On Kingdom Mountain

by Howard Frank Mosher

  September 5, 1864

  My dear Slidell,

  A most astonishing event has transpired here on the mountain, an event that I plan to divulge to no other living soul. Last month, soon after I returned to Vermont from my long trek south, during which I was fortunate enough to meet you in the cave in Virginia, our local bank was robbed by Confederate raiders. They rode out of Canada, hoping to augment the Rebel treasury and, at the same time, spread panic throughout the North and, possibly, divert Union troops away from the fighting to New England. It is believed that the raiders made away with nearly one hundred thousand dollars in gold! It was a most brazen action, carried out in broad daylight by only two men. At any rate, the day of the robbery, when I went to the barn to milk in the evening, I heard moaning from the haymow above. There, to my great amazement, I discovered a young man, a Rebel captain, lying wounded in his gray uniform. Oh, Slidell! Here was a dilemma. However, bearing in mind my grandfather’s motto on the lintel of our door, “They lived in a house at the end of the road and were friends to mankind,” which I well remember telling you of in Virginia, I felt obliged to hide and care for this Rebel, with the help of my dear young wife, Pharaoh’s Daughter, and to nurse him back to health, then send him on his way back to Canada. What a traitor I felt, until he happened to let drop that he had done the same for an injured Yankee soldier, hiding in the mountains in North Carolina, named Pilgrim, who had told him about the wealthy little bank in Vermont and, without dreaming what he was doing, put the idea of the robbery in his head. The last the captain had seen of my brother, he was headed up into the high peaks of Carolina to live with and doctor the mountain people of that region! You know from my earlier letters the outcome of my search in those mountains for my brother. The wounded Reb then told me a tale stranger yet, which I did not, and do not, know whether to credit. He was a wild, ranting fellow, and his injury, which, I believe, will leave him with a ball in his leg to remind him of Vermont, made him no less so. He said that as he and his partner were headed over the mountain, the other man suddenly drew his pistol, threw down on him, and fired, wounding him in the leg, then rode off over the summit to Canada with the gold.

  To cut a long tale short, in a week’s time he was well enough to return to Canada and, thence, I suppose, to the South. What became of the gold from the robbery I don’t pretend to know, and though I am grateful to him for helping my brother, if that story be true, I never did trust the fellow, who was all full of talk about the end of times and final judgments and I don’t know what. Yet I do not feel that, in befriending him, I transgressed. My great-grandfather’s motto on the lintel particularly stipulates that we are to help mankind, which I take to mean all mankind. Whoever the man was, I am glad I helped him, and nearly as glad that he is gone. I remain, with warm, best wishes, your dear friend in Vermont,

  Morgan Kinneson

  “The wounded soldier,” Henry said, “was my grandfather, Captain Cantrell Satterfield. He always walked with a limp. But what about Pilgrim, Miss Jane? Your father’s letter mentions another letter telling about his search for Pilgrim.”

  “It’s not in the box Elisabeth gave me,” Jane said. “I fear it’s lost.”

  “How long have you known where the treasure was?”

  “I’ve suspected for some time,” she said. “Since soon after the second half of the riddle appeared so mysteriously on the slate, actually. A few days ago, when I read my father’s letters to Slidell, I was less sure. I thought your grandfather’s partner, whoever he was, might well have escaped with the gold.”

  “He was shot in the back,” Henry said.

  “So it appears.”

  For a time, neither of them spoke. Miss Jane seemed lost in thought, no doubt wondering if she would ever learn what had happened to Pilgrim. Henry kept expecting his granddaddy to say something to him, offer some explanation concerning the preserved soldier in the tree or pass one of his famous sarcastic remarks. But the granddaddy was as silent as a stone.

  Jane was the first to break the silence. “For ever so long, Henry, I dismissed your grandfather’s two-part riddle as the addlepated rant of a demented old man. Now, of course, it all comes clear to me. The hollow chestnut has no doubt always been a bee tree, at least since the Civil War. The blessed sweet host on high must be the honey. The Holy Ghost would be the honey tree. The Father and the Son are the two other chestnuts. Together, the three trees make up the Trinity. The soldier standing vigil is our preserved man. The rood is the cross formed by the two horizontal limbs above the cavity. The golden trove is the treasure.”

