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The Shepherd of the Hills

by Harold Bell Wright · English · Gutenberg #4735 · 421,852 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Shepherd of the Hills

Author: Harold Bell Wright


        
Release date: December 1, 2003 [eBook #4735]
                Most recently updated: July 28, 2021

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/4735

Credits: Jim Weiler and Robert Rowe


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SHEPHERD OF THE HILLS ***

[Illustration]




The Shepherd of the Hills

by Harold Bell Wright

1907




TO FRANCES, MY WIFE

IN MEMORY OF THAT BEAUTIFUL SUMMER
IN THE OZARK HILLS, WHEN, SO OFTEN,
WE FOLLOWED THE OLD TRAIL AROUND
THE RISE OF MUTTON HOLLOW—THE TRAIL
THAT IS NOBODY KNOWS HOW OLD—AND FROM
SAMMY’S LOOKOUT WATCHED THE
DAY GO OVER THE WESTERN RIDGES.




_“That all with one consent praise new-born gawds,
Tho they are made and moulded of things past,
And give to dust that is a little gilt
More laud than gilt o’er-dusted.”_

TROILUS AND CRESSIDA. ACT 3; SC. 3.




Contents

 CHAPTER I. THE STRANGER
 CHAPTER II. SAMMY LANE
 CHAPTER III. THE VOICE FROM OUT THE MISTS
 CHAPTER IV. A CHAT WITH AUNT MOLLIE
 CHAPTER V. “JEST NOBODY.”
 CHAPTER VI. THE STORY
 CHAPTER VII. WHAT IS LOVE?
 CHAPTER VIII. “WHY AIN’T WE GOT NO FOLKS.”
 CHAPTER IX. SAMMY LANE’S FOLKS
 CHAPTER X. A FEAT OF STRENGTH AND A CHALLENGE
 CHAPTER XI. OLLIE STEWART’S GOOD-BY
 CHAPTER XII. THE SHEPHERD AND HIS FLOCK
 CHAPTER XIII. SAMMY LANE’S AMBITION
 CHAPTER XIV. THE COMMON YELLER KIND
 CHAPTER XV. THE PARTY AT FORD’S
 CHAPTER XVI. ON THE WAY HOME
 CHAPTER XVII. WHAT HAPPENED AT THE RANCH
 CHAPTER XVIII. LEARNING TO BE A LADY
 CHAPTER XIX. THE DROUGHT
 CHAPTER XX. THE SHEPHERD WRITES A LETTER
 CHAPTER XXI. GOD’S GOLD
 CHAPTER XXII. A LETTER FROM OLLIE STEWART
 CHAPTER XXIII. OLLIE COMES HOME
 CHAPTER XXIV. WHAT MAKES A MAN
 CHAPTER XXV. YOUNG MATT REMEMBERS
 CHAPTER XXVI. OLLIE’S DILEMMA
 CHAPTER XXVII. THE CHAMPION
 CHAPTER XXVIII. WHAT PETE TOLD SAMMY
 CHAPTER XXIX. JIM LANE MAKES A PROMISE
 CHAPTER XXX. SAMMY GRADUATES
 CHAPTER XXXI. CASTLE BUILDING
 CHAPTER XXXII. PREPARATION
 CHAPTER XXXIII. A RIDE IN THE NIGHT
 CHAPTER XXXIV. JIM LANE KEEPS HIS PROMISE
 CHAPTER XXXV. “I WILL LIFT UP MINE EYES UNTO THE HILLS.”
 CHAPTER XXXVI. ANOTHER STRANGER
 CHAPTER XXXVII. OLD FRIENDS
 CHAPTER XXXVIII. I AIN’T NOBODY NO MORE
 CHAPTER XXXIX. A MATTER OF HOURS
 CHAPTER XL. THE SHEPHERD’S MISSION
 CHAPTER XLI. THE OTHER SIDE OF THE STORY
 CHAPTER XLII. THE WAY OF THE LOWER TRAIL
 CHAPTER XLIII. POOR PETE
 CHAPTER XLIV. THE TRAIL ON THE SUNLIT HILLS
 CHAPTER XLV. SOME YEARS LATER




CHAPTER I.
THE STRANGER.


It was corn-planting time, when the stranger followed the Old Trail
into the Mutton Hollow neighborhood.

All day a fine rain had fallen steadily, and the mists hung heavy over
the valley. The lower hills were wrapped as in a winding sheet; dank
and cold. The trees were dripping with moisture. The stranger looked
tired and wet.

By his dress, the man was from the world beyond the ridges, and his
carefully tailored clothing looked strangely out of place in the
mountain wilderness. His form stooped a little in the shoulders,
perhaps with weariness, but he carried himself with the unconscious air
of one long used to a position of conspicuous power and influence; and,
while his well-kept hair and beard were strongly touched with white,
the brown, clear lighted eyes, that looked from under their shaggy
brows, told of an intellect unclouded by the shadows of many years. It
was a face marked deeply by pride; pride of birth, of intellect, of
culture; the face of a scholar and poet; but it was more—it was the
countenance of one fairly staggering under a burden of disappointment
and grief.

As the stranger walked, he looked searchingly into the mists on every
hand, and paused frequently as if questioning the proper course.
Suddenly he stepped quickly forward. His ear had caught the sharp ring
of a horse’s shoe on a flint rock somewhere in the mists on the
mountain side above. It was Jed Holland coming down the trail with a
week’s supply of corn meal in a sack across his horse’s back.

As the figure of the traveler emerged from the mists, the native
checked his horse to greet the newcomer with the customary salutation
of the backwoods, “Howdy.”

The man returned Jed’s greeting cordially, and, resting his satchel on
a rock beside the narrow path, added, “I am very glad to meet you. I
fear that I am lost.”

The voice was marvelously pure, deep, and musical, and, like the brown
eyes, betrayed the real strength of the man, denied by his gray hair
and bent form. The tones were as different from the high keyed,
slurring speech of the backwoods, as the gentleman himself was unlike
any man Jed had ever met. The boy looked at the speaker in wide-eyed
wonder; he had a queer feeling that he was in the presence of a
superior being.

Throwing one thin leg over the old mare’s neck, and waving a long arm
up the hill and to the left, Jed drawled, “That thar’s Dewey Bal’; down
yonder’s Mutton Holler.” Then turning a little to the right and
pointing into the mist with the other hand, he continued, “Compton
Ridge is over thar. Whar was you tryin’ to git to, Mister?”

“Where am I trying to get to?” As the man repeated Jed’s question, he
drew his hand wearily across his brow; “I—I—it doesn’t much matter,
boy. I suppose I must find some place where I can stay to-night. Do you
live near here?”

“Nope,” Jed answered, “Hit’s a right smart piece to whar I live. This
here’s grindin’ day, an’ I’ve been t’ mill over on Fall Creek; the
Matthews mill hit is. Hit’ll be plumb dark ’gin I git home. I ’lowed
you was a stranger in these parts soon ’s I ketched sight of you. What
might _yer_ name be, Mister?”

The other, looking back over the way he had come, seemed not to hear
Jed’s question, and the native continued, “Mine’s Holland. Pap an’ Mam
they come from Tennessee. Pap he’s down in th’ back now, an’ ain’t
right peart, but he’ll be ’round in a little, I reckon. Preachin’ Bill
he ’lows hit’s good fer a feller t’ be down in th’ back onct in a
while; says if hit warn’t fer that we’d git to standin’ so durned proud
an’ straight we’d go plumb over backwards.”

A bitter smile crossed the face of the older man. He evidently applied
the native’s philosophy in a way unguessed by Jed. “Very true, very
true, indeed,” he mused. Then he turned to Jed, and asked, “Is there a
house near here?”

“Jim Lane lives up the trail ’bout half a quarter. Ever hear tell o’
Jim?”

“No, I have never been in these mountains before.”

“I ’lowed maybe you’d heard tell o’ Jim or Sammy. There’s them that
’lows Jim knows a heap more ’bout old man Dewey’s cave than he lets on;
his place bein’ so nigh. Reckon you know ’bout Colonel Dewey, him th’
Bal’ up thar’s named fer? Maybe you come t’ look fer the big mine they
say’s in th’ cave? I’ll hep you hunt hit, if you want me to, Mister.”

“No,” said the other, “I am not looking for mines of lead or zinc;
there is greater wealth in these hills and forests, young man.”

“Law, you don’t say! Jim Wilson allus ’lowed thar must be gold in these
here mountains, ’cause they’re so dad burned rough. Lemme hep you,
Mister. I’d like mighty well t’ git some clothes like them.”

“I do not speak of gold, my boy,” the stranger answered kindly. “But I
must not keep you longer, or darkness will overtake us. Do you think
this Mr. Lane would entertain me?”

Jed pushed a hand up under his tattered old hat, and scratched awhile
before he answered, “Don’t know ’bout th’ entertainin’, Mister, but
’most anybody would take you in.” He turned and looked thoughtfully up
the trail. “I don’t guess Jim’s to home though; ’cause I see’d Sammy a
fixin’ t’ go over t’ th’ Matthews’s when I come past. You know the
Matthews’s, I reckon?”

There was a hint of impatience now in the deep voice. “No, I told you
that I had never been in these mountains before. Will Mr. Matthews keep
me, do you think?”

Jed, who was still looking up the trail, suddenly leaned forward, and,
pointing into the timber to the left of the path, said in an exciting
whisper, “Look at that, Mister; yonder thar by that big rock.”

The stranger, looking, thought he saw a form, weird and ghost-like in
the mist, flitting from tree to tree, but, even as he looked, it
vanished among the hundreds of fantastic shapes in the gray forest.
“What is it?” he asked.

The native shook his head. “Durned if I know, Mister. You can’t tell.
There’s mighty strange things stirrin’ on this here mountain, an’ in
the Holler down yonder. Say, Mister, did you ever see a hant?”

The gentleman did not understand.

“A hant, a ghost, some calls ’em,” explained Jed. “Bud Wilson he sure
seed old Matt’s—”

The other interrupted. “Really, young man, I must go. It is already
late, and you know I have yet to find a place to stay for the night.”

“Law, that’s alright, Mister!” replied Jed. “Ain’t no call t’ worry.
Stay anywhere. Whar do you live when you’re to home?”

Again Jed’s question was ignored. “You think then that Mr. Matthews
will keep me?”

“Law, yes! They’ll take anybody in. I know they’re to home ’cause they
was a fixin’ t’ leave the mill when I left ’bout an hour ago. Was the
river up much when you come acrost?” As the native spoke he was still
peering uneasily into the woods.

“I did not cross the river. How far is it to this Matthews place, and
how do I go?”

“Jest foller this Old Trail. Hit’ll take you right thar. Good road all
th’ way. ’Bout three mile, I’d say. Did you come from Springfield or
St. Louis, maybe?”

The man lifted his satchel from the rock as he answered: “No, I do not
live in either Springfield or St. Louis. Thank you, very much, for your
assistance. I will go on, now, for I must hurry, or night will overtake
me, and I shall not be able to find the path.”

“Oh, hit’s a heap lighter when you git up on th’ hill ’bove th’ fog,”
said Jed, lowering his leg from the horse’s neck, and settling the meal
sack, preparatory to moving. “But I’d a heap rather hit was you than me
a goin’ up on Dewey t’night.” He was still looking up the trail.
“Reckon you must be from Kansas City or Chicago? I heard tell they’re
mighty big towns.”

The stranger’s only answer was a curt “Good-by,” as his form vanished
in the mist.

Jed turned and dug his heels vigorously in the old mare’s flanks, as he
ejaculated softly, “Well, I’ll be dod durned! Must be from New York,
sure!”

Slowly the old man toiled up the mountain; up from the mists of the
lower ground to the ridge above; and, as he climbed, unseen by him, a
shadowy form flitted from tree to tree in the dim, dripping forest.

As the stranger came in sight of the Lane cabin, a young woman on a
brown pony rode out of the gate and up the trail before him; and when
the man reached the open ground on the mountain above, and rounded the
shoulder of the hill, he saw the pony, far ahead, loping easily along
the little path. A moment he watched, and horse and rider passed from
sight.

The clouds were drifting far away. The western sky was clear with the
sun still above the hills. In an old tree that leaned far out over the
valley, a crow shook the wet from his plumage and dried himself in the
warm light; while far below the mists rolled, and on the surface of
that gray sea, the traveler saw a company of buzzards, wheeling and
circling above some dead thing hidden in its depth.

Wearily the man followed the Old Trail toward the Matthews place, and
always, as he went, in the edge of the gloomy forest, flitted that
shadowy form.




CHAPTER II.
SAMMY LANE.


Preachin’ Bill, says, “Hit’s a plumb shame there ain’t more men in th’
world built like old man Matthews and that thar boy o’ his’n. Men like
them ought t’ be as common as th’ other kind, an’ would be too if folks
cared half as much ’bout breeding folks as they do ’bout raising hogs
an’ horses.”

Mr. Matthews was a giant. Fully six feet four inches in height, with
big bones, broad shoulders, and mighty muscles. At log rollings and
chopping bees, in the field or at the mill, or in any of the games in
which the backwoodsman tries his strength, no one had ever successfully
contested his place as the strongest man in the hills. And still,
throughout the country side, the old folks tell with pride tales of the
marvelous feats of strength performed in the days when “Old Matt” was
young.

Of the son, “Young Matt,” the people called him, it is enough to say
that he seemed made of the same metal and cast in the same mold as the
father; a mighty frame, softened yet by young manhood’s grace; a
powerful neck and well poised head with wavy red-brown hair; and blue
eyes that had in them the calm of summer skies or the glint of battle
steel. It was a countenance fearless and frank, but gentle and kind,
and the eyes were honest eyes.

Anyone meeting the pair, as they walked with the long swinging stride
of the mountaineer up the steep mill road that gray afternoon, would
have turned for a second look; such men are seldom seen.

When they reached the big log house that looks down upon the Hollow,
the boy went at once with his axe to the woodpile, while the older man
busied himself with the milking and other chores about the barn.

Young Matt had not been chopping long when he heard, coming up the
hill, the sound of a horse’s feet on the Old Trail. The horse stopped
at the house and a voice, that stirred the blood in the young man’s
veins, called, “Howdy, Aunt Mollie.”

Mrs. Matthews appeared in the doorway; by her frank countenance and
kindly look anyone would have known her at a glance as the boy’s
mother. “Land sakes, if it ain’t Sammy Lane! How are you, honey?”

“I am alright,” answered the voice; “I’ve come over t’ stop with you
to-night; Dad’s away again; Mandy Ford staid with me last night, but
she had to go home this evenin’.” The big fellow at the woodpile drove
his axe deeper into the log.

“It’s about time you was a comin’ over,” replied the woman in the
doorway; “I was a tellin’ the menfolks this mornin’ that you hadn’t
been nigh the whole blessed week. Mr. Matthews ’lowed maybe you was
sick.”

The other returned with a gay laugh, “I was never sick a minute in my
life that anybody ever heard tell. I’m powerful hungry, though. You’d
better put in another pan of corn bread.” She turned her pony’s head
toward the barn.

“Seems like you are always hungry,” laughed the older woman, in return.
“Well just go on out to the barn, and the men will take your horse;
then come right in and I’ll mighty soon have something to fill you up.”

Operations at the woodpile suddenly ceased and Young Matt was first at
the barn-yard gate.

Miss Sammy Lane was one of those rare young women whose appearance is
not to be described. One can, of course, put it down that she was tall;
beautifully tall, with the trimness of a young pine, deep bosomed, with
limbs full-rounded, fairly tingling with the life and strength of
perfect womanhood; and it may be said that her face was a face to go
with one through the years, and to live still in one’s dreams when the
sap of life is gone, and, withered and old, one sits shaking before the
fire; a generous, loving mouth, red lipped, full arched, with the
corners tucked in and perfect teeth between; a womanly chin and nose,
with character enough to save them from being pretty; hair dark,
showing a touch of gold with umber in the shadows; a brow, full broad,
set over brown eyes that had never been taught to hide behind their
fringed veils, but looked always square out at you with a healthy look
of good comradeship, a gleam of mirth, or a sudden, wide, questioning
gaze that revealed depth of soul within.

But what is the use? When all this is written, those who knew Sammy
will say, “’Tis but a poor picture, for she is something more than all
this.” Uncle Ike, the postmaster at the Forks, did it much better when
he said to “Preachin’ Bill,” the night of the “Doin’s” at the Cove
School, “Ba thundas! That gal o’ Jim Lane’s jest plumb fills th’ whole
house. _What!_ An’ when she comes a ridin’ up t’ th’ office on that
brown pony o’ hern, I’ll be dad burned if she don’t pretty nigh fill
th’ whole out doors, ba thundas! What!” And the little shrivelled up
old hillsman, who keeps the ferry, removed his cob pipe long enough to
reply, with all the emphasis possible to his squeaky voice, “She sure
do, Ike. She sure do. I’ve often thought hit didn’t look jest fair fer
God ’lmighty t’ make sech a woman ’thout ary man t’ match her. Makes me
feel plumb ’shamed o’ myself t’ stand ’round in th’ same county with
her. Hit sure do, Ike.”

Greeting the girl the young man opened the gate for her to pass.

“I’ve been a lookin’ for you over,” said Sammy, a teasing light in her
eyes. “Didn’t you know that Mandy was stoppin’ with me? She’s been a
dyin’ to see you.”

“I’m mighty sorry,” he replied, fastening the gate and coming to the
pony’s side. “Why didn’t you tell me before? I reckon she’ll get over
it alright, though,” he added with a smile, as he raised his arms to
assist the girl to dismount.

The teasing light vanished as the young woman placed her hands on the
powerful shoulders of the giant, and as she felt the play of the
swelling muscles that swung her to the ground so easily, her face
flushed with admiration. For the fraction of a minute she stood facing
him, her hands still on his arms, her lips parted as if to speak; then
she turned quickly away, and without a word walked toward the house,
while the boy, pretending to busy himself with the pony’s bridle,
watched her as she went.

When the girl was gone, the big fellow led the horse away to the
stable, where he crossed his arms upon the saddle and hid his face from
the light. Mr. Matthews coming quietly to the door a few minutes later
saw the boy standing there, and the rugged face of the big mountaineer
softened at the sight. Quietly he withdrew to the other side of the
barn, to return later when the saddle and bridle had been removed, and
the young man stood stroking the pony, as the little horse munched his
generous feed of corn.

The elder man laid his hand on the broad shoulder of the lad so like
him, and looked full into the clear eyes. “Is it alright, son?” he
asked gruffly; and the boy answered, as he returned his father’s look,
“It’s alright, Dad.”

“Then let’s go to the house; Mother called supper some time ago.”

Just as the little company were seating themselves at the table, the
dog in the yard barked loudly. Young Matt went to the door. The
stranger, whom Jed had met on the Old Trail, stood at the gate.




CHAPTER III.
THE VOICE FROM OUT THE MISTS.


While Young Matt was gone to the corral in the valley to see that the
sheep were safely folded for the night, and the two women were busy in
the house with their after-supper work, Mr. Matthews and his guest sat
on the front porch.

“My name is Howitt, Daniel Howitt,” the man said in answer to the
host’s question. But, as he spoke, there was in his manner a touch of
embarrassment, and he continued quickly as if to prevent further
question, “You have two remarkable children, sir; that boy is the
finest specimen of manhood I have ever seen, and the girl is
remarkable—remarkable, sir. You will pardon me, I am sure, but I am an
enthusiastic lover of my kind, and I certainly have never seen such a
pair.”

The grim face of the elder Matthews showed both pleasure and amusement.
“You’re mistaken, Mister; the boy’s mine alright, an’ he’s all that you
say, an’ more, I reckon. I doubt if there’s a man in the hills can
match him to-day; not excepting Wash Gibbs; an’ he’s a mighty good boy,
too. But the girl is a daughter of a neighbor, and no kin at all.”

“Indeed!” exclaimed the other, “you have only one child then?”

The amused smile left the face of the old mountaineer, as he answered
slowly, “There was six boys, sir; this one, Grant, is the youngest. The
others lie over there.” He pointed with his pipe to where a clump of
pines, not far from the house, showed dark and tall, against the last
red glow in the sky.

The stranger glanced at the big man’s face in quick sympathy. “I had
only two; a boy and a girl,” he said softly. “The girl and her mother
have been gone these twenty years. The boy grew to be a man, and now he
has left me.” The deep voice faltered. “Pardon me, sir, for speaking of
this, but my lad was so like your boy there. He was all I had, and
now—now—I am very lonely, sir.”

There is a bond of fellowship in sorrow that knows no
conventionalities. As the two men sat in the hush of the coming night,
their faces turned toward the somber group of trees, they felt strongly
drawn to one another.

The mountaineer’s companion spoke again half to himself; “I wish that
my dear ones had a resting place like that. In the crowded city
cemetery the ground is always shaken by the tramping of funeral
professions.” He buried his face in his hands.

For some time the stranger sat thus, while his host spoke no word. Then
lifting his head, the man looked away over the ridges just touched with
the lingering light, and the valley below wrapped in the shadowy mists.
“I came away from it all because they said I must, and because I was
hungry for this.” He waved his hand toward the glowing sky and the
forest clad hills. “This is good for me; it somehow seems to help me
know how big God is. One could find peace here—surely, sir, one could
find it here—peace and strength.”

The mountaineer puffed hard at his pipe for a while, then said gruffly,
“Seems that way, Mister, to them that don’t know. But many’s the time
I’ve wished to God I’d never seen these here Ozarks. I used to feel
like you do, but I can’t no more. They ’mind me now of him that
blackened my life; he used to take on powerful about the beauty of the
country and all the time he was a turnin’ it into a hell for them that
had to stay here after he was gone.”

As he spoke, anger and hatred grew dark in the giant’s face, and the
stranger saw the big hands clench and the huge frame grow tense with
passion. Then, as if striving to be not ungracious, the woodsman said
in a somewhat softer tone, “You can’t see much of it, this evening,
though, ’count of the mists. It’ll fair up by morning, I reckon. You
can see a long way from here, of a clear day, Mister.”

“Yes, indeed,” replied Mr. Howitt, in an odd tone. “One could see far
from here, I am sure. We, who live in the cities, see but a little
farther than across the street. We spend our days looking at the work
of our own and our neighbors’ hands. Small wonder our lives have so
little of God in them, when we come in touch with so little that God
has made.”

“You live in the city, then, when you are at home?” asked Mr. Matthews,
looking curiously at his guest.

“I did, when I had a home; I cannot say that I live anywhere now.”

Old Matt leaned forward in his chair as if to speak again; then paused;
someone was coming up the hill; and soon they distinguished the
stalwart form of the son. Sammy coming from the house with an empty
bucket met the young man at the gate, and the two went toward the
spring together.

