But the train was in motion again, slowly crossing the bridge, and the officer could only rush to a window and look wildly over the waters, illumined by the head-light and the glimmer of the moon, and fire at devious black floating objects that showed resemblance to the head of a swimming man struggling for his life. Several of the passengers derived great sport from this unique target-shooting, and the quiet was invaded with cries of excitement mingled with the reiterations of the pistol pealing over the water. There! a fair shot! the object sinks,—only a floating rail, for it is distinct as it rises once more to the surface; and again the balls make havoc only among the ripples. The quarry eludes,—eludes strangely. He must have had great practice in diving, or, as one hopeful soul cries out, he must be at the bottom of the river.
Its current was placid enough when the train was safely on the other side at a stand-still, and the people from the little log-cabin below climbed the embankment to hear the cause of the unprecedented stoppage. The bridge did not break on this occasion, but the old man is very sure they cannot do this “fool trick” again.
Although the train waited for a time while the banks of the river were patrolled, it was gone clanging on its way long before the rocks had ceased to echo the tramp of excited horsemen and their hoarse cries, as they beat the bushes in the neighboring woods, for the whole country-side was roused. The opinion that the reckless young mountaineer had, in leaping into the river, struck against some floating log, and had been killed by the concussion, or had gone to the bottom among the bowlders with a fatal force, gained ground as the day gradually dawned and no trace of him was detected.
By degrees the search degenerated into the idler phases of morbid curiosity. Many people visited the spot, ostensibly to join in the effort, who stared at the bridge and speculated on its height, and strolled up and down the banks, wondering futilely. Even when the sunset was reddening the river; when the evening star was tangled in the boughs of a white pine on the bank; when the sound of lowing kine was mellow on the air; when the bridge doffed its massive aspect, and became illusory, a shadow not more material than its shadow in the current below,—footing for the moonbeams, lodgment for the dew, a perch for a belated bird, familiar of the mist,—vague figures still lingered about the water-side, and raucous voices grated on the evening air. But at last the darkness slipped down; the train came and went; silence fell upon the river, save for its own meditative, iterative voice, the croaking of frogs, and the exquisite melody of the mocking-bird, as he sang in the slant of the moonbeams glistening through fringes of the pines. A wind rose and died away. The night was inexpressibly solitary. Far off a dog howled. The constellations imperceptibly tended westward. And presently, in the dark loneliness of the dead hour, something,—an otter, a musk-rat, a mink?—some stealthy wild thing, stirred itself at the water’s edge, beneath a broad ledge of the jagged, beetling rocks along the bank, under the current, on the gravelly shallows. It made much commotion; the water receded in widening circles far out toward the middle of the river,—a scramble, a stroke or two, and it rose to its full height, and waded to the shore; for it was the battered image of a man. He wore no hat; his long locks hung in straight wisps down upon his shoulders. He glanced about him continually with fearful eyes, as he hobbled stiffly up the bank. Once he sat down on the roots of a tree in the shadow, and essayed to draw off the great boots, heavy with water, and hampering his every motion. But the leather, so long steeped, had swelled, and he could not divest himself of them.
“Mought lose ’em, ennyhow, ef I war ter take ’em off,” he said, sturdily adapting his optimism to the cumbrous impediments. And so he limped on. He shivered in every limb. Over and again his breath seemed to fail him. More than once his head whirled, and he leaned against a tree to steady himself. The air was chill, but although the wind blew he was not sorry; it would the earlier dry his garments.
“An’ I reckon I hev done cotch all the rheumatiz I kin hold, ennyways, a-layin’ thar under the aidge o’ the ruver, half kivered with water fur a night an’ a day.”
When the woods began to give way to fields he hung back, feeling desolate and affrighted. How could he barter these sheltering shadows, this nullifying darkness, for those wide, exposed spaces of the pasture? Its dewy slope, with here and there an outcropping rock, but never a bush nor a tree, lay under the slanting light of the moon. The mountains, however, he knew were in that direction; and presently he took courage to climb the fence, and with his hobbling shadow at his side,—from which he sometimes shrunk with sudden fear, glancing over his shoulder askance,—skulked across the grassy expanse, now in the melancholy sheen, and now in the vague shade of a drifting cloud. There were sheep huddled and white, at one side of the slope, all asleep, save one, that held its head up and looked at him with a contemplative eye as he passed. A dog seemed their only guardian. He did not bark, but came down toward the stranger with a sinister growl. Mink had no fear of dogs, and somehow they trusted him. The shepherd sniffed in surprise at his heels, bounded up to lick his hand, followed with a wagging tail till he climbed the fence, and regretfully saw him take his way down the road. For his courage was renewed by its own achievements. He was bold enough presently to invade a garden where potatoes had lately been planted, and he dug up the sliced fragments, each carefully cut that it might contain two or more “eyes.” He found, too, some turnips, and was greatly refreshed and strengthened by his surreptitious meal. As he rose from the garden border and turned away among the currant bushes, he was confronted suddenly by the figure of a man. He sprang back, his heart plunging. He thought for a moment that he was discovered. And yet—it stood so strangely still. Only a suit of clothes stuffed with straw, and surmounted by an ancient and battered hat.
Mink gazed gravely at the scarecrow, that had surpassed its evident destiny in frightening that larger fowl, a jail-bird.
It might seem that with the weight of his heavy cares, the anguish of his forlorn plight, the dispiriting influence of his imprisonment, the jeopardy of his tortured freedom, his doubtful future,—exhausted, chilled, sore,—he would find scant amusement or relish in the grotesque image. One might wonder at the zest with which he applied himself, with convulsive, feeble efforts, to uproot the pole that sustained it. He conveyed it across the garden,—daring the dogs,—and placed the scarecrow where it might seem to peer into the front window of the house. He stood looking at it with intense satisfaction for a moment,—so like a man it was! He could forecast how the women of the household would cry aloud with terror when they should see it, how the mystified men would stare and swear. He did not laugh; the feat in some other method satisfied his sense of the ludicrous. It did not occur to him as a futile waste of his time and strength,—of both he presently stood in sore need. For the day was breaking when he still trudged between the zigzag lines of farm fences, along a road that bore evidences of much travel, in a country which he did not know, of which the only familiar objects were the dying moon and the slowly developing outline of the Great Smoky Mountains, far away.
“I’ll git ter Shaftesville in time ter stan’ my trial, ef I don’t mind, ’fore the dep’ty does,” he said to himself in a panic.