Originally Published: March 9, 1895
Genres: Adventure
Dime Novel Bibliography: https://dimenovels.org/Item/15005/Show
Gutenberg link: https://gutenberg.org/ebooks/54930
Chapters: 37
Warning: This may include outdated and derogatory language and attitudes.
CHAPTER I
A POSTBOY'S COURAGE
"Has my letter come today?"
The dark bay horse—as fine a specimen of equine beauty and worth as ever came from the famed Blue Grass regions—ridden by the Postboy of the Kanawha, came to a standstill simultaneously with the utterance of the earnest, pleading tone, knowing in its almost human intelligence that its rider would be challenged at this particular spot and the question repeated which had been asked daily without variation for six months.
Little Snap had expected it, and on the watch, had discovered, a quarter of a mile back, a tall, gaunt figure clothed in skins and leaning heavily on a gnarled staff, standing by the wayside, under the shadows of a huge live oak.
An additional wildness was lent to the strange man's figure by the presence of a gray squirrel on either shoulder, while others gamboled at his feet, or ran up and down his lank form.
"Not today," replied the postboy, with an unusual softness in his voice; "not today, Uncle Solitaire."
"Please excuse me for troubling you, but I felt sure she would send me that letter today. I have waited so long. But take this to her, and I am certain that tomorrow I shall get my letter."
Then, as he had done so many times before, he handed the postboy a carefully folded piece of coarse paper, thanked him in a tremulous voice as he took it, to vanish the next moment into the heart of the wilderness hemming in the wild landscape.
"I wonder who he can be," said Little Snap, speaking his thoughts aloud, moved as he always was by the pathos of the meetings in this lonely place. "I would give my quarter's salary to know his life secret, but that is something no one I have ever met knows. It is singular that he should be able to bury himself in these woods so completely as to defy all attempts to find his stopping place. I suppose this paper is as blank as all the others have been."
Though he could not have told the reason for it, he had always unfolded these scraps of paper before throwing them away. He always felt, too, a sort of awed feeling as he gazed on the spotless pages, innocent of conveying any message, unless outside of the power of pen or pencil.
His surprise may be imagined on this occasion, therefore, when he unfolded the sheet to find a few lines of closely written manuscript.
His astonishment increasing, he read:
"Keep your eyes open; step lightly on Eagle's Tracks; fly through the Devil's Wash Bowl!"
The paper contained no signature and puzzled over its meaning, Little Snap read it several times before he crumpled it in the hollow of his hand.
"Some foolish whim of his," he said to himself. "Come, Jack, we must move faster than we have, or we shan't get to Six Roads until midnight."
As young as he was, Little Snap, whose name, by the way, was Dix Lewis, though he was seldom addressed thus, had been carrying the mail between Upper Loop on the Kanawha and Union Six Roads, at the very base of the backbone of the Alleghany Mountains, for about two years.
The distance between the two isolated towns was nearer forty than thirty miles, but he had never lost a trip yet, and he had never felt in better spirits than on this particular afternoon.
The valley of the Great Kanawha, as the lower section of this "River of the Woods" is called, is one of the most fertile regions to be found in West Virginia; but beginning near the Greenbrier Uplands, the stream finds its course often through rocky gateways. Particularly is this the case where a narrow gorge in the Great Flat Top Mountains allows the water to escape from the rock-bound basin lying between that rugged ridge of earth and Greenbrier Mountain.
The gnarled live oak, with its blasted top, where Little Snap had met Old Solitaire so many times, stood on the west side of the ascent leading to the Narrows, where the road wound over a spur of the mountain, to descend into one of the wildest valleys even the hackneyed landscape of the Old Dominion can show.
For nearly a mile, a natural shelf of rock formed the roadbed, which actually hung out over the chasm of the Kanawha, that found its way along the rocky bottom a hundred feet below.
Just beyond the Narrows in the first stage of the descent was a place called "Eagle's Tracks," where a bolt of lightning or some other work of nature had torn the rocks asunder so as to make the passage more difficult than at any other spot.
As he reached this locality the postboy instinctively looked about him, as if expecting some unseen foe would spring upon him from behind the bowlders piled one on the other.
Almost at his feet lay the rock-rimmed valley known by the gruesome name of "Devil's Wash Bowl."
The ascent on the opposite side was less abrupt, while in the far distance, rising high above all the lesser ranges, loomed the Alleghany Mountains, looking like a mighty wave on the sea of space.
But Little Snap had passed through this rugged scenery too often for his gaze to rest upon it now.
"Pah!" he exclaimed, "I am foolish. Of course, they were but idle words, though it does—"
"Hold up, younker!" suddenly broke in a harsh voice, giving an abrupt ending to his low speech. "We have a word to say to ye."