In silence the men on the porch watched the moon as she slowly pushed
her way up through the leafy screen on the mountain wall. Higher and
higher she climbed until her rays fell into the valley below, and the
drifting mists from ridge to ridge became a sea of ghostly light. It
was a weird scene, almost supernatural in its beauty.

Then from down at the spring a young girl’s laugh rose clearly, and the
big mountaineer said in a low tone, “Mr. Howitt, you’ve got education;
it’s easy to see that; I’ve always wanted to ask somebody like you, do
you believe in hants? Do you reckon folks ever come back once they’re
dead and gone?”

The man from the city saw that his big host was terribly in earnest,
and answered quietly, “No, I do not believe in such things, Mr.
Matthews; but if it should be true, I do not see why we should fear the
dead.”

The other shook his head; “I don’t know—I don’t know, sir; I always
said I didn’t believe, but some things is mighty queer.” He seemed to
be shaping his thought for further speech, when again the girl’s laugh
rang clear along the mountain side. The young people were returning
from the spring.

The mountaineer relighted his pipe, while Young Matt and Sammy seated
themselves on the step, and Mrs. Matthews coming from the house joined
the group.

“We’ve just naturally got to find somebody to stay with them sheep,
Dad,” said the son; “there ain’t nobody there to-night, and as near as
I can make out there’s three ewes and their lambs missing. There ain’t
a bit of use in us trying to depend on Pete.”

“I’ll ride over on Bear Creek to-morrow, and see if I can get that
fellow Buck told us about,” returned the father.

“You find it hard to get help on the ranch?” inquired the stranger.

“Yes, sir, we do,” answered Old Matt. “We had a good ’nough man ’till
about a month ago; since then we’ve been gettin’ along the best we
could. But with some a stayin’ out on the range, an’ not comin’ in, an’
the wolves a gettin’ into the corral at night, we’ll lose mighty nigh
all the profits this year. The worst of it is, there ain’t much show to
get a man; unless that one over on Bear Creek will come. I reckon,
though, he’ll be like the rest.” He sat staring gloomily into the
night.

“Is the work so difficult?” Mr. Howitt asked.

“Difficult, no; there ain’t nothing to do but tendin’ to the sheep. The
man has to stay at the ranch of nights, though.”

Mr. Howitt was wondering what staying at the ranch nights could have to
do with the difficulty, when, up from the valley below, from out the
darkness and the mists, came a strange sound; a sound as if someone
were singing a song without words. So wild and weird was the melody; so
passionately sweet the voice, it seemed impossible that the music
should come from human lips. It was more as though some genie of the
forest-clad hills wandered through the mists, singing as he went with
the joy of his possessions.

Mrs. Matthews came close to her husband’s side, and placed her hand
upon his shoulder as he half rose from his chair, his pipe fallen to
the floor. Young Matt rose to his feet and moved closer to the girl,
who was also standing. The stranger alone kept his seat and he noted
the agitation of the others in wonder.

For some moments the sound continued, now soft and low, with the sweet
sadness of the wind in the pines; then clear and ringing, it echoed and
reechoed along the mountain; now pleadings, as though a soul in
darkness prayed a gleam of light; again rising, swelling exultingly, as
in glad triumph, only to die away once more to that moaning wail,
seeming at last to lose itself in the mists.

Slowly Old Matt sank back into his seat and the stranger heard him
mutter, “Poor boy, poor boy.” Aunt Mollie was weeping. Suddenly Sammy
sprang from the steps and running down the walk to the gate sent a
clear, piercing call over the valley: “O—h—h, Pete.” The group on the
porch listened intently. Again the girl called, and yet again: “O—h—h,
Pete.” But there was no answer.

“It’s no use, honey,” said Mrs. Matthews, breaking the silence; “it
just ain’t no use;” and the young girl came slowly back to the porch.




CHAPTER IV.
A CHAT WITH AUNT MOLLIE.


When the stranger looked from his window the next morning, the valley
was still wrapped in its gray blanket. But when he and his host came
from the house after breakfast, the sun had climbed well above the
ridge, and, save a long, loosely twisted rope of fog that hung above
the distant river, the mists were gone. The city man exclaimed with
delight at the beauty of the scene.

As they stood watching the sheep—white specks in the distance—climbing
out of the valley where the long shadows still lay, to the higher,
sunlit pastures, Mr. Matthews said, “We’ve all been a talkin’ about you
this mornin’, Mr. Howitt, and we’d like mighty well to have you stop
with us for a spell. If I understood right, you’re just out for your
health anyway, and you’ll go a long ways, sir, before you find a
healthier place than this right here. We ain’t got much such as you’re
used to, I know, but what we have is yourn, and we’d be proud to have
you make yourself to home for as long as you’d like to stay. You see
it’s been a good while since we met up with anybody like you, and we
count it a real favor to have you.”

Mr. Howitt accepted the invitation with evident pleasure, and, soon
after, the mountaineer rode away to Bear Creek, on his quest for a man
to herd sheep. Young Matt had already gone with his team to the field
on the hillside west of the house, and the brown pony stood at the gate
ready for Sammy Lane to return to her home on Dewey Bald.

“I’d like the best in the world to stay, Aunt Mollie,” she said, in
answer to Mrs. Matthews’ protest; “but you know there is no one to feed
the stock, and besides Mandy Ford will be back sometime to-day.”

The older woman’s arm was around the girl as they went down the walk.
“You must come over real often, now, honey; you know it won’t be long
’til you’ll be a leavin’ us for good. How do you reckon you’ll like
bein’ a fine lady, and livin’ in the city with them big folks?”

The girl’s face flushed, and her eyes had that wide questioning look,
as she answered slowly, “I don’t know, Aunt Mollie; I ain’t never seen
a sure ’nough fine lady; I reckon them city folks are a heap different
from us, but I reckon they’re just as human. It would be nice to have
lots of money and pretties, but somehow I feel like there’s a heap more
than that to think about. Any how,” she added brightly, “I ain’t goin’
for quite a spell yet, and you know ‘Preachin’ Bill’ says, ‘There ain’t
no use to worry ’bout the choppin’ ’til the dogs has treed the coon.’
I’ll sure come over every day.”

Mrs. Matthews kissed the girl, and then, standing at the gate, watched
until pony and rider had disappeared in the forest.

Later Aunt Mollie, with a woman’s fondness for a quiet chat, brought
the potatoes she was preparing for dinner, to sit with Mr. Howitt on
the porch. “I declare I don’t know what we’ll do without Sammy,” she
said; “I just can’t bear to think of her goin’ away.”

The guest, feeling that some sort of a reply was expected, asked, “Is
the family moving from the neighborhood?”

“No, sir, there ain’t no family to move. Just Sammy and her Pa, and Jim
Lane won’t never leave this country again. You see Ollie Stewart’s
uncle, his father’s brother it is, ain’t got no children of his own,
and he wrote for Ollie to come and live with him in the city. He’s to
go to school and learn the business, foundry and machine shops, or
something like that it is; and if the boy does what’s right, he’s to
get it all some day; Ollie and Sammy has been promised ever since the
talk first began about his goin’; but they’ll wait now until he gets
through his schoolin’. It’ll be mighty nice for Sammy, marryin’ Ollie,
but we’ll miss her awful; the whole country will miss her, too. She’s
just the life of the neighborhood, and everybody ’lows there never was
another girl like her. Poor child, she ain’t had no mother since she
was a little trick, and she has always come to me for everything like,
us bein’ such close neighbors, and all. But law! sir, I ain’t a blamin’
her a mite for goin’, with her Daddy a runnin’ with that ornery Wash
Gibbs the way he does.”

Again the man felt called upon to express his interest; “Is Mr. Lane in
business with this man Gibbs?”

“Law, no! that is, don’t nobody know about any business; I reckon it’s
all on account of those old Bald Knobbers; they used to hold their
meetin’s on top of Dewey yonder, and folks do say a man was burned
there once, because he told some of their secrets. Well, Jim and Wash’s
daddy, and Wash, all belonged, ’though Wash himself wasn’t much more
than a boy then; and when the government broke up the gang, old man
Gibbs was killed, and Jim went to Texas. It was there that Sammy’s Ma
died. When Jim come back it wasn’t long before he was mighty thick
again with Wash and his crowd down on the river, and he’s been that way
ever since. There’s them that says it’s the same old gang, what’s left
of them, and some thinks too that Jim and Wash knows about the old
Dewey mine.”

Mr. Howitt, remembering his conversation with Jed Holland, asked
encouragingly, “Is this mine a very rich one?”

“Don’t nobody rightly know about that, sir,” answered Aunt Mollie.
“This is how it was: away back when the Injuns was makin’ trouble
’cause the government was movin’ them west to the territory, this old
man Dewey lived up there somewhere on that mountain. He was a mighty
queer old fellow; didn’t mix up with the settlers at all, except Uncle
Josh Hensley’s boy who wasn’t right smart, and didn’t nobody know where
he come from nor nothing; but all the same, ’twas him that warned the
settlers of the trouble, and helped them all through it, scoutin’ and
such. And one time when they was about out of bullets and didn’t have
nothin’ to make more out of, Colonel Dewey took a couple of men and
some mules up on that mountain yonder in the night, and when they got
back they was just loaded down with lead, but he wouldn’t tell nobody
where he got it, and as long as he was with them, the men didn’t dare
tell. Well, sir, them two men was killed soon after by the Injuns, and
when the trouble was finally over, old Dewey disappeared, and ain’t
never been heard tell of since. They say the mine is somewhere’s in a
big cave, but nobody ain’t never found it, ’though there’s them that
says the Bald Knobbers used the cave to hide their stuff in, and that’s
how Jim Lane and Wash Gibbs knows where it is; it’s all mighty queer.
You can see for yourself that Lost Creek down yonder just sinks clean
out of sight all at once; there must be a big hole in there somewhere.”

Aunt Mollie pointed with her knife to the little stream that winds like
a thread of light down into the Hollow. “I tell you, sir, these hills
is pretty to look at, but there ain’t much here for a girl like Sammy,
and I don’t blame her a mite for wantin’ to leave. It’s a mighty hard
place to live, Mr. Howitt, and dangerous, too, sometimes.”

“The city has its hardships and its dangers too, Mrs. Matthews; life
there demands almost too much at times; I often wonder if it is worth
the struggle.”

“I guess that’s so,” replied Aunt Mollie, “but it don’t seem like it
could be so hard as it is here. I tell Mr. Matthews we’ve clean forgot
the ways of civilized folks; altogether, though, I suppose we’ve done
as well as most, and we hadn’t ought to complain.”

The old scholar looked at the sturdy figure in its plain calico dress;
at the worn hands, busy with their homely task; and the patient, kindly
face, across which time had ploughed many a furrow, in which to plant
the seeds of character and worth. He thought of other women who had sat
with him on hotel verandas, at fashionable watering places; women
gowned in silks and laces; women whose soft hands knew no heavier task
than the filmy fancy work they toyed with, and whose greatest care,
seemingly, was that time should leave upon their faces no record of the
passing years. “And this is the stuff,” said he to himself, “that makes
possible the civilization that produces them.” Aloud, he said, “Do you
ever talk of going back to your old home?”

“No, sir, not now;” she rested her wet hands idly on the edge of the
pan of potatoes, and turned her face toward the clump of pines. “We
used to think we’d go back sometime; seemed like at first I couldn’t
stand it; then the children come, and every time we laid one of them
over there I thought less about leavin’, until now we never talk about
it no more. Then there was our girl, too, Mr. Howitt. No, sir, we won’t
never leave these hills now.”

“Oh, you had a daughter, too? I understood from Mr. Matthews that your
children were all boys.”

Aunt Mollie worked a few moments longer in silence, then arose and
turned toward the house. “Yes, sir, there was a girl; she’s buried
under that biggest pine you see off there a little to one side.
We—we—don’t never talk about her. Mr. Matthews can’t stand it. Seems
like he ain’t never been the same since—since—it happened. ’Tain’t
natural for him to be so rough and short; he’s just as good and kind
inside as any man ever was or could be. He’s real taken with you, Mr.
Howitt, and I’m mighty glad you’re goin’ to stop a spell, for it will
do him good. If it hadn’t been for Sammy Lane runnin’ in every day or
two, I don’t guess he could have stood it at all. I sure don’t know
what we’ll do now that she’s goin’ away. Then there’s—there’s—that at
the ranch in Mutton Hollow; but I guess I’d better not try to tell you
about that. I wish Mr. Matthews would, though; maybe he will. You know
so much more than us; I know most you could help us or tell us about
things.”




CHAPTER V.
“JEST NOBODY.”


After the midday meal, while walking about the place, Mr. Howitt found
a well worn path; it led him to the group of pines not far from the
house, where five rough head stones marked the five mounds placed side
by side. A little apart from these was another mound, alone.

Beneath the pines the needles made a carpet, firm and smooth, figured
by the wild woodbine that clambered over the graves; moss had gathered
on the head stones, and the wind, in the dark branches above, moaned
ceaselessly. About the little plot of ground a rustic fence of poles
was built, and the path led to a stile by which one might enter the
enclosure.

The stranger seated himself upon the rude steps. Below and far away he
saw the low hills, rolling ridge on ridge like the waves of a great
sea, until in the blue distance they were so lost in the sky that he
could not say which was mountain and which was cloud. His poet heart
was stirred at sight of the vast reaches of the forest all shifting
light and shadows; the cool depths of the near-by woods with the
sunlight filtering through the leafy arches in streaks and patches of
gold on green; and the wide, wide sky with fleets of cloud ships
sailing to unseen ports below the hills.

The man sat very still, and as he looked the worn face changed; once,
as if at some pleasing memory, he smiled. A gray squirrel with bright
eyes full of curious regard peeped over the limb of an oak; a red bird
hopping from bush to bush whistled to his mate; and a bob-white’s quick
call came from a nearby thicket.

The dreamer was aroused at last by the musical tinkle of a bell. He
turned his face toward the sound, but could see nothing. The bell was
coming nearer; it came nearer still. Then he saw here and there through
the trees small, moving patches of white; an old ewe followed by two
lambs came from behind a clump of bushes, and the moving patches of
white shaped themselves into other sheep feeding in the timber.

Mr. Howitt sat quite still, and, while the old ewe paused to look at
him, the lambs took advantage of the opportunity, until their mother
was satisfied with her inspection, and by moving on, upset them. Soon
the whole flock surrounded him, and, after the first lingering look of
inquiry, paid no heed to his presence.

Then from somewhere among the trees came the quick, low bark of a dog.
The man looked carefully in every direction; he could see nothing but
the sheep, yet he felt himself observed. Again came the short bark; and
this time a voice—a girl’s voice, Mr. Howitt thought—said, “It’s
alright, Brave; go on, brother.” And from behind a big rock not far
away a shepherd dog appeared, followed by a youth of some fifteen
years.

He was a lightly built boy; a bit tall for his age, perhaps, but
perfectly erect; and his every movement was one of indescribable grace,
while he managed, somehow, to wear his rough backwoods garments with an
air of distinction as remarkable as it was charming. The face was
finely molded, almost girlish, with the large gray eyes, and its frame
of yellow, golden hair. It was a sad face when in repose, yet
wonderfully responsive to every passing thought and mood. But the eyes,
with their strange expression, and shifting light, proclaimed the lad’s
mental condition.

As the boy came forward in a shy, hesitating way, an expression of
amazement and wonder crept into the stranger’s face; he left his seat
and started forward. “Howard,” he said; “Howard.”

“That ain’t his name, Mister; his name’s Pete,” returned the youth, in
low, soft tones.

In the voice and manner of the lad, no less than in his face and eyes,
Mr. Howitt read his story. Unconsciously he echoed the words of Mr.
Matthews, “Poor Pete.”

The dog lifted his head and looked into the man’s face, while his tail
wagged a joyful greeting, and, as the man stooped to pat the animal and
speak a few kind words, a beautiful smile broke over the delicate
features of the youth. Throwing himself upon the ground, he cried,
“Come here, Brave”; and taking the dog’s face between his hands, said
in confidential tones, ignoring Mr. Howitt’s presence, “He’s a good
man, ain’t he, brother?” The dog answered with wagging tail. “We sure
like him, don’t we?” The dog gave a low bark. “Listen, Brave, listen.”
He lifted his face to the tree tops, then turned his ear to the ground,
while the dog, too, seemed to hearken. Again that strange smile
illuminated his face; “Yes, yes, Brave, we sure like him. And the tree
things like him, too, brother; and the flowers, the little flower
things that know everything; they’re all a singin’ to Pete ’cause he’s
come. Did you see the flower things in his eyes, and hear the tree
things a talkin’ in his voice, Brave? And see, brother, the sheep like
him too!” Pointing toward the stranger, he laughed aloud. The old ewe
had come quite close to the man, and one of the lambs was nibbling at
his trousers’ leg.

Mr. Howitt seated himself on the stile again, and the dog, released by
the youth, came to lie down at his feet; while the boy seemed to forget
his companions, and appeared to be listening to voices unheard by them,
now and then nodding his head and moving his lips in answer.

The old man looked long and thoughtfully at the youth, his own face
revealing a troubled mind. This then was Pete, Poor Pete. “Howard,”
whispered the man; “the perfect image;” then again he said, half aloud,
“Howard.”

The boy turned his face and smiled; “That ain’t his name, Mister; his
name’s Pete. Pete seen you yesterday over on Dewey, and Pete he heard
the big hills and the woods a singin’ when you talked. But Jed he
didn’t hear. Jed he don’t hear nothin’ but himself; he can’t. But Pete
he heard and all Pete’s people, too. And the gray mist things come out
and danced along the mountain, ’cause they was so glad you come. And
Pete went with you along the Old Trail. Course, though, you didn’t
know. Do you like Pete’s people, Mister?” He waved his hands to include
the forest, the mountains and the sky; and there was a note of anxiety
in the sweet voice as he asked again: “Do you like Pete’s friends?”

“Yes, indeed, I like your friends,” replied Mr. Howitt, heartily; “and
I would like to be your friend too, if you will let me. What is your
other name?”

The boy shook his head; “Not me; not me;” he said; “do you like Pete?”

The man was puzzled. “Are you not Pete?” he asked.

The delicate face grew sad: “No, no, no,” he said in a low moaning
tone; “I’m not Pete; Pete, he lives in here;” he touched himself on the
breast. “I am—I am—” A look of hopeless bewilderment crept into his
eyes; “I don’t know who I am; I’m jest nobody. Nobody can’t have no
name, can he?” He stood with downcast head; then suddenly he raised his
face and the shadows lifted, as he said, “But Pete he knows, Mister,
ask Pete.”

A sudden thought came to Mr. Howitt. “Who is your father, my boy?”

Instantly the brightness vanished; again the words were a puzzled moan;
“I ain’t got no father, Mister; I ain’t me; nobody can’t have no
father, can he?”

The other spoke quickly; “But Pete had a father; who was Pete’s
father?” Instantly the gloom was gone and the face was bright again.
“Sure, Mister, Pete’s got a father; don’t you know? Everybody knows
that. Look!” He pointed upward to a break in the trees, to a large
cumulus cloud that had assumed a fantastic shape. “He lives in them
white hills, up there. See him, Mister? Sometimes he takes Pete with
him up through the sky, and course I go along. We sail, and sail, and
sail, with the big bird things up there, while the sky things sing; and
sometimes we play with the cloud things, all day in them white hills.
Pete says he’ll take me away up there where the star things live, some
day, and we won’t never come back again; and I won’t be nobody no more;
and Aunt Mollie says she reckons Pete knows. ’Course, I’d hate mighty
much to go away from Uncle Matt and Aunt Mollie and Matt and Sammy,
’cause they’re mighty good to me; but I jest got to go where Pete goes,
you see, ’cause I ain’t nobody, and nobody can’t be nothin’, can he?”

The stranger was fascinated by the wonderful charm of the boy’s manner
and words. As the lad’s sensitive face glowed or was clouded by each
wayward thought, and the music of his sweet voice rose and fell, Mr.
Howitt told himself that one might easily fancy the child some
wandering spirit of the woods and hills. Aloud, he asked, “Has Pete a
mother, too?”

The youth nodded toward the big pine that grew to one side of the
group, and, lowering his voice, replied, “That’s Pete’s mother.”

Mr. Howitt pointed to the grave; “You mean she sleeps there?”

“No, no, not there; there!” He pointed up to the big tree, itself. “She
never sleeps; don’t you hear her?” He paused. The wind moaned through
the branches of the pine. Drawing closer to the stranger’s side, the
boy whispered, “She always talks that a way; always, and it makes Pete
feel bad. She wants somebody. Hear her callin’, callin’, callin’? He’ll
sure come some day, Mister; he sure will. Say, do you know where he
is?”

The stranger, startled, drew back; “No, no, my boy, certainly not; what
do you mean; who are you?”

Like the moaning of the pines came the reply, “Nothin’, Mister, nobody
can’t mean nothin’, can they? I’m jest nobody. But Pete lives in here;
ask Pete.”

“Is Pete watching the sheep?” asked Mr. Howitt, anxious to divert the
boy’s mind to other channels.

“Yes, we’re a tendin’ ’em now; but they can’t trust us, you know; when
they call Pete, he just goes, and course I’ve got to go ’long.”

“Who is it calls Pete?”

“Why, they, don’t you know? I ’lowed you knowed about things. They
called Pete last night. The moonlight things was out, and all the
shadow things; didn’t you see them, Mister? The moonlight things, the
wind, the stars, the shadow things, and all the rest played with Pete
in the shiny mists, and, course, I was along. Didn’t you hear singin’?
Pete he always sings that a way, when the moonlight things is out.
Seems like he just can’t help it.”

“But what becomes of the sheep when Pete goes away?”

The boy shook his head sadly; “Sometimes they get so lost that Young
Matt can’t never find ’em; sometimes wolves get ’em; it’s too bad,
Mister, it sure is.” Then laughing aloud, he clapped his hands; “There
was a feller at the ranch to keep ’em, but he didn’t stay; Ho! Ho! he
didn’t stay, you bet he didn’t. Pete didn’t like him, Brave didn’t like
him, nothing didn’t like him, the trees wouldn’t talk when he was
around, the flowers died when he looked at ’em, and the birds all
stopped singin’ and went away over the mountains. He didn’t stay,
though.” Again he laughed. “You bet he didn’t stay! Pete knows.”

“Why did the man go?” asked Mr. Howitt, thinking to solve a part of the
mystery, at least. But the only answer he could draw from the boy was,
“Pete knows; Pete knows.”

Later when the stranger returned to the house, Pete went with him; at
the big gate they met Mr. Matthews, returning unsuccessful from his
trip.

“Hello, boy!” said the big man; “How’s Pete to-day?”

The lad went with glad face to the giant mountaineer. It was clear that
the two were the warmest friends. “Pete’s mighty glad to-day, ’cause
he’s come.” He pointed to Mr. Howitt. “Does Pete like him?”

