CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Down the Mountain Trail
The day after Christmas arrives. High up on Cumberland Mountain the snow is still coming down hard and furious outside the cave. The fire is but smoldering embers. The cheer and companionship of the previous night are now replaced with moans, headaches and stomachs churning with the morning after a big drunk sickness.
“Oh, my,” Nate says leaning against the side of the cave heaving his innards out. “Dear Lords, jest let me live and I’s swear I’s never gonna partake of that Devil’s brew again. On second thought, dear Lord jest lets me die right where I stand, here and now, and gets me outta my terrible misry!”
Luke is piling up the fire with fresh wood as Old Bill and Kay begin to stir from the spot where they had passed out the night before. The aroma in the cave is different, it is pleasant, it is the smell of hot coffee. Luke has the coffee pot boiling fresh coffee, thinking plenty of it is needed and needed not a minute too soon.
“All right you revelers get your drunken butts over here and get a fresh cup of coffee; it will make you feel better.”
“Dadgum,” says Nate, “whos could feel any worse?”
The hot java did make them feel better, and a little while later they are sitting around the warm fire, bend over, with most resting their heads in their hands. More than one has sworn off drinking for life. Luke looks to Kay and asks, “Kay you have just come from the far side of the mountain can you give me any advice after we get out of here what to expect?”
Sick, but Kay answers weakly, “Luke if you can get to the other side, about three-quarters of the way down the mountain y’all will come to a farm. The Babb family lives there. The man, who owns the farm, is originally from South Carolina and sides with the South – his name is Samuel Babb, and he will give y’all help.”
“Kay, how long before reaching the Babb place?”
“In good weather, about two weeks or so. For now, you’ll just have to wait out this blizzard and please Luke, no more questions.”
CAVE FEVER
For the better part of three weeks, the four men, Luke, Nate, Old Bill and the mail-rider Kay Mann live together in the cave almost to the top of the Cumberland Plateau. The snow finally stops falling, the sun is shining and the temperature is on the rise; however, the snow outside the cave’s entrance is nearly four feet deep, much too deep to try to venture down the narrow, mountain trail. They can do nothing but wait until some of the snow melts. During their stay in the cave, New Year’s Day came and went without much excitement – their frivolity on Christmas was enough to last them for a while.
Luke has heard of ‘cabin fever,’ but he has never heard tell of ‘cave fever.’ He may not have heard the name, but he sure enough recognizes the feeling, so do all the others. They have to get outside. Being shut up in this hole is about to drive them crazy. It is nearing the end of week three when Luke announces he is leaving. He is going down the eastern side of the mountain!
Old Bill protests saying it is too dangerous to try that trail with wet, melting snow. Luke argues he doesn’t care he is going, and if they want they can come along. If not, stay in the cave and continue looking at the rock walls, he’s out of there.
“I’m with Luke,” responds Kay. “The mail must go through. Oh, by the way, Luke, I’ll take care of that letter of yours and make sure it gets posted once I get to Lexington, don’t you worry. I send it to your mother in Alabama, for sure.”
Luke begins saddling his horse. He is about to throw the saddle over its back when Nate stands up and declares, “Oh what the blazes...we’s all got to die some time or nuther. Might as well be fallin’ off a cliff in someplace I ain’t never hear’d of I suppose.”
“Well, I’ll be dogged,” answers Old Bill, “you fellers ain’t leaving me behind, no sir’ree.”
Standing just inside the cave’s entrance, Kay Mann says good-bye to his recently acquired friends. All mount their horses, and Kay turns Nellie to the left on the snow-covered trail and heads down the western side of the Cumberland Mountains. The other three head uphill toward the eastern side. The snow is still deep. The footing for the burro and horses is perilous at best. One slip or false step by one of the animals, and it is over the edge they go, falling hundreds of feet to a horrible death in the canyons below.
It is the end of January 1864 a new year. Luke thinks as they prod along the narrow trail – ‘what will this New Year bring? Will Nate and I ever get home?’ A more pressing question – ‘will we even survive this mountain?’
