Part 23

After this narrative the train of thoughts which it awakened and the strangeness of my situation prevented me from going immediately to sleep, and hours elapsed before I was in the arms of “Nature’s fond nurse.” Tabal’s regular snoring I suppose put me in that condition.

How long I slept I know not, but I awoke with a start. Terrible, blood-curdling cries, like those from a woman or child in distress, came from the end of the room opposite the chimney.

The fire was still blazing, and by it I saw that Tabal was awake, lying half raised from his blanket, and with eyes fixed on the back of the room, was intent on listening. Several piercing cries, with intervals between, rang out, and the last one had just died down, when there was a sound of some heavy body falling on the roof, a rumble, then a terrific crash, after which all was darkness, blackest darkness in the room.

Successive creakings of the cabin, and sputterings and hissings from the fire-place ensued.

I attempted to call out but could not.

I leaned over and reached, in the darkness, for my companion. He was not there--nowhere on his blanket, which I felt still unrolled. I groped around the room.

Nothing!

The room was deserted, and I was alone in the haunted cabin.

I leaned out of the door. It was as black outside as in. Again I attempted to call, and then my voice broke from me. The halloo rang out, echoed along the cliff, and instantly seemed swallowed by the night; but no answer came.

With these efforts courage returned, and I stepped back into the center of the apartment. As I did so, I heard a fall on the window, then one on the floor, and the pit-pat of feet sounded plainly as something brushed against my legs, and shot with sudden velocity out of the cabin door.

“What else,” I thought; “what other unaccountable things were to happen? Tabal was right; the cabin is haunted.”

I drew out a large clasp-knife from my pocket, opened it, and retreated to one corner of the room. I stirred not, scarcely breathed. For hours I stood there, as rigid as a statue. Again the foot-falls resounded through the room; again a fall on the window by the cliff--then death-like stillness again intervened.

In the black, unbroken silence, I heard nothing but the action of my heart, thumping, thumping, till it seemed it would beat the breath from my chest, and all the while I was, in vain, seeking a solution for these mysteries of the night. Where was Tabal? What caused the blood spots, the horrible cries, the crash, the fire’s extinguishment, and the foot-falls?

Gray light began to sift in. It grew stronger, brighter, and the light of morning filled the room. Black objects assumed regular outlines, became distinct, regained their natural shapes, and everything around me was revealed. There lay the tumbled blankets; the fire-place filled a foot high with snow. I started. The crash and following darkness were explained. A snow slide off the cliff had struck the roof and then fallen down the chimney.

I went to the door. A man’s footprints long and far between, led from the door-step down through the laurel. Tabal had disappeared in that direction. I expected to see footprints besides those of the mountaineer,--the footprints of the owner of the footfalls in the night,--but none were there, at least, no human tracks, but, instead, in the snow were prints like those of a dog. What did this mean?

I ran to the window. The same impressions were on the snow-covered sill, and then beyond on the near ledge of the cliff. Some animal had entered by the window, rushed through the cabin, and then re-entering, had retreated by the same way to the cliff. That it was a wild-cat or panther I was convinced; and this conviction was strengthened when my mind reverted to the cries, which were similar to those made by the cat species.

The whole mystery seemed cleared up. The wild, rugged precipice held on its face a den of panthers; the cabin was another retreat of theirs, and the bloody pool on the floor was the mark of some recent feast.

Gathering up the blankets I followed in Tabal’s footprints for half a mile, when I met him coming towards me with the settler he had remained with during a part of the previous night. My appearance to him was like one raised from the dead. We returned to the cabin, and my conclusions were confirmed by their immediate affirmations that, “nairy varmint but a painter hed made them tracks, an’ they ’lowed the cabin mought not be hanted arter all.”

Soon after this night’s adventure, a systematic hunt was organized; and in the chase four panthers which had had their hereditary den in the cliff’s face were killed. With this slaughter all reasonable fears of the cabin’s being haunted vanished, and now it is made the usual rendezvous for hunters driving bears or deer in that locality.