The boy nodded. “All Pete’s people like him. Ask him to keep the sheep,
Uncle Matt. He won’t be scared at the shadow things in the night.”

Mr. Matthews smiled, as he turned to his guest. “Pete never makes a
mistake in his judgment of men, Mr. Howitt. He’s different from us
ordinary folks, as you can see; but in some things he knows a heap
more. I’m mighty glad he’s took up with you, sir. All day I’ve been
thinking I’d tell you about some things I don’t like to talk about; I
feel after last night like you’d understand, maybe, and might help me,
you having education. But still I’ve been a little afraid, us being
such strangers. I know I’m right now, ’cause Pete says so. If you
weren’t the kind of a man I think you are, he’d never took to you like
he has.”

That night the mountaineer told the stranger from the city the story
that I have put down in the next chapter.




CHAPTER VI.
THE STORY.


Slowly the big mountaineer filled his cob pipe with strong, home grown
tobacco, watching his guest keenly the while, from under heavy brows.
Behind the dark pines the sky was blood red, and below, Mutton Hollow
was fast being lost in the gathering gloom.

When his pipe was lighted, Old Matt said, “Well, sir, I reckon you
think some things you seen and heard since you come last night are
mighty queer. I ain’t sayin’, neither, but what you got reasons for
thinkin’ so.”

Mr. Howitt made no reply. And, after puffing a few moments in silence,
the other continued, “If it weren’t for what you said last night makin’
me feel like I wanted to talk to you, and Pete a takin’ up with you the
way he has, I wouldn’t be a tellin’ you what I am goin’ to now. There’s
some trails, Mr. Howitt, that ain’t pleasant to go back over. I didn’t
’low to ever go over this one again. Did you and Pete talk much this
afternoon?”

In a few words Mr. Howitt told of his meeting with the strange boy, and
their conversation. When he had finished, the big man smoked in
silence. It was as if he found it hard to begin. From a tree on the
mountain side below, a screech owl sent up his long, quavering call; a
bat darted past in the dusk; and away over on Compton Ridge a hound
bayed. The mountaineer spoke; “That’s Sam Wilson’s dog, Ranger; must a’
started a fox.” The sound died away in the distance. Old Matt began his
story.

“Our folks all live back in Illinois. And if I do say so, they are as
good stock as you’ll find anywhere. But there was a lot of us, and I
always had a notion to settle in a new country where there was more
room like and land wasn’t so dear; so when wife and I was married we
come out here. I recollect we camped at the spring below Jim Lane’s
cabin on yon side of Old Dewey, there. That was before Jim was married,
and a wild young buck he was too, as ever you see. The next day wife
and I rode along the Old Trail ’til we struck this gap, and here we’ve
been ever since.

“We’ve had our ups and downs like most folks, sir, and sometimes it
looked like they was mostly downs; but we got along, and last fall I
bought in the ranch down there in the Hollow. The boy was just eighteen
and we thought then that he’d be makin’ his home there some day. I
don’t know how that’ll be now, but there was another reason too why we
wanted the place, as you’ll see when I get to it.

“There was five other boys, as I told you last night. The oldest two
would have been men now. The girl”—his voice broke—“the girl she come
third; she was twenty when we buried her over there. That was fifteen
year ago come the middle of next month.

“Everybody ’lowed she was a mighty pretty baby, and, bein’ the only
girl, I reckon we made more of her than we did of the boys. She growed
up into a mighty fine young woman too; strong, and full of fire and go,
like Sammy Lane. Seems to wife and me when Sammy’s ’round that it’s our
own girl come back and we’ve always hoped that she and Grant would take
the ranch down yonder; but I reckon that’s all over, now that Ollie
Stewart has come into such a fine thing in the city. Anyway, it ain’t
got nothing to do with this that I’m a tellin’ you.

“She didn’t seem to care nothin’ at all for none of the neighbor boys
like most girls do; she’d go with them and have a good time alright,
but that was all. ’Peared like she’d rather be with her brothers or her
mother or me.

“Well, one day, when we was out on the range a ridin’ for stock—she’d
often go with me that way—we met a stranger over there at the deer lick
in the big low gap, coming along the Old Trail. He was as fine a
lookin’ man as you ever see, sir; big and grand like, with lightish
hair, kind, of wavy, and a big mustache like his hair, and fine white
teeth showing when he smiled. He was sure good lookin’, damn him! and
with his fine store clothes and a smooth easy way of talkin’ and actin’
he had, ’tain’t no wonder she took up with him. We all did. I used to
think God never made a finer body for a man. I know now that Hell don’t
hold a meaner heart than the one in that same fine body. And that’s
somethin’ that bothers me a heap, Mr. Howitt.

“As I say, our girl was built like Sammy Lane, and so far as looks go
she was his dead match. I used to wonder when I’d look at them together
if there ever was such another fine lookin’ pair. I ain’t a goin’ to
tell you his name; there ain’t no call to, as I can see. There might be
some decent man named the same. But he was one of these here artist
fellows and had come into the hills to paint, he said.”

A smothered exclamation burst from the listener.

Mr. Matthews, not noticing, continued: “He sure did make a lot of
pictures and they seemed mighty nice to us, ’though of course we didn’t
know nothin’ about such things. There was one big one he made of Maggie
that was as natural as life. He was always drawin’ of her in one way or
another, and had a lot of little pictures that didn’t amount to much,
and that he didn’t never finish. But this big one he worked at off and
on all summer. It was sure fine, with her a standin’ by the ranch
spring, holdin’ out a cup of water, and smilin’ like she was offerin’
you a drink.”

It was well that the night had fallen. At Old Matt’s words the stranger
shrank back in his chair, his hand raised as if to ward off a deadly
blow. He made a sound in his throat as if he would cry out, but could
not from horror or fear. But the darkness hid his face, and the
mountaineer, with mind intent upon his story, did not heed.

“He took an old cabin at the foot of the hill near where the sheep
corral is now, and fixed it up to work in. The shack had been built
first by old man Dewey, him that the mountain’s named after. It was
down there he painted the big picture of her a standin’ by the big
spring. We never thought nothin’ about her bein’ with him so much.
Country folks is that way, Mr. Howitt, ’though we ought to knowed
better; we sure ought to knowed better.” The old giant paused and for
some time sat with his head bowed, his forgotten pipe on the floor.

“Well,” he began again; “he stopped with us all that summer, and then
one day he went out as usual and didn’t come back. We hunted the hills
out for signs, thinkin’ maybe he met up with some trouble. He’d sent
all his pictures away the week before, Jim Lane haulin’ them to the
settlement for him.

“The girl was nigh about wild and rode with me all durin’ the hunt, and
once when we saw some buzzards circlin’, she gave a little cry and
turned so white that I suspicioned maybe she got to thinkin’ more of
him than we knew. Then one afternoon when we were down yonder in the
Hollow, she says, all of a sudden like, ‘Daddy, it ain’t no use a
ridin’ no more. He ain’t met up with no trouble. He’s left all the
trouble with us.’ She looked so piqued and her eyes were so big and
starin’ that it come over me in a flash what she meant. She saw in a
minute that I sensed it, and just hung her head, and we come home.

“She just kept a gettin’ worse and worse, Mr. Howitt; ’peared to fade
away like, like I watched them big glade lilies do when the hot weather
comes. About the only time she would show any life at all was when
someone would go for the mail, when she’d always be at the gate a
waitin’ for us.

“Then one day, a letter come. I brung it myself. She give a little cry
when I handed it to her, and run into the house, most like her old
self. I went on out to the barn to put up my horse, thinkin’ maybe it
was goin’ to be alright after all; but pretty soon, I heard a scream
and then a laugh. ’Fore God, sir, that laugh’s a ringin’ in my ears
yet. She was ravin’ mad when I got to her, a laughin’, and a
screechin’, and tryin’ to hurt herself, all the while callin’ for him
to come.

“I read the letter afterwards. It told over and over how he loved her
and how no woman could ever be to him what she was; said they was made
for each other, and all that; and then it went on to say how he
couldn’t never see her again; and told about what a grand old family
his was, and how his father was so proud and expected such great things
from him, that he didn’t dare tell, them bein’ the last of this here
old family, and her bein’ a backwoods girl, without any schoolin’ or
nothin’.”

“My God! O, my God!” faltered the stranger’s voice in the darkness.

Old Matt talked on in a hard easy tone. “Course it was all wrote out
nice and smooth like he talked, but that’s the sense of it. He finished
it by sayin’ that he would be on his way to the old country when the
letter reached her, and that it wouldn’t be no use to try to find him.

“The girl quieted down after a spell, but her mind never come back. She
wasn’t just to say plumb crazy, but she seemed kind o’ dazed and lost
like, and wouldn’t take no notice of nobody. Acted all the time like
she was expectin’ him to come. And she’d stand out there by the gate
for hours at a time, watchin’ the Old Trail and talkin’ low to herself.

“Pete is her boy, Mr. Howitt, and as you’ve seen he ain’t just right.
Seems like he was marked some way in his mind like you’ve seen other
folks marked in their bodies. We’ve done our best by the boy, sir, but
I don’t guess he’ll ever be any better. Once for a spell we tried
keepin’ him to home, but he got right sick and would o’ died sure, if
we hadn’t let him go; it was pitiful to see him. Everybody ’lows there
won’t nothin’ in the woods hurt him nohow; so we let him come and go,
as he likes; and he just stops with the neighbors wherever he happens
in. Folks are all as good to him as they can be, ’cause everybody knows
how it is. You see, sir, people here don’t think nothin’ of a wood’s
colt, nohow, but we was raised different. As wife says, we’ve most
forgot civilized ways, but I guess there’s some things a man that’s
been raised right can’t never forget.

“She died when Pete was born, and the last thing she said was, ‘He’ll
come, Daddy, he’ll sure come.’ Pete says the wind singin’ in that big
pine over her grave is her a callin’ for him yet. It’s mighty queer how
the boy got that notion, but you see that’s the way it is with him.

“And that ain’t all, sir.” The big man moved his chair nearer the
other, and lowered his voice to a hoarse whisper; “Folks say she’s come
back. There’s them that swears they’ve seen her ’round the old cabin
where they used to meet when he painted her picture, the big one, you
know. Just before I bought the ranch, it was first; and that’s why we
can’t get no one to stay with the sheep.

“I don’t know, Mr. Howitt; I don’t know. I’ve thought a heap about it,
I ain’t never seen it myself, and it ’pears to me that if she _could_
come back at all, she’d sure come to her old Daddy. Then again I figure
it that bein’ took the way she was, part of her dead, so to speak, from
the time she got that letter, and her mind so set on his comin’ back,
that maybe somehow—you see—that maybe she is sort a waitin’ for him
there. Many’s the time I have prayed all night that God would let me
meet him again just once, or that proud father of his’n, just once,
sir; I’d glad go to Hell if I could only meet them first. If she is
waitin’ for him down there, _he’ll come; he’ll sure come. Hell couldn’t
hold him against such as that, and when he comes—”_

Unconsciously, as he spoke the last sentences, the giant’s voice took a
tone of terrible meaning, and he slowly rose from his seat. When he
uttered the last word he was standing erect, his muscles tense, his
powerful frame shaken with passion.

There was an inarticulate cry of horror, as the mountaineer’s guest
started to his feet. A moment he stood, then sank back into his chair,
a cowering, shivering heap.

Long into the night, the stranger walked the floor of his little room
under the roof, his face drawn and white, whispering half aloud things
that would have startled his unsuspecting host. _“My_ boy—_my_
boy—_mine!_ To do such a thing as that! Howard—Howard. O Christ! that I
should live to be glad that you are dead! And that picture! His
masterpiece, the picture that made his fame, the picture he would never
part with, and that we could never find! I see it all now! Just God,
what a thing to carry on one’s soul!”

Once he paused to stand at the window, looking down upon the valley.
The moon had climbed high above the mountain, but beneath the flood of
silver light the shadows lay dark and deep in Mutton Hollow. Then as he
stood there, from out the shadowy gloom, came the wild, weird song they
had heard the evening before. The man at the window groaned. The song
sank to a low, moaning wail, and he seemed to hear again the wind in
the pine above the grave of the murdered girl. She was calling,
calling—would he come back? Back from the grave, could he come? The
words of the giant mountaineer seemed burned into the father’s brain;
_Hell couldn’t hold him against such as that._

Then the man with the proud face, the face of a scholar and poet, drew
back from the window, shaking with a fear he could not control. He
crept into a corner and crouched upon the floor. With wide eyes, he
stared into the dark. He prayed.

And this is how it came about that the stranger, who followed the Old
Trail along the higher sunlit ground, followed, also, the other trail
down into the valley where the gloomy shadows are; there to live at the
ranch near the haunted cabin—the shepherd of Mutton Hollow.




CHAPTER VII.
WHAT IS LOVE?


Sammy Lane rode very slowly on her way home from the Matthews place
that morning after the stranger had arrived. She started out at her
usual reckless gait, but that was because she knew that Young Matt was
watching her.

Once in the timber, the brown pony was pulled to a walk, and by the
time they came out into the open again, the little horse, unrebuked by
his mistress, was snatching mouthfuls of grass as he strolled along the
trail. Sammy was thinking; thinking very seriously. Aunt Mollie’s
parting question had stirred the girl deeply.

Sammy had seen few people who did not belong to the backwoods. The
strangers she had met were hunters or cattlemen, and these had all
been, in dress and manner, not unlike the natives themselves. This man,
who had come so unexpectedly out of the mists the night before, was
unlike anyone the young woman had ever known. Like Jed Holland, she
felt somehow as if he were a superior being. The Matthews family were
different in many ways from those born and raised in the hills. And
Sammy’s father, too, was different. But this stranger—it was quite as
though he belonged to another world.

Coming to the big, low gap, the girl looked far away to the blue line
of hills, miles, and miles away. The stranger had come from over these,
she thought; and then she fell to wondering what that world beyond the
farthest cloud-like ridge was like.

Of all the people Sammy had ever known, young Stewart was the only one
who had seen even the edge of that world to tell her about it. Her
father and her friends, the Matthews’s, never talked of the old days.
She had known Ollie from a child. With Young Matt they had gone to and
from the log school house along the same road. Once, before Mr.
Stewart’s death, the boy had gone with his father for a day’s visit to
the city, and ever after had been a hero to his backwoods schoolmates.
It was this distinction, really, that first won Sammy’s admiration, and
made them sweethearts before the girl’s skirts had touched the tops of
her shoes. Before the woman in her was fairly awake she had promised to
be his wife; and they were going away now to live in that enchanted
land.

Spying an extra choice bunch of grass a few steps to one side of the
path, Brownie turned suddenly toward the valley; and the girl’s eyes
left the distant ridge for the little cabin and the sheep corral in
Mutton Hollow. Sammy always spoke of that cabin as “Young Matt’s
house.” And, all unbidden now, the thought came, who would live with
the big fellow down there in the valley when she had gone far away to
make her home with Ollie and his people in the city?

An impatient tug at the reins informed Brownie that his mistress was
aware of his existence, and, for a time, the pony was obliged to pass
many a luscious bunch of grass. But soon the reins fell slack again.
The little horse moved slowly, and still more slowly, until, by the
relaxed figure of his rider, he knew it was safe to again browse on the
grass along the path.

So, wondering, dreaming, Sammy Lane rode down the trail that
morning—the trail that is nobody knows how old. And on the hill back of
the Matthews house a team was standing idle in the middle of the field.

At the big rock on the mountain side, where the trail seems to pause a
moment before starting down to the valley, the girl slipped from her
saddle, and, leaving Brownie to wander at will, climbed to her favorite
seat. Half reclining in the warm sunshine, she watched the sheep
feeding near, and laughed aloud as she saw the lambs with wagging
tails, greedily suckling at their mother’s sides; near by in a
black-haw bush a mother bird sat on her nest; a gray mare, with a week
old colt following on unsteady legs, came over the ridge; and not far
away; a mother sow with ten squealing pigs came out of the timber.
Keeping very still the young woman watched until they disappeared
around the mountain. Then, lifting her arms above her head, she
stretched her lithe form out upon the warm rocky couch with the freedom
and grace of a wild thing of the woods.

Sammy Lane knew nothing of the laws and customs of the, so-called, best
society. Her splendid young womanhood was not the product of those
social traditions and rules that kill the instinct of her kind before
it is fairly born. She was as free and as physically perfect as any of
the free creatures that lived in the hills. And, keenly alive to the
life that throbbed and surged about her, her woman’s heart and soul
responded to the spirit of the season. The droning of the bees in the
blossoms that grew in a cranny of the rock; the tinkle, tinkle of the
sheep bells, as the flock moved slowly in their feeding; and the soft
breathing of Mother Earth was in her ears; while the gentle breeze that
stirred her hair came heavy with the smell of growing things. Lying so,
she looked far up into the blue sky where a buzzard floated on lazy
wings. If she were up there she perhaps could see that world beyond the
hills. Then suddenly a voice came to her, Aunt Mollie’s voice, “How do
you reckon you’ll like bein’ a fine lady, Sammy, and a livin’ in the
city with the big folks?”

The girl turned on her side and rising on one elbow looked again at
Mutton Hollow with its little cabin half hidden in the timber. And, as
she looked, slowly her rich red life colored cheek, and neck, and brow.
With a gesture of impatience, Sammy turned away to her own home on the
southern slope of the mountain, just in time to see a young woman ride
into the clearing and dismount before the cabin door. It was her
friend, Mandy Ford. The girl on the rock whistled to her pony, and,
mounting, made her way down the hill.

All that day the strange guest at the Matthews place was the one topic
of conversation between the two girls.

“Shucks,” said Mandy, when Sammy had finished a very minute description
of Mr. Howitt; “he’s jest some revenue, like’s not.”

Sammy tossed her head; “Revenue! you ought to see him! Revenues don’t
come in no such clothes as them, and they don’t talk like him,
neither.”

“Can’t tell ’bout revenues,” retorted the other. “Don’t you mind how
that’n fooled everybody over on th’ bend last year? He was jest as
common as common, and folks all ’lowed he was just one of ’em.”

“But this one ain’t like anybody that we ever met up with, and that’s
jest it,” returned Sammy.

Mandy shook her head; “You say he ain’t huntin’; he sure ain’t buyin’
cattle this time o’ year; and he ain’t a wantin’ t’ locate a comin’ in
on foot; what else can he be but a revenue?”

To which Sammy replied with an unanswerable argument; “Look a here,
Mandy Ford; you jest tell me, would a low down revenue ask a blessin’
like Parson Bigelow does?”

At this Mandy gave up the case, saying in despair, “Well, what is he a
doin’ here then? ’Tain’t likely he’s done come into th’ woods fer
nothin’.”

“He told Old Matt that he was sick and tired of it all,” answered the
other.

“Did he look like he was ailin’?”

Sammy replied slowly, “I don’t reckon it’s that kind of sickness he
meant; and when you look right close into his eyes, he does ’pear kind
o’ used up like.”

In connection with this discussion, it was easy to speak of Miss Lane’s
fairy prospects, for, was not the stranger from the city? and was not
Sammy going to live in that land of wonders? The two girls were
preparing for the night, when Sammy, who was seated on the edge of the
bed, paused, with one shoe off, to ask thoughtfully, “Mandy, what is
love, anyhow?”

Mandy looked surprised. “I reckon you ought to know,” she said with a
laugh; “Ollie’s been a hangin’ ’round you ever since I can remember.”

Sammy was struggling with a knot in the other shoe lace; “Yes,” she
admitted slowly; “I reckon I had ought to know; but what do you say it
is, Mandy?”

“Why, hit’s—hit’s—jest a caring fer somebody more’n fer ary one else in
th’ whole world.”

“Is that all?” The knot was still stubborn.

“No, hit ain’t all. Hit’s a goin’ t’ live with somebody an’ a lettin’
him take care o’ you, ’stead o’ your folks.” Sammy was still struggling
with the knot. “An’ hit’s a cookin’ an’ a scrubbin’ an’ a mendin’ fer
him, an’—an’—sometimes hit’s a splittin’ wood, an’ a doin’ chores, too;
an’ I reckon that’s all.”

Just here the knot came undone, and the shoe dropped to the floor with
a thud. Sammy sat upright. “No, it ain’t, Mandy; it’s a heap more’n
that; it’s a nursin’ babies, and a takin’ care of ’em ’till they’re
growed up, and then when they’re big enough to take care o’ themselves,
and you’re old and in the way, like Grandma Bowles, it’s a lookin’ back
over it all, and bein’ glad you done married the man you did. It’s a
heap more’n livin’ with a man, Mandy; it’s a doin’ all that, without
ever once wishin’ he was somebody else.”

This was too much for Mandy; she blushed and giggled, then remarked, as
she gazed admiringly at her friend, “You’ll look mighty fine, Sammy,
when you get fixed up with all them pretties you’ll have when you an’
Ollie git married. I wish my hair was bright an’ shiny like yourn. How
do you reckon you’ll like bein’ a fine lady anyhow?”

Here it was again. Sammy turned upon her helpless friend, with, “How do
I know if I would like it or not? What is bein’ a fine lady, anyhow?”

“Why, bein’ a fine lady is—is livin’ in a big house with carpets on th’
floor, an’ lookin’ glasses, an’ not havin’ no work t’ do, an’ wearin’
pretty clothes, with lots of rings an’ things, an’—an’,” she paused;
then finished in triumph, “an’ a ridin’ in a carriage.”

That wide questioning look was in Sammy’s eyes as she returned, “It’s a
heap more’n that, Mandy. I don’t jest sense what it is, but I know
’tain’t all them things that makes a sure ’nough lady. ’Tain’t the
clothes he wears that makes Mr. Howitt different from the folks we
know. He don’t wear no rings, and he walks. He’s jest different ’cause
he’s different; and would be, no matter what he had on or where he
was.”

This, too, was beyond Mandy. Sammy continued, as she finished her
preparations for retiring; “This here house is plenty big enough for
me, least wise it would be if it had one more room like the cabin in
Mutton Hollow; carpets would be mighty dirty and unhandy to clean when
the men folks come trampin’ in with their muddy boots; I wouldn’t want
to wear no dresses so fine I couldn’t knock ’round in the brush with
them; and it would be awful to have nothin’ to do; as for a carriage, I
wouldn’t swap Brownie for a whole city full of carriages.” She slipped
into bed and stretched out luxuriously. “Do you reckon I could be a
fine lady, and be as I am now, a livin’ here in the hills?”

The next day Mandy went back to her home on Jake Creek. And in the
evening Sammy’s father, with Wash Gibbs, returned, both men and horses
showing the effects of a long, hard ride.




CHAPTER VIII.
“WHY AIN’T WE GOT NO FOLKS.”