  Henry made his small, polite bow. “I think you are exactly right, Miss Jane. But who under the sun would the poor soldier-boy in the hollow tree be?”

  “I think it most unlikely that we will ever learn his identity,” Miss Jane said quickly. “Or, for that matter, exactly what became of Pilgrim. I’ll tell you what. Let’s call our bee-tree soldier Pilgrim and let the mystery go at that. What do you say?”

  Henry nodded. Outside a cricket chirped, the first of the year. They could hear the constant hush of the waterfalls dropping down the mountainside into Pond Number Three.

  “So Miss Jane. How do you propose to get the gold down the mountain? Gold is very heavy, you know.”

  “Mr. Satterfield,” she said, “means will be found. For the time being, let us not fret ourselves with worldly concerns.”

  Soon enough, Miss Jane and Henry found themselves once again in that sublime state in which Henry actually forgot about his new red plane and all other temporal matters as well, with the possible exception of the five thousand double-eagle gold pieces, glittering softly, like so many lovely fireflies, under the moonlight high on the mountain. The moon shone on the surface of Pond Number Three and through the window of Camp Hard Luck, bathing Miss Jane’s lovely limbs and light hair in its glow, and to the enraptured pilot, the great round moon looked uncannily like a large gold coin, hanging in the night sky, ripe for the picking.

  The next morning Miss Jane and Henry climbed the mountainside in the bright early sunshine to consider the best way to transport Pilgrim, the bees, and the treasure back to the home place. With care, the soldier and the beehive could be pulled down the slope on the hand sled, then carried across the ponds in the guide boat. The gold was another matter. As Henry had remarked, gold was heavy, and Miss Jane supposed they would have the devil’s own time getting it back to Camp Hard Luck. Then Henry suggested that they send it, like the great deer she had shot as a girl, down the wooden chute to the evergreen grove below. From there they could transport it in the guide boat across the three ponds to the blueberry barrens, where Ethan and General Ira Allen could haul it the rest of the way.

  “Trust you, Henry, to solve any practical problem,” Miss Jane said fondly, and they spent the rest of the morning dispatching the coins down the chute, several dozen at a time, ringing showers of sun-drenched gold which they picked up under the evergreens and plucked out of the branches where some of the coins had lodged like Christmas tree ornaments. In all, it took three trips over a three-day period to transfer the bees, the honey, Pilgrim, and the boodle to the home place.

  After scrubbing the honey off the coins in her zinc washtub filled with hot, soapy water, Miss Jane and Henry stacked them inside the Currier and Ives strongbox in On Kingdom Mountain. Jane gently shut the massive iron door embossed with the scene of Lake Memphremagog, pulled down the heavy black handle, spun the dial, then wrote out the combination numbers for Henry in case “something untoward should happen to me.” Henry protested that nothing could possibly happen to her as long as he was on hand to prevent it. Jane smiled and asked him for a moment alone with her dear people.

  “Now, then,” she announced when Henry had departed. “This handsome young gentleman”—motioning at the preserved Confederate soldier, whom she had placed on the horsehair love seat beside the sarcophagus containing the Bride of Ramses—“is our guest. Who he was originally, I don’t know. Truth to tell, I’m
not entirely sure I wish to know. Whoever he was, he came to a tragic and violent end, and I want you to welcome him to On Kingdom Mountain, and to be kind to him, as you would be to any stranger. Perhaps he and Ramses’ bereft young widow will come to know each other and even begin keeping company. The heart, as we have recently seen, works in its own mysterious way. In the meantime, you’re not to breathe a word to anyone about the contents of the safe or, upon pain of being taken immediately to the burning barrel, to tender me a single word of advice about its disposition. That’s all. I thank you for your understanding, my dears. Sleep tight.”

