I went directly to Goshorn’s hotel. He was a stout, burly man, shrewd in his way, good-natured, but not without temper and impulses. He looked keenly after business, played the fiddle, and performed a few tricks of legerdemain. He had a ladylike wife, and both were very kind to me, especially after they came to know me pretty well. The lady had a nice, easy horse, which ere long was lent me freely whenever I wanted to ride. One day it was missing. The master grieved. They had named it after me in compliment. “Goshorn,” I said, “in future I shall call you Horse-gone.” But he was not pleased with the name. However, it was recovered by a miracle, for the amount of horse-stealing which went on about us then was fabulous.
After a few days Goshorn and I prepared to go up Elk River, to renew the leases of oil and coal lands. Now I must premise that at all times the man who was engaged in “ile” bore a charmed life, and was venerated by both Union men and rebels. He could pass the lines and go anywhere. At one time, when not a spy could be got into or out of Richmond to serve us, Goshorn seriously proposed to me to go with him into the city! I had a neighbour named Fassit, an uncle of Theodore. He had oil-wells in Virginia, and when the war begun work on them was stopped. This dismayed the natives. One morning there came to Mr. Fassit a letter imploring him to return: “Come back, o come agin and bore us some more wels. We wil protec you like a son. We dont make war on Ile.” And I, being thus respected, went and came from the Foeman’s Land, and joined in the dreadful rebel-ry and returned unharmed, leading a charmed if not particularly charming life all winter and the spring, to the great amazement and bewilderment of many, as will appear in the sequence.
The upper part of Elk River was in the debatable land, or rather still in Slave-ownia or rebeldom, where a Union
man’s life was worth about a chinquapin. In fact, one day there was a small battle between me and home—with divers wounds and deaths. This going and coming of mine, among and with rebels, got me into a droll misunderstanding some time after. But I think that the real cause lay less in oil than in the simple truth that these frank, half-wild fellows liked me. One said to me one day, “You’re onlike all the Northern men who come here, and we all like you. What’s the reason?” I explained it that he had only met with Yankees, and that as Pennsylvania lay next to Virginia, of course we must be more alike as neighbours. But the cause lay in the liking which I have for Indians, gypsies, and all such folk.
Goshorn began by buying a dug-out poplar canoe sixty-four feet in length, and stocking it with provisions. “Money won’t be of much use,” he said; “what we want chiefly is whisky and blue beads for presents.” He hired two men who had been in the Confederate army, but who had absented themselves since the proceedings had become uninteresting. These men took to me with a devotion which ended by becoming literally superstitious. I am quite sure that, while naturally intelligent, anything like a mind stored with varied knowledge was something utterly unknown to them. And as I, day by day, let fall unthinkingly this or that scrap of experience or of knowledge, they began to regard me as a miracle. One day one of them, Sam Fox, said to me meaningly, that I liked curious things, and that he knew a nest where he could get me a young raven. The raven is to an Indian conjuror what a black cat is to a witch, and I suppose that Sam thought I must be lonely without a familiar. Which recalls one of the most extraordinary experiences of all my life.
During my return down the river, it was in a freshet, and we went headlong. This is to the very last degree dangerous, unless the boatmen know every rock and point, for the dugout canoe goes over at a touch, and there is no life to be
saved in the rapids. Now we were flying like a swallow, and could not stop. There was one narrow shoot, or pass, just in the middle of the river, where there was exactly room to an inch for a canoe to pass, but to do this it was necessary to have moonlight enough to see the King Rock, which rose in the stream close by the passage, and at the critical instant to “fend off” with the hand and prevent the canoe from driving full on the rock. A terrible storm was coming up, thunder was growling afar, and clouds fast gathering in the sky.
The men had heard me talking the day before as to how storms were formed in circles, and it had deeply impressed them. When Goshorn asked them what we had better do, they said, “Leave it all to Mr. Leland; he knows everything.” I looked at the moon and saw that the clouds were not driving dead against it, but around while closing in, and I know not by what strange inspiration I added, “You will have just time to clear King Rock!”
It was still far away. I laid down my paddle and drew my blanket round me, and smoked to the storm, and sang incantations to myself. It was a fearful trial, actually risking death, but I felt no fear—only a dull confidence in fate. Closer grew the clouds—darker the sky—when during the very last second of light King Rock came in sight. Goshorn was ready with his bull-like strength and gave the push; and just as we shot clear into the channel it became dark as pitch, and the rain came down in a torrent. Goshorn pitched his hat high into the air—aux moulins—and hurrahed and cried in exulting joy.
“Now, Mr. Leland, sing us that German song you’re always so jolly with—lodle yodle tol de rol de rol!”