* * * * *

“Wal,” exclaimed one of the Federal court witnesses, “thet’s a blamed good way to git red o’ hants!”

“Now,” said Upson, directing his speech toward me, “we would like to hear from you.”

“I have no personal experience to relate,” I replied, “but can tell you something, similar in nature to your story, as it was told me by an old resident of Graham county.”

Immediately there was a hearty invitation extended me to begin; so without ceremony I preluded what follows with the announcement that the tale was the one of

THE PHANTOM MILLERS.

Three years ago, while taking a tramp through the wilderness of the Santeetlah and Unaka mountains, I stopped for a few days with an intelligent, elderly farmer on the bank of Cheowah river. One pleasant afternoon, during the time of my visit, I took a ramble with my host over his extensive farm. Through the cool woods, upward along the roaring stream, we slowly walked for probably half a mile, when suddenly the rough wagon-trail we were following led away from the river; and, looking through the thick undergrowth in the direction where with redoubled roar the waters still kept their way, I saw the outlines of an old building.

“What ancient looking structure is that?” I asked, pointing toward it.

“That,” my companion answered, “is a worn out mill.”

“Why,” I returned, “this is the first mill I have noticed on the river. It does, in fact, appear dilapidated; but, looking at the heavy thickets and tall trees that stand so close to it, I should think that at the time it was abandoned it might have been in pretty good condition. See, there’s a tree apparently fifteen years old thrusting its whole top through a window, and the casements that are around it are not yet rotted away.”

“You are a close observer,” said Mr. Staley, “but, nevertheless, we quit running that mill because it couldn’t be worked.”

“Why so?” I asked with interest.

“Because it was haunted!”

“Haunted! A haunted mill!”

“Yes, sir; the subject is one I don’t like to commence on, but I suppose now you must hear it.”

“Yes, by all means, but wait first till I see the mill.”

I pushed through the tangled thickets under the scrubby oaks, and a minute after stood before the structure. It was a mill which even at this date would, if new, have been suited to a more open country. The side that faced us was farthest from the river. One door, up to which rotten steps led, and two windows, through one of which the tree before mentioned, spread its heavy limbs, were on the front. The siding was falling and hanging loosely in places from the upright timbers, and the entire structure was fast becoming a skeleton, for all the clapboards had been torn by the wind or thievish hands from the three remaining sides. The roof, in part, had fallen in, but had been caught by the shaky stringers of the upper, half-story floor. The spot on the river bank was peculiarly suited for a mill site. The channel of the stream above was rock bound, the banks being steep and narrow. Just before it reached the mill the body of waters compressed into an impetuous volume, shot over a fall of twenty feet. An outlet had been blasted through the solid rock close by the side of the fall, and a wooden race set up leading to the mill. This race had long since disappeared, worn away by time and water. The old wheel, though, hung in its place beside the structure almost under the fall, and above the mad waters, boiling and foaming below.

Going around to one of the sides, we managed to clamber in and on the plank floor. There was half a partition through the center, forming on either side two rooms, each about 20 X 25 feet in dimensions. The mill-stones were yet in place, but the hopper and grain bins were missing.

We seated ourselves on the floor at the back side of the building, and with our feet hanging over the green, rotten wheel, with the thin spray of the cataract now and then touching us, and the turbulent river sweeping onward below, he began as follows:

“When I came here from Charleston, South Carolina, and settled, in the spring of 184-, the first thing I found necessary, after building my house, was a mill. As many families, apparently, lived in these valleys then as live here now. I was compelled to go to Murphy, a distance of eighteen miles, to get my flour and meal, or take my grain to a primitive hopper, two miles below on this river, and wait a day for it to grind a bushel. Either was an exasperating procedure. This site seemed the best adapted one along the river. The race was formed, a foundation laid, and, by the aid of a temporary saw, enough lumber was gotten out to finish this mill complete by the following summer.