  40

  ON KINGDOM MOUNTAIN summer was quickly fading. In the cool evenings Miss Jane and Henry sat out on the porch, Henry sometimes playing the old mountain tunes of his Satterfield ancestors on his fiddle. Sometimes they played catch in the dooryard with a couple of ancient three-fingered baseball mitts and a grass-stained baseball. They pitched horseshoes in the mountain twilight, their ringers and leaners clanging against the stake like the purloined gold coins clanging and ringing down the chute on the far side of the mountain. Henry allowed as how, next to Miss Jane as God made her, that was the greatest sight he had ever seen. Recently he had been pondering a grand scheme by which he might wind up with both the gold and the Duchess. It would be by far the boldest venture of his life, and it would depend on her willingness to live at least part of every year away from the mountain. But he was prepared, he thought, to make the proposal, the first such of his life, and to leave the rest to Miss Jane and, as he thought of it, the roll of the dice.

  “Gold generally appreciates in value, Miss Jane,” he began one evening, lying in the old rope hammock under the Virginia creeper with his stocking feet in her lap. “The boodle in your safe is no doubt worth several times its original value. With it you could save half a dozen mountains.” Henry took a deep breath. Now that he was airborne, there was no sense landing until he had accomplished his mission. “You are not only a very beautiful woman, but a very wealthy woman as well.”

  The words were scarcely out of his mouth before he realized that this was probably not the best approach to the momentous proposition he was about to make to a woman who had little concern for money. “But let us not speak of gold tonight. Let us speak, rather, of each other and our future together. All I meant to say was that the gold, you know, will pave that future and remove any little bumps in the road.”

  “What can you be driving at, Henry?” Jane said. “Aren’t your feet getting cold? Here, let me slip your shoes on your feet.”

  “I am certainly not getting cold feet, Miss Jane. In Atlantic City, where I am scheduled to perform later this month, there is a small chapel near the fabled boardwalk along the ocean. Present company agreeable, I would very much like to make you Mrs. Henry Satterfield in that chapel. We could then,” he plunged on, “divide our time between touring the world and living here on your wonderful mountain.”

  A look of distress came across Miss Jane’s face. It was not that she did not wish to travel the world, much less that she did not wish to marry the dashing aviator. The problem was leaving her mountain, even for part of the year. Who knew what Eben and the town fathers might do while she was gone? And which seasons could she bear to be away from home? She loved them all, from mud time through the roaring Canadian blizzards of January and February. Yet she could not, she absolutely must not, lose Henry Satterfield the way she had, long ago, lost Ira Allen.

  “Mr. Satterfield,” Jane said, “I am honored and moved by your kind—most kind—proposal. I will return to it momentarily. But first, I could not consent to burdening you and your tours with my presence unless I could contribute in my own right.”

  “Oh, but you can,” Henry said, nearly blurting out with your gold. Catching himself just in time, he said, “With your presence.”

  “I appreciate that,” Jane said. “But I am quite interested, Henry, in what you have told me about Miss Lola Beauregard Beauclerk.”

  “I meant it from my heart, Miss Jane. Not to speak ill of the departed, but her charms were as dross to your—” He had nearly done it again. “Charms,” he said lamely.

  “I am not speaking of Miss Lola’s charms, though I have no doubt they were not inconsiderable,” Miss Jane said in her driest manner. “I am speaking, sir, of her skills as a wingwalker. What, pray, does wingwalking require?”

  “Oh, a fearlessness of heights. Exceptional balance and a certain delight in performing for an audience. It helps to have a shapely set of legs.”

  “Very well,” Miss Jane said. “Later this month, on the weekend of the autumnal equinox, the village will be celebrating the one hundredth anniversary of its Harvest Festival. It is the major annual event in Kingdom Common, held over a three-day weekend on the county fairgrounds. The festival opens two weeks from this coming Friday. That should give me sufficient time to master the art.”

  “The art?”

