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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d7b82bc --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,4 @@ +*.txt text eol=lf +*.htm text eol=lf +*.html text eol=lf +*.md text eol=lf diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6312041 --- /dev/null +++ b/LICENSE.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements, +metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be +in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. + +Procedures for determining public domain status are described in +the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org. + +No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in +jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize +this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright +status under the laws that apply to them. diff --git a/README.md b/README.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..12739c4 --- /dev/null +++ b/README.md @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ +Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for +eBook #67485 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/67485) diff --git a/old/67485-0.txt b/old/67485-0.txt deleted file mode 100644 index db7d85a..0000000 --- a/old/67485-0.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,3713 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Little Fig-tree Stories, by Mary -Hallock Foote - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and -most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions -whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms -of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at -www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you -will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before -using this eBook. - -Title: The Little Fig-tree Stories - -Author: Mary Hallock Foote - -Release Date: February 24, 2022 [eBook #67485] - -Language: English - -Produced by: Charlene Taylor and the Online Distributed Proofreading - Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from - images generously made available by The Internet - Archive/American Libraries.) - -*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LITTLE FIG-TREE -STORIES *** - - - - - - Books by Mary Hallock Foote. - - - =THE CHOSEN VALLEY.= A Novel. 16mo, $1.25; paper, 50 cents. - - =THE LED-HORSE CLAIM.= Illustrated. 16mo, $1.25; paper, 50 cents. - - =JOHN BODEWIN’S TESTIMONY.= 12mo, $1.50; paper, 50 cents. - - =THE LAST ASSEMBLY BALL=, and =THE FATE OF A VOICE=. 16mo, $1.25. - - =IN EXILE, AND OTHER STORIES.= 16mo, $1.25. - - =CŒUR D’ALÉNE.= A Novel. 16mo, $1.25. - - =THE CUP OF TREMBLING, AND OTHER STORIES.= 16mo, $1.25. - - - HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO. - BOSTON AND NEW YORK. - - [Illustration: UP THE LADDER TO THE SCUTTLE (_Page 160_)] - - - - - THE - - LITTLE FIG-TREE STORIES - - BY - - MARY HALLOCK FOOTE - - _WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY THE AUTHOR_ - - [Illustration: Decorative image with publisher info] - - - BOSTON AND NEW YORK - HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY - The Riverside Press, Cambridge - 1899 - - - - - COPYRIGHT, 1899, BY MARY HALLOCK FOOTE - ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. - - - - - AUTHOR’S NOTE - - -These stories were originally published in the St. Nicholas Magazine, -and are reprinted here by kind permission of the Century Company. - -The profits of the volume are dedicated to the Children’s Hospital of -San Francisco. - - - - - CONTENTS - - - PAGE - - FLOWER OF THE ALMOND AND FRUIT OF THE FIG 1 - - THE LAMB THAT COULDN’T “KEEP UP” 17 - - DREAM HORSES 32 - - AN IDAHO PICNIC 44 - - A VISIT TO JOHN’S CAMP 92 - - NOVEMBER IN THE CAÑON 107 - - THE GATES ON GRANDFATHER’S FARM 120 - - THE GARRET AT GRANDFATHER’S 144 - - THE SPARE BEDROOM AT GRANDFATHER’S 167 - - - - -THE - -LITTLE FIG-TREE STORIES - - - - -FLOWER OF THE ALMOND AND FRUIT OF THE FIG - - -There is a garden on a hill slope between the snows of the Sierra -Nevada and the warm, rich valleys of the coast. It is in that region of -Northern California where the pine belt and the fruit belt interlace. -Both pine and fruit trees grow in that mountain garden, and there, in -the new moon of February, six young Almond trees burst into flower. - -The Peach and Plum trees in the upper garden felt a glow of sympathy -with their forward sisters of the south, but the matronly Cherry trees -shook their heads at such an untimely show of blossoms. They foresaw -the trouble to come. - -“The Almond trees,” they said, “will lose their fruit buds this year, -as they did last and the year before. Poor things, they are so -emotional! The first whisper of spring that wanders up the foothills -sets them all aflame; out they rush, with their hearts on their -sleeves, for the frosts to peck at. But what can one do? If you try -to reason with them, ‘Our parents and grandparents always bloomed in -February,’ they will tell you, ‘and _they_ did not lose their fruit -buds.’” - -“The Almond trees come of very ancient stock,” said the Normandy -Pear, who herself bore one of the oldest names in France. “Inherited -tendencies are strong in people of good blood. One of their ancestors, -I have heard, was born in a queen’s garden in Persia, a thousand years -ago; and beautiful women, whose faces the sun never shone upon, wore -its blossoms in their hair. And as you probably know, their forefathers -are spoken of in the Bible.” - -“A number of persons, my dear, are spoken of in the Bible who were no -better than they should be,” said the eldest Apple tree. “We go back to -the ‘Mayflower,’--that is far enough for us; and none of our family -ever dreamed of putting on white and pink in February. It would be -flying in the face of Providence.” - -“White and pink are for Easter,” said the Pear tree, whose grandparents -were raised in a bishop’s garden. “I should not wish to put my blossoms -on in Lent.” - -The Apple tree straightened herself stiffly. - -“We do not keep the church fasts and feasts,” she said; “but every one -knows that faith without works is dead. What are these vain blossoms -that we put forth for a few days in the spring, without the harvest -that comes after?” - -“Now the Apple tree is going to preach,” said the light-hearted Peach -tree, stepping on the Plum tree’s toes. “If we must have preaching, I -had rather listen to the Pines. They, at least, have good voices.” - -“Those misguided Almonds are putting out all their strength in fleshly -flowers,” the Apple tree continued; “but how when the gardener comes -to look for his crop? We all know, as the Cherry trees said, what -happened last year and the year before. It cannot be expected that the -Master of the Garden will have patience with them forever.” - -“The Master of the Garden!” Four young Fig trees, who stood apart and -listened in sorrowful silence to this talk of blossoms, repeated the -words with fear and trembling. - -“How long,--how much longer,”--they asked themselves, “will he have -patience with us?” - -It was now the third spring since they had been planted, but not one -of the four sisters had yet produced a single flower. With deep, shy -desire they longed to know what the flower of the fig might be like. -They were all of one age, and they had no parent tree to tell them. -They knew nothing of their own nature or race or history. Two seasons -in succession, a strange, distressful change had come upon them. They -had felt the spring thrills, and the sap mounting in their veins; but -instead of breaking out into pink and white flowers, like the happy -trees around them, ugly little hard green knobs had crept out of their -tender bark, and these had swollen and increased in size till they were -bowed with the burden of their deformity. Fruit this could not be, for -they had seen that fruit comes from a flower, and no sign of blossom or -bud had ever been vouchsafed them. When inquisitive hands came groping, -and feeling of the purple excrescences upon their limbs, they covered -them up in shame and tried to hide them with their broad green leaves. -In time they were mercifully eased of this affliction; but then the -frosts came, and the winter’s dull suspense, and then another spring’s -awakening to hope and fear. - -“Perhaps we were not old enough before,” they whispered encouragement -to one another. “Blossoms no doubt are a great responsibility. Had we -had them earlier, we might have been foolish and brought ourselves to -blame, like the Almond trees. Let us not be impatient; the sun is warm, -but the nights are cold. Do not despair, dear sisters; we may have -flowers yet. And when they do come, no doubt they will be fair enough -to reward us for our long waiting.” - -They passed the word on softly, even to the littlest Fig-tree sister -that stood in rocky ground close to the wall that shut the garden -in from the pine wood at its back. The Pines were always chanting -and singing anthems in the wood; but though the sound was beautiful, -it oppressed the little Fig tree, and filled her with melancholy. -Moreover, it was very dry in the ground where she stood, and a Fig tree -must have drink. - -“Sisters, I am very thirsty!” she cried. “Have you a little, a very -little water that you could spare?” - -The sister Fig trees had not much of anything to spare; they were -spreading and growing fast, and their own soil was coarse and stony. -The water that had so delicious a sound in coming seemed to leak away -before their eager rootlets had more than tasted it; still they would -have shared what they had, could they have passed it to their weaker -sister. But the water would not go uphill; it ran away down, instead, -and the Peach and Plum and Pear trees grew fat with what the Fig trees -lacked. - -“Courage, little sister!” they called to the fainting young tree by the -wall. “The morning sun is strong, but soon the shadow of the wood will -reach us. Cover thy face and keep a good heart. When our turn shall -come, it will be thy turn too; one of us will not bloom without the -others.” - -It was only February, and the Almond trees stood alone, without a rival -in their beauty. They stood in the proudest place in the garden, in -full view both from the road and from a high gallery that ran across -the front of the house where the Master of the Garden lived. The -house faced the west, and whenever the people came out to look at the -sunset they admired the beauty of the Almond trees, with their upright -shoots, tipped and starred with luminous blossoms, against the deep, -rich colors in the west; and when the west faded, as it did every -evening, a lamp on a high post by the gate, bigger and brighter than -the brightest star, was set burning,--“for what purpose,” thought the -Almond trees, “but to show our beauty in the night?” So they watched -through the dark hours, and felt the intoxication of the keen light -upon them, and marveled at their own shadows on the grass. - -They were somewhat troubled because so many of their blossoms were -being picked; but the tree that stood nearest the house windows rose -on tiptoe, and behold! each gathered spray had been kept for especial -honor. Some were grouped in vases in the room, or massed against the -chimney-piece; others were set in a silver bowl in the centre of a -white table, under a shaded lamp, where a circle of people gazed at -them, and every one praised their delicate, sumptuous beauty. - -But peepers as well as listeners sometimes learn unpleasant truths -about themselves. - -“Aren’t we picking too many of these blossoms?” asked the lady of the -house. “I’m afraid we are wasting our almond crop.” - -“Almond trees will never bear in this climate,” said the Master of the -Garden. “Better make the most of the blossoms while they last. The -frost will catch them in a week or two.” - -So the mother and children gathered the blossoms recklessly,--to save -them, they said. Then a snow fall came, and those that had been left -on the trees were whiter than ever for one day, and the next day they -were dead. Each had died with a black spot at its core, which means the -death that has no resurrection in the fruit to come. - -After the snow came rain and frost, and snow again. The white Sierra -descended and shook its storm cloak in the face of laughing Spring, and -she fled away downward into the warm valleys. Alas, the flatterer! But -the Almond trees alone had trusted her, and again their hope of fruit -was lost. - -“Did we not say so?” muttered the Apple tree between her chattering -teeth. She was the most crabbed and censorious of the sisters, and by -her talk of fruit one might have supposed her own to be of the finest -quality; but this was not the case, and the gardener only that year had -been threatening, though she did not know it, to cut off her top and -graft her with a sweeter kind. - -The leaves of the Almond tree are not beautiful, neither is her shape -a thing to boast of. When spring did at last come back to stay, the -Almonds were the plainest of all the trees. Their blossoms were like -bright candles burned to the socket, that would light no more; their -“corruptible crown” of beauty had passed to other heads. No one looked -at them, no one pitied them, except the Fig trees, who wondered which -had most cause to mourn,--they, who had never had a blossom, or the -Almond trees, who had risked theirs and lost them all before the time -of blossoms came. - -The Fig trees’ reproach had not been taken away. While every tree -around them was dressed in the pride of the crop to come, they stood -flowerless and leafless, and burned with shame through all their barren -shoots. - -When the Master of the Garden came with his children to look at them, -they hung their heads and were afraid. - -“When will they blossom, like the other trees,” the children asked, -“and what sort of flower will _they_ bear?” - -The Fig trees held their breath to hear the answer. - -“A Fig tree has no flower, like the other fruit trees,” said the Master -of the Garden. “Its blossom is contained in the fruit. You cannot see -it unless you cut open the budding figs, and then you would not know it -was a flower.” - -“What is the use of having blossoms, if no one ever sees them?” one of -the children asked. - -“What is the use of doing good, unless we tell everybody and brag about -it beforehand?” the father questioned, smiling. - -“I thought the best way was--you know--to do it in secret,” said the -child. - -“That’s what we are taught; and some persons do good in that way, and -cover it up as if they were ashamed of it. And so the Fig tree doesn’t -tell anybody when it is going to bear fruit.” - -The Fig trees had heard their doom. To the words that followed they had -not listened; nor would they have understood much more of it than the -child of its father’s meaning. - -“What is this he calls our fruit?” they asked each other in fear and -loathing. “Was _that_ our fruit,--those green and purple swellings, -that unspeakable weight of ugliness? Will it come year after year, and -shall we never have a flower? The burden without the honor, without -the love and praise, that beauty brings. That is the beginning and the -end with us. Little sister, thou art happier than we, for soon thy -burden-bearing will be done. Uncover thy head and let the sunbeams slay -thee, for why should such as we encumber the ground!” - -Trees that grow in gardens may have long memories and nature teaches -them a few things by degrees, but they can know little of what goes on -in the dwellings or the brains of men, or why one man should plant -and call it good and later another come and dig up the first man’s -planting. But so it happened in this garden. “The stone which the -builders rejected, the same was made the head of the corner.” - -“These little Fig trees with their strange, great leaves,--why were -they put off here by themselves, I wonder?” A lady spoke who had lately -come to the cottage. She was the wife of the new Master of the Garden. -“I wish we had them where we could see them from the house,” she said. -“All the other trees are commonplace beside them.” - -“They are not doing well here,” said her husband. “This one, you see, -is nearly dead. They must be transplanted, or we shall lose them all.” - -Then followed talk which set the Fig trees a-tremble with doubt and -amazement and joy. They were to be moved from that arid spot,--where, -they knew not, but to some place of high distinction! They--the -little aliens who had stood nearest the wall and thirsted for a bare -existence--were to be called to the front of the garden and have honor -in the presence of all! The despised burden which they had called their -deformity they heard spoken of as the rarest fruit of the garden, and -themselves outvalued beyond all the other trees, for that, having so -little, they had done so much. - -Beauty too was theirs, it appeared, as well as excellence, though they -could scarcely believe what their own ears told them; and they had -a history and a family as old as those of the Almond tree, who can -remember nothing that did not happen a thousand years ago and so has -never learned anything in the present. - -But the Fig trees would have been deeply troubled at their promotion -could they have known what it was to cost their neighbors the Almond -trees. - -“Two we will keep for the sake of their flowers, but the others must -go, and give room for the Figs.” So said the new Master, and so it -was done. The unfruitful Almond trees were dug up and thrown over the -wall,--all but the two whom their sisters had ransomed with their -lives; for beauty has its price in this world and there must be some -one to pay it. - -When another spring came round, it was the little Fig tree that stood -in the bright corner where the splendor of the road lamp shone upon its -leaves all night. Its leaves were now as broad as a man’s outspread -hand, and its fruit was twice the size it had been the season before. - -Its sister trees stood round and interlaced their boughs about it. - -“Lean on us, little one,” they said, regarding it with pride. - -“But you have your own load to bear.” - -“We scarcely feel it,” said the happy trees. - -This was true; for the burden that had seemed beyond their strength, -when their hearts were heavy with shame and despondency, they could -bear up lightly now, since they had learned its meaning and its worth. - -The new Master’s children were so full of the joy of spring in that -mountain garden--for they too, like the little Fig trees, had been -transplanted from arid ground--they had no words of their own in which -to utter it. So their mother taught them some words from a song as old, -almost, as the oldest garden that was ever planted:-- - -“For, lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone; the flowers -appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds is come, and the -voice of the turtle is heard in our land; the fig tree putteth forth -her green figs, and the vines with the tender grape give a good smell.” - - * * * * * - -“Awake, O north wind; and come, thou south; blow upon my garden, that -the spices thereof may flow out.” - - - - -THE LAMB THAT COULDN’T “KEEP UP” - - -Until Jack Gilmour was seven years old his home had been at his -grandfather’s house in a country “well wooded and watered,” as the -Dutch captain who discovered it described it to his king. - -There was water in the river; there was water in the ponds that lay -linked together by falling streams among the hills above the mill; -there was water in the spring lot; there was water in the brook that -ran through the meadow across the road; there was water in the fountain -that plashed quietly all through the dark, close summer nights, when -not a leaf stirred, even of the weeping ash, and the children lay -tossing in their beds, with only their nightgowns covering them. And -besides all these living, flowing waters, there was water in the -cistern that lay concealed under the foundations of the house. Not one -of the grandchildren knew who had dug it, or cemented it, or sealed -it up, for children and children’s children to receive their first -bath from its waters. The good grandfather’s care had placed it there; -but even that fact the little ones took for granted, as they took the -grandfather himself,--as they took the fact that the ground was under -their feet when they ran about in the sunshine. - -In an outer room, which had been a kitchen once (before Jack’s mother -was born), there was a certain place in the floor that gave out a -hollow sound, like that from the planking of a covered bridge, whenever -Jack stamped upon it. Somebody found him, one day, trying the echoes -on this queer spot in the floor, and advised him to keep off it. It -was the trapdoor which led down into the cistern; and although it was -solidly made and rested upon a broad ledge of wood--well, it had rested -there on that same ledge for many years, and it wasn’t a pleasant -thought that a little boy in kilts should be prancing about with only -a few ancestral planks between him and a hidden pit of water. - -Once, when the trapdoor had been raised for the purpose of measuring -the depth of the water in the cistern, Jack had looked down and had -watched a single spot of light wavering over the face of the dark, -still pool. It gave him a strange, uncomfortable feeling, as if this -water were something quite unlike the outdoor waters, which reflected -the sky instead of the under side of a board floor. This water was -imprisoned, alone and silent; and if ever a sunbeam reached it, it was -only a stray gleam wandering where it could not have felt at home, and -must have been glad to leap out again when the sunbeam moved away from -the crack in the floor that had let it in. - -That same night a thunderstorm descended; the chimneys bellowed, and -the rain made a loud trampling upon the roof. Jack woke and felt for -his mother’s hand. As he lay still, listening to the rain lessening to -a steady, quiet drip, drip, he heard another sound, very mysterious -in the sleeping house,--a sound as of a small stream of water falling -from a height into an echoing vault. His mother told him it was the -rain water pouring from all the roofs and gutters into the cistern, and -that the echoing sound was because the cistern was “low.” Next morning -the bath water was deliciously fresh and sweet; and Jack had no more -unpleasant thoughts about the silent, sluggish old cistern. - -Now, there are parts of our country where the prayer “Give us this day -our daily water” might be added to the prayer “Give us this day our -daily bread;” unless we take the word “bread” to mean all that men and -women require to preserve life to themselves and their children. That -sad people of the East to whom this prayer was given so long ago could -never have forgotten the cost and value of water. - -If you turn the pages of a Bible concordance to the word “water,” -you will find it repeated hundreds of times, in the language of -supplication, of longing, of prophecy, of awful warning, of beautiful -imagery, of love and aspiration. The history of the Jewish people in -their wanderings, their wars and temptations, to their final occupation -of the promised land, might be traced through the different meanings -and applications of this one word. It was bargained, begged, and fought -for, and was apportioned from generation to generation. We read among -the many stories of those thirsty lands how Achsah, daughter of Caleb -the Kenizzite, not content with her dowry, asked of her father yet -another gift, without which the first were valueless: “For thou hast -given me a south land; give me also springs of water. And Caleb gave -her the upper springs and the nether springs.” - -Now, our little boy Jack was seven years old, and had to be taken more -than halfway across the continent before he learned that water is a -precious thing. He was taken to an engineer’s camp in a cañon of a -little, wild river that is within the borders of that region of the far -West known as the “arid belt.” - -Well, there was water in this river; but after the placer-mining -began, in the month of May, and Moore’s Creek brought down the -“tailings” from the mines and mingled them with the current of the -river, its waters became as yellow as those of the famous Tiber as -it “rolls by the towers of Rome,”--yellow with silt, which is not -injurious; but it is not pleasant to drink essence of granite rock, -nor yet to wash one’s face in it. They made a filter and filtered it; -but every pailful had to be “packed,” as they say in the West, by the -Chinese cook and the cook’s assistant. Economy in the use of water -became no more than a matter of common consideration for human flesh. - -In addition to the river there was a stream that came down the gulch -close beside the camp. This little stream was a spendthrift in the -spring and wasted its small patrimony of water; by the middle of summer -it had begun to economize, and by September it was a niggard,--letting -only a small dribble come down for those at its mouth to cherish in -pools or pots or pails, or in whatever it could be gathered. This -water of the gulch was frequently fouled by the range cattle that -came crowding down to drink, mornings and evenings. Dead leaves and -vegetation lay soaking in it, as summer waned. It was therefore -condemned for drinking, but served for bathing or for washing the camp -clothing, and was exceedingly precious by reason of its small and -steadily decreasing quantity. - -One morning, late in July, Jack was fast asleep and dreaming. The -sun was hot on the great hills toward the east,--hills that had been -faintly green for a few weeks in the spring, but were now given up to -the mingled colors of the gray-green sagebrush and the dun-yellow soil. - -They would have been hills of paradise, could rain have fallen upon -them as often as it falls upon the cedar-crowned knolls of the Hudson; -for these hills are noble in form and of great size,--a family of -giants as they march skyward, arm in arm and shoulder to shoulder,--and -the sky above them is the sky we call “Italian.” The “down-cañon -wind,” that all night long had swept the gulch from its source in the -hills to its mouth in the river, had fainted dead away in the heat of -the sun. Presently the counter wind from the great hot plains would -begin to blow, but this was the breathless pause between. - -The flies were tickling Jack’s bare legs and creeping into the neck -of his nightgown, where the button was off, as usually it is from a -seven-year-old’s nightgown. He was restless, “like a dog that hunts in -dreams,” for he was taking the old paths again that once he had known -so well. - -From the eastern hills came the mingled, far-off bleating, the -ululation of a multitude of driven sheep. The sound had reached Jack’s -dreaming ear. Suddenly his dream took shape, and for an instant he was -a happy boy. - -He was “at home” in the East. It was sheep-washing time, the last week -in May; the apple orchards were a mass of bloom and the deep, old, -winding lanes were sweet with their perfume. Jack was hurrying up the -lane by the Long Pond to the sheep-washing place, where the water came -down from the pond in a dark, old, leaky, wooden flume, and was held -in a pool into which the sheep were plunged by twos and by threes, -squeezed and tumbled about and lifted out to stagger away under the -apple trees and dry their heavy fleeces in the sun. Jack was kicking in -his sleep, when his name was called by a voice outside the window and -he woke. Nothing was left of the dream, with all its sweets of sight -and sound and smell, but the noise of the river’s continuous wrestle -with the rocks of the upper bend, and that far-off multitudinous clamor -from over the sun-baked hills. - -“Jack, come out!” said the voice of Jack’s big cousin. “They are going -to ‘sheep’ us. There’s a band of eight thousand coming!” - -There was a great scattering of flies and of bedclothes, as Jack -leaped out. He wasted no regrets upon the past,--one isn’t so foolish -as that at seven years old,--but was ready for the joys of the -present. Eight thousand sheep, or half that number (allowing for a big -cousin’s liberal computation), were a sight worth seeing. As to being -“sheeped,” what was there in an engineer’s camp to “sheep,” unless the -eight thousand woolly range-trotters should trot over tents and house -roofs and stovepipes and all, like Santa Claus’s team of reindeer! - -Jack was out of bed and into his clothes in a hurry, and off over the -hill with his cousin, buttoning the buttons of his “star” shirt waist -on the way. - -The “band” was pouring over the hill slopes in all directions, making -at full speed for the river. The hills themselves seemed to be dizzily -moving. The masses of distant small gray objects swarmed, they drifted, -they swam, with a curious motionless motion. They looked like nothing -more animated than a crop of gray stones, nearly of a size, spreading -broadly over the hills and descending toward the river with an impulse -which seemed scarcely more than the force of gravitation. - -The dogs were barking, the shepherds were racing and shouting to head -off the sheep and check their speed, lest the hundreds behind should -press upon the hundreds in front and force them out into deep water. -The hot air throbbed with the tumult. - -When the thirst of every panting throat had been slaked and the band -began to scatter