In The Course Of The Morning A Couple Of Stout Fellows Arrived,
Leading Between Them A Young Man Whom They Had Arrested, - It Didn't
Appear On Any Warrant, But They Wanted To Get Him Committed And
Locked Up.
The offense charged was carrying a pistol; the boy had
not used it against anybody, but he had flourished it about and
threatened, and the neighbors wouldn't stand that; they were bound to
enforce the law against carrying concealed weapons.
The captors were perfectly good-natured and on friendly enough terms
with the young man, who offered no resistance, and seemed not
unwilling to go to jail. But a practical difficulty arose. The jail
was locked up, the sheriff had gone away into the country with the
key, and no one could get in. It did not appear that there was any
provision for boarding the man in jail; no one in fact kept it. The
sheriff was sent for, but was not to be found, and the prisoner and
his captors loafed about the square all day, sitting on the fence,
rolling on the grass, all of them sustained by a simple trust that
the jail would be open some time.
Late in the afternoon we left them there, trying to get into the
jail. But we took a personal leaf out of this experience. Our
Virginia friends, solicitous for our safety in this wild country, had
urged us not to venture into it without arms - take at least, they
insisted, a revolver each. And now we had to congratulate ourselves
that we had not done so. If we had, we should doubtless on that
Sunday have been waiting, with the other law-breaker, for admission
into the Yancey County jail.
III
From Burnsville the next point in our route was Asheville, the most
considerable city in western North Carolina, a resort of fashion, and
the capital of Buncombe County. It is distant some forty to
forty-five miles, too long a journey for one day over such roads. The
easier and common route is by the Ford of Big Ivy, eighteen miles, the
first stopping-place; and that was a long ride for the late afternoon
when we were in condition to move.
The landlord suggested that we take another route, stay that night on
Caney River with Big Tom Wilson, only eight miles from Burnsville,
cross Mount Mitchell, and go down the valley of the Swannanoa to
Asheville. He represented this route as shorter and infinitely more
picturesque. There was nothing worth seeing on the Big Ivy way.
With scarcely a moment's reflection and while the horses were
saddling, we decided to ride to Big Tom Wilson's. I could not at the
time understand, and I cannot now, why the Professor consented. I
should hardly dare yet confess to my fixed purpose to ascend Mount
Mitchell. It was equally fixed in the Professor's mind not to do it.
We had not discussed it much. But it is safe to say that if he had
one well-defined purpose on this trip, it was not to climb Mitchell.
"Not," as he put it, -
"Not mine own fears, nor the prophetic soul
Of the wide world dreaming on things to come,"
had suggested the possibility that he could do it.
But at the moment the easiest thing to do seemed to be to ride down
to Wilson's. When there we could turn across country to the Big Ivy,
although, said the landlord, you can ride over Mitchell just as easy
as anywhere - a lady rode plump over the peak of it last week, and
never got off her horse. You are not obliged to go; at Big Tom's,
you can go any way you please.
Besides, Big Tom himself weighed in the scale more than Mount
Mitchell, and not to see him was to miss one of the most
characteristic productions of the country, the typical backwoodsman,
hunter, guide. So we rode down Bolling Creek, through a pretty,
broken country, crossed the Caney River, and followed it up a few
miles to Wilson's plantation. There are little intervales along the
river, where hay is cut and corn grown, but the region is not much
cleared, and the stock browse about in the forest. Wilson is the
agent of the New York owner of a tract of some thirteen thousand
acres of forest, including the greater portion of Mount Mitchell, a
wilderness well stocked with bears and deer, and full of streams
abounding in trout. It is also the playground of the rattlesnake.
With all these attractions Big Tom's life is made lively in watching
game poachers, and endeavoring to keep out the foraging cattle of the
few neighbors. It is not that the cattle do much injury in the
forest, but the looking after them is made a pretense for roaming
around, and the roamers are liable to have to defend themselves
against the deer, or their curiosity is excited about the bears, and
lately they have taken to exploding powder in the streams to kill the
fish.
Big Tom's plantation has an openwork stable, an ill-put-together
frame house, with two rooms and a kitchen, and a veranda in front, a
loft, and a spring-house in the rear. Chickens and other animals
have free run of the premises. Some fish-rods hung in the porch, and
hunter's gear depended on hooks in the passage-way to the kitchen.
In one room were three beds, in the other two, only one in the
kitchen. On the porch was a loom, with a piece of cloth in process.
The establishment had the air of taking care of itself. Neither Big
Tom nor his wife was at home. Sunday seemed to be a visiting day,
and the travelers had met many parties on horseback. Mrs. Wilson
was away for a visit of a day or two. One of the sons, who was
lounging on the veranda, was at last induced to put up the horses; a
very old woman, who mumbled and glared at the visitors, was found in
the kitchen, but no intelligible response could be got out of her.
Presently a bright little girl, the housekeeper in charge, appeared.
She said that her paw had gone up to her brother's (her brother was
just married and lived up the river in the house where Mr. Murchison
stayed when he was here) to see if he could ketch a bear that had
been rootin' round in the corn-field the night before.
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