MAKING A HUNDRED-DOLLAR CASTER.
While they now had good reason to be sorry that the gold was not iron, they were thankful for their providential supply of the softer metal, and Bromley toiled and smelted and hammered and welded and riveted, in the smoke of the forge and the steam of the water-vat, and turned out little golden conveniences that would have made a barbaric king or a modern millionaire green with envy. So it came about that, poor as they were, the three exiled soldiers, without friends or country they could call their own, sat on three-legged stools shod with hundred-dollar casters, and drank spring-water from massy golden cups fit for the dainty lips of a princess.
CHAPTER XIV
WHICH GIVES A NEARER VIEW OF THE NEIGHBOR CALLED "SHIFLESS"
With the events which closed the last chapter the three soldiers had been more than a year on the mountain. They had become thoroughly settled in their delusion, and more contented in their way of living than they would have thought it possible, in the beginning, ever to become.
The long war had come to an end in a way of its own, and without any regard for the messages flagged from Upper Bald. The soldiers of both armies had been disbanded, and the good news had found its way into the mountain settlements at about the time the bear had discovered the bee-tree.
Far and near the Union outliers had come in from their hiding-places among the rocks, and were gradually settling their differences with their Confederate neighbors, in which delicate process there was just enough shooting to prevent peace from settling too abruptly among the mountains. In Cashiers valley there was scarcely any difference of opinion, and the old postmaster in the Cove, who had attended strictly to his duties and never spied on his neighbors, was not molested under the new order of things, or even deprived of his office.
On the very evening when the fires were first lighted under the charcoal pit, it happened that two men were driving along a stony road which led into the valley over a spur of Little Terrapin. All day the rain had been falling steadily, and the team showed unmistakable signs of weariness, the sodden ears of the mule flapping dejectedly outward, and the steer halting to rest on every shelf of the descent, as the light wagon creaked and splashed down the mountain in full view of the wooded face of old Whiteside, now relieved boldly against a twilight sky which showed signs of clearing. The two men sat crouched on the wet seat, with a border of sodden bedquilt showing under their rubber coats, their wool hats dripping down their shining backs, and the barrels of their guns pointing to right and left out of the dry embrace in which the locks rested. As they mounted the next ridge, the major was getting a little comfort out of a spluttering pipe, and Sandy was looking hopefully between the horns of the steer at the patch of clearing sky.
"There's some humans a-outlyin' on old Whiteside to-night," said Sandy. "I 'lowed them critters had all come in."