along the hill slopes, the boys went forward to speak -with the sheepmen. - -A few moments afterward both lads were returning to the camp on a run, -to ask permission to accept from the shepherds the gift of a lamb that -couldn’t “keep up” with the band. It had run beside its mother as -far as its strength would carry it, and then it had fallen and been -trampled; and there it must lie unless help could revive it. A night on -the hills, with the coyotes about, would finish it. - -Permission was given, and breakfast was a perfunctory meal for the -children by reason of the lamb lying on the strip of shade outside. -After breakfast they sopped its mouth with warm milk, they sponged -it with cold water, they tried to force a spoonful of mild stimulant -between its teeth. They hovered and watched for signs of returning -life. The lamb lay with its eyes closed; its sides, that were -beginning to swell, rose and sank in long, heavy gasps. Once it moved -an ear, and the children thought it must be “coming to.” Upon this -hopeful sign they began at once to make plans for the lamb’s future -life and joys with them in the cañon. - -It should be led down to the river, night and morning, to drink; it -should have bran soaked in milk; it should nibble the grass on the -green strip; they would build it a house, for fear the coyotes should -come prowling about at night; it should follow them up the gulch and -over the hills, and race with them in the evenings on the river beach, -as “Daisy,” the pet fawn, had done--until something happened to her -(the children never knew what), and the lovely creature disappeared -from the cañon and out of their lives forever. - -[Illustration: THE LAMB THAT COULDN’T KEEP UP] - -When the strip of morning shadow was gone, they lifted the lamb -tenderly and carried it to the strip of afternoon shadow on the other -side of the house; and still it took no notice of the water or the -milk, or of all the children’s care, nor seemed to hear that they were -planning a happy life for it, if only it would get well. - -When twilight came, and still it had not moved, the children held -anxious consultation on the subject of their neighbors, the coyotes; -but their father assured them there would be no danger, so near to the -house; and it seemed a pity to disturb the poor lamb. - -When the cool night wind began to blow down the cañon again, and the -children were asleep, the lamb made its last effort. It is the instinct -of all dumb creatures to keep upon their feet as long as they can -stand; for when they have fallen the herd has no compassion,--or it -may be that its comrades press around the sufferer out of curiosity or -mistaken sympathy, and so trample it out of existence without meaning -the least harm. The little nursling of the range obeyed this instinct -in its last moments,--struggled to its feet and fell, a few steps -farther on; and the lamb that couldn’t keep up was at rest. - -No more toiling over hills and mountains and across hot valleys, packed -in the midst of the band, breathing the dust, stunned with the noise, -always hungry, almost always athirst, baked by the sun, chilled by the -snow, driven by the wind,--drifting on, from mountain to river, from -river to plain. - -This one, out of eight thousand, could rest at last, on cool grass, -with the peace and the silence and the room of a summer night around it. - -The band slept upon the hills that night; the next morning they crossed -the gulch above the camp, and drank up by the way _all_ the water of -the little stream. Not another drop was seen for days. At length it -gathered strength enough to trickle down again, but it was necessary -to dip it up and let it stand in casks to settle before it was fit for -use; and meanwhile the Chinamen carriers did double duty. - -Those eastern hills in spring had been covered with wild flowers,--the -moss pink, lupines both white and blue, wild phlox, the small yellow -crocus, beds of tiny sweet-scented wild pansies, the camas flower, and -a tall-stemmed, pale lilac lily,--the queen of the hill garden. But -when spring came again, the old pathways were like an ash heap. The -beautiful hill garden was a desert. - -When these great sheep bands pass over the country, from range to -range, from territory to territory, they devour not only the vegetation -of one year, but the seeds, the roots, and, with these, the promise of -the next. - -It is the migration of the Hungry and the Thirsty; and a cry goes out -against them, like the cry of Moab when the children of Israel camped -within its borders:-- - -“Surely this multitude will lick up all that is round about us.” - - - - -DREAM-HORSES - - -There is a little girl who hangs upon her mother’s chair, getting her -head between her mother’s work and the light, and begs for pictures. - -She expects her mother to make these pictures on some bit of paper -treasured for the purpose which she offers, with a book to rest it -on, and a stubby pencil notched with small toothmarks, the record of -moments of perplexity when Polly was making her own pictures. - -It is generally after a bad failure of her own that she comes to her -mother. The pang of disappointment with her own efforts is apt to -sharpen her temper a little; it does not make Polly more patient with -her mother’s mistakes that she makes mistakes herself. But between -critic and artist, with such light as the dark lantern of a little -girl’s head permits to fall upon the paper, the picture gets made -somehow, and before it is finished Polly’s heart will be so full of -sunshine that she will insist upon comparisons most flattering to the -feelings of her artist, between their different essays at the same -subject. - -It is a subject they are both familiar with; and it is wonderful, -considering the extent of Polly’s patronage, that her artist’s work -does not better itself. - -It is always a picture of a young person on horseback,--a young person -about the age of Polly, but much handsomer and more grown-up looking. -And the horse must be a pony with a flowing mane and tail, and his legs -must be flung out, fore and aft, so that in action he resembles one of -those “crazy-bugs” (so we children used to call them) that go scuttling -like mad things across the still surface of a pond. In other respects -he may be as like an ordinary pony as mamma and the stubby pencil can -make him. But the young person on the pony must be drawn in profile, -because Polly cannot make profiles, except horses’ profiles; her young -persons always look straight out of the picture as they ride along, and -the effect, at full speed, on a horse with his legs widely extended -from his body, is extremely gay and nonchalant. - -With the picture in her hand, the little girl will go away by herself -and proceed to “dream and to dote.” - -She lives in a horsey country. Horses in troops or “bands” go past -by the trails, on the one side of the river or the other. Sometimes -they ford where the water is breast-high over the bar. It is wild and -delicious to hear the mares whinnying to their foals in midstream, and -the echo of their voices, with the rushing of the loud water pent among -the hills. - -Often the riders who are in charge of the band encamp for the night -on the upper bend of the river, and the red spark of their camp-fire -glows brightly about the time the little girl must be going to bed; -for it is in spring or fall the bands of horses go up into the hills -or down into the valleys, or off, one does not know where,--to a -“round up,” perhaps, where each stockman counts his own, and puts his -brand on the young colts. Over the hills, where Polly and her big -brother go wild-flower hunting, horses wander loose and look down from -the summits, mere specks, like black mice, against the sky; they are -plainly to be seen from miles away, for there is not a tree anywhere -upon these hills. Sometimes a single horse, the chieftain of a troop, -will stand alone on a hilltop and take a look all the wide country -round, and call, in his splendid voice like “sounding brass,” to -the mares and colts that have scattered in search of alkali mud to -lick, or just to show, perhaps, that they are able to get on without -his lordship. He will call, and if his troop do not answer, he will -condescend to go a little way to meet them, halting and inquiring with -short whinnies what they are about. Sometimes, in spite of discipline, -they will compel him to go all the way to meet them; for even a horse -soon tires of dignity on a hilltop all alone, with no one to see how it -becomes him. - -Polly likes to meet stray horses on her walks, close enough to see -their colors and tell which are the pretty ones, the ones she calls -hers. They stare at her from under breezy forelocks, and no doubt think -themselves much finer creatures than little girls who have only two -feet to go upon. And the little girl thinks so, too,--or so it would -seem; for every evening after sunset when she runs about the house -bareheaded she plays she is a horse herself. And not satisfied with -being a horse, she plays she is a rider, too. Such a complex ideal as -that surely never came into the brain of a “cayuse,” for all his big -eyes and his tangle of hair which Polly thinks so magnificent. - -The head and the feet of Polly and her tossing locks are pure horse; -that is evident at a glance as she prances past the window. But the -clinched, controlling hands are the hands of the rider,--a thrilling -combination on a western summer evening, when the brassy sunset in the -gate of the cañon is like a trumpet-note, and the cold, pink light on -the hills is as keen as a bugle-call, and the very spirit of “boots and -saddles” is in the wind that gustily blows up from the plains, turning -all the poplars white, and searching the quiet house from room to room -for any laggard stay-indoors. - -Within a mile of the house, in the cañon which Polly calls home, there -is a horse ranch in a lovely valley opening toward the river. All -around it are these treeless hills that look so barren and feed so -many wild lives. The horses have a beautiful range, from the sheltered -valley up the gulches to the summits of the hills and down again to the -river to drink. The men live in a long, low cabin, attached to a corral -much bigger than the cabin, and have an extremely horsey time of it. - -I shouldn’t be surprised if it were among Polly’s dreams to be one -of a picked company of little-girl riders, in charge of a band of -long-tailed ponies, just the right size for little girls to manage; -to follow the ponies over the hills all day, and at evening to fetch -water from the river and cook their own little-girl suppers in the -dingy cabin by the corral; to have envious visits from other little -girls, and occasionally to go home and tell mother all about it. - -Now, in this country of real horses there were not many play-horses, -and these few not of the first quality. Hobby-horses in the shops of -the town were most trivial in size, meant only for riders of a very -tender age. Some of them were merely heads of horses, fastened to a -seat upon rockers, with a shelf in front to keep the inexperienced -rider in his place. - -There were people in the town, no doubt, who had noble rocking-horses -for their little six-year-olds, but they must have sent for them on -purpose; the storekeepers did not “handle” this variety. - -So Polly’s papa, assisted by John Brown, the children’s most delightful -companion and slave and story-teller, concluded to build a hobby-horse -that would outdo the hobby-horse of commerce. (Brown was a modest, -tender-hearted man, who had been a sailor off the coast of Norway, -among the islands and fiords, a miner where the Indians were “bad,” a -cowboy, a ranchman; and he was now irrigating the garden and driving -the team in the cañon.) - -Children like best the things they invent and make themselves, and -plenty of grown people are children in this respect; they like their -own vain imaginings better than some of the world’s realities. - -But Polly’s rocking-horse was no “vain thing,” although her father and -John did have their own fun out of it before she had even heard of it. - -His head wasn’t “made of pease-straw,” nor his tail “of hay,” but in -his own way he was quite as successful a combination. - -His eyes were two of Brother’s marbles. They were not mates, which was -a pity, as they were set somewhat closely together so you couldn’t help -seeing them both at once; but as one of them soon dropped out it didn’t -so much matter. His mane was a strip of long leather fringe. His tail -was made up of precious contributions extorted from the real tails -of Billy and Blue Pete and the team-horses, and twined most lovingly -together by John, the friend of all the parties to the transfer. - -The saddle was a McClellan tree, which is the framework of a kind of -man’s saddle; a wooden spike, fixed to the left side of it and covered -with leather, made a horn, and the saddle-blanket was a Turkish towel. - -It was rainy weather, and the cañon days were short, when this unique -creation of love and friendship--which are things more precious, it is -to be hoped, even than horseflesh--took its place among Polly’s idols, -and was at once clothed on with all her dreams of life in action. - -When she mounted the hobby-horse she mounted her dream-horse as well; -they were as like as Don Quixote’s helmet and the barber’s basin. - -She rode him by firelight in the last half-hour before bedtime. She -rode him just after breakfast in the morning. She “took” to him when -she was in trouble, as older dream-riders take to _their_ favorite -“hobbies.” She rocked and she rode, from restlessness and wretchedness -into peace, from unsatisfied longings into temporary content, from bad -tempers into smiles and sunshine. - -She rode out the winter, and she rode in the wild and windy spring. She -got well of the measles pounding back and forth on that well-worn seat. -She took cold afterward, before the winds grew soft, experimenting with -draughts in a corner of the piazza. - -Now that summer gives to her fancies and her footsteps a wider range, -the hard-worked hobby gets an occasional rest. (Often he is to be seen -with his wooden nose resting on the seat of a chair which is bestrewed -with clover blossoms, withered wild-roses, and bits of grass; for -Polly, like other worshipers of graven images, believes that her idol -can eat and drink and appreciate substantial offerings.) But when the -dream grows too strong, the picture too vivid,--not mamma’s picture, -but the one in the child’s heart,--she takes to the saddle again, and -the horsehair switch and the leather fringes float upon the wind, and -her fancies mount, far above the lava bluffs that confine her