VOICES!
They have spent almost a week reaching the summit and are beginning the winding path down the eastern side when they suddenly hear voices. It is men talking. The muffled sounds seem to be coming from below. Dismounting they slip close to the edge of the cliff, Luke sees the trail ahead makes a large left-hand horseshoe curve going down – these men are directly in their path and immediately below them. Whispering, “I count six men, how many do y’all see?”
“Luke, I counts six of ’um too. Do you suppose they be Yankees? They’s jest sitting around that campfire having themselves a good ole time.”
Before Luke can reply Old Bill answers, “Nah, them’s bandits. I didn’t want to let on before, but I have been ridin’ with them cutthroats fer the last few months. They’s aiming to take yer belongings, horses, and money and then they’s gonna murder y’all.”
“See, I told you Nate, I told you he wasn’t a prospector! He’s one of them good-for-nothin’ outlaws!”
“Nah! Nah you got it all wrong. You see I is a prospector, leastways I wuz, but like I’s said I’ve been working these mountains fer ages and had never found as much as a smidgen of gold. One day tho’ I wuz working this here creek bottom and I picked up the purtiest hunk of yeller gold that I have ever seed.
“I had found the mother lode, but jest as I was fixin’ to start digging out more nuggets up rides them there outlaws right down here below us. Their leader is Jesse something or other; I jest ferget, but he tells me he’s gonna give me a choice: work fer them or die right where I wuz standin’. Well, now see here, where I were standin’ wuz my mother lode, and no sir’ree, I wasn’t fixin’ to die right there smack-dab in the middle of my fortune. Them outlaws had no idee what wuz in that creek. I knowed I could find it agin, so here we is – my job is to lead travelers, such as yerselfs, to them so as they can bushwhack you.”
“Old Bill, why are you telling us this now?”
“Fellers, since I met up with you and Nate and that mail-rider Kay feller I’ve done come to realize I’s wrong, gold or naught. Y’all has become my friends; I ain’t never had no friends, and I ain’t gonna let them murder you.”
The camp of Old Bill’s bandits is at the bottom of the horseshoe curve situated in a small canyon. The bluff Luke, Nate, and Old Bill are currently sitting on is on one side, and the snow-covered canyon wall is to the outlaws back on the other side. Luke questions Old Bill if there might be another way around the outlaws.
He shakes his head, “The onliest way down this here mountain is right down this trail. If ’en yer want to try to try to save yer skins, you can cut across that yonder ridge and y’all will come to Cumberland Gap, but hit’s full of more cutthroats and Yankees than you can shake a stick at. Luke I got y’all in this fix and I’m aimin’ to git y’all out.”
DYNAMITE
Nate had talked earlier of having a couple sticks of dynamite in his saddlebag. Old Bill says he believes he can get into their camp, get to talking and when they aren’t watching toss a stick of dynamite into the fire. He believes he will have enough time to get away from the ensuing, horrendous blast.
Luke tries to talk Old Bill out of such a crazy scheme, telling him he is going to get himself killed. “Once you throw that stick of dynamite into the fire it might immediately explode Old Bill. You probably won’t get two steps before it goes off. I can’t let you do such a foolish thing.”
“I can’t say yer arguments er wrong – do y
ou still have any of that mail-rider’s paper left?”
“Yeah, and his ink and pen too. I forgot to give them back to Kay – you remember we were having a pretty big party that night! What do you want the paper for Old Bill.”
Old Bill explains Luke is probably right and he, in all likelihood, will not survive the explosion, so he wants to draw a map to his mother lode. He says if he gets blowed to pieces the gold strike belongs to Luke. He draws the map and hands it to Luke. “I want you to have this too, just to prove my gold strike exists.” He gives Luke a gold nugget that must weigh at least two or three ounces.
