The Last Three Soldiers

by W. H. Shelton

The long, cold winter of 1870, which froze all the fowls except the six sad roosters, and followed the failure of the potato and corn crops, was also disastrous to the bees. The hives had increased to a fine long row in the years that followed the capture of the first swarm discovered by Tumbler, the bear, and the honey had been a welcome addition to the soldiers' simple fare; but the cold weather had destroyed every swarm, leaving only bee-bread and some half-consumed old combs from which the dead bees had fallen in a dry mass upon the bench below.

While Coleman and Bromley were engaged in planting, Philip was making an effort to find a new bee-tree. He had noticed some bees buzzing about the wild flowers on the ridge by the old flagging-station, and he determined to "line" them by a method he had seen his uncle practise when he was a boy in Ohio. He made a little box with a sliding cover, into which he put a small honeycomb, and taking the old yellow rooster under one arm for company,—or perhaps for luck,—he went over to where the flowers grew near the northern end of the plateau. He set down the old rooster on the ground, and opened the box on a stone in front of him, and waited, watching his bait. It was something like fishing in the old mill-pond, of which he had once been fond, and he found a singular fascination about watching the opening in the box as he used to watch his bobber. The June weather on the mountain was like May in the Ohio valley, and the sweet smell of the flowers carried his mind back to his old home. He had no longer to wait for the first nibble than he had waited in the old days for the first stir of his cork and the spreading ring on the water. A bee lighted on the lid and then made his way down into the box. After loading his legs with honey, the bee reappeared, and rising into the air, flew away to the south. Philip followed the small insect with his eyes, and then, picking up the old rooster, he came on for a hundred yards in the same direction, and set his bait as before. This time he had two bees in his box, and when they had loaded themselves they flew away in the same direction as the first. They disappeared so soon above the tree-tops that he thought the swarm was not far away; but every time he advanced, the loaded bees continued to fly south, until he had moved the paralyzed old rooster by easy stages the whole length of the plateau; and the bees, which came in greater numbers now, rose into the air and flew in a "bee-line" over the top of the southern cliff.

Philip was disgusted at this result of his bee-hunt, as any fisherman, after wading to his middle in a cold river to humor a fine trout, might be, to lose his victim at last in the foaming rapids; but he knew to a certainty that there was a bee-tree somewhere beyond the thus far unscalable southern cliff.

For the present the vision of honey was abandoned, and the economy of the camp, where food was now alarmingly low, was cunningly exercised to discover edible things in lieu of the corn, which, after the planting, was all stored in the nine gunny-sacks which had fallen from the balloon. The sacks were piled one upon another in a small heap behind the hopper in the mill, and the six sad roosters had to shift for themselves as best they could, except the old fellow who was paralyzed, and for him they gathered grubs and worms, and saved the crumbs that fell from the table.

It appeared possible to the minds of the soldiers that the liver-colored slabs of fungus which grew out of the sides of the chestnut-trees and the birches might be as palatable and nourishing as mushrooms. They broke off one of these pieces one day, which was shaped like the half of an inverted saucer, and was moist and clammy on the under side. They had a suspicion that such things were poison. They had never heard of any one eating the like, and after they had stewed it in their camp-kettle, inviting as its odor was, they sniffed and hesitated and feared to taste it. In the end they shook their heads, and spilled the contents of the kettle on the ground, where as soon as their backs were turned Tumbler and the five sad roosters fell to devouring the rejected food.

When the soldiers discovered what their domestic animals were about, the bear was licking his chops and the old roosters were waltzing about in the grass picking up the last morsels of the feast. They regretted their carelessness, and rather expected that before night the old paralyzed rooster would be their only living companion on the mountain.

When, however, the bear and the five sad roosters survived the test, and seemed rather to flourish on the new food, the soldiers took heart, and found the fungus not only good, but so much like meat that it was quite startling to their vegetarian palates.

After eating all of this peculiar food-product that grew on the plateau, they gleaned the field above the deep gorge, and as a last resort they made a hunting expedition to the half-acre of rocks and brambles where they had found the mica. Terrible as the passage through the cavern had at first seemed to the mind of Lieutenant Coleman, the lapse of time and a better acquaintance with the interior of the subterraneous tunnel made it but a commonplace covered way to the field of mica. Not that the soldiers had any further use for the mineral wealth which was so lavishly strewn among the rocks. It was as valueless to them now as the button-hook found in the hand-bag of alligator-skin. To go now and then through the underground passage, however, if only for the purpose of looking at the world outside from the view-point of their newest territorial possession, was a temptation which no landed proprietors could resist. The little shelf afforded them a glimpse to the south of the Cove road, which on account of certain intervening trees was not to be had from the plateau above. Several cabins could be seen smoking in the small clearings which surrounded them, but since the telescope had gone into the avalanche with Philip there was but poor satisfaction in looking at them.

They found a single piece of the liver-colored fungus growing on the root of a half-decayed old chestnut, and even this they regarded as well worth their journey. They spent some time wandering about the mica shelf, and when Lieutenant Coleman and Philip were boring their torches into the ground, one after the other, to rid them of the dead coal, and getting ready for the start back, Bromley, who had been poking about among the rocks, called to them in a tone of voice that indicated a pretty important discovery in the stone line. He was down on his hands and knees on the turf, boring his toes into the soil, and as his comrades approached him, he exclaimed:

"I haven't touched it yet. Just come here and look!"