vision. - -Will our little girl-riders be as happy on their real horses, when they -get them, as they are upon their dream-horses? Is the actual possession -of “back hair” and the wearing of long petticoats more blissful than -the knot, hard-twisted, of the ends of a silk handkerchief, which the -child-woman binds about her brows when she walks--like Troy’s proud -dames whose garments sweep the ground--in the skirt of her mother’s -“cast-off gown”? - -It depends upon the direction these imperious dream-horses will take -with our small women. Will the rider be in bondage to the steed? Heaven -forbid! for dream-horses make good servants but very bad masters. Will -they bear her fast and far, and will she keep a quiet eye ahead and a -constant hand upon the rein? Will they flag and flounder down in the -middle-ways, where so many of us have parted with our dream-steeds and -taken the footpath, consoled to find that we have plenty of company and -are not altogether dismayed? The dream-horses carry their child-riders -beyond the mother’s following, so that the eyes and the heart ache with -straining after the fleeting vision. - -It is better she should not see too much nor too far along the way they -go, since “to travel joyfully is better than to arrive.” - -If only they could know their own “blessedness” while the way is long -before them! - - - - -AN IDAHO PICNIC - - -At the camp in the cañon they had a cow. It is true she sometimes broke -away and went off with the herds on the range and had to be chased -on horseback and caught with a lasso. They had chickens,--all that -were left them from night raids by the coyotes;[1] and a garden, the -products of which they shared with the jack-rabbits and the gophers. -But the supply wagon brought fresh fruit from the town, ten miles away, -and new butter from the valley ranches. There were no mosquitoes, -no peddlers, no tramps, no book agents, no undesirable neighbor’s -children, whom one cannot scare away as one may the neighbor’s dogs -and chickens when they creep through the fence, but must be civil -to for the sake of peace and good-will,--which are good things in a -neighborhood. - -Jack Gilmour worked at his crude inventions in the shop, and was -allowed to use grown-up tools under certain not too hard conditions; -and Polly rode up and down the steep path to the river beach on -the shoulders of the young assistant engineers--and assistant -everything-elses. The mother was waited on and spoiled, as women are in -camp; she was even invited to go fishing with her husband and Mr. Dane, -one of the young assistants-in-general. It was a dull time for work -in the camp, and there were good care-takers with whom Mrs. Gilmour -could trust the children. The boy was the elder. He was learning those -two most important elements of a boy’s education, up to nine years, -according to Sir Walter Scott,--to ride and to speak the truth. But he -was only eight, and perhaps was not quite perfect in either. - -He watched the three happy ones ride away, and as they turned on the -hilltop and waved good-by to the little figure on the trail below, he -was longing, with all the strength of desire an eight-year-old heart -can know, for the time to come when he too should climb the hills and -wave his hand against the sky before turning the crest, where he had so -often stood and felt so small, gazing up into those higher hills that -locked the last bright bend of the river from sight. - -They were to go up Charcoal Creek; they were to cross the “Divide;” -they were to go down Grouse Creek on the other side and camp on some -unknown bit of the river’s shore. - -The boy went stumbling back down the dusty path to his unfinished work -in the shop,--the engine for a toy elevated road he was making. But the -painfully fashioned fragments of his plan had no meaning for eyes that -still saw only the hills against the morning sky, and the three happy -ones riding away. - -This first trip led to a second and longer one, to the fishing-grounds -up the river, by the trail on the opposite shore. Jack heard his -father and Mr. Dane talking one morning at the breakfast-table about -riding down to Turner’s and getting a pack-animal and some more riding -animals,--and mamma was going again! What good times the grown-ups did -have! And John Brown, Jack’s particular crony from the men’s camp, was -going, to cook and take care of the animals. This word “animal” is used -in the West to describe anything that is ridden or “packed,”--horse, -mule, Indian pony, or “burro.” It is never applied to cattle or -unbroken horses on the range; these are “stock.” - -The party were to take a tent and stay perhaps a week, if no word came -from the home camp to call them back. - -Jack slipped away from the table and went out and hung upon the railing -of a footbridge that crossed the brook. Beside learning how to ride -and to speak the truth, Jack was learning to whistle. He was practicing -this last more persistently, perhaps, than either of the more important -branches of knowledge,--let us hope because there was more need of -practice; for he was as yet very far from being a perfect whistler. It -was but a melancholy, tuneless little note in which he gave vent to his -feelings, as he watched the trickling water. - -“I’d like to take the boy,” his father was that moment saying at the -breakfast-table in the cook-tent, “if we had anything he could ride.” -And then he added, smiling, “There’s Mrs. O’Dowd.” The smile went -around the table. - -Mrs. O’Dowd, or “Peggy,” as she was variously called, was a gray donkey -of uncertain age and mild but inflexible disposition who sometimes -consented to carry the children over the hills at a moderate pace, -her usual equipment being a side-saddle, which did not fit her oval -figure (the curves of which turned the wrong way for beauty); so the -side-saddle was always slipping off, obliging the children to slide -down and “cinch up.” - -The engineer’s house was built against a hill; from the end of the -upper piazza a short bridge, or gang-plank, joined the hill and met a -steep trail which led upward to the tents, the garden, the road to the -lower camp, the road up the bluffs, and all the rest of the children’s -world beyond the gulch. One of their favorite exercises with Mrs. -O’Dowd was to ride her down the trail, and try to force her over this -gang-plank. She would put her small feet cautiously one before the -other, hanging her great white head and sniffing her way. The instant -her toes touched the resonant boards of the bridge, she stopped, and -then the exercises began. Mrs. O’Dowd’s gravity and resignation, in the -midst of the children’s laughing and shouting and pulling and whacking, -was most edifying to see; but she never budged. She saw the darlings of -the household dance back and forth before her in safety; the engineers -in their big boots would push past her and tramp over the bridge. Mrs. -O’Dowd was a creature of fixed habits. Useless, flighty children, and -people with unaccountable ways of their own might do as they liked; it -had never been her habit to trust Mrs. O’D. on such a place as that, -and she never did. - -“Yes, the boy might ride Peggy,” said Jack’s father. “He could keep her -up with John and the pack-mule, if not with us.” - -“Oh, I should not want him behind with the men,” said Jack’s -mother,--“and those high trails! If he’s to go over such places, he -must ride where you can look after his saddle-girths.” She could hear -Jack’s disconsolate whistle as she spoke. “I hope he does not hear us,” -she said. “It would break his heart to think he is going, and be left -behind after all.” - -“If the boy’s heart is going to break as easily as that, it is time it -was toughened,” said his father, but not ungently. “I should tell him -there is a chance of his going; but if it can’t be managed, he must not -whine about it.” - -Jack went to bed by himself, except on Sunday nights; then his mother -went with him, and saw that he laid his clothes in a neat pile on the -trunk by his bed,--for in a camp bedroom trunks sometimes take the -place of chairs,--and heard him say his prayers, and sometimes they -talked together a little while before she kissed him good-night. That -night was Sunday night, and Jack’s mother asked him, while she watched -his undressing, if it ever made him dizzy to stand on high places and -look down. Jack did not seem to know what that feeling was like; and -then she asked him how far he had ever ridden on Mrs. O’Dowd at one -time. Jack thought he had never ridden farther than Mr. Hensley’s -ranch--that was three miles away, six miles in all, going and coming; -but he had rested at the ranch, and had walked for a part of the -journey when his sister Polly had resolved to ride by herself, instead -of behind him, holding on to his jacket. - -It made his mother very happy to tell the boy that the next day, if -nothing happened to prevent, he was to set out with the fishing party -for a week’s camping up the river. She knew how, in his reticent -child’s heart, he had envied them. He was seated on the side of his -bed, emptying the beach sand out of his stockings, when she told him. -He said nothing at first, and one who did not know his plain little -face as his mother knew it might have thought he was indifferent. She -took a last look at him, before leaving the room. It seemed but a very -little while ago that the close-cropped whity-brown head on the pillow -had been covered with locks like thistle-down, which had never been -touched with the scissors; that the dark little work-hardened hands -(for Jack’s play was always work) lying outside the sheet had been -kissed a dozen times a day for joy of their rosy palms and dimples. And -to-morrow the boy would put on spurs,--no, not _spurs_, but _a_ spur, -left over from the men’s accoutrements,--and he would ride--to be sure -it was only Mrs. O’Dowd, but no less would the journey be one of the -landmarks in his life. And many older adventurers than Jack have set -out in this way on their first emprise,--not very heroically equipped, -except for brave and joyous dreams and good faith in their ability to -keep the pace set by better-mounted comrades. - -Jack woke next morning with a delightful feeling that this day was -not going to be like any other day he had known. Preparations for -the journey had already begun. In the cook-tent two boxes were being -filled with things to eat and things to cook them with. These were to -be covered with canvas, roped, and fastened, one on each side of the -pack-mule’s pack-saddle. On the piazza, saddle-bags were being packed; -guns, ammunition, fishing-rods, rubber coats, and cushions were being -collected in a heap for John to carry down to the beach to be ferried -across the river, where the man from Turner’s horse-ranch was already -waiting with the animals. The saddle-horses and Mrs. O’Dowd were to -cross by the ford above the rapids. The boat went back and forth two -or three times, and in the last load went Jack and his mother and -Polly in the care of one of the young engineers. The stir of departure -had fired Polly’s imagination. It was not mamma saying good-by to -Polly,--it was Polly saying good-by to mamma, before riding off with -“bubba” on an expedition of their own. She was telling about it, in a -soft, joyous recitative, to any one who had time to listen. The man -from Turner’s had brought, for Mrs. Gilmour to ride, a mule he called a -lady’s animal, but remarked that for his own use he preferred one that -would go. Mrs. Gilmour thought that she did, too; so the side-saddle -was changed from the “lady’s animal” to the mule that “would go.” - -The pack-mule was “packed,” the men’s horses were across the ford, -mamma had kissed Polly, two pairs and a half of spurs were jingling -impatiently on the rocks,--but where was Mrs. O’Dowd? - -She was dallying at the ford,--she was coy about taking to the water. -Sticks and straps and emphatic words of encouragement had no effect -upon her. She had unfortunately had time to make up her mind, and she -had made it up not to cross the river. She was persuaded finally, by -means of a “lass’ rope” around her neck. Everybody was laughing at her -subdued way of making herself conspicuous, delaying the whole party and -meekly implying that it was everybody’s fault but her own. - -The camp of the engineers was on a little river of Idaho that rises -in the Bitter-root range of the Rocky Mountains, and flows into the -swift, silent current of the great Snake River, which flows into the -Columbia, which flows into the Pacific; so that the waters of this -little inland river see a great deal of grand and peculiar scenery -on their way to the ocean. But the river as it flows past the camp -is still very young and inexperienced. Its waters have carried no -craft larger than a lumberman’s pirogue, or the coffin-shaped box the -Chinese wood-drivers use for a boat. Its cañons have never echoed to -a locomotive’s scream; it knows not towns nor villages; not even a -telegraph pole has ever been reared on its banks. It is just out of -the mountains, hurrying down through the gate of its last cañon to the -desert plains. But young and provincial as it is, it has an ancestral -history very ancient and respectable, if mystery and tragedy and -years of reticence can give dignity to a family history. The river’s -story has been patiently recorded on the tablets of the black basalt -bluffs that face each other across its channel. Their language it is -not given to everybody to read. The geologists tell a wonderful tale -which they learned from those inscriptions on the rocks. They do not -say how many years ago, but long enough to have given a very ancient -name to our river,--had there been any one living at that time to -call it by a name,--it met with a fearful obstruction, a very dragon -in its path, which threatened to devour it altogether, or to scatter -it in little streams over the face of the earth. A flood of melted, -boiling-hot lava burst up suddenly in the river’s bed, making it to -boil like a pot, and crowded into the granite gorges through which the -river had found its way, half filling them. It was a battle between the -heavens and the earth,--the stream of molten rock, blinding hot from -the caverns beneath the earth’s crust, meeting the sweet cool waters -from the clouds that troop about the mountains or hide their tops in -mist and snow. The life-giving flood prevailed over that which brought -only defacement and death. The sullen lava flux settled, shrank, and -hardened at last, fitting into the granite gorges as melted lead fits -the mould into which it is poured. The waters kept flowing down, never -resting till they had worn a new channel in the path of the old one, -only