Preachin’ Bill says “There’s a heap o’ difference in most men, but Jim
Lane now he’s more different than _ary_ man you ever seed. Ain’t no
better neighbor’n Jim anywhere. Ride out o’ his way any time t’ do you
a favor. But you bet there ain’t ary man lives can ask Jim any fool
questions while Jim’s a lookin’ at him. Tried it onct myself. Jim was a
waitin’ at th’ ferry fer Wash Gibbs, an’ we was a talkin’ ’long right
peart ’bout crops an’ th’ weather an’ such, when I says, says I, like a
dumb ol’ fool, ‘How’d you like it down in Texas, Jim, when you was
there that time?’ I gonies! His jaw shet with a click like he’d cocked
a pistol, an’ that look o’ hisn, like he was a seein’ plumb through
you, come int’ his eyes, an’ he says, says he, quiet like, ‘D’ you
reckon that rain over on James yesterday raised th’ river much?’ An’
’fore I knowed it, I was a tellin’ him how that ol’ red bull o’ mine
treed th’ Perkins’ boys when they was a possum huntin’.”

Many stories of the Bald Knobber days, when the law of the land was the
law of rifle and rope, were drifting about the country side, and
always, when these tales were recited, the name of Jim Lane was
whispered; while the bolder ones wondered beneath their breath where
Jim went so much with that Wash Gibbs, whose daddy was killed by the
Government.

Mr. Lane was a tall man, well set up, with something in his face and
bearing that told of good breeding; southern blood, one would say, by
the dark skin, and the eyes, hair, and drooping mustache of black.

His companion, Wash Gibbs, was a gigantic man; taller and heavier,
even, than the elder Matthews, but more loosely put together than Old
Matt; with coarse, heavy features, and, as Grandma Bowles said, “the
look of a sheep killin’ dog.” Grandma, being very near her journey’s
end, could tell the truth even about Wash Gibbs, but others spoke of
the giant only in whispers, save when they spoke in admiration of his
physical powers.

As the two men swung stiffly from their saddles, Sammy came running to
greet her father with a kiss of welcome; this little exhibition of
affection between parent and child was one of the many things that
marked the Lanes as different from the natives of that region. Your
true backwoodsman carefully hides every sign of his love for either
family or friends. Wash Gibbs stood looking on with an expression upon
his brutal face that had very little of the human in it.

Releasing his daughter, Mr. Lane said, “Got anything to eat, honey?
We’re powerful hungry. Wash ’lowed we’d better tie up at the river, but
I knew you’d be watching for me. The horses are plumb beat.” And Gibbs
broke in with a coarse laugh, “I wouldn’t mind killin’ a hoss neither,
if I was t’ git what you do at th’ end o’ th’ ride.”

To this, Jim made no reply; but began loosening the saddle girths,
while Sammy only said, as she turned toward the house, “I’ll have
supper ready for you directly, Daddy.”

While the host was busy caring for his tired horse, the big man, who
did not remove the saddle from his mount, followed the girl into the
cabin. “Can’t you even tell a feller, Howdy?” he exclaimed, as he
entered the kitchen.

“I did tell you, Howdy,” replied the girl sharply, stirring up the
fire.

“’Pears like you might o’ been a grain warmer about hit,” growled the
other, seating himself where he could watch her. “If I’d been Young
Matt er that skinny Ollie Stewart, you’d a’ been keen enough.”

Sammy turned and faced him with angry eyes; “Look a here, Wash Gibbs, I
done tol’ you last Thursday when you come for Daddy that you’d better
let me alone. I don’t like you, and I don’t aim to ever have anything
to do with you. You done fixed yourself with me that time at the Cove
picnic. I’ll tell Daddy about that if you don’t mind. I don’t want to
make no trouble, but you just got to quit pestering me.”

The big fellow sneered. “I ’lowed you might change your mind ’bout that
some day. Jim ain’t goin’ t’ say nothin’ t’ me, an’ if he did, words
don’t break no bones. I’m a heap th’ best man in this neck o’ th’
woods, an’ your Paw knows hit. You know it, too.”

Under his look, the blood rushed to the girl’s face in a burning blush.
In spite of her anger she dropped her eyes, and, without attempting a
reply, turned to her work.

A moment later, Mr. Lane entered the room; a single glance at his
daughter’s face, a quick look at Wash Gibbs, as the bully sat following
with wolfish eyes every movement of the girl, and Jim stepped quietly
in front of his guest. At the same moment, Sammy left the house for a
bucket of water, and Wash turned toward his host with a start to find
the dark faced man gazing at him with a look that few men could face
with composure. Without a word, Jim’s right hand crept stealthily
inside his hickory shirt, where a button was missing.

For a moment Gibbs tried to return the look. He failed. Something he
read in the dark face before him—some meaning light in those black
eyes—made him tremble and he felt, rather than saw, Jim’s hand resting
quietly now inside the hickory shirt near his left arm pit. The big
man’s face went white beneath the tan, his eyes wavered and shifted, he
hung his head and shuffled his feet uneasily, like an overgrown
school-boy brought sharply to task by the master.

Then Jim, his hand still inside his shirt, drawled, softly, but with a
queer metallic ring in his voice, “Do you reckon it’s a goin’ t’ storm
again?”

At the commonplace question, the bully drew a long breath and looked
around. “We might have a spell o’ weather,” he muttered; “but I don’t
guess it’ll be t’night.”

Then Sammy returned and they had supper.

Next to his daughter, Jim Lane loved his violin, and with good reason,
for the instrument had once belonged to his great-grandfather, who,
tradition says, was a musician of no mean ability.

Preachin’ Bill “’lowed there was a heap o’ difference between a playin’
a violin an’ jest fiddlin’. You wouldn’t know some fellers was a makin’
music, if you didn’t see ’em a pattin’ their foot; but hit ain’t that a
way with Jim Lane. He sure do make music, real music.” As no one ever
questioned Bill’s judgment, it is safe to conclude that Mr. Lane
inherited something of his great-grandfather’s ability; along with his
treasured instrument.

When supper was over, and Wash Gibbs had gone on his way; Jim took the
violin from its peg above the fireplace, and, tucking it lovingly under
his chin, gave himself up to his favorite pastime, while Sammy moved
busily about the cabin, putting things right for the night.

When her evening tasks were finished, the girl came and stood before
her father. At once the music ceased and the violin was laid carefully
aside. Sammy seated herself on her father’s knee.

“Law’, child, but you’re sure growin’ up,” said Jim, with a mock groan
at her weight.

“Yes, Daddy, I reckon I’m about growed; I’ll be nineteen come
Christmas.”

“O shucks!” ejaculated the man. “It wasn’t more’n last week that you
was washin’ doll clothes, down by the spring.”

The young woman laughed. “I didn’t wash no doll clothes last week,” she
said. Then her voice changed, and that wide, questioning look, the look
that made one think so of her father, came into her eyes. “There’s
something I want to ask you, Daddy Jim. You—you know—Ollie’s goin’
away, an’—an’—an’ I was thinkin’ about it all day yesterday, an’,
Daddy, why ain’t we got no folks?”

Mr. Lane stirred uneasily. Sammy continued, “There’s the Matthews’s,
they’ve got kin back in Illinois; Mandy Ford’s got uncles and aunts
over on Lang Creek; Jed Holland’s got a grandad and mam, and even
Preachin’ Bill talks about a pack o’ kin folks over in Arkansaw. Why
ain’t we got no folks, Daddy?”

The man gazed long and thoughtfully at the fresh young face of his
child; and the black eyes looked into the brown eyes keenly, as he
answered her question with another question, “Do you reckon you love
him right smart, honey? Are you sure, dead sure you ain’t thinkin’ of
what he’s got ’stead of what he is? I know it’ll be mighty nice for you
to be one of the fine folks and they’re big reasons why you ought, but
it’s goin’ to take a mighty good man to match you—a mighty good man.
And it’s the man you’ve got to live with, not his money.”

“Ollie’s good, Daddy,” she returned in a low voice, her eyes fixed upon
the floor.

“I know, I know,” replied Jim. “He wouldn’t do nobody no harm; he’s
good enough that way, and I ain’t a faultin’ him. But you ought to have
a _man,_ a sure enough good man.”

“But tell me, Daddy, why ain’t we got no folks?”

The faintest glimmer of a smile came into the dark face; “You’re sure
growed up, girl; you’re sure growed up, girl; you sure are. An’ I
reckon you might as well know.” Then he told her.




CHAPTER IX.
SAMMY LANE’S FOLKS.


It began on a big southern plantation, where there were several
brothers and sisters, with a gentleman father of no little pride, and a
lady mother of equal pride and great beauty.

With much care for detail, Jim drew a picture of the big mansion with
its wide lawns, flower gardens and tree bordered walks; with its wealth
of culture, its servants, and distinguished guests; for, said he, “When
you get to be a fine lady, you ought to know that you got as good blood
as the best of the thorough-breds.” And Sammy, interrupting his speech
with a kiss, bade him go on with his story.

Then he told how the one black sheep of that proud southern flock had
been cast forth from the beautiful home while still hardly grown; and
how, with his horse, gun and violin, the wanderer had come into the
heart of the Ozark wilderness, when the print of moccasin feet was
still warm on the Old Trail. Jim sketched broadly here, and for some
reason did not fully explain the cause of his banishment; neither did
he comment in any way upon its justice or injustice.

Time passed, and a strong, clear-eyed, clean-limbed, deep-bosomed
mountain lass, with all the mastering passion of her kind, mated the
free, half wild, young hunter; and they settled in the cabin by the
spring on the southern slope of Dewey. Then the little one came, and in
her veins there was mingled the blue blood of the proud southerners and
the warm red life of her wilderness mother.

Again Jim’s story grew rich in detail. Holding his daughter at arm’s
length, and looking at her through half-closed eyes, he said, “You’re
like her, honey; you’re mighty like her; same eyes, same hair, same
mouth, same build, same way of movin’, strong, but smooth and free
like. She could run clean to the top of Dewey, or sit a horse all day.
Do you ever get tired, girl?”

Sammy laughed, and shook her head; “I’ve run from here to the signal
tree, lots of times, Daddy.”

“You’re like the old folks, too,” mused Jim; “like them in what you
think and say.”

“Tell me more,” said the girl. “Seems like I remember bein’ in a big
wagon, and there was a woman there too; was she my mother?”

Jim nodded, and unconsciously lowered his voice, as he said, “It was in
the old Bald Knobber time. Things happened in them days, honey. Many’s
the night I’ve seen the top of old Dewey yonder black with men. It was
when things was broke up, that—that your mother and me thought we could
do better in Texas; so we went,” Jim was again sketching broadly.

“Your mother left us there, girl. Seemed like she couldn’t stand it,
bein’ away from the hills or somethin’, and she just give up. I never
did rightly know how it was. We buried her out there, way out on the
big plains.”

“I remember her a little,” whispered Sammy. Jim continued; “Then after
a time you and me come back to the old place. Your mother named you
Samantha, girl, but bein’ as there wasn’t no boy, I always called you
Sammy. It seems right enough that way now, for you’ve sure been more’n
a son to me since we’ve been alone; and that’s one reason why I learned
you to ride and shoot with the best of them.

“There’s them that says I ain’t done right by you, bringing you up
without ary woman about the place; and I don’t know as I have, but
somehow I couldn’t never think of no woman as I ought, after living
with your mother. And then there was Aunt Mollie to learn you how to
cook and do things about the house. I counted a good bit, too, on the
old stock, and it sure showed up right. You’re like the old folks,
girl, in the way you think, but you’re like your mother in the way you
look.”

Sammy’s arms went around her father’s neck, “You’re a good man, Daddy
Jim; the best Daddy a girl ever had; and if I ain’t all bad, it’s on
account of you.” There was a queer look on the man’s dark face. He had
sketched some parts of his tale with a broad hand, indeed.

The girl raised her head again; “But, Daddy, I wish you’d do something
for me. I—I don’t like Wash Gibbs to be a comin’ here. I wish you’d
quit ridin’ with him, Daddy. I’m—I’m afeared of him; he looks at me so.
He’s a sure bad one—I know he is, Daddy.”

Jim laughed and again there was that odd metallic note in his voice;
“I’ve knowed him a long time, honey. Me and his daddy was—was together
when he died; and you used to sit on Wash’s knee when you was a little
tad. Not that he’s so mighty much older than you, but he was a man’s
size at fifteen. You don’t understand, girl, but I’ve got to go with
him sometimes. But don’t you fret; Wash Gibbs ain’t goin’ to hurt me,
and he won’t come here more’n I can help, either.” Then he changed the
subject abruptly. “Tell me what you’ve been doin’ while I was away.”

Sammy told of her visit to their friends at the Matthews place, and of
the stranger who had come into the neighborhood. As the girl talked,
her father questioned her carefully, and several times the metallic
note crept into his soft, drawling speech, while into his eyes came
that peculiar, searching look, as if he would draw from his daughter
even more than she knew of the incident. Once he rose, and, going to
the door, stood looking out into the night.

Sammy finished with her answer to Mandy Ford’s opinion of the stranger;
“You don’t reckon a revenue would ask a blessin’, do you, Daddy? Seems
like he just naturally wouldn’t dast; God would make the victuals stick
in his throat and choke him sure.”

Jim laughed, as he replied, “I don’t know, girl; I never heard of a
revenue’s doin’ such. But a feller can’t tell.”

When Sammy left him to retire for the night, her father picked up the
violin again, and placed it beneath his chin as if to play; but he did
not touch the strings, and soon hung the instrument in its place above
the mantel. Then, going to the doorway, he lighted his pipe, and, for a
full hour, sat, looking up the Old Trail toward the Matthews place, his
right hand thrust into the bosom of his hickory shirt, where the button
was missing.




CHAPTER X.
A FEAT OF STRENGTH AND A CHALLENGE.


What the club is to the city man, and the general store or postoffice
to the citizens of the country village, the mill is to the native of
the backwoods.

Made to saw the little rough lumber he needs in his primitive building,
or to grind his corn into the rough meal, that is his staff of life,
the mill does more for the settler than this; it brings together the
scattered population, it is the news center, the heart of the social
life, and the hub of the industrial wheel.

On grinding day, the Ozark mountaineer goes to mill on horse-back, his
grist in a sack behind the saddle, or, indeed, taking place of the
saddle itself. The rule is, first come, first served. So, while waiting
his turn, or waiting for a neighbor who will ride in the same
direction, the woodsman has time to contribute his share to the gossip
of the country side, or to take part in the discussions that are of
more or less vital interest. When the talk runs slow, there are games;
pitching horse shoes, borrowed from the blacksmith shop—there is always
a blacksmith shop near by; running or jumping contests, or wrestling or
shooting matches.

Fall Creek Mill, owned and operated by Mr. Matthews and his son, was
located on Fall Creek in a deep, narrow valley, about a mile from their
home.

A little old threshing engine, one of the very first to take the place
of the horse power, and itself in turn already pushed to the wall by
improved competitors, rolled the saw or the burr. This engine, which
had been rescued by Mr. Matthews from the scrap-pile of a Springfield
machine shop, was accepted as evidence beyond question of the superior
intelligence and genius of the Matthews family. In fact, Fall Creek
Mill gave the whole Mutton Hollow neighborhood such a tone of
up-to-date enterprise, that folks from the Bend, or the mouth of the
James, looked upon the Mutton Hollow people with no little envy and
awe, not to say even jealousy.

The settlers came to the Matthews mill from far up the creek, crossing
and recrossing the little stream; from Iron Spring and from Gardner,
beyond Sand Ridge, following faint, twisting bridle paths through the
forest; from the other side of Dewey Bald, along the Old Trail; from
the Cove and from the Postoffice at the Forks, down the wagon road,
through the pinery; and from Wolf Ridge and the head of Indian Creek
beyond, climbing the rough mountains. Even from the river bottoms they
came, yellow and shaking with ague, to swap tobacco and yarns, and to
watch with never failing interest the crazy old engine, as Young Matt
patted, and coaxed, and flattered her into doing his will.

They began coming early that grinding day, two weeks after Mr. Howitt
had been installed at the ranch. But the young engineer was ready, with
a good head of steam in the old patched boiler, and the smoke was
rising from the rusty stack, in a long, twisting line, above the
motionless tree tops.

It was a great day for Young Matt; great because he knew that Sammy
Lane would be coming to mill; he would see her and talk with her;
perhaps if he were quick enough, he might even lift her from the brown
pony.

It was a great day, too, because Ollie Stewart would be saying good-by,
and before to-morrow would be on his way out of the hills. Not that it
mattered whether Ollie went or not. It was settled that Sammy was going
to marry young Stewart; that was what mattered. And Young Matt had
given her up. And, as he had told his father in the barn that day, it
was alright. But still—still it was a great day, because Ollie would be
saying good-by.

It was a great day in Young Matt’s life, too, because on that day he
would issue his challenge to the acknowledged champion of the
country-side, Wash Gibbs. But Young Matt did not know this until
afterwards, for it all came about in a very unexpected way.

The company had been discussing the new arrival in the neighborhood,
and speculating as to the probable length of Mr. Howitt’s stay at the
ranch, and while Young Matt was in the burr-house with his father, they
had gone over yet again the familiar incidents of the ghost story; how
“Budd Wilson seen her as close as from here t’ th’ shop yonder.” How
“Joe Gardner’s mule had gone plumb hog-wild when he tried to ride past
the ol’ ruins near th’ ranch.” And “how Lem Wheeler, while out hunting
that roan steer o’ hisn, had heard a moanin’ an’ a wailin’ under the
bluff.”

Upon Young Matthews returning to his engine, the conversation had been
skilfully changed, to Ollie Stewart and his remarkable good fortune.
From Ollie and his golden prospects, it was an easy way to Sammy Lane
and her coming marriage.

Buck Thompson was just concluding a glowing tribute to the girl’s
beauty of face and form when Young Matt reached for an axe lying near
the speaker. Said Buck, “Preachin’ Bill ’lowed t’other day hit didn’t
make no difference how much money th’ ol’ man left Ollie he’d be a poor
sort of a man anyhow; an’ that there’s a heap better men than him right
here in th’ hills that Sammy could a’ had fer th’ askin’.”

“How ’bout that, Matt?” called a young fellow from the river.

The big man’s face flushed at the general laugh which followed, and he
answered hotly, as he swung his axe, “You’d better ask Wash Gibbs; I
hear he says he’s the best man in these woods.”

“I reckin as how Wash can back his jedgment there,” said Joe.

“Wash is a sure good man,” remarked Buck, “but there’s another not so
mighty far away that’ll pretty nigh hold, him level.” He looked
significantly to where Young Matt was making the big chips fly.

“Huh,” grunted Joe. “I tell you, gentlemen, that there man, Gibbs, is
powerful; yes, sir, he sure is. Tell you what I seed him do.” Joe
pulled a twist of tobacco from his hip pocket, and settled down upon
his heels, his back against a post. “Wash an’ me was a goin’ to th’
settlement last fall, an’ jest this side th’ camp house, on Wilderness
Road, we struck a threshin’ crew stuck in th’ mud with their engine.
Had a break down o’ some kind. Somethin’ th’ matter with th’ hind
wheel. And jest as Wash an’ me drove up, th’ boss of th’ outfit was a
tellin’ ’em t’ cut a big pole for a pry t’ lift th’ hind ex, so’s they
could block it up, an’ fix th’ wheel.

“Wash he looked at ’em a minute an’ then says, says he, ‘Hold on, boys;
you don’t need ary pole.’

“‘What do you know ’bout an engine, you darned hill billy,’ says th’
old man, kind o’ short.

“‘Don’t know nothin’ ’bout an engine, you prairie hopper,’ says Wash,
‘but I know you don’t need no pole t’ lift that thing.’

“‘How’d you lift it then?’ says t’other.

“‘Why I’d jest catch holt an’ lift,’ says Wash.

“The gang like t’ bust themselves laughin’. ‘Why you blame fool,’ says
the boss; ‘do you know what that engine’ll weigh?”

“‘Don’t care a cuss _what_ she’ll weigh,’ says Wash. ‘She ain’t
_planted_ there, is she?’ An’ with that he climbs down from th’ wagon,
an’ dad burn me if he didn’t take holt o’ that hind ex an’ lift one
whole side o’ that there engine clean off th’ ground. Them fellers jest
stood ’round an’ looked at him t’ beat th’ stir. ‘Well,’ says Wash,
still a keepin’ his holt; slide a block under her an’ I’ll mosey along!

“That boss didn’t say a word ’till he’d got a bottle from a box on th’
wagon an’ handed, hit t’ Wash; then he says kind o’ scared like, ‘Where
in hell are you from, Mister?’

“‘Oh, I’m jest a kid from over on Roark,’ says Wash, handin’ th’ bottle
t’ me. ‘You ought t’ see some o’ th’ _men_ in my neighborhood!’ Then we
went on.”

When the speaker had finished, there was quiet for a little; then the
young man from the river drawled, “How much did you say that there
engine ’d weigh, Joe?”

There was a general laugh at this, which the admirer of Gibbs took good
naturedly; “Don’t know what she’d weigh but she was ’bout the size o’
that one there,” he answered.

With one accord everyone turned to inspect the mill engine. “Pretty
good lift, Joe. Let’s you an’ me take a pull at her, Budd,” remarked
Lem Wheeler.

The two men lifted and strained at the wheel. Then another joined them,
and, amid the laughter and good natured raillery of the crowd, the
three tried in vain to lift one of the wheels; while Mr. Matthews,
seeing some unusual movement, came into the shed and stood with his
son, an amused witness of their efforts.

“Sure this engine ain’t bigger’n t’other, Joe?” asked one of the group.

“Don’t believe she weighs a pound more,” replied the mountaineer with
conviction. “I tell you, gentlemen, that man Gibbs is a wonder, he sure
is.”

Old Matt and his son glanced quickly at each other, and the boy shook
his head with a smile. This little by-play was lost on the men who were
interested in the efforts of different ones, in groups of three, to
move the wheel. When they had at last given it up, the young man from
the river drawled, “You’re right sure hit weren’t after th’ boss give
you that bottle that Wash lifted her, are you Joe? Or wasn’t hit on th’
way home from th’ settlement?”

When the laugh at this insinuation had died out, Buck said
thoughtfully, “Tell you what, boys; I’d like t’ see Young Matt try that
lift.”

Mr. Matthews, who was just starting back to the burr-house, paused in
the doorway. All eyes were fixed upon his son. “Try her, Matt. Show us
what you can do,” called the men in chorus. But the young man shook his
head, and found something that needed his immediate attention.

All that morning at intervals the mountaineers urged the big fellow to
attempt the feat, but he always put them off with some evasive reply,
or was too busy to gratify them.

But after dinner, while the men were pitching horse shoes in front of
the blacksmith shop, Buck Thompson approached the young engineer alone.
“Look a here, Matt,” he said, “why don’t you try that lift? Durned me
if I don’t believe you’d fetch her.”

The young giant looked around; “I know I can, Buck; I lifted her
yesterday while Dad fixed the blockin’; I always do it that way.”

