He didn’t try to overtake the child, but, though the road was crooked, he never let him get out of his sight for a second. Sometimes in dark, rough places the man stumbled. “Seem like some spirit’s a-guidin’ the boy,” he said. “He don’t ’pear to make a false step”; and, like Suly, he was awed.
As they neared the ford he lessened the distance between them but, though his heart stood still when the boy got upon the foot log (for the stream was running high) he made no sign but to take off his coat ready for a plunge if emergency called for it.
They crossed in close procession, the little sleeper, the dog, and the old man. Upon the other side the leader kept the highroad for a furlong or more and then, where a rough culvert conducted a small branch into the Junaluska, turned into a rocky gully and ascended by a rough, steep path, the others following. Two or three times Dixie, turning to the old man, entreated with tail and eyes for an explanation of these strange proceedings, but by pantomime was ordered into line again.
Upward and onward they went, no sound accompanying but the tramp of their feet, the rustle of leaves as some frightened animal darted from its lair, the gurgle of the brook, and the recoil of the low-hanging branches which two of them nimbly dodged, but the old man put aside with his hands.
At last they came out upon a table of shale, dry and white in the moonlight. On its edge, backed by a cliff, stood a forlorn cabin, built for a stable one might have thought, but for the pile of clay and stones that showed at which end of it a chimney had once stood.
Straight up to its sagging door marched the little sleeper, laid the blue-blocked half of the Valley of the Mississippi upon the rotten step, and then—the silent procession “marched down again.”
Next morning the sun was shining through the open doorway and Colonel Ledbetter with an awl and a waxed-end was splicing a strap when Grover Cleveland sat up in bed and rubbed his eyes open with his fists. Suddenly he shouted:
“Gran’daddy! gran’daddy! here’s the Valley of the Mississippi cut plumb in half and your part’s here and”—he wriggled to the floor and grabbed his gran’daddy by the shoulder—“where’s my half gone to, gran’daddy?” Without waiting for an answer the child went back to the bed and made a more thorough examination.
“Gran’daddy! gran’daddy! don’t you reckon ’twas a mighty low-down somebody to do that trick?”
“I ’low ’twas, Grover Cleveland—that is, if he knowed what he was doin’, ’twas.”