narrower and deeper, down through the intruding lava. When the -river was first known to men, wherever its course lay through a granite -gorge the granite was seen to be lined in places, often continuously -for miles, with black lava rock, or basalt, standing in lofty palisades -with deeply scarred and graven fronts and with long slides of crumbled -rock at their feet, descending to the level of the river. - -Another part of the river’s story has been toilsomely written in -the trails that wind along its shores, worn by the feet of men and -animals. Whose feet were the first to tread them, and on what errands? -This is the part of the river’s story some of us would like best to -know. But this the geologist cannot tell us. - -It was one of these hunters’, miners’, cowboys’, packers’, ranchmen’s -trails the fishing-party followed on its way up the river. Through the -cañon they wound along the base of the lava bluffs; then entered a -crooked fold of the hills called Sheep Gulch, passing through willow -thickets, rattling over the pebbles of a summer-dried stream, losing -the breeze and getting more than they wanted of the sun. Sheep Gulch -is one of the haunts of grouse, wood-doves, and “cotton-tails” (as -the little gray rabbits are called to distinguish them from the tall -leaping “jack-rabbits” of the sage-brush plains, which are like the -English hare). - -Above Turner’s horse-ranch, Sheep Gulch divides into two branches; up -one of these goes the old Idaho City road. Where the gulch divides -there is a disused cabin, (which Jack remembered afterward because -there they saw some grouse which they didn’t get,) and there they left -the trail for the old stage-road. As they climbed the little divide -which separates the waters (when there are any) of Sheep Gulch from -those of Moore’s Creek, they were met by a fresh breeze which cooled -their hot faces and seemed to welcome them to the hills. The hills were -all around them now,--the beautiful mountain pastures, golden with -their wind-sown harvest of wild, strong-stemmed grasses. As the grass -becomes scarce on the lower ranges the herds of cattle climb to the -higher, along the spiral trails they make in grazing, taking always, -like good surveyors, the easiest upward grade. - -In the fall the cattle-men send out their cowboys, or “riders,” to -drive the herds down from these highest ranges, where snow falls early, -and to collect them in some valley chosen for the autumn “round-up.” - -At Giles’s ranch, on the divide, the party halted to cinch up and to -ask a drink all around from the spring which every traveler who has -tasted it remembers. - -The women of the household--a slender, dark-haired daughter and a -stout, fair, flushed mother with a year-old baby--were busy, baby and -all, in an outdoor kitchen, a delightful-looking place, part light and -part shadow, and full of all manner of tools and rude conveniences that -told of cheerful, busy living and making the best of things. They were -preparing for the coming, next week, of the threshers,--a yearly event -of consequence at a ranch,--fifteen men with horses for their machines -and saddle-horses besides, all to be fed and lodged at the ranch. In -the corral behind the big new barn, there were stacks of yellow and -stacks of green, and between them a hay press, painted pink, which one -could see as far as one could see Giles’s. Altogether it was lovely at -Giles’s; but they were building a new house,--which, of course, they -had a perfect right to do. But whoever stops there next year will find -them all snugly roofed and gabled and painted white; and it is to be -feared the outdoor kitchen, with its dim corners full of “truck” and -its lights and shadows, will be seen no more. - -The old stage-road went gayly along a bit of high plain, and then, -without the slightest hesitation or circumlocution, dropped off into -the cañon of Moore’s Creek. These reckless old pioneer roads give one -a vivid idea of the race for possession of a new mining-camp, and of -the pluck it took to win. At the “freeze-out” stage-passengers probably -got out and walked, and the driver “rough-locked” the wheels; but the -horsemen of that new country doubtless took a fresh hitch on their -cinches and went jouncing down the breakneck grade, with countenances -as calm as those of the illustrious riders of bronze and marble horses -we see in the public squares, unless they were tired of the saddle and -walked down to rest themselves,--never their horses. - -Jack’s short legs were getting numb with pressing the saddle, and he -was glad to walk, and to linger on his way down the wild descent -into the cañon. It was the middle of September; Moore’s Creek had -not more than enough water left to float the “Chinaman’s drive” of -cord-wood, cut higher up on its banks. Its waters, moreover, were -turbid with muddy tailings emptied into them from the sluice-boxes of -the placer-miners who had been working all summer on the bars. Above -Moore’s Creek the water of the river is clear as that of a trout-stream -and iridescent with reflections from sky and shore; but after its union -with that ill-fated stream it is obliged to carry the poor creek’s -burden, and its own bright waters thenceforth wear the stain of labor. -A breath of coolness, as of sunless rocks and damp, spicy shade, came -up to them from the cañon; and a noise of waters, mingled with queer, -discordant cries. It was dinner-time at the Chinamen’s camp and word -was being passed up stream, from man to man, calling the wood-drivers -to leave their work. They were not the sleek-braided, white-bloused, -silk-sashed Chinese of the house-servant variety. They had wild black -hair, rugged, not fat, sleepy faces, and little clothing except the -boots,--store boots, in which a Chinaman is queerer than in anything -except a store hat. They struggled with the jam of cord-wood as if it -were some sort of water-prey they had hunted down, and were now meeting -at bay, spearing, thrusting, hooking with their long boat-hooks, -skipping from rock to rock in midstream, hoarse with shouting. - -The party had now left the stage-road and turned down the pack-trail -along the creek toward its junction with the river. The pack-trail here -crosses the creek by a bridge high above the stream; the bridge was -good enough, but it was a question whether Mrs. O’Dowd, with her known -prejudices, could be induced to go over it. It was quickly decided to -get a “good ready,” as Jack said, and hustle the old lady down the -trail between two of the horses and crowd her on the bridge before she -had time to make up that remarkable mind of hers. This simple plan was -carried out with enthusiasm on the part of all but Mrs. O’D. herself. - -Soon after leaving Giles’s, they had met a wagon-load of people -townward bound from Gillespie’s, the beautiful river ranch above -Moore’s Creek. Mr. Gilmour had stopped them to inquire if a pack-animal -and two riding animals, mules or horses, could be sent from the ranch -up to the fishing-camp, on a day set for the journey home; for the -mules from Turner’s were to go back that same day, to start the next -day but one, as part of a pack-train bound for Atlanta. - -The people in the wagon “couldn’t say.” Most of the horses were -out on the range; those at the ranch were being used for hauling -peaches to town, fording Moore’s Creek and the river, and scaling the -“freeze-out.” But Mr. Gillespie himself was at home; the travelers had -better stop on the way up and find out. - -So, after crossing the bridge and gaining the good trail along the -river-bank, Mr. Dane spurred on ahead and forded the river, to make -the necessary inquiries at the ranch. Gillespie’s is on the opposite -side of the river from the packer’s trail. It is most beautiful with -the sun in the western sky, its hills and water-front of white beech -and pine trees all in shadow, and a broad reflection floating out into -the river at its feet. - -The sun was still high and the shadows were short; but the river ranch -was a fair picture of a frontier home as they looked back at it passing -by on the other side,--the last home they should see on the wild way -they were taking. - -The trail went winding up and up, and still higher, until they were -far above the river and could see, beyond the still reflections that -darkened it by Gillespie’s, the white-whipped waters of the rapids -above. And the higher they went, the more hills beyond hills rose along -the horizon widening their view. - -Mr. Dane had rejoined the party, with a satisfactory report from -the ranch. He rode ahead on his blue-roan Indian pony twirling his -_romál_, a long leathern strap attached to the bridle, the end divided -like a double whip-lash by means of which and a pair of heavy blunt -spurs “Blue Pete” and his rider had come to a perfect understanding. -Blue Pete was a sulky little brute, with a broad white streak down his -nose and a rather vicious eye, but he was tough and unsensitive and -minded his business. - -Next came Jack’s mamma on the “mule that would go”--with a will, as -far as Turner’s,--but after that needed the usual encouragement; a -gentle-paced creature though, and sure-footed on a bad trail. Then came -Jack on Mrs. O’Dowd. The poor old girl had been vigorously cinched and -it wasn’t becoming to her figure; but those were bad places for a -saddle to turn, even with an active, eight-year-old boy on it. - -The boy was deeply content, gazing about him at the river, the hills, -the winding trail ahead, and serenely poking up Mrs. O’Dowd with his -one spur in response to the packer’s often-repeated command to “Keep -her up!” When Mrs. O’Dowd refused to be kept up Jack’s father made -a rush at her--a kind of business his good horse Billy must have -despised, for Billy had points that indicated better blood than that -which is usually found in the veins of those tough little “rustlers” of -the desert and the range. He loved to lead on a hard trail, with his -long, striding walk, his cheerful, well-opened eyes to the front. He -was gentle, but he was also scornful; he was not a “lady’s animal;” he -had a contempt for paltry little objectless canters over the hills with -limp-handed women and children flopping about on his back. He liked -to feel there was work ahead; a long climb and a bad trail did not -frighten him; he looked his best when he was breasting a keen ascent -with the wind of the summit parting his thin forelock, his ears pointed -forward, his breath coming quick and deep, his broad haunches working -under the saddle. Poor work indeed he must have thought it, hustling -a lazy, sulky old donkey along a trail that was as nothing to his own -sinewy legs. - -After Billy came the pack-mule, driven by the man from Turner’s, -a square-jawed, bronzed young fellow, mounted also on a mule and -conversing amicably with John Brown. The lunch-bag had been passed -down the line, but there was no halt, except for water at the crossing -of a little gulch. The trail wound in and out among the spurs of the -hills and up and down the rock-faced heights. They passed a roofless -cabin, once the dwelling of some placer-miners, and farther on the -half-obliterated ditch they had built leading to the deserted bars, -where a few gray, warped sluice-boxes were falling to pieces in the sun. - -Between two and three o’clock they came in sight of some large -pine-trees, sheltering a half circle of white sand beach that sloped -smoothly to the river. Above the pines a granite cliff rose, two -hundred and fifty feet of solid rock against a hill five hundred or -more feet higher, that shut off the morning sun. Between the cliff and -the lava bluffs opposite, the eastern and western shadows nearly met -across the river. There were deep, still pools among the rocks near -shore, where the large trout congregate. Below the shadowed bend, the -river spread out again suddenly in the sunlight that flashed white as -silver on the ripples of a gravelly bar. This was the spot chosen at -sight for the fishing-camp. - -A bald eagle perched on a turret of the lava bluffs across the river -watched the party descending the trail. At the report of a rifle -echoing among the rocks, he rose and wheeled away over the pine-trees -without hurrying himself or dropping a single feather in acknowledgment -of the shot. It was a dignified, rather scornful retreat. - -Where the trail hugs the cliff closest on its way around the bend, it -passes under a big overhanging rock. No one, I am sure, ever rode under -it for the first time without looking up at the black crack between -it and the cliff, and wondering how far up the crack goes, and when -the huge mass will fall. There is a story that the Bannock braves, -following this trail on the war-path, always fired a passing arrow up -into the crack,--perhaps out of the exuberance of youth and war-paint, -perhaps to propitiate the demon of the rocks, lest he should drop one -of his superfluous boulders on their feathered heads. The white men who -followed the trail after the Indians had left it, amused themselves by -shooting at the arrows and dislodging them from the crack. The story -must be true, because there are no arrows left in the crack! Jack -stared up at it many times, and never could see one. - - * * * * * - -So now they were at home for a week in the wilderness. Jack followed -Brown about as he was “making camp,” cutting tent-pegs and poles -and putting up the old A-tent, which had seen service in the army -and in many frontier camps since it was “condemned” and sold at -quartermaster’s sale. - -The man from Turner’s had taken another bite of lunch and returned with -his animals. He bade Jack to watch for him as he passed the camp, day -after to-morrow, with his mule-train for Atlanta. - -The kitchen was unpacked down on the beach and the fireplace chosen,--a -big, wedge-shaped rock,--in the lee of which John built a fire, not -for warmth, but for the sake of a good bed of coals for cooking. Mrs. -Gilmour was resting in the tent, under the pine-trees. Mr. Gilmour had -gone up the river to catch some trout for supper. - -After four o’clock the sun left the river bank, but all the colors were -distinct and strong,--the white beach, the dark pine boughs against the -sky, the purple colors in the rocks, and the spots of pale green and -yellow lichen on them, the changing tints in the dark water swinging -smoothly around the bend and then flashing out into a broad sheet of -silvery sparkles over the bar. It was as if it went gravely around the -shadowy bend, and then broke out laughing in the bright light. - -As it grew darker, the kitchen fire began to glow red against the big -gray rock. In front of it John was stooping to heap coals on the lid -of the bake-kettle, where the bread was spread