Buck looked at him in amazement. “Well, why in thunder don’t you show
th’ boys, then?” he burst forth at last.

“’Cause if I do Wash Gibbs’ll hear of it sure, and I’ll have to fight
him to settle which is th’ best man.”

“Good Lord!” ejaculated Buck, with a groan. “If you’re afraid o’ Wash
Gibbs, it’s th’ first thing I ever knowed you t’ be scared o’.”

Young Matt looked his friend steadily in the eyes, as he replied; “I
ain’t afraid of Wash Gibbs; I’m afraid of myself. Mr. Howitt says, ‘No
man needn’t be afraid of nobody but himself.’ I’ve been a thinkin’
lately, Buck, an’ I see some things that I never see before. I figure
it that if I fight Wash Gibbs or anybody else just to see which is th’
best man, I ain’t no better’n he is. I reckon I’ll have to whip him
some day, alright, an’ I ain’t a carin’ much how soon it comes; but I
ain’t a goin’ to hurt nobody for nothin’ just because I can.”

Buck made no reply to this. Such sentiment was a little too much for
his primitive notions. He went back to the men by the blacksmith shop.

It was not long, however, until the players left their game, to gather
once more about the engine. Lem Wheeler approached Young Matt with a
serious air; “Look a here,” he said; “we all want t’ see you try that
lift.”

“I ain’t got no time for foolin’,” replied the young man; “Dad’s just
pushin’ to get done before dark.”

“Shucks!” retorted the other; “Hit won’t take a minute t’ try. Jest
catch hold an’ show us what you can do.”

“What are you all so keen about my liftin’ for, anyhow?” demanded the
big fellow, suspiciously. “I ain’t never set up as the strong man of
this country.”

“Well, you see it’s this way; Buck done bet me his mule colt agin mine
that you could lift her; an’ we want you to settle th’ bet!” exclaimed
Lem.

Young Matthews shot a glance at the mountaineer, who grinned joyously.
“Yep,” said Buck, “that’s how it is; I’m a backin’ you. Don’t want you
t’ hurt yourself for me, but I sure do need that colt o’ Lem’s; hit’s a
dead match for mine.”

The giant looked at his friend a moment in silence, then burst into a
laugh of appreciation at Buck’s hint. “Seein’ as how you’re backin’ me,
Buck, I’ll have t’ get you that mule if I can.”

He shut off steam, and, as the engine came to a stop, stooped, and,
with apparent ease, lifted the rear wheel a full four inches from the
ground.

Loud exclamations of admiration came from the little group of men in
the shed. Lem turned with a long face, “Them colts ’ll make a fine
team, Buck;” he said.

“You bet; come over an’ hep me break ’em,” replied Buck, with another
grin of delight.

“Wait ’till Wash Gibbs hears ’bout this, an’ he’ll sure be for breakin’
Young Matt,” put in another.

“Better get your fightin’ clothes on, Matt; Wash’ll never rest easy
until you’ve done showed him.” These and similar remarks revealed the
general view of the situation.

While the men were discussing the matter, a thin, high-pitched voice
from the edge of the crowd, broke in, “That there’s a good lift
alright, but hit ain’t nothin’ t’ what I seed when I was t’ th’ circus
in th’ city.”

Young Matt, who had started the engine again, turned quickly. Ollie
Stewart was sitting on a horse near by, and at his side, on the brown
pony, was Miss Sammy Lane. They had evidently ridden up just in time to
witness the exhibition of the giant’s strength.




CHAPTER XI.
OLLIE STEWART’S GOOD-BY.


Beside the splendidly developed young woman, Ollie Stewart appeared but
a weakling. His shoulders were too narrow and he stooped; his limbs
were thin; his hair black and straight; and his eyes dull.

As Young Matt stepped forward, Ollie dismounted quickly, but the big
fellow was first at the brown pony’s side. Sammy’s eyes shone with
admiration, and, as the strong man felt their light, he was not at all
sorry that he had won the mule colt for Buck.

“No,” she said, declining his offered assistance; she did not wish to
get down; they were going to the postoffice and would call for the meal
on their way home.

Young Matt lifted the sack of corn from Brownie’s back and carried it
into the shed. When he returned to the group, Ollie was saying in his
thin voice, “In th’ circus I seen in the city there was a feller that
lifted a man, big as Jed here, clean above his head with one hand.”

Buck turned to his big friend. His look was met by a grim smile that
just touched the corners of the lad’s mouth, and there was a gleam in
the blue eyes that betrayed the spirit within. The lean mountaineer
again turned to the company, while the boy glanced at Sammy. The girl
was watching him and had caught the silent exchange between the two
friends.

“Shucks!” said Buck; “Matt could do that easy.” “Try it, Matt.” “Try
Jed here.” “Try hit once,” called the chorus.

This time the big fellow needed no urging. With Sammy looking on, he
could not resist the opportunity which Ollie himself had presented.
Without a word, but with a quick tightening of the lips, he stepped
forward and caught Jed by the belt with his right hand; and then,
before anyone could guess his purpose, he reached out with his other
hand, and grasped Ollie himself in the same manner. There was a short
step forward, a quick upward swing, and the giant held a man in each
hand at full arm’s length above his head. Amid the shouts of the crowd,
still holding the men, he walked deliberately to the blacksmith shop
and back; then lowering them easily to their feet, turned to his
engine.

Ollie and Sammy rode away together, up the green arched road, and the
little company in the mill shed stood watching them. As the finely
formed young woman and her inferior escort passed from sight, a tall
mountaineer, from the other side of Compton Ridge, remarked, “I done
heard Preachin’ Bill say t’other day, that ’mighty nigh all this here
gee-hawin’, balkin’, and kickin’ ’mongst th’ married folks comes ’cause
th’ teams ain’t matched up right.’ Bill he ’lowed God ’lmighty ’d fixed
hit somehow so th’ birds an’ varmints don’t make no mistake, but left
hit plumb easy for men an’ women t’ make durned fools o’ theirselves.”

Everybody grinned in appreciation, and another spoke up; “According t’
that, I’ll bet four bits if them two yonder ever do get into double
harness, there’ll be pieces o’ th’ outfit strung from th’ parson’s
clean t’ th’ buryin’ ground.”

When the laughter had subsided, Buck turned to see Young Matt standing
just outside the shed, ostensibly doing something with the belt that
led to the burr, but in reality looking up the creek.

“Law!” ejaculated Buck, under his breath; “what a team _they’d_ make!”

“Who?” said Lem, who was standing near by.

“Them mule colts,” returned Buck with a grin.

“They sure will, Buck. There ain’t two better in the country; they’re a
dead match. I’ll come over an’ hep you break ’em when they’re big
’nough.” And then he wondered why Buck swore with such evident delight.

One by one the natives received their meal, and, singly, or in groups
of two or three, were swallowed up by the great forest. Already the
little valley was in the shadow of the mountain, though the sun still
shone brightly on the tree tops higher up, when Ollie and Sammy
returned from the Forks. Mr. Matthews had climbed the hill when the
last grist was ground, leaving his son to cool down the engine and put
things right about the mill.

“Come on, Matt,” said Ollie, as the big fellow brought out the meal;
“It’s time you was a goin’ home.”

The young giant hung back, saying, “You folks better go on ahead. I’ll
get home alright.”

“Didn’t think nothin’ would get you,” laughed Ollie. “Come on, you
might as well go ’long with us.”

The other muttered something about being in the way, and started back
into the shed.

“Hurry up,” called Sammy, “we’re waitin’.”

After this there was nothing else for the young man to do but join
them. And the three were soon making their way up the steep mountain
road together.

For a time they talked of commonplace things, then Young Matt opened
the subject that was on all their hearts. “I reckon, Ollie, this is the
last time that you’ll ever be a climbin’ this old road.” As he spoke he
was really thinking of the time to come when Sammy would climb the road
for the last time.

“Yes,” returned Stewart; “I go to-morrow ’fore sun up.”

The other continued; “It’ll sure be fine for you to live in the city
and get your schoolin’ and all that. Us folks here in the woods don’t
know nothin’. We ain’t got no chance to learn. You’ll be forgettin’ us
all mighty quick, I reckon, once you get to livin’ with your rich kin.”

“’Deed, I won’t!” returned Ollie warmly. “Sammy an’ me was a talkin’
’bout that this evenin’. We aim t’ always come back t’ Mutton Holler
onct a year, an’ be just like other folks; don’t we, Sammy?”

The brown pony, stepping on a loose stone, stumbled toward the man
walking by his side. And the big fellow put out his hand quickly to the
little horse’s neck. For an instant, the girl’s hand rested on the
giant’s shoulder, and her face was close to his. Then Brownie recovered
his footing, and Young Matt drew farther away.

Ollie continued; “We aim t’ have you come t’ th’ city after a while.
I’m goin’ t’ get Uncle Dan t’ give you a job in th’ shops, an’ you can
get out o’ these hills an’ be somebody like we’uns.”

The tone was unmistakably patronizing. The big mountaineer lifted his
head proudly, and turned toward the speaker; but before he could reply,
Sammy broke in eagerly, “Law! but that would sure be fine, wouldn’t it,
Matt? I’d know you’d do somethin’ big if you only had the chance. I
just know you would. You’re so—so kind o’ big every way,” she laughed.
“It’s a plumb shame for you to be buried alive in these hills.”

There was nothing said after this, until, coming to the top of the
ridge, they stopped. From here Ollie and Sammy would take the Old Trail
to the girl’s home. Then, with his eyes on the vast sweep of
forest-clad hills and valleys, over which the blue haze was fast
changing to purple in the level rays of the sun, Young Matt spoke.

“I don’t guess you’d better figure on that. Some folks are made to live
in the city, and some ain’t. I reckon I was built to live in these
hills. I don’t somehow feel like I could get along without them; and
besides, I’d always be knockin’ against somethin’ there.” He laughed
grimly, and stretched out his huge arms. “I’ve got to have room. Then
there’s the folks yonder.” He turned his face toward the log house,
just showing through the trees. “You know how it is, me bein’ the only
one left, and Dad gettin’ old. No, I don’t guess you need to count on
me bein’ more than I am.”

Then suddenly he wheeled about and looked from one face to the other;
and there was a faint hint of defiance in his voice, as he finished; “I
got an idea, too, that the backwoods needs men same as the cities. I
don’t see how there ever could _be_ a city even, if it wasn’t for the
men what cleared the brush. Somebody’s got to lick Wash Gibbs some day,
or there just naturally won’t be no decent livin’ in the neighborhood
ever.”

He held up his big hand to the man on the horse; “Good-by, and good
luck to you, Ollie.” The horses turned down the Old Trail and with
their riders, passed from sight.

That night Sammy Lane said farewell to her lover, and, with many
promises for the future, Ollie rode away to his cabin home, to leave
the next morning for that world that lies so far—so far away from the
world of Young Matt and his friends, the world that is so easy to get
into after all, and so impossible to get out of ever.




CHAPTER XII.
THE SHEPHERD AND HIS FLOCK.


All that spring and summer things went smoothly in the Mutton Hollow
neighborhood. The corn was ready to gather, and nothing had happened at
the ranch since Mr. Howitt took charge, while the man, who had appeared
so strangely in their midst, had made a large place for himself in the
hearts of the simple mountaineers.

At first they were disposed to regard him with some distrust, as one
apart; he was so unlike themselves. But when he had changed his dress
for the rough garb of the hillsman, and, meeting them kindly upon their
own ground, had entered so readily into their life, the people by
common consent dropped the distinguishing title “Mister” for the more
familiar one of the backwoods, “Dad.” Not that they lacked in respect
or courtesy; it was only their way. And the quiet shepherd accepted the
title with a pleased smile, seeming to find in the change an honor to
be received not lightly. But while showing such interest in all that
made up their world, the man never opened the door for anyone to enter
his past. They knew no more of his history than the hints he had given
Mr. Matthews the night he came out of the mists.

At the occasional religious meetings in the school house at the Forks,
Mr. Howitt was always present, an attentive listener to the sermons of
the backwoods preacher. And then, seeing his interest, they asked him
to talk to them one day when Parson Bigelow failed to make his
appointment. “He don’t holler so much as a regular parson,” said Uncle
Josh Hensley, “but he sure talks so we’uns can understand.” From that
time they always called upon him at their public gatherings.

So the scholar from the world beyond the ridges slipped quietly into
the life of the mountain folk, and took firm root in their affections.
And in his face, so “Preachin’ Bill” said, was the look of one who had
“done fought his fight to a finish, an’ war too dead beat t’ even be
glad it war all over.”

Between the giant Mr. Matthews and his shepherd, the friendship, begun
that night, grew always stronger. In spite of the difference in
education and training, they found much in common. Some bond of
fellowship, unknown to the mountaineer, at least, drew them close, and
the two men spent many evenings upon the front porch of the log house
in quiet talk, while the shadows crept over the valley below; and the
light went from the sky back of the clump of pines.

From the first Young Matt was strongly drawn to the stranger, who was
to have such influence over his life, and Pete—Pete said that “God
lived with Dad Howitt in Mutton Hollow.”

Pete somehow knew a great deal about God these days. A strange
comradeship had come to be between the thoughtful gentleman, who cared
for the sheep, and the ignorant, sorely afflicted, and nameless
backwoods boy. The two were always together, out on the hillside and in
the little glens and valleys, during the day with the sheep, or at the
ranch in the Hollow, when the flock was safely folded and the night
slipped quietly over the timbered ridges. Mr. Howitt had fixed a bunk
in his cabin for the boy, so that he could come and go at will. Often
the shepherd awoke in the morning to find that some time during the
night his strange friend had come in from his roving. Again, after
seeing the boy soundly sleeping, the shepherd would arise in the
morning to find the bunk empty.

Sammy Lane, too, had fallen under the charm of the man with the white
hair and poet’s face.

Sammy was not so often at the Matthews place after Ollie had gone to
the city. The girl could not have told why. She had a vague feeling
that it was better to stay away. But this feeling did not prevent her
climbing the Old Trail to the Lookout on the shoulder of Dewey, and she
spent hours at the big rock, looking over the valley to where the smoke
from Aunt Mollie’s kitchen curled above the trees. And sometimes,
against the sky, she could see a man and a team moving slowly to and
fro in the field back of the house. When this happened, Sammy always
turned quickly away to where the far off line of hills lay like a long,
low cloud against the sky.

Every week the girl rode her brown pony to the Postoffice at the Forks;
and when she had a letter, things were different. She always stopped
then at the Matthews home.

One day when this happened, Dad and Pete were on the ridge above the
Old Trail, just where the north slope of Dewey shades into the rim of
the Hollow. The elder man was seated on the ground in the shade of an
oak, with his back against the trunk of the tree, while the boy lay
full length on the soft grass, looking up into the green depths of
foliage where a tiny brown bird flitted from bough to bough. In his
quaint way, Pete was carrying on a conversation with his little friend
in the tree top, translating freely the while for his less gifted, but
deeply interested, companion on the ground below, when Brave, the
shepherd dog, lying near, interrupted the talk by a short bark. Looking
up, they saw Young Matt riding along the summit of the ridge.

The young man paused when he heard the dog, and caught sight of the two
under the tree; then he came to them, and seated himself on the grass
at Pete’s side. He spoke no word of greeting, and the look on his face
was not good to see.

Pete’s eyes went wide with fear at the manner of his big friend, and he
drew back as if to run, but when Young Matt, throwing himself over on
the grass, had hidden his face, a half sad, half knowing look came into
the lad’s delicate features; reaching forth a hand, as slim as a
girl’s, he stroked the shaggy, red brown head, as he murmured softly,
“Poor Matt. Poor Matt. Does it hurt? Is Matt hurt? It’ll be better
by-and-by.”

The great form on the grass stirred impatiently. The shepherd spoke no
word. Pete continued, stroking the big head, and talking in low,
soothing tones, as one would hush a child, “Pete don’t know what’s a
hurtin’ Young Matt, but it’ll be alright, some day. It’ll sure grow
over after awhile. Ain’t nothing won’t grow over after awhile; ’cause
God he says so.”

Still the older man was silent. Then the giant burst forth in curses,
and the shepherd spoke, “Don’t do that, Grant. It’s not like you, lad.
You cannot help your trouble that way.”

Young Matt turned over to face his friend; “I know it, Dad;” he growled
defiantly; “but I just got to say somethin’; I ain’t meanin’ no
disrespect to God ’lmighty, and I reckon He ought to know it; but—” he
broke forth again.

Pete drew back in alarm. “Look your trouble in the face, lad,” said the
shepherd; “don’t let it get you down like this.”

“Look it in the face!” roared the other. “Good God! that’s just it!
ain’t I a lookin’ it in the face every day? You don’t know about it,
Dad. If you did, you—you’d cuss too.” He started in again.

“I know more than you think, Grant,” said the other, when the big
fellow had stopped swearing to get his breath. While he spoke, the
shepherd was looking away along the Old Trail. “There comes your
trouble now,” he added, pointing to a girl on a brown pony, coming
slowly out of the timber near the deer lick. The young man made no
reply. Pete, at sight of the girl, started to his feet, but the big
fellow pulled him down again, and made the boy understand that he must
not betray their position.

When Sammy reached the sheep, she checked her pony, and searched the
hillside with her eyes, while her clear call went over the mountain,
“Oh—h—h—Dad!”

Young Matt shook his head savagely at his companion, and even Brave was
held silent by a low “Be still” from his master.

Again Sammy looked carefully on every side, but lying on the higher
ground, and partly hidden by the trees, the little group could not be
seen. When there was no answer to her second call, the girl drew a
letter from her pocket, and, permitting the pony to roam at will,
proceeded to read.

The big man, looking on, cursed again beneath his breath. “It’s from
Ollie,” he whispered to his companions. “She stopped at the house. He
says his uncle will give me a job in the shops, and that it’ll be fine
for me, ’cause Ollie will be my boss himself. He my boss! Why, dad burn
his sneakin’ little soul, I could crunch him with one hand. I’d see him
in hell before I’d take orders from him. I told her so, too,” he
finished savagely.

“And what did she say?” asked the shepherd quietly, his eyes on the
girl below.

“Just said, kind o’ short like, that she reckoned I could. Then I come
away.”

The girl finished her letter, and, after another long call for Dad,
moved on over the shoulder of the mountain. Pete, who had withdrawn a
little way from his companions, was busily talking in his strange
manner to his unseen friends.

Then Young Matt opened his heart to the shepherd and told him all. It
was the old, old story; and, as Mr. Howitt listened, dreams that he had
thought dead with the death of his only son, stirred again in his
heart, and his deep voice was vibrant with emotion as he sought to
comfort the lad who had come to him.

While they talked, the sun dropped until its lower edge touched the top
of the tallest pine on Wolf Ridge, and the long shadows lay over the
valley below. “I’m mighty sorry I let go and cuss, Dad,” finished, the
boy. “But I keep a holdin’ in, and a holdin’ in, ’til I’m plumb wild;
then something happens like that letter, and I go out on the range and
bust. I’ve often wished you knowed. Seems like your just knowin’ about
it will help me to hold on. I get scared at myself sometimes, Dad, I
do, honest.”

“I’m glad, too, that you have told me, Grant. It means more to me than
you can guess. I—I had a boy once, you know. He was like you. He would
have come to me this way, if he had lived.”

The sheep had begun working toward the lower ground. The shepherd rose
to his feet. “Take them home, Brave. Come on, boys, you must eat with
me at the ranch, to-night.” Then the three friends, the giant
mountaineer, the strangely afflicted youth, and the old scholar went
down the mountain side together.

As they disappeared in the timber on the lower level, the bushes, near
which they had been sitting, parted silently, and a man’s head and
shoulders appeared from behind a big rock. The man watched the strange
companions out of sight. Then the bushes swayed together, and the
mountain seemed to have swallowed him up.

The three friends had just finished their supper when Pete saw Sammy
entering the ranch clearing. Young Matt caught up his hat. At the rear
door he paused. “I’ve got to go now, Dad,” he said awkwardly. “I can’t
see her any more to-day. But if you’ll let me, I’ll come again when
things get too hot.”

The shepherd held out his hand, “I understand. Come always, my boy.”

The big fellow, with Pete, skipped away into the timber at the rear of
the cabin, a moment before Sammy appeared at the open door in front.




CHAPTER XIII.
SAMMY LANE’S AMBITION.


“Law sakes!” cried Sammy, looking at the table. “You don’t use all them
dishes, do you, Dad? You sure must eat a lot.”

“Oh, I eat enough,” laughed Mr. Howitt; “but it happens that I had
company this evening. Young Matt and Pete were here for supper.” He
brought two chairs outside the cabin.

“Shucks!” exclaimed Sammy, as she seated herself, and removed her
sunbonnet; “they must’ve eat and run. Wish’d I’d got here sooner. Young
Matt run away from me this afternoon. And I wanted to see him ’bout
Mandy Ford’s party next week. I done promised Mandy that I’d bring him.
I reckon he’d go with me if I asked him.”

“There is not the least doubt about that,” observed the man; “I’m sure
anyone would be glad for such charming company.”

The girl looked up suspiciously; “Are you a jokin’?” she said.

“Indeed, I am not; I am very much in earnest.” Then, taking a cob pipe
from his pocket, he added, politely, “May I smoke?”

“Heh? O law! yes. What you ask me for?” She watched him curiously, as
he filled and lighted the pipe. “I reckon that’s because you was raised
in the city,” he added slowly; “is that the way folks do there?”

“Folks smoke here, sometimes, do they not?” he returned between puffs.

“I don’t mean that. Course they smoke and chew, too. And the women dip
snuff, some of ’em. Aunt Mollie Matthews don’t, though, and I ain’t
never goin’ to, ’cause she don’t. But nobody don’t ask nobody else if
they can. They just go ahead. That ain’t the only way you’re different
from us, though,” she continued, looking at Mr. Howitt, with that wide
questioning gaze. “You’re different in a heap o’ ways. ’Tain’t that you
wear different clothes, for you don’t, no more. Nor, ’taint that you
act like you were any better’n us. I don’t know what it is, but it’s
somethin’. Take your stayin’ here in Mutton Hollow, now; honest, Dad,
ain’t you afear’d to stay here all alone at nights?”

“Afraid? afraid of what?” he looked at her curiously.

“Hants,” said the girl, lowering her voice; “down there.” She pointed
toward the old ruined cabin under the bluff. _“She’s_ sure been seen
there. What if _he_ was to come, too? Don’t you believe in hants?”

The shepherd’s face was troubled, as he answered, “I don’t know, Sammy.
I scarcely know what I believe. Some marvelous experiences are related
by apparently reliable authorities; but I have always said that I could
not accept the belief. I—I am not so sure now. After all, the unseen
world is not so very far away. Strange forces, of which we know
nothing, are about us everywhere. I dare not say that I do not
believe.”

“But you ain’t scared?”

“Why should I fear?”

