Read Online Walking to Gatlinburg: A Novel by Howard Frank Mosher - Free Book Online
Authors: Howard Frank Mosher
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walked on into the Mountains of the Bark Eaters beside the elephant. From time to time the animal paused and looked back the way they had come with red and weepy eyes. Morgan thought that the gypsy must have had considerable goodness in him. Why else would the Caliph mourn him so?
That night Morgan heard wolves howling and a scream that could have been a cat o' the mountains, a great yellow painter. The elephant paid little attention to the wolves, but the painter's scream angered him, and he trumpeted back as if to keep this tiger of the north woods at bay. Toward morning Morgan dreamed that he heard his name being called out over the dark forest. "Morrr-gaaan. Give up the stone, Morrr-gaaan. Give up the nigger gal."
He sat bolt upright. Was it in fact a dream? From far off in the woods came a high, eerie threnody:
Young Morgan's body is a-moldering in the dust,
Young Morgan's musket's red with bloodspots turned to rust,
Doctor Surgeon's scalpel has made its last inquiring thrust,
A.D. goes marching on.
There could be no doubt. The apparition called Doctor Surgeon was sporting with him. Terrified though he was, Morgan resolved to sell his life as dearly as possible. The doctor might kill him, but not without mortal cost to himself.
Dawn, and racked by bloody coughing. The Caliph knelt in the snow trail, speckled with brown evergreen needles, and beckoned with his trunk. Morgan stepped carefully onto the animal's bent brow and then onto its back. For the rest of that day he rode on the elephant. Like the migrating geese overhead, he knew north instinctively so, putting his back to Canada, he and Caliph proceeded south along the lumber track through the snowy woods. How could runaways from the South who had never seen snow make their way through this boreal fastness? With a conductor like John Brown, he supposed. Morgan had been a conductor himself. Now he was a soldier. He was his own private, captain, and general, his own sutler, though a poor one, because both he and the elephant were near starving. He was his own outrider and his own artillery, his own pickets, his own rolling army of one. He was guilt-ridden and sick and in full retreat from an evil he did not understand. Very possibly he was dying.
A T FIRST Morgan thought that an avalanche had let loose from the upper slopes of the mountain ahead. The low rumbling rose to a steady growl as the woods road he was following crested a rise. Ahead he saw thousands of logs rushing down the whitewater rapids of a brawling river. Grinding together and creating a tremendous thunder, they sluiced downstream between looming black boulders.
Morgan jolted along on the elephant until he came to a place where all hell seemed to have let out for a holiday. In a bend just downstream, logs scrubbed clean of every shred of bark were piled thirty feet high. More logs were augmenting the jam every second, piling up against a black cliff that plunged directly down to the water on the far side of the river. The jam rose higher and higher up the sheer stone wall, though some few logs were still being guided through a narrow corridor of rushing water by red-shirted black men with pick poles.
More lumberjacks, also black, were using a yoke of oxen hitched to a long cable to try to free a mammoth debarked log, the butt end of a monstrous white pine. Branded on the side of each ox Morgan noticed the rune. The animals' eyes bulged as they strained to free the pine log from the jam. A gigantic coal-black jack in a red shirt, a slouch hat as big as a five-gallon bucket, and voluminous trousers was urging the oxen on. From time to time the mountainous jam gave a groan and shifted. But it refused to give. The pine butt had it locked fast in the narrows below the cliff.
The huge black drover exhorting the oxen glanced up at Morgan and said, "This exactly what we need. I was just saying, what we need now, complete this bedlam, is an elephant show come by."
Morgan realized that
That night Morgan heard wolves howling and a scream that could have been a cat o' the mountains, a great yellow painter. The elephant paid little attention to the wolves, but the painter's scream angered him, and he trumpeted back as if to keep this tiger of the north woods at bay. Toward morning Morgan dreamed that he heard his name being called out over the dark forest. "Morrr-gaaan. Give up the stone, Morrr-gaaan. Give up the nigger gal."
He sat bolt upright. Was it in fact a dream? From far off in the woods came a high, eerie threnody:
Young Morgan's body is a-moldering in the dust,
Young Morgan's musket's red with bloodspots turned to rust,
Doctor Surgeon's scalpel has made its last inquiring thrust,
A.D. goes marching on.
There could be no doubt. The apparition called Doctor Surgeon was sporting with him. Terrified though he was, Morgan resolved to sell his life as dearly as possible. The doctor might kill him, but not without mortal cost to himself.
Dawn, and racked by bloody coughing. The Caliph knelt in the snow trail, speckled with brown evergreen needles, and beckoned with his trunk. Morgan stepped carefully onto the animal's bent brow and then onto its back. For the rest of that day he rode on the elephant. Like the migrating geese overhead, he knew north instinctively so, putting his back to Canada, he and Caliph proceeded south along the lumber track through the snowy woods. How could runaways from the South who had never seen snow make their way through this boreal fastness? With a conductor like John Brown, he supposed. Morgan had been a conductor himself. Now he was a soldier. He was his own private, captain, and general, his own sutler, though a poor one, because both he and the elephant were near starving. He was his own outrider and his own artillery, his own pickets, his own rolling army of one. He was guilt-ridden and sick and in full retreat from an evil he did not understand. Very possibly he was dying.
A T FIRST Morgan thought that an avalanche had let loose from the upper slopes of the mountain ahead. The low rumbling rose to a steady growl as the woods road he was following crested a rise. Ahead he saw thousands of logs rushing down the whitewater rapids of a brawling river. Grinding together and creating a tremendous thunder, they sluiced downstream between looming black boulders.
Morgan jolted along on the elephant until he came to a place where all hell seemed to have let out for a holiday. In a bend just downstream, logs scrubbed clean of every shred of bark were piled thirty feet high. More logs were augmenting the jam every second, piling up against a black cliff that plunged directly down to the water on the far side of the river. The jam rose higher and higher up the sheer stone wall, though some few logs were still being guided through a narrow corridor of rushing water by red-shirted black men with pick poles.
More lumberjacks, also black, were using a yoke of oxen hitched to a long cable to try to free a mammoth debarked log, the butt end of a monstrous white pine. Branded on the side of each ox Morgan noticed the rune. The animals' eyes bulged as they strained to free the pine log from the jam. A gigantic coal-black jack in a red shirt, a slouch hat as big as a five-gallon bucket, and voluminous trousers was urging the oxen on. From time to time the mountainous jam gave a groan and shifted. But it refused to give. The pine butt had it locked fast in the narrows below the cliff.
The huge black drover exhorting the oxen glanced up at Morgan and said, "This exactly what we need. I was just saying, what we need now, complete this bedlam, is an elephant show come by."
Morgan realized that
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