“Well, time went by; the mill run smoothly, and with it I managed to make enough to keep my family. One morning, however, on entering here I saw that the wheel, which I left running for the night, in order to grind out an extra amount of meal, had stopped, while the water was still pouring on it. On examination I found the dead body of a young man, a farmer, who lived on the slope of Deer mountain, hanging fastened to the lowest paddle of the wheel. All that could be learned of his untimely end was that he had left home for an evening’s trout-fishing the day before. He had undoubtedly fallen into the deep, swift stream above; had been drowned; swept through the race down on to the wheel; and, his clothes catching on the splintered paddle, he had hung there.

“A short time after the last sad occurrence, a neighbor’s boy fell through the trap door and broke his neck. Superstitious people then began to whisper that a spell was on the place. They had had, as yet, no ocular demonstration of what they imagined and reported, but such was the influence that my mill was avoided at night, travelers beating a new path around it through the forest. Of course, this talk had no effect upon me, and in fact I rather liked it, for, as far as I was able to perceive, it kept a class of indigent mountaineers away from the mill, whom I had reason before to suspect of grinding their corn surreptitiously at night.

“But in the spring of 1861 something really strange did occur. My youngest brother was one day with me at the mill. I had left him inside here while I had gone some distance back into the woods to get a second-growth hickory. Probably half an hour had passed and I was returning, when just before coming in sight of the mill I heard angry voices. One voice was that of my brother, the other I could not recognize; neither had I time to consider, for suddenly the report of a fire-arm sounded in that direction. I hallooed loudly at the moment I heard it, and at the same time came out of the wood. A comparatively clear space, with the exception of a few large trees, was between me and the mill. I saw no one near but my brother, and he was leaning partly out the front window there, where now grows the red maple.

“‘Halloo! what have you shot?’ I shouted.

“There was no answer.

“The day was growing terribly dark. Black clouds, heavy with moisture, were filling and piling deep the entire face of the sky between these circling mountains. The lightning had not yet begun to play, but it would not have taken a prophet to tell of its speedy coming.

“I was somewhat surprised at hearing no return to my salute; and as I drew nearer I noticed that his face was deadly pale. I ran up the steps. I caught hold of him. He had fainted. I laid him in the doorway. My first thought was that he had been shot by some one and was in a death faint. I tore his shirt open, discovering a small red mark under the nipple. Five minutes after he was a corpse. But where was he who fired the fatal shot? I had seen no one, and in vain I looked around the mill.

“Meanwhile the storm burst with appalling fury. One of the first flashes of lightning struck a monarch ash, whose decaying stump stands just over there, not thirty feet from the mill’s front. In some manner it struck the tree and ran down its bark, then cut through its base, or struck the bole at once; for the whole body of the ash fell with a resounding crash. I was knocked down and blinded for an instant by the electricity. It was the hardest rain that has drenched these mountains since 1840. All night long it continued, and I remained in the mill with my dead brother.

“It must have been past midnight when, in the pitchy darkness, I heard hoarse cries, hollow shouts, and groans, that seemed to proceed from without the mill, but which swept through the open rooms with chilling and horrible earnestness. The building shook in the wind and storm; the doors rattled on their hinges; the cataract’s roar increased with the swelling flood; but yet above all these deafening sounds, at intervals, rang this muffled voice. I must confess that I laid it to the supernatural.

“Morning and calm came together, and with the first streaks of light two of my farm-hands appeared. The storm had made a havoc before the mill. Lengthways, and down the center of the road the ash had fallen, the body of the tree lying close against the base of that great hollow oak you see still standing. We carried the body home. Who had killed him was the unanswered question on every one’s lips. Well, we buried the mysteriously murdered man in the old churchyard down the river, and the day after I went on business to Murphy. As fortune would have it I was just in time to be drafted into the Confederate army. I had only a day to spare to go to my house and return.