Sammy shook her head. “Ain’t ’nother man or woman in the whole country
would dast spend the night here, Dad; except Pete, of course. Not even
Young Matt, nor my Daddy would do it; and I don’t guess they’re afraid
of anything—anything that’s alive, I mean. You’re sure different, Dad;
plumb different. I reckon it must be the city that does it. And that’s
what I’ve come to see you about this evenin’. You see Ollie’s been a
tellin’ me a lot about folks and things way over there.” She waived her
hand toward the ridges that shut in the Hollow. “And Ollie he’s changed
a heap himself since he went there to live. I got a letter to-day, and,
when I went home, I hunted up the first one he wrote, and I can tell
there’s a right smart difference already. You know all about Ollie and
me goin’ to get married, I reckon?”

Mr. Howitt admitted that he had heard something of that nature; and
Sammy nodded, “I ’lowed you’d know. But you don’t know how mighty proud
and particular Ollie always is. I figure that bein’ in the city with
all them one folks ain’t goin’ to make him any less that way than he
was. And if he stays there and keeps on a changin’, and I stay here,
and don’t change none, why it might be that I—I—” She faltered and came
to a dead stop, twisting her bonnet strings nervously in her confusion.
“Ollie he ain’t like Young Matt, nohow,” she said again. “Such as that
wouldn’t make no difference with him. But Ollie—well you see—”

There was a twinkle, now, in the shepherd’s eye, as he answered; “Yes,
I see; I am quite sure that I see.”

The girl continued; “You know all about these things, Dad. And there
ain’t nobody else here that does. Will you learn me to be a sure ’nough
lady, so as Ollie won’t—so he won’t—” Again she paused in confusion. It
was evident, from the look on Mr. Howitt’s face, that, whatever he saw,
it was not this.

“I feel somehow like I could do it, if I had a chance,” she murmured.

There was no answer. After a time, Sammy stole a look at her quiet
companion. What could the man in the chair be thinking about? His pipe
was neglected; his gray head bowed.

“Course,” said the young woman, with just a little lifting of her chin;
“Course, if I couldn’t never learn, there ain’t no use to try.”

The old scholar raised his head and looked long at the girl. Her
splendid form, glowing with the rich life and strength of the
wilderness, showed in every line the proud old southern blood. Could
she learn to be a fine lady? Mr. Howitt thought of the women of the
cities, pale, sickly, colorless, hot-house posies, beside this mountain
flower. What would this beautiful creature be, had she their training?
What would she gain? What might she not lose? Aloud he said, “My dear
child, do you know what it is that you ask?”

Sammy hung her head, abashed at his serious tone. “I ’lowed it would be
right smart trouble for you,” she said. “But I could let you have
Brownie in pay; he ain’t only five year old, and is as sound as a
button. He’s all I’ve got, Mr. Howitt. But I’d be mighty proud to swap
him to you.”

“My girl, my girl,” said the shepherd, “you misunderstand me. I did not
mean that. It would be a pleasure to teach you. I was thinking how
little you realized what the real life of the city is like, and how
much you have that the ‘fine ladies,’ as you call them, would give
fortunes for, and how little they have after all that could add one ray
of brightness to your life.”

Sammy laughed aloud, as she cried, “Me got anything that anybody would
want? Why, Dad, I ain’t got nothin’ but Brownie, and my saddle, and—and
that’s all. I sure ain’t got nothing to lose.”

The man smiled in sympathy. Then slowly a purpose formed in his mind.
“And if you should lose, you will never blame me?” he said at last.

“Never, never,” she promised eagerly.

“Alright, it is a bargain. I will help you.”

The girl sprang to her feet. “I knew you would. I knew you would. I was
plumb sure you would,” she cried, fairly quivering with life and
excitement. “It’s got to be a sure ’nough lady, Dad. I want to be a
really truly fine lady, like them Ollie tells about in his letters, you
know.”

“Yes, Sammy. I understand, a ‘sure enough’ lady, and we will do it, I
am sure. But it will take a great deal of hard work on your part,
though.”

“I reckon it will,” she returned soberly, coming back to her seat. Then
drawing her chair a little closer, she leaned toward her teacher,
“Begin now,” she commanded. “Tell me what I must do first.”

Mr. Howitt carefully searched his pockets for a match, and lighted his
pipe again, before he said, “First you must know what a ‘sure enough’
lady is. You see, Sammy, there are several kinds of women who call
themselves ladies, but are not real ladies after all; and they all look
very much like the ‘sure enough’ kind; that is, they look like them to
most people.”

Sammy nodded, “Just like them Thompsons down by Flat Rock. They’re all
mighty proud, ’cause they come from Illinois the same as the
Matthews’s. You’d think to hear ’em that Old Matt couldn’t near run the
ranch without ’em, and some folks, strangers like, might believe it.
But we all know they ain’t nothing but just low down trash, all the
time, and no better than some of them folks over on the Bend.”

The shepherd smiled, “Something like that. I see you understand. Now a
real lady, Sammy, is a lady in three ways: First, in her heart; I mean
just to herself, in the things that no one but she could ever know. A
‘sure enough’ lady does not _pretend_ to be; she _is.”_

Again the girl broke in eagerly, “That’s just like Aunt Mollie, ain’t
it? Couldn’t no one ever have a finer lady heart than her.”

“Indeed, you are right,” agreed the teacher heartily. “And that is the
thing that lies at the bottom of it all, Sammy. The lady heart comes
first.”

“I won’t never forget that,” she returned. “I couldn’t forget Aunt
Mollie, nohow. Tell me more, Dad.”

“Next, the ‘sure enough’ lady must have a lady mind. She must know how
to think and talk about the things that really matter. All the fine
dresses and jewels in the world can’t make a real lady, if she does not
think, or if she thinks only of things that are of no value. Do you
see?”

Again the girl nodded, and, with a knowing smile, answered quickly, “I
know a man like that. And I see now that that is what makes him so
different from other folks. It’s the things he thinks about all to
himself that does it. But I’ve got a heap to learn, I sure have. I
could read alright, if I had something to read, and I reckon I could
learn to talk like you if I tried hard enough. What else is there?”

Then, continued the shepherd, “A lady will keep her body as strong and
as beautiful as she can, for this is one way that she expresses her
heart and mind. Do you see what I mean?”

Sammy answered slowly, “I reckon I do. You mean I mustn’t get stooped
over and thin chested, and go slouching around, like so many of the
girls and women around here do, and I mustn’t let my clothes go without
buttons, ’cause I am in a hurry, and I must always comb my hair, and
keep my hands as white as I can. Is that it?”

“That’s the idea,” said the shepherd.

Sammy gazed ruefully at a large rent in her skirt, and at a shoe half
laced. Then she put up a hand to her tumbled hair. “I—I didn’t think it
made any difference, when only home folks was around,” she said.

“That’s just it, my child,” said the old man gently. “I think a ‘sure
enough’ lady would look after these things whether there was anyone to
see her or not; just for herself, you know. And this is where you can
begin. I will send for some books right away, and when they come we
will begin to train your mind.”

“But the heart, how’ll I get a lady heart, Dad?”

“How does the violet get its perfume, Sammy? Where does the rose get
its color? How does the bird learn to sing its song?”

For a moment she was puzzled. Then her face lighted; “I see!” she
exclaimed. “I’m just to catch it from folks like Aunt Mollie, and—and
someone else I know. I’m just to _be,_ not to make believe or let on
like I was, but to _be_ a real lady inside. And then I’m to learn how
to talk and look, like I know myself to be.” She drew a long breath as
she rose to go. “It’ll be mighty hard, Dad, in some ways; but it’ll
sure be worth it all when I get out ’mong the folks. I’m mighty
thankful to you, I sure am. And I hope you won’t never be sorry you
promised to help me.”

As the girl walked swiftly away through the thickening dusk of the
evening, the shepherd watched her out of sight; then turned toward the
corral for a last look at the sheep, to see that all was right for the
night. “Brave, old fellow,” he said to the dog who trotted by his side;
“are we going to make another mistake, do you think? We have made so
many, so many, you know.” Brave looked up into the master’s face, and
answered with his low bark, as though to declare his confidence. “Well,
well, old dog, I hope you are right. The child has a quick mind, and a
good heart; and, if I am not mistaken, good blood. We shall see. We
shall see.”

Suddenly the dog whirled about, the hair on his back bristling as he
gave a threatening growl. A man on a dun colored mule was coming up the
road.




CHAPTER XIV.
THE COMMON YELLER KIND.


Mr. Howitt stood quietly by the corral gate when the horseman rode up.
It was Wash Gibbs, on his way home from an all day visit with friends
on the river.

When the big mountaineer took the short cut through Mutton Hollow, he
thought to get well past the ranch before the light failed. No matter
how well fortified with the courage distilled by his friend, Jennings,
the big man would never have taken the trail by the old ruined cabin
alone after dark. He had evidently been riding at a good pace, for his
mule’s neck and flanks were wet with sweat. Gibbs, himself, seemed
greatly excited, and one hand rested on the pistol at his hip, as he
pulled up in front of the shepherd.

Without returning Mr. Howitt’s greeting, he pointed toward the two
empty chairs in front of the house, demanding roughly, “Who was that
with you before you heard me comin’?”

“Sammy Lane was here a few minutes ago,” replied the shepherd.

Gibbs uttered an oath, “She was, was she? Well, who was th’ man?”

“There was no man,” returned the other. “Young Matt and Pete were here
for supper, but they went as soon as the meal was finished, before
Sammy came.”

“Don’t you try to lie to me!” exclaimed the big man, with another burst
of language, and a threatening movement with the hand that rested on
the pistol.

Mr. Howitt was startled. Never in his life before had such words been
addressed to him. He managed to reply with quiet dignity, “I have no
reason for deceiving you, or anyone else, Mr. Gibbs. There has been no
man here but myself, since Matt and Pete left after supper.” The
shepherd’s manner carried conviction, and Gibbs hesitated, evidently
greatly perplexed. During the pause, Brave growled again, and faced
toward the cliff below the corral, his hair bristling.

“What’s th’ matter with that dog?” said Gibbs, turning uneasily in his
saddle, to face in the direction the animal was looking.

“What is it, Brave?” said Mr. Howitt. The only answer was an uneasy
whine, followed by another growl, all of which said plainly, in dog
talk, “I don’t know what it is, but there is something over there on
that cliff that I don’t like.”

“It must be some animal,” said the shepherd.

“Ain’t no animal that makes a dog act like that. Did any body pass
while you was a sittin’ there, jest before I come in sight?”

“Not a soul,” answered the other. “Did you meet someone down the road?”

The big man looked at the shepherd hard before he answered, in a
half-frightened, half-bullying tone, “I seed something in th’ road
yonder, an’ hit disappeared right by th’ old shack under th’ bluffs.”
He twisted around in his saddle again, facing the cliff with its dense
shadows and dim twilight forms, as he muttered, “If I was only right
sure, I—” Then swinging back he leaned toward the man on the ground;
“Look a here, Mister. There’s them that ’lows there’s things in this
here Holler t’ be afeared of, an’ I reckon hit’s so. There’s sure been
hell t’ pay at that there cabin down yonder. I ain’t a sayin’ what hit
was I seed, but if hit war anywhere else, I’d a said hit was a man; but
if hit was a man, I don’t know why you didn’t see him when he come
past; er else you’re a lyin’. I jest want t’ tell you, you’re right
smart of a stranger in these here parts, even if you have been a
workin’ fer Ol’ Matt all summer. You’re too blame careful ’bout talkin’
’bout yourself, or tellin’ whar you come from, t’ suit some folks. Some
strangers are alright, an’ again some ain’t. But we don’t aim t’ have
nobody in this here neighborhood what jumps into th’ brush when they
see an honest man a comin’.”

As he finished speaking, Gibbs straightened himself in the saddle, and
before Mr. Howitt could reply, the dun mule, at a touch of the spur,
had dashed away up the road in the direction taken by Sammy Lane.

It was quite dark in the heavy timber of the Hollow by the time Sammy
had reached the edge of the open ground on the hill side, but once on
the higher level, clear of the trees, the strong glow of the western
sky still lighted the way. From here it was not far to the girl’s home,
and, as she climbed a spur of Dewey, Sammy saw the cabin, and heard
distinctly the sweet strain’s of her father’s violin. On top of the
rise, the young woman paused a moment to enjoy the beauties of the
evening, which seemed to come to her with a new meaning that night. As
she stood there, her strong young figure was clearly outlined against
the sky to the man who was riding swiftly along the road over which she
had just passed.

Sammy turned when she heard the quick beating of the mule’s feet; then,
recognizing the huge form of the horseman, as he came out of the woods
into the light, she started quickly away towards her home; but the mule
and its rider were soon beside her.

“Howdy, Sammy.” Gibbs leaped from the saddle, and, with the bridle rein
over his arm, came close to the girl. “Fine evening for a walk.”

“Howdy,” returned the young woman, coolly, quickening her pace.

“You needn’t t’ be in such a powerful hurry,” growled Wash. “If you’ve
got time t’ talk t’ that old cuss at th’ ranch, you sure got time t’
talk t’ me.”

Sammy turned angrily. “You’d better get back on your mule, and go about
your business, Wash Gibbs. When I want you to walk with me, I’ll let
you know.”

“That’s alright, honey,” exclaimed the other insolently. “I’m a goin’
your way just th’ same; an’ we’ll mosey ’long t’gether. I was a goin’
home, but I’ve got business with your paw now.”

“Worse thing for Daddy, too,” flashed the girl. “I wish you’d stay away
from him.”

Wash laughed; “Your daddy couldn’t keep house ’thout me, nohow. Who was
that feller talkin’ with you an’ th’ old man down yonder?”

“There wasn’t nobody talkin’ to us,” replied Sammy shortly.

“That’s what he said, too,” growled Gibbs; “but I sure seed somebody a
sneakin’ into th’ brush when I rode up. I thought when I was down there
hit might o’ been a hant; but I know hit was a man, now. There’s
somethin’ mighty funny a goin’ on around here, since that feller come
int’ th’ neighborhood; an’ he’ll sure find somethin’ in Mutton Holler
more alive than Ol’ Matt’s gal if he ain’t careful.”

The girl caught her breath quickly. She knew the big ruffian’s methods,
and with good reason feared for her old friend, should he even
unconsciously incur the giant’s displeasure.

As they drew near the house, Wash continued, “Young Matt he was there
too. Let me tell you I ain’t forgot ’bout his big show at th’ mill last
spring; he’ll have t’ do a heap better’n he done then, when I get
’round t’ him.”

Sammy laughed scornfully, “’Pears like you ain’t been in no hurry t’
try it on. I ain’t heard tell of Young Matt’s leaving th’ country yet.
You’d better stay away from Jennings’ still though, when you do try
it.” Then, while the man was tying his mule to the fence, she ran into
the cabin to greet her father with a hysterical sob that greatly
astonished Jim. Before explanations could be made, a step was heard
approaching the door, and Sammy had just time to say, “Wash Gibbs,” in
answer to her father’s inquiring look, when the big man entered. Mr.
Lane arose to hang his violin on its peg.

“Don’t stop fer me, Jim,” said the newcomer. “Jest let her go. Me an’
Sammy’s been havin’ a nice little walk, an’ some right peart music
would sound mighty fine.” Gibbs was angered beyond reason at Sammy’s
last words, or he would have exercised greater care.

Sammy’s father made no reply until the girl had left the room, but
whatever it was that his keen eye read in his daughter’s face, it made
him turn to his guest with anything but a cordial manner, and there was
that in his voice that should have warned the other.

“So you and Sammy went for a walk, did you?”

“She was comin’ home from th’ sheep ranch, an’ I caught up with her,”
explained Gibbs. “I ’lowed as how she needed company, so I come ’long.
I seemed t’ be ’bout as welcome as usual,” he added with an ugly grin.

“Meanin’ that my girl don’t want your company, and told you so?” asked
the other softly.

Wash answered with a scowl; “Sammy’s gettin’ too dad burned good fer me
since Ollie’s uncle took him in. An’ now, this here old man from
nowhere has come, it’s worse than ever. She’ll put a rope ’round our
necks th’ first thing you know.”

Jim’s right hand slipped quietly inside his hickory shirt, where the
button was missing, as he drawled, “My girl always was too good for
some folks. And it’s about time you was a findin’ it out. She can’t
help it. She was born that way. She’s got mighty good blood in her
veins, that girl has; and I don’t aim to ever let it be mixed up with
none of the low down common yeller kind.”

The deliberate purpose of the speaker was too evident to be mistaken.
The other man’s hand flew to his hip almost before Mr. Lane had
finished his sentence. But Wash was not quick enough. Like a flash
Jim’s hand was withdrawn from inside the hickory shirt, and the giant
looked squarely into the muzzle of Jim Lane’s ever ready, murderous
weapon.

In the same even voice, without the slightest allusion to the
unfinished movement of the other, Mr. Lane continued, “I done told you
before that my girl would pick her own company, and I ain’t never
feared for a minute that she’d take up with such as you. Ollie Stewart
ain’t so mighty much of a man, maybe, but he’s clean, he is, and the
stock’s pretty good. Now you can just listen to me, or you can mosey
out of that door, and the next time we meet, we will settle it for
good, without any further arrangement.”

As Sammy’s father talked, the big figure of his visitor relaxed, and
when Jim had finished his slow speech, Wash was leaning forward with
his elbows on his knees, his hands clasped in front. “We ain’t got no
call t’ fight, now, Jim,” he said in a tone of respect. “We got
something else t’ think about; an’ that’s what I come here fer t’night.
I didn’t aim t’, ’til I seed what I did at th’ ranch down yonder. I
tell you hit’s time we was a doin’ somethin’.”

At this, Mr. Lane’s face and manner changed quickly. He put up his
weapon, and the two men drew their chairs close together, as though
Death had not a moment before stretched forth his hand to them.

For an hour they sat talking in low tones. Sammy in the next room had
heard the conversation up to this point, but now only an occasional
word reached her ears. Gibbs seemed to be urging some action, and her
father was as vigorously protesting. “I tell you, Jim, hit’s th’ only
safe way. You didn’t use t’ be so squeamish.” Several times the old
shepherd was mentioned, and also the stranger whom Wash had seen that
evening. And once, the trembling girl heard Young Matt’s name. At
length the guest rose to go, and Mr. Lane walked with him to the gate.
Even after the big man was mounted, the conversation still continued;
Wash still urging and Jim still protesting.

When his visitor was gone, Mr. Lane came slowly back to the house.
Extinguishing the light, he seated himself in the open doorway, and
filled his pipe. Sammy caught the odor of tobacco, and a moment later
Jim heard a light, quick step on the floor behind him. Then two arms
went around his neck; “What is it, Daddy? What is it? Why don’t you
drive that man away?”

“Did you hear us talkin’?” asked the man, an anxious note in his voice.

“I heard you talkin’ to him about pesterin’ me, but after that, you
didn’t talk so loud. What is the matter, Daddy, that he could stay and
be so thick with you after the things you said? I was sure he’d make
you kill him.”

Jim laughed softly; “You’re just like your mother, girl. Just like her,
with the old blood a backin’ you up.” Then he asked a number of
questions about Mr. Howitt, and her visit to the ranch that evening.

As Sammy told him of her ambition to fit herself for the place that
would be hers, when she married, and repeating the things that Mr.
Howitt had told her, explained how the shepherd had promised to help,
Jim expressed his satisfaction and delight. “I knowed you was a
studyin’ about something, girl,” he said, “but I didn’t say nothin’,
’cause I ’lowed you’d tell me when you got ready.”

“I didn’t want to say nothing ’til I was sure, you see,” replied the
daughter. “I aimed to tell you as soon as I got home to-night, but Wash
Gibbs didn’t give me no chance.”

The man held her close “Dad Howitt sure puts the thing just right,
Sammy. It’ll be old times come back, when you’re a lady in your own
house with all your fine friends around; and you’ll do it, girl; you
sure will. Don’t never be afraid to bank on the old blood. It’ll see
you through.” Then his voice broke; “You won’t never be learned away
from your old Daddy, will you, honey? Will you always stand by Daddy,
like you do now? Will you let me and Young Matt slip ’round once in a
while, just to look at, you, all so fine?”

“Daddy Jim, if you don’t—hush—I’ll—I’ll—” she hid her face on his
shoulder.

“There, there, honey; I was only funnin’. You’ll always be my Sammy;
the only boy I ever had. You just naturally couldn’t be nothin’ else.”

Long after his daughter had gone to her room and to her bed, the
mountaineer sat in the doorway, looking into the dark. He heard the
short bark of a fox in the brush back of the stable; and the wild cry
of a catamount from a cliff farther down the mountain was answered by
another from the timber below the spring. He saw the great hills
heaving their dark forms into the sky, and in his soul he felt the
spirit of the wilderness and the mystery of the hour. At last he went
into the house to close and bar the door.

Away down in Mutton Hollow a dog barked, and high up on Old Dewey near
Sammy’s Lookout, a spot of light showed for a moment, then vanished.




CHAPTER XV.
THE PARTY AT FORD’S.


Young Matt would have found some excuse for staying at home the night
of the party at Ford’s, but the shepherd said he must go.

The boy felt that the long evening with Sammy would only hurt. He
reasoned with himself that it would be better for him to see as little
as possible of the girl who was to marry Ollie Stewart. Nevertheless,
he was singing as he saddled the big white faced sorrel to ride once
more over the trail that is nobody knows how old.

Mr. Lane was leading the brown pony from the stable as Young Matt rode
up to the gate; and from the doorway of the cabin Sammy called to say
that she would be ready in a minute.

“Ain’t seen you for a coon’s age, boy,” said Jim, while they were
waiting for the girl. “Why don’t you never come down the Old Trail no
more?”

The big fellow’s face reddened, as he answered, “I ain’t been nowhere,
Jim. ’Pears like I just can’t get away from the place no more; we’re
that busy.”

Sammy’s father looked his young neighbor squarely in the eye with that
peculiar searching gaze; “Look a here, Grant. I’ve knowed you ever
since you was born, and you ought to know me a little. ’Tain’t your way
to dodge, and ’tain’t mine. I reckon you know you’re welcome, same as
always, don’t you?”

Young Matt returned the other’s look fairly; “I ain’t never doubted it,
Jim. But things is a heap different now, since it’s all done and
settled, with Ollie gone.”

The two understood each other perfectly. Said Jim, drawing a long
breath, “Well I wish you’d come over just the same, anyway. It can’t do
nobody no harm as I can see.”

“It wouldn’t do me no good,” replied the young man.

“Maybe not,” assented Jim. “But I’d like mighty well to have you come
just the same.” Then he drew closer to his young friend; “I’ve been
aimin’ to ride over and see you, Matt; but Sammy said you was a comin’
this evenin’, and I ’lowed this would be soon enough. I reckon you know
what Wash Gibbs is tellin’ he aims to do first chance he gets.”