  “Of wingwalking. Mr. Satterfield, I plan to be walking on the wing of your Burgess-Wright biplane on the opening day of the Harvest Festival when you land on the racetrack in front of the grandstand at the fairgrounds. We will make a bargain. If you teach me to wingwalk, I will seriously consider your most kind proposal to become Mrs. Henry Satterfield.”

  “I goddamn!” Henry exclaimed, very nearly tumbling out of the hammock. “Miss Jane. Only a few people have ever attempted to walk on the wing of a flying airplane. It is far too dangerous. I myself have never done it. It is madness. You know what happened to Lola.”

  “Lola, through no fault of yours, was ignited by a lightning bolt. Are you suggesting that I am not up to the mark? That I am not capable of doing what Lola Beauregard Beauclerk, pronounced without the k, did?”

  “Miss Jane, I beg you. Many a wingwalker has met a similar q-u-i-e-t-u-s to Miss Lola. We must not consider this further.”

  “I am a strong and agile woman, Henry. You of all people should know that.”

  “And a most lovely woman, Miss Jane. You would grace the wing of any airship. The problem is the great hazard.”

  “In this life it is sometimes a great hazard to climb out of bed in the morning. I will wear a tether and hold fast to the guy wires between the wings, and there will be very little risk. Then, present company willing, I will very seriously consider accompanying you on your upcoming tour. With the proviso, of course, that like Pluto with his dear Persephone, you will agree to my spending half the year here on my mountain.”

  “Oh, Miss Jane,” Henry said, pulling her down beside him so that the hammock sagged nearly to the porch floor, while she laughed and protested halfheartedly. “Present company is very willing. Hold out your hand, please. No, no, the other one.”

  “This one will do for the time being,” Miss Jane said, presenting Henry with her right hand. “Are you a palm reader? Did you read palms when you and your grandfather were selling Bibles and family trees to the unsuspecting old ladies? Are you going to read my future?”

  “No, Miss Jane. I leave your future entirely up to you. Turn your hand over, please.”

  Without quite knowing how it happened, Jane, who was still flustered from their little hammock tussle, saw, on the third finger of her hand, a narrow gold-colored band set with a small sparkling stone.

  She could not help smiling. The ring Henry had placed on her finger bore more than a passing resemblance to the dime-store bauble he had found in the belly of the leviathan steam combine, King James’s Jehovah, now converted to a carnival kiddie ride. Yet inside the bit of glass affixed to the ring, she could see the high fall colors of Kingdom Mountain glowing red, orange, and yellow like no other foliage on earth. She could see the northern lights flashing silver and blue and crimson over the summit of her mountain on a clear and icy night in January. And the regal purple of the sunset behind the Green Mountains, viewed from the home-place porch on a midsummer’s eve when the sky still held color at nine o’clock.

  “For my duchess,” Henry said.

  “Let us
hope,” Miss Jane said as the ring threw a fiery arc of color onto the porch railing, “that I will be your first and last duchess.”

  “You are and you will be,” Henry said. “Shall we set a date? For the ceremony?”

  “Slow down, sir. I said that if you would teach me to wing-walk so that I could make a contribution to your business, I would consider your proposal. And I shall. But you must first fulfill your end of the bargain.”

  “Then you must agree to let me be the judge of when, if ever, you are ready to go up on a wing.”

  “That’s fine,” she said. “I am entirely confident that I will master the art. We will take the Harvest Festival by storm, Henry. Then, perhaps, away to Atlantic City and the world beyond. We will commence our lessons first thing in the morning.”

  Miss Jane spent the next two weeks practicing wingwalking, sewing her costume, arranging for Ben Currier, her neighbor, to care for Ethan and General Ira Allen while she was touring with Henry, and transferring the rest of her books from the defunct Atheneum to her five-story barn. She found walking back and forth on the broad lower wing of Henry’s old Burgess-Wright not much more difficult than skipping across the hemlock-plank bridge as a girl. Like her Memphremagog grandfather, a high-steel worker, she had no fear of heights, and so long as she wore the tether Henry had rigged for her, he was no longer worried for her safety.