hearts with an unspeakable bitterness toward the institution which the united efforts of their comrades in arms had failed to overthrow.

It was evident that the old man had kept up some sort of communication by mail with the Boston abolitionists, and that his agent, Josiah, had yielded his views, if he had any, to a liberal supply of gold; for up to the time of his death he had continued to receive these periodicals. As long as he received such dangerous publications, he must have maintained correspondence with their editors; and the more the soldiers became imbued by their reading with the ideas which had made a hermit of Hezekiah Wallstow, the more certain they became that he had willed his money to the cause of abolition, or perhaps that he only held it in trust from the first. Otherwise, why should he have adopted so crafty a method of hiding it from Josiah? To speculate on the cunning of these two men became a favorite occupation of Coleman and Bromley when their eyes were worn out with reading. They were sure that every fresh lot of pamphlets had come, through the settlement and up the mountain, at the bottom of a cask of meal. The old man had no mill or other means of grinding his corn, which he must have cultivated for his cattle, relying upon Josiah for most of his food. Undoubtedly the very keg which the hunters had seen Josiah carrying up by moonlight, and which they believed was filled with whisky, contained seditious literature enough, if they had ever found it, to have put them to the unpleasant necessity of hanging the bearer to the nearest limb.

So the soldiers continued to read, to the neglect of every other duty, through the entire month of August, except that Lieutenant Coleman made a brief entry in the diary each morning, and, when they were out of food, Philip laid by his book long enough to grind another sack of the corn. The few ears which had shown themselves on the plantation had been eaten green, and the yellow and shriveled stalks which had escaped the grub at the root stood in thin, sickly rows. It was an off year even for the chestnuts. When, in addition to this, it was found in September that the potato crop had rotted in the ground, the reading was brought to a sudden end, and the soldiers found themselves face to face with a condition which threatened starvation, and that before the winter began. They remembered the bee-tree, and took up the line where Philip had left it, at the edge of the southern wall, only to find that the bees flew on to some tree in the forest below and beyond the plateau.

When it was quite settled that they would have no supplies for the winter unless they bought them from the people in the valley with their gold pieces, as the old man had done before them, they settled down to their reading again, foraging by turns for every edible thing they could find, and putting off the evil hour when they should be forced to reveal themselves. The more they read of these fiery periodicals the more they loathed their neighbors in the valley and shrank from communicating with them. They knew that these people in the mountains seldom owned slaves themselves; but they felt that they were in full sympathy with all the cruelties of which the yellow-and-blue covered pamphlets treated. If the guineas in the hoard of Hezekiah Wallstow meant anything, they represented the proportion of the gold which had been contributed by antislavery societies in England; and they began seriously to consider their moral obligation to return the entire sum to its rightful owners. In order to accomplish this just purpose, their lives must be preserved during the approaching winter, and seeds secured for another planting. After that, they would find means to replace with iron the gold they had used in the construction of the mill and of various domestic utensils; and when the treasure was restored to the cask, they would find some way to open communication with the benevolent antislavery societies.

By the end of October they had eaten the last of their meal. There were a few clusters of purple grapes on the vines, and to these they turned for food, still dreading to make any signs to their enemies, with a dread which was born of the pamphlets they were reading. For two days more they stained their hands and faces with the juice of the grapes, until an exclusive fruit diet, and meditation day and night on the awful wickedness of men, weakened their bodies and began to affect their minds.

The dread hour had finally come, and they could no longer delay making signs of their distress. To this end they collected a pile of dry wood, and heaped it on the point of rocks, in full view of the settlement of Cashiers. It was growing dusk when everything was ready to start the fire, and Philip had come from the house with a lighted torch. At the moment he was about to touch it to the dry wood, Bromley snatched the torch from his hand and extinguished it in the dirt. Coleman and Philip tried to prevent this rash act of their comrade, and in their excitement gave free expression to their anger; but Bromley stamped out the last spark of the fire without paying any heed to their bad language and frantic gestures.

"Are you mad?" he then cried, retreating a little from what threatened to be an assault. "What do you think will be our fate at the hands of these people, when we are found in possession of such books as we have been reading? We should be imprisoned like Lovejoy, or branded like Walker. We might pay with our lives for your recklessness to-night."

Philip and Coleman were shocked at the danger they had so narrowly escaped, and thanked Bromley for his forethought and prompt action.

Of course they must bury the books, but they would have all of the next day to attend to that; and with many expressions of thankfulness they returned to the house and crept into their bunks. When morning came they were weak and hungry, with nothing whatever to eat; but in spite of all this they heaped the antislavery books and pamphlets on the earthen floor, carefully separating them from the works on temperance. They had come to regard these books as little less than sacred, and they naturally shrank from burying them in the ground. Happy thought!—there was the cave of the bats. So, packing them into the pails, the soldiers carried the books in two toilsome journeys by torch-light to the middle of the cavernous passage, and laid them carefully together on the stone floor. They were well-nigh exhausted by this exertion; but after a rest they found strength to close the entrance with brush and earth, and to cover their work with pine-needles.

Half famished as Lieutenant Coleman and his comrades were, they could only drink from the branch and wait patiently for night. The poor old paralyzed rooster, sitting in the chips by the door, looked so forlorn and hungry that Philip set him out among the dry weeds, and lay down on the ground beside him, so as to be ready to turn him about and set him along when he had plucked the few seeds in his front. As for the bear and the five crippled roosters, they shambled and hobbled about, and shifted bravely for themselves.