The giant drew himself up with a grim smile, “I’ve heard a good bit,
Jim. But you don’t need to mind about me; I know I ain’t quite growed,
but I am a growin’.”

The older man surveyed the great form of the other with a critical eye,
as he returned, “Durned if I don’t believe you’d push him mighty close,
if he’d only play fair. But—but I ’lowed you ought to know it was a
comin’.”

“I have knowed it for a long time,” said the other cheerfully; “but I
heard ‘Preachin’ Bill’ say once, that if a feller don’t fuss about what
he knows for sure, the things he don’t know ain’t apt to bother him
none. It’s this here guessin’ that sure gets a man down.”

“‘Preachin’ Bill’ hits it every pop, don’t he?” exclaimed Jim,
admiringly. “But there’s somethin’ else you ought to know, too, Matt.
Wash has done made his threats agin the old man down there.”

“You mean Dad Howitt?” said Young Matt, sharply. “What’s Wash got agin
Dad, Jim?”

Mr. Lane shifted uneasily, “Some fool notion of hisn. You mind old man
Lewis, I reckon?”

The big man’s muscles tightened. “Dad told us about his stoppin’ at the
ranch the other night. Wash Gibbs better keep his hands off Mr.
Howitt.”

“I ain’t told nobody about this, Grant, and you can do as you like
about tellin’ your father, and the old man. But if anything happens,
get word to me, quick.”

Before more could be said, Sammy appeared in the doorway, and soon the
two young people were riding on their way. Long after they had passed
from sight in the depth of the forest, the dark mountaineer stood at
the big gate, looking in the direction they had gone.

Young Matt was like a captive, tugging at his bonds. Mr. Lane’s words
had stirred the fire, and the girl’s presence by his side added fuel to
the flame. He could not speak. He dared not even look at her, but rode
with his eyes fixed upon the ground, where the sunlight fell in long
bars of gold. Sammy, too, was silent. She felt something that was
strangely like fear, when she found herself alone with her big
neighbor. Now and then she glanced timidly up at him and tried to find
some word with which to break the silence. She half wished that she had
not come. So they rode together through the lights and shadows down
into the valley, the only creatures in all the free life of the forest
who were not free.

At last the girl spoke, “It’s mighty good of you to take me over to
Mandy’s to-night. There ain’t no one else I could o’ gone with.” There
was no reply, and Sammy, seeming not to notice, continued talking in a
matter-of-fact tone that soon—for such is the way of a woman—won him
from his mood, and the two chatted away like the good comrades they had
always been.

Just after they had crossed Fall Creek at Slick Rock Ford, some two
miles below the mill, Young Matt leaned from his saddle, and for a
little way studied the ground carefully. When he sat erect again, he
remarked, with the air of one who had reached a conclusion, “Wouldn’t
wonder but there’ll be doin’s at Ford’s to-night, sure enough.”

“There’s sure to be,” returned the girl; “everybody’ll be there.
Mandy’s folks from over on Long Creek are comin’, and some from the
mouth of the James. Mandy wanted Daddy to play for ’em, but he says he
can’t play for parties no more, and they got that old fiddlin’ Jake
from the Flag neighborhood, I guess.”

“There’ll be somethin’ a heap more excitin’ than fiddlin’ and dancin’,
accordin’ to my guess,” returned Young Matt.

“What do you mean?” asked Sammy.

Her escort pointed to the print of a mule’s shoe in the soft soil of
the low bottom land. “That there’s Wash Gibbs’s dun mule, and he’s
headed down the creek for Jennings’s still. Wash’ll meet a lot of his
gang from over on the river, and like’s not they’ll go from there to
the party. I wish your dad was goin’ to do the playin’ to-night.”

It was full dark before they reached the Ford clearing. The faint, far
away sound of a violin, seeming strange and out of place in the gloomy
solitude of the great woods, first told them that other guests had
already arrived. Then as they drew nearer and the tones of the
instrument grew louder, they could hear the rhythmic swing and beat of
heavily shod feet upon the rough board floors, with the shrill cries of
the caller, and the half savage, half pathetic sing-song of the
backwoods dancers, singing, “Missouri Gal.”

Reaching the edge of the clearing, they involuntarily checked their
horses, stopping just within the shadow of the timber. Here the sound
of the squeaking fiddle, the shouting caller, the stamping feet, and
the swinging dancers came with full force; and, through the open door
and windows of the log house, they could see the wheeling, swaying
figures of coatless men and calico gowned women, while the light,
streaming out, opened long lanes in the dusk. About them in the
forest’s edge, standing in groups under the trees, were the shadowy
forms of saddle horses and mules, tied by their bridle reins to the
lower branches; and nearer to the cabin, two or three teams, tied to
the rail-fence, stood hitched to big wagons in which were splint-bottom
chairs for extra seats.

During the evening, the men tried in their rough, good natured way, to
joke Young Matt about taking advantage of Ollie Stewart’s absence, but
they very soon learned that, while the big fellow was ready to enter
heartily into all the fun of the occasion, he would not receive as a
jest any allusion to his relation to the girl, whom he had escorted to
the party. Sammy, too, when her big companion was not near, suffered
from the crude wit of her friends.

“Ollie Stewart don’t own me yet,” she declared with a toss of the head,
when someone threatened to write her absent lover.

“No,” replied one of her tormentors, “but you ain’t aimin’ to miss your
chance o’ goin’ t’ th’ city t’ live with them big-bugs.”

In the laugh that followed, Sammy was claimed by a tall woodsman for
the next dance, and escaped to take her place on the floor.

“Well, Ollie’ll sure make a good man for her,” remarked another joker;
“if he don’t walk th’ chalk, she can take him ’cross her knee an’
wallop him.”

“She’ll surely marry him, alright,” said the first, “’cause he’s got
th’ money, but she’s goin’ t’ have a heap o’ fun makin’ Young Matt play
th’ fool before she leaves th’ woods. He ain’t took his eyes off her
t’night. Everybody’s laughin’ at him.”

“I notice they take mighty good care t’ laugh behind his back,” flashed
little black-eyed Annie Brooke from the Cove neighborhood.

Young Matt, who had been dancing with Mandy Ford, came up behind the
group just in time to hear their remarks. Two or three who saw him
within hearing tried to warn the speakers, but while everybody around
them saw the situation, the two men caught the frantic signals of their
friends too late. The music suddenly stopped. The dancers were still.
By instinct every eye in the room was fixed upon the little group, as
the jokers turned to face the object of their jests.

The big mountaineer took one long step toward the two who had spoken,
his brow dark with rage, his huge fists clenched. But, even as his
powerful muscles contracted for the expected blow, the giant came to a
dead stop. Slowly his arm relaxed. His hand dropped to his side. Then,
turning deliberately, he walked to the door, the silent crowd parting
to give him way.

As the big man stepped from the room, a gasp of astonishment escaped
from the company, and the two jokers, with frightened faces, broke into
a shrill, nervous laughter. Then a buzz of talk went round; the
fiddlers struck up again; the callers shouted; the dancers stamped, and
bowed, and swung their partners as they sang.

And out in the night under the trees, at the edge of the gloomy forest,
the strongest man in the hills was saying over and over to the big,
white faced sorrel, “I don’t dare do it. I don’t dare. Dad Howitt
wouldn’t. He sure wouldn’t.”

Very soon two figures left the house, and hurried toward a bunch of
saddle horses near by. They had untied their animals, and were about to
mount, when suddenly a huge form stepped from the shadows to their
horses’ heads. “Put up your guns, boys,” said Young Matt calmly. “I
reckon you know that if I’d wanted trouble, it would o’ been all over
before this.”

The weapons were not drawn, and the big man continued, “Dad Howitt says
a feller always whips himself every time he fights when there ain’t
no—no principle evolved. I don’t guess Dad would see ary principle in
this, ’cause there might be some truth in what you boys said. I reckon
I am somethin’ at playin’ a fool, but it would o’ been a heap safer for
you to let folks find it out for themselves.”

“We all were jest a foolin’, Matt,” muttered one.

“That’s alright,” returned the big fellow; “But you’d better tie up
again and go back into the house and dance a while longer. Folks might
think you was scared if you was to leave so soon.”




CHAPTER XVI.
ON THE WAY HOME.


Not until the party was breaking up, and he saw Sammy in the doorway,
did Young Matt go back to the house.

When they had ridden again out of the circle of light, and the laughter
and shouting of the guests was no longer heard, Sammy tried in vain to
arouse her silent escort, chatting gaily about the pleasures of the
evening. But all the young man’s reserve had returned. When she did
force him to speak, his responses were so short and cold that at last
the girl, too, was silent. Then, man-like, he wished she would continue
talking.

By the time they reached Compton Ridge the moon was well up. For the
last two miles Sammy had been watching the wavering shafts of light
that slipped through tremulous leaves and swaying branches. As they
rode, a thousand fantastic shapes appeared and vanished along the way,
and now and then as the sound of their horses’ feet echoed through the
silent forest, some wild thing in the underbrush leaped away into the
gloomy depth.

Coming out on top of the narrow ridge, the brown pony crowded closer to
the big, white faced sorrel, and the girl, stirred by the weird
loveliness of the scene, broke the silence with an exclamation, “O
Matt! Ain’t it fine? Look there!” She pointed to the view ahead. “Makes
me feel like I could keep on a goin’, and goin’, and never stop.”

The man, too, felt the witchery of the night. The horses were crowding
more closely together now, and, leaning forward, the girl looked up
into his face; “What’s the matter, Matt? Why don’t you talk to me? You
know it ain’t true what them folks said back there.”

The sorrel was jerked farther away. “It’s true enough, so far as it
touches me,” returned the man shortly. “When are you goin’ to the
city?”

“I don’t know,” she replied. “Let’s don’t talk about that to-night. I
don’t want even to think about it, not to-night. You—you don’t believe
what they was a sayin’, Matt; you know you don’t. You mustn’t ever
believe such as that. I—I never could get along without you and Aunt
Mollie and Uncle Matt, nohow.” The brown pony was again crowding closer
to his mate. The girl laid a hand on her companion’s arm. “Say you
don’t blame me for what they said, Matt. You know I wouldn’t do no such
a thing even if I could. There mustn’t anything ever come between you
and me; never—never. I—I want us always to be like we are now. You’ve
been so good to me ever since I was a little trick, and you whipped big
Lem Wheeler for teasin’ me. I—I don’t guess I could get along without
knowin’ you was around somewhere.” She finished with a half sob.

It was almost too much. The man swung around in his saddle, and the
horses, apparently of their own accord, stopped. Without a word, the
big fellow stretched forth his arms, and the girl, as if swept by a
force beyond her control, felt herself swaying toward him.

The spell was broken by the trampling of horses and the sound of loud
voices. For a moment they held their places, motionless, as if rudely
awakened from a dream. The sound was coming nearer. Then Young Matt
spoke, “It’s Wash Gibbs and his crowd from the still. Ride into the
brush quick.”

There was no time for flight. In the bright moonlight, they would have
been easily recognized, and a wild chase would have followed. Leaving
the road, they forced their horses into a thick clump of bushes, where
they dismounted, to hold the animals by their heads. Scarcely had they
gained this position when the first of the crowd reached the spot where
they had been a moment before. Wash Gibbs was easily distinguished by
his gigantic form, and with him were ten others, riding two and two,
several of whom were known to Young Matt as the most lawless characters
in the country. All were fired by drink and were laughing and talking,
with now and then a burst of song, or a vulgar jest.

“I say, Wash,” called one, “What’ll you do if Young Matt’s there?” The
unseen listeners could not hear the leader’s reply; but those about the
speaker laughed and shouted with great glee. Then the two in the bushes
distinctly heard the last man in the line ask his companion, “Do you
reckon he’ll put up a fight?” and as they passed from sight, the other
answered, “Wash don’t aim t’ give him no show.”

When the sounds had died away; Young Matt turned to the girl; “Come on;
we’ve got to keep ’em in sight.”

But Sammy held back. “Oh, Matt, don’t go yet. We must not. Didn’t you
hear what that man said? It’s you they’re after. Let’s wait here until
they’re clean gone.”

“No, ’tain’t; they ain’t a wantin’ me,” the big fellow replied. And
before the young woman could protest further, he lifted her to the
saddle as easily as if she were a child. Then, springing to the back of
his own horse, he led the way at a pace that would keep them within
hearing of the company of men.

“Who is it, Matt? Who is it, if it ain’t you?” asked the girl.

“Don’t know for sure yet, but I’ll tell you pretty soon.”

They had not gone far when Young Matt stopped the horse to listen
intently; and soon by the sound he could tell that the party ahead had
turned off the ridge road and were following the trail that leads down
the eastern side of the mountain. A moment longer the mountaineer
listened, as if to make sure; then he spoke; “Them devils are goin’ to
the ranch after Dad Howitt. Sammy, you’ve got to ride hard to-night.
They won’t hear you now, and they’re getting farther off every minute.
There ain’t no other way, and, I know you’ll do it for the old man. Get
home as quick as you can and tell Jim what’s up. Tell him I’ll hold ’em
until he gets there.” Even as he spoke, he sprang from his horse and
began loosening the saddle girths.

“But, Matt,” protested the girl; “how can you? You can’t get by them.
How’re you goin’ to get there in time?”

“Down the mountain; short cut;” he answered as he jerked the heavy
saddle from his horse and threw it under some nearby bushes.

“But they’ll kill you. You can’t never face that whole crowd alone.”

“I can do it better’n Dad, and him not a lookin’ for them.”

Slipping the bridle from the sorrel, he turned the animal loose, and,
removing his coat and hat, laid them with the saddle. Then to the girl
on the pony he said sharply, “Go on, Sammy. Why don’t you go on? Don’t
you see how you’re losin’ time? Them devils will do for Dad Howitt like
they done for old man Lewis. Your father’s the only man can stop ’em
now. Ride hard, girl, and tell Jim to hurry. And—and, good-by, Sammy.”
As he finished, he spoke to her horse and struck him such a blow that
the animal sprang away.

For a moment Sammy attempted to pull up her startled pony. Then Young
Matt saw her lean forward in the saddle, and urge the little horse to
even greater speed. As they disappeared down the road, the giant turned
and ran crashing through the brush down the steep side of the mountain.
There was no path to follow. And with deep ravines to cross, rocky
bluffs to descend or scale, and, in places, wild tangles of vines and
brush and fallen trees, the trip before him would have been a hard one
even in the full light of day. At night, it was almost impossible, and
he must go like a buck with the dogs in full cry.

When Sammy came in sight of her home, she began calling to her father,
and, as the almost exhausted horse dashed up to the big gate, the door
of the cabin opened, and Jim came running out. Lifting his daughter
from the trembling pony, he helped her into the house, where she sobbed
out her message.

At the first word, “Wash Gibbs,” Jim reached for a cartridge belt, and,
by the time Sammy had finished, he had taken his Winchester from its
brackets over the fireplace. Slipping a bridle on his horse that was
feeding in the yard, he sprang upon the animal’s back without waiting
for a saddle. “Stay in the cabin, girl, put out the light, and don’t
open the door until I come,” he said and he was gone.

As Sammy turned back into the house, from away down in Mutton Hollow,
on the night wind, came the sound of guns.




CHAPTER XVII.
WHAT HAPPENED AT THE RANCH.


It was after midnight when Mr. Howitt was rudely awakened. The bright
moon shining through the windows lit up the interior of the cabin and
he easily recognized Young Matt standing by the bed, with Pete, who was
sleeping at the ranch that night, near by.

“Why, Matt, what is the matter?” exclaimed the shepherd, sitting up. He
could not see that the big fellow’s clothing was torn, that his hat was
gone, and that he was dripping with perspiration; but he could hear his
labored breathing. Strong as he was, the young giant was nearly
exhausted by the strain of his race over the mountains.

“Get up quick, Dad; I’ll tell you while you’re puttin’ on your
clothes,” the woodsman answered; and while the shepherd dressed, he
told him in a few words, finishing with, “Call Brave inside, and get
your gun, with all the shells you can find. Don’t show a light for a
minute. They’ll be here any time now, and it’ll be a good bit yet
before Sammy can get home.” He began fastening the front door.

The peaceful minded scholar could not grasp the meaning of the message;
it was to him an impossible thought; “You must be mistaken, Grant,” he
said. “Surely you are excited and unduly alarmed. Wash Gibbs has no
reason to attack me.”

Young Matt replied gruffly, “I ain’t makin’ no mistake in the woods,
Dad. You ain’t in the city now, and there ain’t no one can hear you
holler. Don’t think I am scared neither, if that’s what you mean. But
there’s ten of them in that bunch, and they’re bad ones. You’d better
call Brave, sir. He’ll be some help when it comes to the rush.”

But the other persisted, “You must be mistaken, lad. Why should any one
wish to harm me? Those men are only out fox hunting, or something like
that. If they should be coming here, it is all a mistake; I can easily
explain.”

“Explain, hell!” ejaculated the mountaineer. “I ask your pardon, Dad;
but you don’t know, not being raised in these woods like me. Old man
Lewis hadn’t done nothing neither, and he explained, too; only he never
got through explainin’. They ain’t got no reason. They’re drunk. You’ve
never seen Wash Gibbs drunk, and to-night he’s got his whole gang with
him. I don’t know why he’s comin’ after you, but, from what you told me
’bout his stoppin’ here that evenin’, and what I’ve heard lately, I can
guess. I know what he’ll do when he gets here, if we don’t stop him.
It’ll be all the same to you whether he’s right or wrong.”

Brave came trotting into the cabin through the rear door, and lay down
in his corner by the fireplace. “That’s mighty funny,” said Young Matt.
Then, as he glanced quickly around, “Where’s Pete?”

The boy had slipped away while the two men were talking. Stepping
outside they called several times; but, save the “Wh-w-h-o—w-h-o-o-o”
of an owl in a big tree near the corral, there was no answer.

“The boy’s alright, anyway,” said the young man; “nothin’ in the woods
ever hurts Pete. He’s safer there than he would be here, and I’m glad
he’s gone.”

The shepherd did not reply. He seemed not to hear, but stood as though
fascinated by the scene. He still could not grasp the truth of the
situation, but the beauty of the hour moved him deeply. “What a
marvelous, what a wonderful sight!” he said at last in a low tone. “I
do not wonder the boy loves to roam the hills a night like this. Look,
Grant! See how soft the moonlight falls on that patch of grass this
side of the old tree yonder, and how black the shadow is under that
bush, like the mouth of a cave, a witch’s cave. I am sure there are
ghosts and goblins in there, with fairies and gnomes, and perhaps a
dragon or two. And see, lad, how the great hills rise into the sky. How
grand, how beautiful the world is! It is good to live, Matt, though
life be sometimes hard, still—still it is good to live.”

At the old scholar’s words and manner, the mountaineer, too, forgot for
a moment the thing that had brought him there, and a look of awe and
wonder came over his rugged features, as the shepherd, with his face
turned upward and his deep voice full of emotion, repeated, “The
heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament showeth his
handiwork. Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night showeth
knowledge.”

The owl left his place in the old tree and flew across the moonlit
clearing into the deeper gloom of the woods. Inside the cabin the dog
barked, and through the still night, from down the valley, where the
ranch trail crosses the creek, came the rattle of horses’ feet on the
rocky floor of the little stream, and the faint sound of voices. Young
Matt started, and again the man of the wilderness was master of the
situation. “They’re comin’, Dad. We ain’t got no time to lose.”

Re-entering the cabin, Mr. Howitt quieted the dog, while his companion
fastened the rear door, and, in the silence, while they waited, a
cricket under the corner of the house sang his plaintive song. The
sound of voices grew louder as the horses drew nearer. Brave growled
and would have barked again, but was quieted by the shepherd, who
crouched at his side, with one hand on the dog’s neck.

The older man smiled to himself. It all seemed to him so like a child’s
game. He had watched the mountaineer’s preparation with amused
interest, and had followed the young woodsman’s directions, even to the
loaded shotgun in his hand, as one would humor a boy in his play. The
scholar’s mind, trained to consider the problems of civilization, and
to recognize the dangers of the city, refused to entertain seriously
the thought that there, in the peaceful woods, in the dead of night, a
company of ruffians was seeking to do him harm.

The voices had ceased, and the listeners heard only the sound of the
horses’ feet, as the party passed the ruined cabin under the bluff. A
moment or two later the riders stopped in front of the ranch house.
Brave growled again, but was silenced by the hand on his neck.

Young Matt was at the window. “I see them,” he whispered. “They’re
gettin’ off their horses, and tyin’ them to the corral fence.” The
smile on the shepherd’s face vanished, and he experienced a queer
sensation; it was as though something gripped his heart.

The other continued his whispered report; “They’re bunchin’ up now
under the old tree, talkin’ things over. Don’t know what to make of the
dog not bein’ around, I reckon. Now they’re takin’ a drink. It takes a
lot of whiskey to help ten men jump onto one old man, and him a
stranger in the Woods. Now Wash is sendin’ two of them around to the
back, so you can’t slip out into the brush. Sh—h—h, here comes a couple
more to try the front door.” He slipped quietly across the room to the
shepherd’s side. The visitors came softly up to the front door, and
tried it gently. A moment later the rear door was tried in the same
way.

“Let Brave speak to them,” whispered Young Matt; and the dog, feeling
the restraining hand removed, barked fiercely.

Mr. Howitt, following his companion’s whispered instructions, spoke
aloud, “What’s the matter, Brave?”

A bold knock at the front door caused the dog to redouble his efforts,
until his master commanded him to be still. “Who is there?” called the
shepherd.

“Young Matt’s took powerful bad,” answered a voice; “an’ they want you
t’ come up t’ th’ house, an’ doctor him.” A drunken laugh came from the
old tree, followed by a smothered oath.

The giant at Mr. Howitt’s side growled under his breath, “Oh, I’m sick,
am I? There’s them that’ll be a heap sicker before mornin’. Keep on a
talkin’, Dad. We’ve got to make all the time we can, so’s Jim can get
here.”

The shepherd called again, “I do not recognize your voice. You must
tell me who you are.”

Outside there was a short consultation, followed by a still louder
knock; “Open up. Why don’t you open up an’ see who we are?” while from
under the tree came a call, “Quit your foolin’ an’ bring him out o’
there, you fellers.” This command was followed by a still more vigorous
hammering at the door, and the threats, “Open up ol’ man. Open up, or
we’ll sure bust her in.”

Mr. Howitt whispered to his companion, “Let me open the door and talk
to them, Grant. Surely they will listen to reason.”

But the woodsman returned, “Talk to a nest of rattlers! Jim Lane’s the
only man that can talk to them now. We’ve got to stand them off as long
as we can.” As he spoke he raised his revolver, and was about to fire a
shot through the door, when a slight noise at one side of the room
attracted his attention. He turned just in time to catch a glimpse of a
face as it was withdrawn from one of the little windows. The noise at
the door ceased suddenly, and they heard the two men running to join
the group under the tree.