in a thin, round cake -for cooking. - -There were three big trout for supper and four or five little ones. The -big ones were a noble weight to tell of, but the little ones tasted the -best when they were taken out of the bake-kettle on hot tin plates and -served with thin slices of bacon and camp bread. - -The horses had been turned loose up the trail but now came wandering -back, Billy leading, followed by Pete, who was hobbled but managed to -keep up with him, and Mrs. O’Dowd meandering meekly in the rear. They -were on their way home, having decided that was the best place to pass -the night, but John turned them back. After supper he watered them at -the river and took them up the trail to a rudely fenced inclosure on -the bluffs, where there was better pasture. - -Sleepy-time for Jack came very soon after supper, but as the tent was -some distance from the camp-fire,--a lonesome bedroom for a little boy -to lie in by himself,--he was rolled up in a blanket and allowed to -sleep by the camp-fire. The last thing he could remember was the sound -of the river and the wind in the great pine boughs overhead and voices -around him talking about the stars that could be seen in the night -sky between the fire-illumined tree branches. The great boughs moved -strangely in the hot breath of the fire that lit them from below. The -sky between looked black as ink and the stars blazed far and keen. -John was washing up the dishes on his knees by the light of a candle -fastened in a box set upon end to shield it from draughts. Jack watched -the light shining up into his face and on his hands as he moved them -about. It seemed as if he had slept but a moment, when they were -shaking him and trying to stand him on his feet and he was stumbling -along to the tent with his father’s arm around him. - -How they crawled about in the low tent, by the light of a candle -fastened by its own drippings to a stone, and took off a few clothes -and put on more (for the September nights were cold); how cosy it was, -lying down in his blankets inside the white walls of the tent with the -curtain securely tied against the wind, with his father close beside -him and his father’s gun on the outside within reach of an outstretched -hand; how the light went out and the river sounded on and some twigs -scraped against the tent in the wind,--this is about all Jack can -remember of his first night under canvas. - -The morning was gray and cold. The sun had been up several hours before -it was seen in the camp. Mr. Gilmour and Mr. Dane were out with the -earliest light for trout. Jack was the next to leave the tent and go -shivering down to the river to wash, and then run to warm his red hands -and button his jacket at the kitchen fire, where John was again cooking -bread. John and Mr. Dane had slept on the beach with only the pine -boughs for a roof and saddle-bags for a pillow. - -When Mrs. Gilmour appeared, last of all, Jack was just finishing his -second chunk of last night’s bread, leaning against the angle of the -rock fireplace out of the smoke that made a pale blue wavering flight -upward and aslant the dark pine boughs. - -The fishermen had returned with trout, but not a surfeit of trout, for -breakfast. The bread was taken out of the bake-kettle and the trout put -in to plump up in their own steam over the coals. The coffee smelled -deliciously in the sweet, cold air. The broiled ham was welcome, -even after a first course of trout, and Jack was good for a third -of bread and honey. He could use his fingers and wipe up the honey -with the broken bread until his tin plate shone, not to speak of his -countenance, and nobody observed him except to smile. - -But something had happened that morning besides breakfast. Mr. Dane had -lost a tremendous trout, after playing him a long time and tiring him -out. He had been fishing from a rock, with deep water all around him. -The big fish seemed quite still and tame as he was drawn in, but as his -tail touched the rock, with a frantic rebound he made one last plunge -for the water and got off. If there had been but a beach to land him on! - -Then, a man had been shot the evening before at Atlanta, the big -mining-camp of the Saw-tooth range; and another man riding a tired -horse had passed the camp at daybreak, on his way to Boise for a -surgeon. The horse he had started with from Atlanta had given out about -twenty miles from that place; he had walked ten or fifteen miles along -the mountain trail in the darkness before he could get another horse. -He wished to change this for one of the horses from the fishing-camp, -but they were back on the bluffs and he concluded to go on and change -at Gillespie’s. He had traveled about fifty miles that night, on -horseback and on foot, over a trail that some of us would not enjoy -riding over by daylight. - -His wife and their young child were at his horse-ranch away back on -the hills, alone, except for some of the cowboys. He had gone up to -Atlanta to attend the ball. The man who had been shot was a stranger to -him,--had a brother in Boise, he believed. He had breathed his horse a -moment while he talked to John and took a bite of something to eat, and -then went on his way. - -It was strange to think that all this was part of those dark hours of -the night that had passed so peacefully to the sleepers on the river -beach,--the miners’ ball, the shooting, the night ride in haste, the -wife waiting at the lonely ranch in the hills for her husband’s return. - -The day passed with fishing and sketching and eating, and beauty of -sunlight and shadow on rocks and trees and river. - -Brown had built a table and placed boxes around it for seats. The -gray rock fireplace had got well blackened, and the camp had taken on -a homelike look. Jack had gone for a glorious walk up the trail with -Brown, to see if the fence on the bluffs was all right, and if there -was a way down to the river from the bluffs by which the horses could -go down to drink. There was one, a rather obscure way; but Billy was -clever, and Pete was a “rustler,” and Mrs. O’Dowd could be relied upon -to follow the lead of her betters. But they did not seem to be eating, -and Jack fancied they looked homesick in their high pasture, as if the -scenery did not console them for being sent off so far from camp. - -That second day Mr. Gilmour went fishing alone down the river. John -was gathering firewood; the boy and his mother were in the tent; Mr. -Dane sat in the doorway, tending a little fire he had made outside, and -reading aloud, while Mrs. Gilmour made a languid sketch of him, in his -red-hooded blanket robe. Mr. Dane was the first to hear a shout from -down the river. He threw off the red robe, seized a rifle, and ran down -the shore in the direction Mr. Gilmour had taken. The shout meant, to -him, game of a kind that could not be tackled with a fly-rod. - -In a moment or two he came running back for more cartridges. Mr. -Gilmour had met a black bear, and they were going after him. John -followed with the axe. Some time passed, but no shots were heard. At -last the men came back, warm and merry, though disappointed of their -game. The bear had got away. It was tantalizing to think how fat and -sleek he must have been, after his summer in the mountains. There would -be no bear-steaks for supper that night, and no glossy dark skin to -carry back in triumph to the home camp and spread before next winter’s -hearth wherever the house-fires might be lighted. - -Mr. Gilmour had been walking down the trail when he saw the bear ahead -of him, crossing the high flat toward the trail and making straight -for the river. If both had continued to advance, there would have been -a meeting, and as Mr. Gilmour was armed only with a fly-rod and a -pistol, he preferred the meeting should be postponed. Then he stopped -and shouted for Dane. The bear came on, and Mr. Gilmour fell back, -leisurely, he said, toward camp. He did not care to bring his game in -alive, he said, without giving the camp due warning, so he shouted -again. It was the second shout Dane had heard. The way of his retreat -led him down into a little gulch, where he lost sight of the bear. - -It did not take very long to tell the story of the hunt, and then Mr. -Gilmour went back to his fishing. The sun came out. The fire in front -of the tent was a heap of smoking ashes; the magazine story palled; the -sketch was pronounced not worth finishing; and then the pack-train for -Atlanta came tinkling and shuffling down the trail. Fourteen sleek, -handsome mules, with crisp, clipped manes, like the little Greek horses -on ancient friezes, passed in single file between a man riding ahead -on the “bell-mare,” and another bringing up the rear of the train, -swinging his leathern “blind” as he rode. This one was the man from -Turner’s. He had met Mr. Gilmour farther down the river, and heard the -story about the bear, and offered to leave his dog, which he said was -a good bear-dog. But the dog wouldn’t be left, and so the picturesque -freight-train went its way, under the Indian’s rock, and up the steep -climb beyond. High above the river they could be seen, footing with -neat steps the winding trail, their packs swinging and shuffling with -a sidelong motion, in time to the regular pace, while the bell sounded -fainter and fainter. - -Bear stories were told by the camp-fire that night; and Mr. Dane slept -with his rifle handy, and John with an axe. John said he was a better -shot with an axe than with a rifle. Jack thought he should dream of -bears, but he didn’t. The next morning he went with John Brown up to -the high pasture to bring down one of the horses. Brown was to ride -down to Gillespie’s and make sure of transportation for the party home, -the next day but one. - -Jack had the happiness of riding Billy barebacked down the trail, -following John on Pete, Mrs. O’Dowd, as usual, in the rear. Mr. Gilmour -was surprised to see all the animals coming down, and he noticed at -once how hollow and drooping the horses looked. John explained that -they had evidently not been able to find the trail leading down to the -river, and had been without water all the time they had been kept -upon the bluffs. He could see by their tracks where they had wandered -back and forth along the edge of the bluffs, seeking a way down. How -glad they must have been of that deep draught from the river, that -had mocked them so long with the sound of its waters! No one liked to -find fault with Brown, who was faithful and tender-hearted; and it was -stupid of horses, used to the range, not to have gone back from the -bluffs and followed the fence until they found the outlet to the river. -They quickly revived with water and food, which they could once more -enjoy now that their long thirst was quenched. Brown rode Pete down to -Gillespie’s, and returned in the afternoon with word that Mr. Gillespie -himself would come for the party on Saturday, with the outfit required. - -The evening was cool and cloudy; twilight came on early, and Brown -cooked supper with the whole family gathered around his fire, hungrily -watching him. There was light enough from the fire, mingled with the -wan twilight on the beach, by which to eat supper. John was filling -the tin cups with coffee, when horses’ feet were heard coming down -the trail from the direction of Boise. A man on a gray horse stopped -under the Indian’s rock and looking down on the group on the beach -below asked what was “the show for a bite of something to eat.” He was -invited to share what there was, and throwing the bridle loose on his -horse’s neck he dropped out of the saddle and joined the party at the -table. - -He was the man from Atlanta, returning from his errand to Boise. No -doctor had been willing to go up from Boise, so he said, and the -friends of the wounded man had telegraphed to C--, and a doctor had -gone across from there. The messenger had stayed over a day in Boise to -rest, and was now on his way home to his ranch in the hills. He gave -the details of the shooting,--the usual details, received with the -usual comments and speculations as to the wounded man’s recovery,--then -the talk turned upon sport, and bear stories and fish stories were in -order. The man from Atlanta knew what good hunting was, from his own -account. He told how he had struck a bear track about as big as a man’s -hand in the woods and followed it some distance, thinking it was “about -his size,” and all of a sudden he had come upon a fresh track about as -big--he picked up the cover of the bake-kettle--“as big as that.” Then -he turned around and came home. It was suggested (after the man from -Atlanta had gone) that the big track he saw was where the bear had _sat -down_. - -It was now deep dusk in the woods; only the latest and palest sky -gleams touched the water. The stranger included the entire party in -his cordial invitation to stop at his place if they ever got so far up -the river, mounted his horse and quickly disappeared up the trail. He -expected to reach his home some time that night. - -The next day was the last in camp. It was still gray, cold weather, and -the tent among the pine-trees looked inviting, with a suggestion of a -fire outside; but there were sketches to be finished and last walks to -be taken and a big mess of trout to be caught to take home. Jack had -a little enterprise of his own to complete,--the filling of a tin can -Brown had given him with melted pine gum, which hardened into clear, -solid resin. The can was nearly full, and Jack had various experiments -in his mind which he intended to try with it on his return. Brown had -told him it would make an excellent boot-grease mixed with tallow--and -if he _should_ want to make a pair of Norwegian snowshoes next winter, -it would be just the thing to rub on the bottom of the wood to make it -slip easily over the snow. - -Brown was going back on the hills to try to get some grouse and the boy -was allowed to go with him. They tramped off together, and the walk was -one of the memorable ones in Jack’s experience; but Jack’s mother would -not have been so contented in his absence, had she known they were -coming home by way of Deer Gulch, one of the most likely places in the -neighborhood of the camp for a meeting with a bear. - -Mr. Gilmour was the enthusiast about fishing, and so it happened that -Mr. Dane was generally the one to stay about camp if John were off -duty. The fishing should have been good, but it was not, partly because -the Chinese placer-miners on the river had a practice of emptying the -deep pools of trout by means of giant-powder, destroying a hundred -times as many fish as they ate. The glorious fishing was higher up the -river and in its tributaries, the mountain streams. However, not a day -had passed