There were still many things to consider as to how they would be received by these people, and what success they would have in exchanging United States gold pieces for food and clothing. Perhaps they would be obliged to buy Confederate notes at ruinous rates of exchange. Perhaps their visitors would confiscate their gold pieces at sight, and take them down the mountain as State prisoners. They must keep some coins in their pockets for barter, which was their object in summoning their dubious neighbors; but it would certainly be prudent to conceal the bulk of their money. So the last thing the soldiers did on this November afternoon was to dump the gold that remained in the cask into a hole in the ground, and cover it up.

As soon as it began to grow dark on the mountain they set fire to the pile of wood, which was presently a great tower of flame, lighting up the rocks and trees, and forming a beacon which must be seen from valley and mountain for miles around. At that hour, and in the glare of their own fire, they could see nothing of its effect in the settlement; but they were sure it would be watched by the families outside every cabin; and in this belief they moved about to the right and left of the flames, waving their arms in token of their distress.

THE BEACON FIRE.
THE BEACON FIRE.

Surely a fire on this mountain-top, where no native had set foot for seven long years, would excite the wonder of the people below. It could be kindled only by human hands, and they would be eager to know to whom the hands belonged.

In the morning the three soldiers crept out to the smoldering remains of their fire, which was still sending up a thin wreath of smoke. On the distant road through the valley they could see groups of tiny people, evidently watching and wondering. They could come no nearer than the bridgeless gorge, and so, weak as the soldiers were, after making every effort to show themselves in the smoke, they made their way to the head of the ladders and climbed down to the field below. Philip stopped behind to run up the old flag on the pole; for, whatever effect that emblem might have on their neighbors, they were determined to stand by their colors. They found a few chestnuts and dried berries in the old field, which they devoured with wolfish hunger as they crept along toward the gorge.

They hoped to see human faces on the opposite bank when they arrived; but there was no one there to meet them. They were not greatly disappointed, for it was still early in the day, and the people had a much longer journey to make from the valley. There was the same old-time stillness on that part of the mountain: the tinkling brook in the bottom of the gorge, and the soughing of the wind in the tops of the tall pines on the other side. There were still some sticks of the old bridge wedged in the top of the dead basswood—the bridge which had served the old abolitionist in his lifetime, and the destruction of which had served the purpose of the soldiers equally well.

The mild November sunshine lay bright on the faded landscape, and the soldiers sat down on the dry grass to await the coming of their deliverers. If one of the tall pines had been standing on their own side of the gorge they would have used their last strength to cut it down and fell it across the chasm. They had put on their old blue overcoats, to make a decent appearance before the people when they arrived; but hour after hour crept slowly by, and nobody came except Tumbler, the bear, who had backed down the ladders and shambled across the field to join them. By the sun it was past noon when he came, and as he seated himself silently in the gloomy circle, he made but a sorry addition to the anxious waiters. Why did no one come to their relief? They knew that their fire had been seen where the presence of a human being would be regarded as little less than a miracle by the dwellers in the valley. What if they had accepted it as a miracle altogether, and avoided the place accordingly? They were ignorant people, and therefore superstitious; or else they were as cruel and heartless as they were described in the "Weekly Emancipator."

The rustling wind in the tree-tops, and the occasional tapping of a woodpecker in the forest beyond, became hateful sounds to their impatient ears. Bromley, who was the strongest of the three, and the more indignant that no one came to their relief, wandered back upon the old field, where he found a few more chestnuts, which he divided equally with his half-famished comrades. Every mouthful of food helped to keep up their strength and courage, and now the slanting rays of the afternoon sun reminded them that they must repeat their signal, and that no time was to be lost in gathering wood for another fire. There was still hope that relief would come before dark, and Philip was left to watch with the bear, while Coleman and Bromley returned to the plateau.

The postmaster in the Cove might be less superstitious, they thought, or less hard-hearted than the people in the valley. If their strength held out they would have two fires that night. No chance should be neglected. As Coleman and Bromley dragged together a few dead limbs upon the edge of the great boulder, they hoped that the postmaster had found the remains of the telescope, as they knew he had found the army blanket which fell from the balloon, so that when he saw their fire he would connect it, in his mind, with the other objects which had come down from the mountain.

It was after sunset when Philip and Tumbler appeared on the plateau. No one had come even so far as the gorge; and Philip helped to carry the last of their wood to the rocky point where the blackened embers of the first fire lay in the thin ashes. Coleman and Philip remained to kindle this beacon, while Bromley went to the Cove side with a lighted torch and a bundle of fat pine-knots. When Bromley saw the first smoke of the other fire across the ridge, no light had yet appeared in the windows of the small post-office. Moreover, with his strong eyes he was sure he saw some object moving along the road in the direction of the office. He waited a little, waving his torch, and then he applied it to the dry leaves and sticks at the base of the pile, which flashed quickly into a blaze. Bromley was not content to move about in the light replenishing his fire, but, as often as a fat pine-knot had become enveloped in flame, he separated it from the pile and poked it over the edge of the great smooth rock, to flare against the black storm-stains as it fell, and perhaps to start a new fire in the Cove bottom. A brisk east wind was blowing across the mountain, which carried the smoke and sparks over the long roof of the post-office. Bromley remained late at his work; but at last his strength and his will-power yielded to the weakness that comes with hunger. An overpowering drowsiness compelled him to leave the fire and go stumbling over the hill to the house, where he found Coleman and Philip already asleep.