“They’ve found you ain’t alone,” whispered the big fellow, springing to
the window again. And, as a wild drunken yell came from the visitors,
he added, “Seems like they’re some excited about it, too. They’re
holdin’ a regular pow-wow. What do you reckon they’re thinkin’? Hope
they’ll keep it up ’till Jim—Sh—h—h Here comes another. It’s that
ornery Jim Bowles from the mouth of Indian Creek.”

The man approached the cabin, but stopped some distance away and
called, “Hello, ol’ man!”

“Well, what do you want?” answered Mr. Howitt.

“Who’s that there feller you got with you?”

“A friend.”

“Yes! We all ’lowed hit war a friend, an’ we all want t’ see him
powerful bad. Can’t he come out an’ play with us, Mister?” Another
laugh came from the group under the tree.

Young Matt whispered, “Keep him a talkin’, Dad;” and Mr. Howitt called,
“He doesn’t feel like playing to-night. Come back to-morrow.”

At this the spokesman dropped his bantering tone, “Look a here, ol’
man. We’uns ain’t got no time t’ be a foolin’ here. We know who that
feller is, an’ we’re a goin’ t’ have him. He’s been a sneakin’ ’round
this here neighborhood long enough. As fer you, Mister, we ’low your
health’ll be some better back where you come from; an’ we aim t’ hep
you leave this neck o’ th’ woods right sudden. Open up, now, an’ turn
that there feller over t’ us; an’ we’ll let you off easy like. If you
don’t, we’ll bust in th’ door, an’ make you both dance t’ th’ same
tune. There won’t be ary thing under you t’ dance on, nuther.”

The old shepherd was replying kindly, when his speech was interrupted
by a pistol shot, and a command from the leader, at which the entire
gang charged toward the cabin, firing as they came, and making the
little valley hideous with their drunken oaths and yells.

From his window, Young Matt coolly emptied his revolver, but even as
the crowd faltered, there came from their leader another volley of
oaths. “Go on, go on,” yelled Wash. “Their guns are empty, now. Fetch
’em out ’fore they can load again.” With an answering yell, the others
responded. Carrying a small log they made for the cabin at full speed.
One crashing blow—the door flew from its hinges, and the opening was
filled with the drunken, sweating, swearing crew. The same instant,
Young Matt dropped his useless revolver, and, springing forward, met
them on the threshold. The old shepherd—who had not fired a shot—could
scarcely believe his eyes, as he saw the giant catch the nearest man by
the shoulder and waist, and, lifting him high above his head, fling him
with terrific force full into the faces of his bewildered companions.

Those who were not knocked down by the strange weapon scattered in
every direction, crouching low. For a moment the big fellow was master
of the situation, and, standing alone in the doorway, in the full light
of the moon, was easily recognized.

“Hell, boys! Hit’s Young Matt hisself!” yelled the one who had raised a
laugh, by saying that Young Matt was sick and the shepherd was wanted
to doctor.

“Yes! It’s me, Bill Simpson. I’m sure ailin’ to-night. I need somebody
to go for a doctor powerful bad,” returned the young giant.

“We never knowed it war you,” whined the other carefully lengthening
the distance between the big man on the doorstep and himself.

“No, I reckon not. You all played to find an old man alone, and do for
him like you’ve done for others. A fine lot you are, ten to one, and
him not knowin’ the woods.”

While he was speaking, the men slowly retreated, to gather about their
big leader under the tree, two of them being assisted by their
companions, and one other limping painfully. Young Matt raised his
voice, “I know you, Wash Gibbs, and I know this here is your dirty
work. You’ve been a braggin’ what you’d do when you met up with me. I’m
here now. Why don’t you come up like a man? Come out here into the
light and let’s you and me settle this thing right now. You all—”
_Crack!_ A jet of flame leaped out of the shadow, and the speaker
dropped like a log.

With a cry the shepherd ran to the side of his friend; but in a moment
the crowd had again reached the cabin, and the old man was dragged from
his fallen companion. With all his strength, Mr. Howitt struggled with
his captors, begging them to let him go to the boy. But his hands were
bound tightly behind his back, and when he still plead with those who
held him, Wash Gibbs struck him full in the mouth, a blow that brought
the blood.

They were leading the stunned and helpless old man away, when someone,
who was bending over Young Matt, exclaimed, “You missed him, Wash! Jest
raked him. He’ll be up in a minute. An’ hell ’ll be to pay in th’
wilderness if he ain’t tied. Better fix him quick.”

The big fellow already showed signs of returning consciousness, and, by
the time they had tied his arms, he was able to struggle to his feet.
For a moment he looked dizzily around, his eyes turning from one evil,
triumphant face to another, until they rested upon the bleeding
countenance of his old friend. The shepherd’s eyes smiled back a
message of cheer, and the kind old man tried to speak, when Wash Gibbs
made another threatening motion, with his clenched fist.

At this, a cry like the roar of a mad bull came from the young giant.
In his rage, he seemed suddenly endowed with almost superhuman
strength. Before a man of the startled company could do more than gasp
with astonishment, he had shaken himself free from those who held him,
and, breaking the rope with which he was bound, as though it were
twine, had leaped to the shepherd’s side.

But it was useless. For a moment, no one moved. Then a crashing blow,
from the butt of a rifle in the hands of a man in the rear of the two
prisoners, sent Young Matt once more to the ground. When he again
regained consciousness, he was so securely bound, that, even with his
great strength, he was helpless.

Leading their captives to the old tree, the men withdrew for a short
consultation, and to refresh themselves with another drink. When they
had finished, Gibbs addressed the two friends; “We’uns didn’t aim to
hurt you, Young Matt, but seein’ how you’re so thick with this here
feller, an’ ’pear to know so much ’bout him, I reckon we can’t hep
ourselves nohow.” He turned to the shepherd; “There’s been too dad
burned much funny work, at this ranch, since you come, Mister, an’
we’uns ’low we’ll just give warnin’ that we don’t want no more
strangers snoopin’ ’round this neighborhood, an’ we don’t aim t’ have
’em neither. We’uns ’low we can take care o’ ourselves, without ary hep
from th’ dad burned government.”

The shepherd tried to speak, but Gibbs, with an oath, roared, “Shut up,
I tell you. Shut up. I’ve been a watchin’, an’ I know what I know. Fix
that there rope, boys, an we’ll get through, an’ mosey ’long out o’
here. Ain’t no use to palaver, nohow.”

A rope was thrown over a limb above their heads, and a man approached
the shepherd with the noose. Young Matt struggled desperately. With an
evil grin, Gibbs said, “Don’t you worry, sonny; you’re a goin’, too.”
And at his signal another rope was fixed, and the noose placed over the
young man’s head. The men took their places, awaiting the word from
their leader.

The shepherd spoke softly to his companion, “Thank you, my boy.” The
giant began another desperate struggle.

Wash Gibbs, raising his hand, opened his lips to give the signal. But
no word came. The brutal jaw dropped. The ruffian’s eyes fairly started
from his head, while the men who held the ropes, stood as if turned to
stone, as a long wailing cry came from the dark shadows under the
bluff. There was a moment of death-like silence. Then another awful,
sobbing groan, rising into a blood curdling scream, came from down the
road, and, from the direction of the ruined cabin, advanced a ghostly
figure. Through the deep shadows and the misty light, it seemed to
float toward them, moaning and sobbing as it came.

A shuddering gasp of horror burst from the frightened crew under the
tree. Then, at a louder wail from the approaching apparition, they
broke and ran. Like wild men they leaped for their horses, and,
flinging themselves into their saddles, fled in every direction.

Young Matt and the shepherd sank upon the ground in helpless amazement.

As the outlaws fled, the spectre paused. Then it started onward toward
the two men. Again it hesitated. For a moment it remained motionless,
then turned and vanished, just as Jim Lane came flying out of the
timber, into the bright light of the little clearing.




CHAPTER XVIII.
LEARNING TO BE A LADY.


The books sent for by Mr. Howitt came a few days after the adventure at
the ranch, and Sammy, with all the intensity of her nature, plunged at
once into the work mapped out for her by the shepherd.

All through the long summer and autumn, the girl spent hours with her
teacher out on the hillside. Seated on some rocky bench, or reclining
on the grassy slope, she would recite the lessons he gave her, or
listen to him, as he read aloud from character forming books, pausing
now and then to slip in some comment to make the teaching clear, or to
answer her eager questions.

At other times, while they followed the sheep, leisurely, from one
feeding ground to another, he provoked her to talk of the things they
were reading, and, while he thus led her to think, he as carefully
guarded her speech and language.

At first they took the old familiar path of early intellectual
training, but, little by little, he taught her to find the way for
herself. Always as she advanced, he encouraged her to look for the life
that is more than meat, and always, while they read and talked
together, there was opened before them the great book wherein God has
written, in the language of mountain, and tree, and sky, and flower,
and brook, the things that make truly wise those who pause to read.

From her mother, and from her own free life in the hills, Sammy had a
body beautiful with the grace and strength of perfect physical
womanhood. With this, she had inherited from many generations of
gentle-folk a mind and spirit susceptible of the highest culture.
Unspoiled by the hot-house, forcing process, that so often leaves the
intellectual powers jaded and weak, before they have fully developed,
and free from the atmosphere of falsehood and surface culture, in which
so many souls struggle for their very existence, the girl took what her
teacher had to offer and made it her own. With a mental appetite
uninjured by tit-bits and dainties, she digested the strong food, and
asked eagerly for more.

Her progress was marvelous, and the old scholar often had cause to
wonder at the quickness with which his pupil’s clear mind grasped the
truths he showed her. Often before he could finish speaking, a bright
nod, or word, showed that she had caught the purpose of his speech,
while that wide eager look, and the question that followed, revealed
her readiness to go on. It was as though many of the things he sought
to teach her slept already in her brain, and needed only a touch to
arouse them to vigorous life.

In time, the girl’s very clothing, and even her manner of dressing her
hair, came to reveal the development and transformation of her inner
self; not that she dressed more expensively; she could not do that; but
in the selection of materials, and in the many subtle touches that give
distinction even to the plainest apparel, she showed her awakening. To
help her in this, there was Aunt Mollie and a good ladies’ magazine,
which came to her regularly, through the kindness of her teacher.

Sammy’s father, too, came unconsciously under the shepherd’s influence.
As his daughter grew, the man responded to the change in her, as he
always responded to her every thought and mood. He talked often now of
the old home in the south land, and sometimes fell into the speech of
other days, dropping, for a moment, the rougher expressions of his
associates. But all this was to Sammy alone. To the world, there was no
change in Jim, and he still went on his long rides with Wash Gibbs. By
fall, the place was fixed up a bit; the fence was rebuilt, the yard
trimmed, and another room added to the cabin.

So the days slipped away over the wood fringed ridges. The soft green
of tree, and of bush, and grassy slope changed to brilliant gold, and
crimson, and russet brown, while the gray blue haze that hangs always
over the hollows took on a purple tone. Then in turn this purple
changed to a deeper, colder blue, when the leaves had fallen, and the
trees showed naked against the winter sky.

With the cold weather, the lessons were continued in the Lane cabin on
the southern slope of Dewey. All day, while the shepherd was busy at
the ranch, Sammy pored over her books; and every evening the old
scholar climbed the hill to direct the work of his pupil, with long Jim
sitting, silent and grim, by the fireside, listening to the talk, and
seeing who knows what visions of the long ago in the dancing flame.

And so the winter passed, and the spring came again; came, with its
soft beauty of tender green; its wealth of blossoms, and sweet
fragrance of growing things. Then came the summer; that terrible
summer, when all the promises of spring were broken; when no rain fell
for weary months, and the settlers, in the total failure of their
crops, faced certain ruin.




CHAPTER XIX.
THE DROUGHT.


It began to be serious by the time corn was waist high. When the
growing grain lost its rich color and the long blades rustled dryly in
the hot air, the settlers looked anxiously for signs of coming rain.
The one topic of conversation at the mill was the condition of the
crops. The stories were all of past drought or tales of hardship and
want.

The moon changed and still the same hot dry sky, with only now and then
a shred of cloud floating lazily across the blue. The grass in the
glades grew parched and harsh; the trees rattled their shriveled
leaves; creek beds lay glaring white and dusty in the sun; and all the
wild things in the woods sought the distant river bottom. In the Mutton
Hollow neighborhood, only the spring below the Matthews place held
water; and all day the stock on the range, crowding around the little
pool, tramped out the narrow fringe of green grass about its edge, and
churned its bright life into mud in their struggle.

Fall came and there was no relief. Crops were a total failure. Many
people were without means to buy food for themselves and their stock
for the coming winter and the months until another crop could be grown
and harvested. Family after family loaded their few household goods
into the big covered wagons, and, deserting their homes, set out to
seek relief in more fortunate or more wealthy portions of the country.

The day came at last when Sammy found the shepherd in the little grove,
near the deer lick, and told him that she and her father were going to
move.

“Father says there is nothing else to do. Even if we could squeeze
through the winter, we couldn’t hold out until he could make another
crop.”

Throwing herself on the ground, she picked a big yellow daisy from a
cluster, that, finding a little moisture oozing from a dirt-filled
crevice of the rock, had managed to live, and began pulling it to
pieces.

In silence the old man watched her. He had not before realized how much
the companionship of this girl was to him. To the refined and
cultivated scholar, whose lot had been cast so strangely with the rude
people of the mountain wilderness, the companionship of such a spirit
and mind was a necessity. Unconsciously Sammy had supplied the one
thing lacking, and by her demands upon his thought had kept the
shepherd from mental stagnation and morbid brooding. Day after day she
had grown into his life—his intellectual and spiritual child, and
though she had dropped the rude speech of the native, she persisted
still in calling him by his backwoods title, “Dad.” But the little word
had come to hold a new meaning for them both. He saw now, all at once,
what he would lose when she went away.

One by one, the petals from the big daisy fell from the girl’s hand,
dull splashes of gold against her dress and on the grass.

“Where will you go?” he asked at last.

Sammy shook her head without looking up; “Don’t know; anywhere that
Daddy can earn a livin’—I mean living—for us.”

“And when do you start?”

“Pretty soon now; there ain’t nothin’—there is nothing to stay for now.
Father told me when he went away day before yesterday that we would go
as soon as he returned. He promised to be home sometime this evening.
I—I couldn’t tell you before, Dad, but I guess you knew.”

The shepherd did know. For weeks they had both avoided the subject.

Sammy continued; “I—I’ve just been over to the Matthews place. Uncle
Matt has been gone three days now. I guess you know about that, too.
Aunt Mollie told me all about it. Oh, I wish, I wish I could help
them.” She reached for another daisy and two big tears rolled from
under the long lashes to fall with the golden petals. “We’ll come back
in the spring when it’s time to plant again, but what if you’re not
here?”

Her teacher could not answer for a time; then he said, in an odd,
hesitating way, “Have you heard from Ollie lately?”

The girl raised her head, her quick, rare instinct divining his
unspoken thought, and something she saw in her old friend’s face
brought just a hint of a smile to her own tearful eyes. She knew him so
well. “You don’t mean that, Dad,” she said. “We just couldn’t do that.
I had a letter from him yesterday offering us money, but you know we
could not accept it from him.” And there the subject was dropped.

They spent the afternoon together, and in the evening, at Sammy’s
Lookout on the shoulder of Dewey, she bade him good-night, and left him
alone with his flocks in the soft twilight.

That same evening Mr. Matthews returned from his trip to the
settlement.




CHAPTER XX.
THE SHEPHERD WRITES A LETTER.


To purchase the sheep and the ranch in the Hollow, Mr. Matthews placed
a heavy mortgage not only upon the ranch land but upon the homestead as
well. In the loss of his stock the woodsman would lose all he had won
in years of toil from the mountain wilderness.

When the total failure of the crops became a certainty, and it was
clear that the country could not produce enough feed to carry his flock
through the winter until the spring grass, Mr. Matthews went to the
settlement hoping to get help from the bank there, where he was known.

He found the little town in confusion and the doors of the bank closed.
The night before a band of men had entered the building, and, forcing
the safe, had escaped to the mountains with their booty.

Old Matt’s interview with the bank official was brief. “It is simply
impossible, Mr. Matthews,” said the man; “as it is, we shall do well to
keep our own heads above water.”

Then the mountaineer had come the long way home. As he rode slowly up
the last hill, the giant form stooped with a weariness unusual, and the
rugged face looked so worn and hopelessly sad, that Aunt Mollie, who
was waiting at the gate, did not need words to tell her of his failure.
The old man got stiffly down from his horse, and when he had removed
saddle and bridle, and had turned the animal into the lot, the two
walked toward the house. But they did not enter the building. Without a
word they turned aside from the steps and followed the little path to
the graves in the rude enclosure beneath the pines, where the sunshine
fell only in patches here and there.

That night after supper Mr. Matthews went down into the Hollow to see
the shepherd. “It’s goin’ to be mighty hard on Mollie and me a leavin’
the old place up yonder,” said the big man, when he had told of his
unsuccessful trip. “It won’t matter so much to the boy, ’cause he’s
young yet, but we’ve worked hard, Mr. Howitt, for that home—Mollie and
me has. She’s up there now a sittin’ on the porch and a livin’ it all
over again, like she does when there ain’t no one around, with her face
turned toward them pines west of the house. It’s mighty nigh a breakin’
her heart just to think of leavin’, but she’ll hide it all from me when
I go up there, thinkin’ not to worry me—as if I didn’t know. An’ it’s
goin to be mighty hard to part with you, too, Mr. Howitt. I don’t
reckon you’ll ever know, sir, how much you done for us; for me most of
all.”

The shepherd made as if to interrupt, but the big man continued; “Don’t
you suppose we can see, sir, how you’ve made over the whole
neighborhood. There ain’t a family for ten miles that don’t come to you
when they’re in trouble. An’ there’s Sammy Lane a readin’, an’ talkin’
just about the same as you do yourself, fit to hold up her end with
anybody what’s got education, and Jim himself’s changed something
wonderful. Same old Jim in lots of ways, but something more, somehow,
though I can’t tell it. Then there’s my boy, Grant. I know right well
what he’d been if it wasn’t for you to show him what the best kind of a
man’s like. He’d a sure never knowed it from me. I don’t mean as he’d a
ever been a bad man like Wash Gibbs, or a no account triflin’ one, like
them Thompsons, but he couldn’t never a been what he is now, through
and through, if he hadn’t a known you. There’s a heap more, too, all
over the country that you’ve talked to a Sunday, when the parson wasn’t
here. As for me, you—you sure been a God’s blessin’ to me and Mollie,
Mr. Howitt.”

Again the shepherd moved uneasily, as if to protest, but his big friend
made a gesture of silence; “Let me say it while I got a chance, Dad.”
And the other bowed his head while Old Matt continued; “I can’t tell
how it is, an’ I don’t reckon you’d understand any way, but stayin’ as
you have after our talk that first night you come, an’ livin’ down here
on this spot alone, after what you know, it’s—it’s just like I was a
little kid, an’ you was a standin’ big and strong like between me an’ a
great blackness that was somethin’ awful. I reckon it looks foolish, me
a talkin’ this way. Maybe it’s because I’m gettin’ old, but anyhow I
wanted you to know.”

The shepherd raised his head and his face was aglow with a glad
triumphant light, while his deep voice was full of meaning as he said
gently, “It has been more to me, too, than you think, Mr. Matthews. I
ought to tell you—I—I will tell you—” he checked himself and added,
“some day.” Then he changed the topic quickly.

“Are you sure there is no one who can help you over this hard time? Is
there _no_ way?”

The mountaineer shook his head. “I’ve gone over it all again an’ again.
Williams at the bank is the only man I know who had the money, an’ he’s
done for now by this robbery. You see I can’t go to strangers, Dad; I
ain’t got nothin’ left for security.”

“But, could you not sell the sheep for enough to save the homestead?”

“Who could buy? or who would buy, if they could, in this country,
without a bit of feed? And then look at ’em, they’re so poor an’ weak,
now, they couldn’t stand the drivin’ to the shippin’ place. They’d die
all along the road. They’re just skin an’ bones, Dad; ain’t no butcher
would pay freight on ’em, even.”

Mr. Howitt sat with knitted brow, staring into the shadows. Then he
said slowly, “There is that old mine. If this man Dewey were only here,
do you suppose—?”

Again the mountaineer shook his head. “Colonel Dewey would be a mighty
old man now, Dad, even if he were livin.’ ’Tain’t likely he’ll ever
come back, nor tain’t likely the mine will ever be found without him. I
studied all that out on the way home.”

As he finished speaking, he rose to go, and the dog, springing up,
dashed out of the cabin and across the clearing toward the bluff by the
corral, barking furiously.

The two men looked at each other. “A rabbit,” said Mr. Howitt. But they
both knew that the well trained shepherd dog never tracked a rabbit,
and Old Matt’s face was white when he mounted to ride away up the
trail.

Long the shepherd stood in the doorway looking out into the night,
listening to the voices of the wilderness. In his life in the hills he
had found a little brightness, while in the old mountaineer’s words
that evening, he had glimpsed a future happiness, of which he had
scarcely dared to dream. With the single exception of that one wild
night, his life had been an unbroken calm. Now he was to leave it all.
And for what?

He seemed to hear the rush and roar of the world beyond the ridges, as
one in a quiet harbor hears outside the thunder of the stormy sea. He
shuddered. The gloom and mystery of it all crept into his heart. He was
so alone. But it was not the wilderness that made him shudder. It was
the thought of the great, mad, cruel world that raged beyond the hills;
that, and something else.

The dog growled again and faced threateningly toward the cliff. “What
is it, Brave?” The only answer was an uneasy whine as the animal
crouched close to the man’s feet. The shepherd peered into the darkness
in the direction of the ruined cabin. “God,” he whispered, “how can I
leave this place?”

He turned back into the house, closed and barred the door. With the
manner of one making a resolution after a hard struggle, he took
writing material from the top shelf of the cupboard, and, seating
himself at the table, began to write. The hours slipped by, and page
after page, closely written, came from the shepherd’s pen, while, as he
wrote, the man’s face grew worn and haggard. It was as though he lifted
again the burden he had learned to lay aside. At last it was finished.
Placing the sheets in an envelope, he wrote the address with trembling
hand.

While Mr. Howitt was writing his letter at the ranch, and Old Matt was
tossing sleeplessly on his bed in the big log house, a horseman rode
slowly down from the Compton Ridge road. Stopping at the creek to
water, he pushed on up the mountain toward the Lane cabin. The horse
walked with low hung head and lagging feet; the man slouched half
asleep in the saddle. It was Jim Lane.




CHAPTER XXI.
GOD’S GOLD.


The troubled night passed. The shepherd arose to see the sky above the
eastern rim of 

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