Simultaneous with the command, two burly figures sprang from behind a big bowlder by the wayside, and while he who spoke leveled a short-barreled shotgun at his head, the second seized hold of Jack's bit.
"What do you mean by? stopping me?" demanded the surprised postboy. "Let go there, Hawk Burrnock, so I can pass on."
"In a minnit, Dix Lewis; don't git onpatient, fer ye hev got time 'nough to git to Six Roads on tick. Ye hev a letter we want."
"Then come along with me and you can get it at the post office."
"We want it here—now!" and the firearm in the man's hand shook ominously.
"But I have no right to open the mail pouch on the road like this. If I am not mistaken, your mail comes to the Hollow Tree. Mr. Shag will let you have it there."
"He won't, younker, 'cos ye air goin' to let us hev it here!"
Little Snap knew the man by sight, but better by reputation as one of the most dangerous men living, and belonging to a gang called "bushbinders."
"I tell you I am not allowed to open the mail anywhere. Come along—"
"Mebbe ye air 'fraid we'll rob it; but to show ye thet we air on th' square, we'll stand back ten feet, while ye git out th' document. It's sent to Dad, Bird Burrnock. Kem, don't keep us waitin' till dark. I sw'ar no Dan Shag shall open a letter b'longin' to our family."
"Yas; hurry up," added the other, who was a brother of the first speaker.
Little Snap knew that his situation was a desperate one and that there was small chance of his getting off without yielding to the ruffians. Still, he quickly decided to baffle them if it lay in his power.
How to do that was a difficult question.
"Air ye goin' to do it?" demanded Burrnock, "or shall we hev to take it from ye? 'Pears to me ye oughter thank us fer bein' perlite 'nough to let ye handle the ol' sack."
"I repeat that I cannot do it, as much as I would like to oblige you. It would be against—"
"Bah! ye could do yit ef ye felt like yit. Uncle Sam need never know ye hev tampered with yit, 'less ye air fool 'nough to tell. Kem, once more, an' fer the las' time, I ax ye to hand over Dad's letter. Why, it's his'n, an' ye hev no bizness to keep it."
Little Snap had already formed a plan of action, which, if desperate, was only in keeping with his situation.
He said:
"You say you will stand back ten feet, and will not touch me while I am finding the letter?"
"Ye hev coined my idee, only there's to be no foolin'. Shoot ye, true ez preachin', ef ye show the fust sign o' treachery. D'ye cave?"
"I'll do all I agree if you will keep your word. As I dismount, you must step back, and upon your knees, you must promise you will never tell a living soul I opened that mail pouch."
As Little Snap spoke he slipped from the saddle into the middle of the road, the outlaws at the same time falling back a few feet.
"Rip th' ol' sack open lively, 'cos we an't got enny time to fool 'way," growled Buzzard Burrnock, as he loosened his hold on the bridle.
"You promise never to betray me?" questioned the postboy, putting his hand up to the mail pouch, though not to remove it from its position on faithful Jack's back, but to be sure that it was securely in place.
"We promise," declared the outlawed brothers in the same breath.
"Away, Jack, old boy!" cried Little Snap, sharply, dealing his trained horse a smart blow with the flat of his hand. "On to Greenbrier!"
Then, before the surprised twain could recover enough to prevent him, the gallant Jack leaped forward at the top of his speed, his body swaying to and fro, striking Buzzard Burrnock in such a way as to send him headlong down the abyss yawning on the right side of the road.
Hawk Burrnock uttered a yell of dismay as he witnessed his brother's fate, and saw the horse dash onward down the descending way.
"The fiends take—"
He was raising his gun to fire at Little Snap as he spoke; but, in the midst of his speech and action, the intrepid postboy snatched his revolver from under his jacket, and, springing forward, dealt the outlaw a blow with its butt over the head that caused him to sink to the ground with a groan.
"I didn't like to do it," said Little Snap, as he stood over the prostrate figure, "but he drove me to it. I do not think he is killed. He will soon come around all right. Wonder how Buzz Burrnock has fared," stepping at the same time to the edge of the bluff to look into the depths.
A dark object caught in a thicket of bushes clinging to the side of the chasm twenty or thirty feet below soon resolved itself into the figure of a man.
"He isn't as bad off as he might be," mused Little Snap. "Well, I will leave the precious pair to look after themselves."
The clatter of a horse's hoofs in the Devil's Wash Bowl at that moment told that Jack had reached the foot of the descent and was beginning to climb the opposite heights.
The postboy quickly placed his hand to his lips in such a way as to emit a short, sharp whistle, which rang up and down the valley with a peculiar clearness.
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