"It wouldn't do any good," said I; "he'd only fight you and try to kill you."
"He's a dam' curious whelp," said Jud. "He must a knowed that the bridge was all right."
"How could he have known?" said I.
"They say," replied Jud, "that horses an' cattle sees things that folks don't see, an' that they know about what's goin' to happen. It's powerful curious about the things they do know."
We slipped the reins over the horses' heads and walked back to the bridge. Jud went on with his talking.
"Now, you can't get a horse on to a dangerous bridge, to save your life, an' you can't get him on ice that ain't strong enough to hold him, an' you can't get him to eat anything that'll hurt him, an' you can't get him lost. An' old Clabe says there's Bible for it that a horse can see spooks. I tell you, Quiller, El Mahdi knowed about that bridge."
Deep in my youthful bosom I was convinced that El Mahdi knew. But I put it wholly on the ground that he was a genius.
We crossed the river, led the horses down to the end of the abutment, and tied them to a fence. Then we went back and examined the bridge as well as we could in the dark. It stood over the river as the early men and Dwarfs had built it,--solid as a wall.
Woodford had given the thing up, and the road was open to the north country.
We sat down on the corner of the abutment near the horses, to wait for the daylight, Jud wearing old Christian's cap, and I bareheaded. We sat for a long time, listening to the choke and snarl of the water as it crowded along under the bridge.
Then we fell to a sort of whispering talk.
"Quiller," he began, "do you believe that story about the Dwarfs buildin' the bridge?"
"Ump don't," I answered. "Ump says it's a cock-and-bull story, and there never were any Dwarfs except once in a while a bad job like him."
"You can't take Ump for it," said he. "Ump won't believe anything he can't put his finger on, if it's swore to on a stack of Bibles. Quiller, I've seen them holes in the mountains where the Dwarfs lived, with the marks on the rocks like's on them logs, an' I've seen the rigamajigs that they cut in the sandstone. They could a built the bridge, if they took a notion, just by sayin' words."
He was quiet a while, and then he added, "An' I've seen the path where they used to come down to the river, an' it has places wore in the solid rock like you'd make with your big toe."