without one meal of trout at least, and many of the fish -were of great size, and an enthusiast like Mr. Gilmour cares for the -sport, not for the fish! - -The last camp-fire, Jack thought, was the best one of all; it was built -farther down the beach, since a change of wind had made the corner by -the rock fireplace uncomfortable. A big log, rolled up near the fire on -its wind-ward side, made an excellent settle-back, the seat of which -was the sand with blankets spread over it. The company sat in a row -facing the fire, and Mrs. Gilmour was provided with a tin plate for a -hand-screen. Perhaps they all were rather glad they were going home -to-morrow. Mrs. Gilmour wanted to see Polly, the sand floor of the tent -was getting lumpy, and they all were beginning to long for the wider -outlook and the fuller life of the home camp at headquarters. Beautiful -as the great pine-trees, the sheltered beach, and the shadows on the -water had looked to them after their long, hot ride over the mountain -trail, there were always the granite cliff on one side and the lava -bluffs on the other, and no far-off lines for the eye to rest upon. -People who have lived in places where there is a great deal of sky and -a wide horizon are never long contented in nooks and corners of the -earth, however lovely their detail may be. - -At all events, the talk was gayer that last night by the camp-fire -than any night except the first one of their stay. At last one of -the company--the smallest one--slid quietly out of sight among the -blankets, and no more was heard of him until the time came to dig him -out, and restore him to consciousness. - -After Mr. and Mrs. Gilmour and Jack--poor little sleepy Jack--had gone -down the shore to their tent, Mr. Dane and Brown rolled the log settle -upon the fire. It burned all night, and there were brands left with -which to light the kitchen fire. - -Breakfast was a sort of “clean-up,” as the miners say. The last of the -ham, the last of the honey, one trout, left over from last night’s -supper which the company quarreled about, each in turn refusing -it,--even Jack, who seldom refused anything in the eating line,--and -leaving it finally for John, who perhaps suspecting there was something -wrong with it threw it out upon the beach. - -After breakfast everybody fell to packing, except Jack, who roamed -around, with his leggings and his one spur on, watching for Mr. -Gillespie and the animals. - -Mrs. Gilmour had finished her small share of the packing, and with Jack -climbed up among the rocks in the shadow of the cliff. Mr. Gillespie -had arrived and on the beach below he and Brown were loading the -pack-horse with the camp stuff. - -The two boxes in which the kitchen was packed went up first, one on -each side of the pack-saddle, set astride the horse’s back, and in -shape something like a saw-horse. The boxes were balanced and made fast -with ropes. The roll of blankets filled the space between them; an axe -was poked in, or a fishing-pole protruded from the heap; more blankets -went up, then the tent was spread over all and the load securely roped -into place,--Mr. Gillespie and Brown, one on either side, pulling -against each other, and the patient old horse being squeezed between. - -Mr. Gillespie had brought the usual “lady’s animal” for Mrs. Gilmour to -ride which, in the West always means an article of horseflesh which no -man would care to bestride, but on which it will do to “pack” women and -children about. - -The chief event of the journey home was the fording of the river, once -above Gillespie’s and once below, thus avoiding the highest and hottest -part of the trail which they would pass at midday. Neither Jack nor his -mother had ever forded a stream on horseback before. The sun was high, -the breeze was strong, the river bright and noisy. Giddily rippling and -sparkling, it rushed past the low willows along its shore. - -Mrs. O’Dowd was whacked into her place in the line between Billy and -the lady’s animal, and kept her feet, if not her temper. And so, in due -time, they arrived at the home ford and the ferry. - -Brown and Mr. Gillespie took the animals across the ford, but the -others were glad to exchange the saddle for the boat. Polly, in a -fresh, white frock, with her hair blown over her cheeks, was watching -from the hilltop, and came flying down the trail to meet them. Every -one said how Polly had grown, and how fair she looked--and the house, -which they called a camp for its rudeness, looked quite splendid with -its lamps and books and curtains, to the sunburnt, dusty, _real_ -campers; and as Jack said, it did seem good to sit in a chair again. It -was noticeable, however, that Jack sat lightly in chairs for several -days after the ride home; but he had not flinched nor whined, and -everybody acknowledged that he had won his single spur fairly well for -an eight-year-old. - -[1] Poisoned meat was laid near the chicken-house one night after -the coyotes had carried off some fine young Plymouth Rocks (with a -baleful instinct they always picked out the best of the fowls), and was -eaten by them. Two of the robbers were found next day, dead, by the -irrigation ditch, where they had crept to quench their thirst, and one -was afterward seen, from time to time, in the sage-brush, a hairless -spectre. The coyote mothers no doubt told their babies of this gruesome -outcast as a warning, not against chicken-stealing, which must be one -of the coyote virtues, but against poison and other desperate arts of -man. - - - - -A VISIT TO JOHN’S CAMP - - -John Brown had concluded to “quit work and go to mining.” Not that -mining is not work; but a man doesn’t get so tired working for himself, -choosing his own hours and resting when he pleases, as he does working -in another man’s time. It is like picking tame blackberries inside the -garden fence for the family table, and picking wild blackberries in the -fields and hedgerows and eating as one goes. Every boy knows how that -is; and some of these good-natured, wandering, Western men are very -like big boys. - -John was still the teamster at the engineers’ camp in the cañon. He -had been a sailor in his native Northern seas. He had been a fisherman -of the Skager Rack; and more than once, by his own story, he had been -driven out to sea, when drifting from his trawls, and picked up by one -of the numerous vessels of the fishing-fleet that is always lying off -or on the entrance to the strait. He had been a teamster on the plains -where the Indians were “bad.” Once, when crossing the great Snake River -plains, he had picked up a curious stone shaped by the Indians which he -recognized as a “sinker,” such as he himself had made and used on the -fishing-grounds of the far North. John had a little ranch of his own, -and he owned half a house. The other half of the house was on the land -of the adjoining settler. The two men had taken up preëmption claims, -side by side, and to save expense had built a joint-dwelling on the -boundary line between the two claims. Each man lived in his own side -of the house--the half that rested on his land. John had lived six -months on his claim, as the law requires before a settler can secure -a title to his land. He was now working to get the money to improve -it into a farm. He was a bit of a carpenter; and in many odd ways he -was clever with his hands, as fishermen and sailors almost always are. -Jack Gilmour possessed a riding-whip, such as the cowboys call a -“quirt,” which John had braided for him, with skill and economy, out -of leather thongs cut from scraps of waste leather, old boot-legs, or -saddle-straps, discarded by the camps. - -Such a companion as this, so experienced and variously gifted, and -so uniformly gentle, was sure to be missed. Jack found the cañon a -much duller place without his friend. He and Charley Moy, the Chinese -cook, used to discourse about John, and recount his virtues, much as -we linger over praises of the dead--although John’s camp was but five -miles away, and he himself in good health, for all any one knew to the -contrary. - -After a while, Jack got permission to ride up the river to John’s camp -and pay him a visit; and he was to be allowed to make the trip alone. -Jack had been promoted, since his fishing expedition of two summers -before, from a donkey and one spur to a pony of his own, a proper boy’s -saddle, and two spurs, all in consequence of his advancing years and -the increasing length of his legs. The pony was called “Lollo,” for -just when he came the children had been reading “Jackanapes,” and -the new pony, like the pony in the story, was “red-haired.” He had -belonged, not to the gypsies, but to the Indians, who had broken and -branded him. One of his ears was clipped, and the brand on his flank -was a circle with a bar through the centre. He had the usual thick mane -and tail of a “cayuse,” a white nose, and four white feet. - -Now, there is an ancient rhyme which says: - - “One white foot, buy him; - Two white feet, try him; - Three white feet, deny him; - Four white feet and a white nose, - Take off his hide and give him to the crows!” - -But Lollo shook the dust of the trail from his four white feet, in -defiance of the crows; nor was he ever known to hide the light of his -white nose under a bushel, except when there were oats in the bottom of -it. - -Jack’s mother advised him to make sure of his lunch by taking it with -him, in case John might be absent from the camp in the hills. But for -some reason (it is very difficult to know a boy’s real reasons) Jack -preferred to take the chances of the trip without provisions. - -His father told him that when he had ridden as far as John Turner’s, -by the river trail, he must take the upper trail which runs along the -bluffs. - -As it turned out, this was mistaken advice. The upper trail was not a -good one, as Jack soon discovered; and in certain places, where it was -highest and steepest above the river, it had been nearly rubbed out by -the passage of herds of stock, crowding and climbing past one another -and sliding over the dry and gritty slope. - -In one spot it disappeared as a footing altogether, and here Jack was -obliged to dismount and creep along on all fours, Lollo following as he -could. A horse can go, it is said, wherever a man can go without using -his hands. As Jack used his hands it was hardly fair to expect Lollo to -follow; but the pony did so. These Western horses seem as ready as the -men to risk themselves on dangerous trails, and quite as sure of what -they are about. - -What with all these ups and downs, the breeze on the bluffs, and the -natural state of a boy’s appetite about midday, Jack was hoping that -lunch would be ready at John’s camp by the time he reached it; and it -is possible that he wished he had not been so proud, and had taken a -“bite” in his pocket, as his mother advised him. - -John’s camp was in a gulch where a cool stream came down from the -hills. There were shade and grass and flowers in the season of flowers. -The prospect-holes were higher up beneath the basalt bluffs which rise -like palisades along the river. Earlier prospectors had driven tunnels, -such as prisoners dig under the foundations of a wall, some extending a -few feet, some farther, under the base of the bluffs. John was pushing -these burrows farther still and “panning out” the dirt he obtained in -his progress. - -Jack soon found the sluice-boxes that John had built, and the “head” he -had made by damming the little stream, but he could not find John nor -John’s camp. - -He argued with himself that John would not be likely to “make camp” -below the pool of water; it was clear and cold, much better for -drinking than the murky river water. His searching, therefore, was all -up the gulch instead of down toward the river; but nowhere could he -discover a sign of John nor of his belongings. - -Jack’s mother asked him afterwards, when he told his story, why he did -not call or make a noise of some kind. He said that he did whistle, but -the place was so “still and lonesome” that he “did not like the sound -of it.” - -His hope now was that John might be at work in one of the tunnels under -the bluffs. So he climbed up there; and by this time he was quite -empty and weak-hearted with hunger. He had a fine view of the river -and its shores, rising or sinking as the bluffs came to the front, or -gave place to slopes of dry summer pastures. There was a strong wind -blowing up there, and the black lava rocks in the sun were like heated -ovens. The wind and the river’s faint ripple, so far below, were the -only sounds he could hear. There were no living sounds of labor, or of -anything that was human or homelike. - -At the entrance to one of the tunnels he saw John’s canvas overalls, -his pick and shovel, a gold-pan, and a wheelbarrow of home -construction. Jack examined the latter and saw that the only shop-made -part of it was the wheel, an old one which John must have found, and -that John by his own ingenuity had added the other parts out of such -materials as he could find. - -The sight of these things, lying unused and unclaimed by their owner, -made Jack feel more dismal than ever. The overalls, in particular, were -like a picture of John himself. The whole place began to seem strange -and awesome. - -Jack crept into the short tunnels, where it was light even at the far -end; and he saw nothing there, either to explain or to add to his -fears. But the long tunnel was as black as night. Into that he dared -not go. - -He looked once more at the dreary little heap of tools and clothing, -and with an ache that was partly in his heart, partly no doubt in the -empty region of his stomach, he climbed down again into the gulch, -mounted Lollo and rode away. - -When he came to the bad place on the trail, he slid down, keeping ahead -of Lollo, who shuffled along cautiously behind him. Lollo would not -have stepped on Jack, but he might have slipped and fallen on him. -However, a cayuse on a bad trail attends strictly to business, and is -quite safe if he can keep but two of his feet on firm ground. - -If Jack’s father had known about that place on the trail he never -would have sent Jack by that way; and it was well that his mother had -no notion of it. As it was, they were merely surprised to see the boy -returning about the middle of the hottest part of the afternoon, and -were not a little sorry for his disappointment when they heard the -story of the trip. - -Mrs. Gilmour shared the boy’s anxiety about John; and Charley Moy, -while he was giving Jack his dinner, told some very painful stories of -miners done away with on their solitary claims for the sake of their -supposed earnings. Mr. Gilmour said there might be a dozen explanations -of John’s absence; and, moreover, that