Again Luke, together with Nate try to dissuade Old Bill from the folly of blowing up the outlaws, but he has his mind made up and isn’t going to change. Nate goes to his horse, opens his saddlebag and withdraws a stick of dynamite and a small length of fuse, and hands it to Old Bill. Bill slips it inside his shirt and starts walking down the trail towards the bandits, leaving Lucky and Brownie with Luke and Nate.
Luke and Nate crawl to the edge of the cliff and watch what is about to happen a few hundred feet below. At the first sight of Old Bill, the bandits spring to their feet and draw their six-shooters; however, as Bill approaches and is recognized, they holster their guns and all begin to talk. Some slap Old Bill on the back and laugh. It appears they also have their own jug of ‘rattlesnake medicine’ and are taking turns with the jug. In a while, the laughing and loud talk begins to quieten down, and all the bandits fall asleep. Old Bill sees his chance and tosses the dynamite into the fire and starts to run back up the trail toward Luke and Nate. A second passes then another. ‘Was the dynamite faulty?’ Thought Luke.
Suddenly they hear a hissing sound and BA-BOOM! The thunderous detonation reverberates off the walls of the narrow canyon. The resulting explosion apparently kills all the outlaws around the fire. All that is except for one. The bandit, that was spared, is running as fast as his boots will take him down the mountain, and he cuts across the ridge heading toward the Gap. What about Old Bill? Luke sees him limping along the trail - he wasn’t killed in the blast. Injured maybe, but Old Bill is still alive.
“What is that noise Luke?” Nate said cocking his head to one side, “Hears it? That there rumbling sound? If’n I didn’t know better, I’d thank a train was a comin’.” Both Luke and Nate realize the sound is coming from the mountain above their heads and on the mountain behind the bandits. The roaring noise is snow! An avalanche of snow, trees, and rocks caused by the explosion of the dynamite is beginnings to cascade down both sides of the mountain into the confining canyon with the dead outlaws and Old Bill.
THE AVALANCHE
“Run Bill run!” Luke tries to yell above the noise of the avalanche.
Nate starts to run down the trail to meet him, but it is too late. The wall of snow, thousands and thousands of tons of it, fill the canyon, burying the bandits and sadly Old Bill too. Luke and Nate have a fine coating of the white, powdery flakes, but the main river of flowing snow spared them.
It takes a few minutes before the snow settles, and Luke and Nate can once again begin to move down the trail. Around the horseshoe bend, they meet the mountain of snow that has buried Old Bill. “Luke, I sees no way ‘round this here pile of snow. We can’t gos over and we can’t gos back. What’s yer plan?”
“To be honest Nate I don’t have a plan – I’m afraid Old Bill and our stick of dynamite have gotten us out of one fix in to another mess. He solved the outlaw problem all right, but he created another perplexing situation – this mountain of snow.”
“Reckon we’s can jest wait ‘til this here big pile of snow melts Luke?”
“Sure, we can Nate in a couple of months or more. Wait! Wait Nate you have another stick of dynamite, right?”
“Shore nuff Luke, I’s will gets it outta my saddlebag.” Excitedly Nate exclaims, “Man oh man, I can see youse done got us a plan!”
Luke tells Nate to take the animals back up the trail and get them out of harms way. He is going to put that stick of dynamite into the mountain of snow and see if he can blow a hole through it.
Running up the trail to Nate and the animals Luke hollers, “Fire in the hole!” He has no sooner said the words than the dynamite explodes with a resounding boom. Snow fills the canyon again covering Luke and Nate with another fine coat of powdered snow. Luke is afraid to look over the side of the cliff – summing up a little courage Luke creeps to the side and looks. “Oh my, oh my,” is all he can say.
“What happened Luke, didn’t we do no good?”
Standing upon his feet Luke peers ito the canyon, “Do good? Do good you say? See for yourself Nate.”
Nate walks to the edge and looks down at the mountain of snow – what mountain of snow? The dynamite has blown a hole through the pile of snow, clean through, from one side to the other - the trail was open again. “My, my, Luke, it looks like when Noah opened that ole Red Sea...”
“Moses, it was Moses Nate,” Luke said slapping Nate on the back, grinning.