“The occurrences of that stormy night had unavoidably kept me away from the mill, and on my flying visit home before taking a long departure, I had no time to go to it. My wife told a strange story of ghostly cries, strange flames and apparitions which had been heard and seen at the mill for two nights by one of the farm-hands and a neighbor. Nothing could hire any of the men in the neighborhood to go near the place, even in the daytime. The description of the sounds coincided singularly with what I had heard. Having no time to investigate, and thinking these fears would wear away, I left orders for one of the hired men to run the mill during my absence.

“Four years passed, and I had returned from the war. What changes had taken place is not my intention to relate only to speak of the mill. The fears of the mountaineers had caused it to be abandoned. The one whom I had designed to work it had wholly disregarded my orders. By a train of petty circumstances connected with this man’s refusal to run the mill, together with the superstitious ideas of the people, all the mountaineers began to take their grain to the lower “corn-cracker.” This course was not adopted by all until several of the more venturesome ones had actual, unexplainable encounters with ghosts at my mill.

“A few days after my return I went up to look at the forsaken place. I found the underbrush rather heavy, fair-sized trees springing up, the old ash lying undisturbed where it had been struck down, and consequently the old road was lost. Everything within the mill, though, was in excellent condition. What struck me as curious was that the mill appeared never to have stopped running; for the stones were not mossed in the least, but on the contrary were still white with flour. The floor was also white, and a close observer would at once have declared that a supply of wheat had been ground there that week.

“‘Jist so,’ said an old neighbor who was with me. ‘In course these hyar stones never quit runnin’ at night, ez I tole yer; but hit ain’t no humin bein’s ez runs ’em. Many a night I’ve cum up the new road over yander, an’ stopped an’ shivered as I heered the ole wheel splashin’ round, seed lights an’ seed yer brother standin’ right hyar at this winder, I’ll swar! Why didn’t I sarch into the matter? Didn’t I though! But the hants all fled when I cum near, and nuthin’ but an owl hooted overhead; an’ one night I war knocked flat by some devil unseen, an’ next thing I knowed I woke up a mile from hyar. Ye don’t catch me foolin’ round sich things.’

“He went on to tell how the meal, which he had ground in the daytime, had made persons sick, and also helped to stop business. That night I determined to watch the ghostly millers in their midnight toils. A man named Bun volunteered to stay with me. Just after dark we came up here and ensconced ourselves in a close thicket near the fall, and about fifty feet from the mill. The hours passed by monotonously. It was late in the night, when suddenly, above the dull roar of the fall, I heard an owl’s hoot up the river road. This would not have attracted my attention, had not another hoot sounded at once from down the road, and then another came from just before the mill. Nothing further was heard to these calls, which I deemed were signals; but, a few moments after, a light flared up in the mill, and through the unboarded side we saw two figures in white garments.

“‘Let’s steal out of this,’ whispered Bun, in a trembling voice. ‘Didn’t I say it war ha’nted?’

“I commanded him to remain silent if he loved his life. The wheel was started, and the two ghosts began to pour corn from a bag into the hopper. I had no idea that they were anything but living men; but the light was faint. Their faces were covered with some white substance, and I failed to recognize them. A little reason began to creep into Bun’s superstitious brain. We crept closer. Then we saw that they were talking, and their voices reached us. The sounds dazed me, and I started as if shot. It was not our language these shadows conversed in; it was a strange tongue, but I recognized it. It was the dialect of the Cherokees!

“Under the impulse of the discovery, I leveled my rifle, aimed the barrel in the darkness, and fired. Both millers stopped in their work, and in an instant an intense darkness wrapped the scene, followed by a crashing in the thickets on the farther side of the mill. Several owl hoots ensued, then all was silent. Having no means of procuring a light, we did not venture to enter the mill that night, but quickly found our way home. The next morning I returned here at an early hour. A bag of corn, some ground meal, and a few drops of blood on the floor, were what I discovered in the grinding-room; these were enough to convince the most skeptical of the mountaineers of the truth of what Bun and I related of our night’s adventure.

“The conclusion drawn was this: A settlement of half-civilized Cherokees over the mountains, being in need of a mill, taking advantage of this one being unused, and also of the mountaineers’ fears, had, by managing to play the role of spectres, secured a good mill, rental free, for two or three years.

“My shot that night, together with a sharp watch kept up for some time, during which we fired, on two occasions, at parties approaching the place after dark, had the desired effect, and the mill was run no more.”

“But who killed your brother? What were the cries that you heard? And why was the mill, after you discovered who the millers were, deserted?” I asked.

“The murder remained a mystery until a few days after we drove out the Indians. The discovery occurred in this way: I determined to have the old road cleared out and go to working again. The fallen ash was first attacked. As we rolled away a severed part of it from before the hollow in that oak, standing there, one of the choppers noticed a pair of boots in the rotten wood within the hollow. He pulled them out and a full skeleton was dragged with them. Part of the clothes was still preserved on this lately securely-sepulchred corpse. A revolver was also scraped out the rubbish. It was the body of a man who had disappeared four years since, as believed up to that time, for the war.

“Of course, I had no doubt but he was the murderer of my brother. He had fired the shot; heard my rapid approach, and, knowing that to step from behind the tree would reveal himself, he squeezed up into the hollow trunk of the old oak. The lightning played the part of a slow executioner. It was probably some time before he attempted to make exit from his confinement. His endeavors, of course, were fruitless. Then he began calling in his terror for help. These were the cries I heard during that stormy night. Afterwards he probably became unconscious through fright. His dreadful cries at intervals for a few days were what startled the mountaineers, who, had they been less superstitious, might have rescued him from a horrible lingering death. His motive in taking the life of my brother remains a mystery.

“This revelation sickened me, and reviving, as it did, sad recollections, I had the men stop work for a few days. In that time a heavy flood aided in breaking down and sweeping away the worn-out race. I never attempted to repair it, and the old mill was left to rot and molder in solitary idleness.”

* * * * *

We had been so engaged with the stories that the rising of the wind had passed unnoticed, and suddenly a few rain drops fell upon us and the fire. I was about to resume my walk, but was prevailed upon to remain, because of the storm. It began pouring in a few minutes; and, crawling with two of the party into one of the wagons, in spite of the novelty of the situation, I enjoyed a sound sleep on a pile of herb bags and under the rain-beaten wagon-cover.

The valley watered by that prong of Richland creek, which rises in the balsams of the Great Divide and beech groves of Old Bald, is one of great beauty. It is quite narrow. The stream flows through its center, overhung with oaks, buckeyes, beeches, maples, black gums, and a dozen other varieties of trees, and fringed with laurel, ivy, and the alder; while at intervals cleared lands roll back to the mountains. Lickstone, with gentle slope, walls it on one side; a lofty ridge on the other, and the black front of the Balsams shuts off at its southern end all communication with what lies beyond, except by a steep winding trail and unfinished dug road over a mountain 5,786 feet in altitude. The road along the creek’s bank, upward from the place of nightly encampments, possesses all the charms of a woodland way. At places the umbrageous branches of monarch trees cross themselves overhead; beautiful vistas of a little stream, streaked with silver rapids and losing itself under the bending laurels, are presented at every turn; at intervals, branch roads wind away into some mountain cove; and here and there, disappearing into leafy coverts, are smooth-beaten by-paths, which tell of a log school-house back in the grove, a hill-side meadow, or some hidden lonely cabin. Wayside log cabins and a few frame farm-houses, all widely separated, are occasionally seen; the noise from a sooty blacksmith shop attracts attention; a weird mill rises amid the chestnut trees; while the roar of waters in its rotten flume awakes the landscape.