Jack hadn’t found the camp at -all, and the camp should be there, or some sign of its having been -there must remain to indicate the spot. - -Still the boy could not dismiss his fears, until two or three days -later John himself stopped at the cañon, on his way to town, not only -alive but in excellent health and spirits. - -He told Jack that he _had_ been at his camp all the time the boy was -searching for him; but the camp was at the mouth of the gulch, close to -the river, where he had found a spring of pure cold water. Very near -the spring was a miner’s shanty, deserted but still quite habitable. -The advantages of house and spring together had decided John to camp -there, instead of higher up and nearer to his ditches. He urged Jack -to make the trip again, and in a week or so the boy repeated his visit. - -This time he did not take the upper trail. John said that that trail -was only used at high water in the spring, when the river rose above -the lower trail. - -The lower trail along the river bank was safe and pleasant, and not -so hot as the upper one; and this time there were no adventures. -Adventures do very well to tell of afterward, but they do not always -make a happy journey. - -John was at home, and seemed very glad to see the boy. He took him -up on the bluffs to show him his workings, and Jack found it very -different, up there by the tunnels,--not at all strange and anxious. He -did not mind the dark tunnel a bit, with John’s company and a candle to -guide him. - -John showed him the under surface of the bluffs, exposed where he had -undermined them and scraped away the dirt. These lava bluffs were once -a boiling flood of melted rock. The ground it flowed over and rested -upon after it cooled had been the bed of a river. In its soft state -the lava had taken the impression of the surface of the river-bed, -and after it cooled the forms remained the same; so that the under -surface of these ancient bluffs was like a plaster cast of the ancient -river-bed. The print could be seen of stones smoothed by water, and -some of the stones were still embedded in the lava crust. - -Now this river came down from the mountains, where every prospector -in Idaho knows there is plenty of gold for those who can discover it. -John argued that the old river-bed must have had, mixed with its sand, -fine gold for which no one had ever prospected. The new bed which the -river had worn for itself at the foot of the bluffs probably contained -quite as much gold, sunk between stones or lodged in potholes in the -rocks (as it lodges against the riffles in a sluice-box), but no one -could hope to get _that_ gold, for the water which covered it. The old -river-bed was covered only with rock, which “stays put” while you dig -beneath it. - -So, on the strength of this ingenious theory, John was digging where -the other theorists had dug before him. He was not getting rich, but -he was “making wages” and enjoying himself in the pleasant camp in the -gulch; and as yet he had not found any of the rich holes. - -He made a great feast in the boy’s honor. The chief dish was stewed -grouse, rolled up in paste and boiled like dumplings. Jack said those -grouse dumplings were about the best eating he had ever “struck.” They -also had potatoes, baked in the ashes, and canned vegetables and stewed -apples and baking-powder biscuits and honey; and to crown the feast, -John made a pot of strong black coffee and sweetened it very sweet. - -But here the guest was in a quandary. He refused the coffee, because -he was not allowed to drink coffee at home; but he could see that his -refusal made John uncomfortable, for there was no milk; there was -nothing else that he could offer the boy to drink but water, and water -seemed very plain at a feast. - -Jack wondered which was worse--for a boy to break a rule without -permission, or to seem to cast reproach upon a friend’s entertainment -by refusing what was set before him. He really did not care for the -coffee; it looked very black and bitter; but he cared so much for John -that it was hard to keep on refusing. Still, he did refuse, but he did -not tell John his reason. Somehow he didn’t think that it would sound -manly for a big boy, nearly twelve years old, to say he was forbidden -to drink coffee. - -Afterward he told his mother about it, and asked her if he had done -right. His mother’s opinion was that he had, but that he might have -done it in a better way by telling John his reason for refusing the -coffee. Then there would have been no danger of John’s supposing that -the boy refused because he did not like that kind of coffee. - -Jack’s little problem set his mother thinking how often we do what -is right, at some cost to ourselves, perhaps, but do it in such an -awkward, proud way, that we give pain to others and so undo the value -of our honest effort to be good; and how, in the matter of feasts, it -is much easier in our time for a guest to decline anything that does -not suit him in the way of eating and drinking than it used to be long -ago, when a gentleman was thought not to have “dined” unless he had -both eaten and drunk more than was good for him; and how, in the matter -of rules, it is only little silly boys who are ashamed to confess -that they are not their own masters. The bravest and wisest men have -been keepers of simple rules in simple matters, and in greater ones -respecters of a loving Intelligence above their own, whose laws they -were proud to obey. - -The courage that displays itself in excesses is happily no longer the -fashion; rather the courage that keeps modestly within bounds, and can -say “no” without offense to others. - - - - -NOVEMBER IN THE CAÑON - - -The long season of fair autumn weather was drawing to a close. -Everybody was tired of sunshine; there had been nearly six months of -it, and the face of nature in southern Idaho was gray with dust. A dark -morning or a cloudy sunset was welcome, even to the children, who were -glad of the prospect of any new kind of weather. - -But no rain came. The river had sunk so low in its bed it barely -murmured on the rocks, like a sleeper disturbed in his dream. When the -children were indoors, with windows shut and fire crackling, they could -hear no sound of water; and this cessation of a voice inseparable from -the life of the cañon added to the effect of waiting which belonged to -these still fall days. - -The talk of the men was of matters suited to the season. It was said -the Chinamen’s wood-drive had got lodged in Moore’s Creek on its way -to the river, there being so little water in the creek this year, and -might not get down at all, which would be almost a total loss to the -Chinamen. Charley Moy knew the boss Chinaman of the “drive,” and said -that he had had bad luck now two seasons running. - -The river was the common carrier between the lumber-camps in the -mountains and the consumers of wood in the towns and ranches below. -Purchasers who lived on the river-bank were accustomed to stop their -winter’s supply of firewood as it floated by. It was taken account -of and paid for when the owners of the drive came to look up their -property. - -Every year three drives came down the river. Goodwin’s log-drive came -first, at high water, early in the summer. The logs were from twelve to -twenty feet long. Each one was marked with the letters M H. These were -the first two of Mr. Goodwin’s initials, and were easily cut with an -axe; the final initial, G, being difficult to cut in this rude way, -was omitted; but everybody knew that saw-logs marked M H belonged to -Goodwin’s drive. They looked like torpedo-boats as they came nosing -along with an ugly rolling motion through the heavy current. - -The men who followed this first drive were rather a picked lot for -strength and endurance, but they made slow progress past the bend in -the cañon. Here a swift current and an eddy together combined to create -what is called a jam. The loggers were often seen up to their waists in -water for hours, breaking up the jam and working the logs out into the -current. When the last one was off the men would get into their boat--a -black, flat-bottomed boat, high at stem and stern like a whaleboat--and -go whooping down in mid-current like a mob of schoolboys upon some -dangerous sort of lark. These brief voyages between the jams must have -been the most exciting and agreeable part of log-driving. - -After Goodwin’s drive came the Frenchmen’s cord-wood drive; and last of -all, when the river was lowest, came the Chinamen’s drive, making the -best of what water was left. - -There is a law of the United States which forbids that an alien -shall cut timber on the public domain. A Chinaman, being an alien -unmistakably and doubly held as such in the West, cannot therefore -cut the public timber for his own immediate profit or use; but he can -take a contract to furnish it to a white dealer in wood, at a price -contingent upon the safe delivery of the wood. But if the river should -fail to bring it in time for sale, the cost of cutting and driving, for -as far as he succeeds in getting it down, is a dead loss to the Chinese -contractor, and the wood belongs to whoever may pick it out of the -water when the first rise of the creek in spring carries it out. - -The Chinese wood-drivers are singular, wild-looking beings. Often at -twilight, when they camped on the shore below the house, the children -would hover within sight of the curious group the men made around their -fire--an economical bit of fire, sufficient merely to cook the supper -of fish and rice. - -All is silence before supper, in a camp of hungry, wet white men, but -the Chinamen were always chattering. The children were amused to see -them “doing” their hair like women,--combing out the long, black, -witch-locks in the light of the fire and braiding them into pigtails, -or twisting them into “Psyche knots.” They wore several layers of -shirts and sleeveless vests, one over another, long waterproof -boots drawn up over their knees, and always the most unfitting of -hats perched on top of the coiled braids or above the Psyche knots. -Altogether, take them wet or dry, on land or in the water, no male or -female of the white race could show anything in the way of costume to -approach them. - -The cloudy weather continued. The nights grew sharper, and the men said -it was too cold for rain; if a storm came now it would bring snow. -There was snow already upon the mountains and the high pastures, for -the deer were seeking feeding-grounds in the lower, warmer gulches, -and the stock had been driven down from the summer range to winter in -the valleys. - -One afternoon an old man, a stranger, was seen coming down the gulch -back of the house, followed by a pack-horse bearing a load. The gulch -was now all yellow and brown, and the man’s figure was conspicuous for -the light, army-blue coat he wore--the overcoat of a private soldier. -He “hitched” at the post near the kitchen door, and uncovering his load -showed two fat haunches of young venison which he had brought to sell. - -No peddler of the olden time, unstrapping his pack in the lonely -farmhouse kitchen, could have been more welcome than this stranger with -his wild merchandise to the children of the camp. They stood around so -as not to miss a word of the conversation while Charley Moy entertained -him with the remnants of the camp lunch. The old buckskin-colored horse -seemed as much of a character as his master. Both his ears were cropped -half off, giving a sullen and pugilistic expression to his bony head. -There was no more arch to his neck than to the handle of a hammer. His -faded yellow coat was dry, matted and dusty as the hair of a tramp who -sleeps in haymows. Without bit or bridle, he followed his master like -a dog. In the course of conversation it appeared that the cropped ears -were not scars of battle nor marks of punishment, but the record of a -journey when he and his master were caught out too late in the season, -and the old horse’s ears had both been frozen. - -The children were surprised to learn that their new acquaintance was a -neighbor, residing in a dugout in Cottonwood Gulch, only three miles -away. They knew the place well, had picnicked there one summer day, -and had played in the dugout. Had not Daisy, the pet fawn, when they -had barred him out of the dugout because he filled up the whole place, -jumped upon the roof and nearly stamped it in?--like Samson pulling -down the pillars of the temple? But no one had been living there then. -The old man said he used the dugout only in winter. It was his town -house. In summer he and the old horse took their freedom on the hills, -hunting and prospecting for mineral--not so much in the expectation -of a fortune as from love of the chances and risks of the life. Was -it not lonely in Cottonwood Gulch when the snows came? the children -asked. Sometimes it was lonely, but he had good neighbors: the boys at -Alexander’s (the horse-ranch) were down from the summer range, and they -came over to his place of an evening for a little game of cards, or he -went over to their place. He would be very glad, however, of any old -newspapers or novels that might be lying around camp; for he was short -of reading-matter in the dugout. - -There was always a pile of old periodicals and “picture papers” on -Charley Moy’s ironing-table; he was proud to contribute his entire -stock on hand to the evening company in the dugout. The visitor then -modestly hinted that he was pretty tired of wild meat: had Charley such -a thing as the rough end of a slab of bacon lying around, or a ham bone -to spare? A little mite of lard would come handy, and if he could let -him have about five pounds of flour, it would be an accommodation, and -save a journey to town. These trifles he desired to pay for with his -venison; but that was not permitted, under the circumstances. - -Before taking his leave the old hunter persuaded Polly to take a -little tour on his horse, up and down the poplar walk, at a slow and -courteous pace. Polly had been greatly interested in her new friend -at a distance, but this was rather a formidable step toward intimacy. -However, she allowed herself to be lifted upon the back of the old -crop-eared barbarian, and with his master walking beside her she paced -sedately up and down between the leafless poplars. - -The old man’s face was pale, notwithstanding the exposure of his life; -the blood in his cheek no longer fired up at the touch of the sun. His -blue coat and the yellow-gray light of the poplar walk gave him an -added pallor. Polly was a pink beside him, perched aloft in her white -bonnet and ruffled pinafore. - -The old sway-backed horse sulked along, refusing to “take any hand” in -such a trifling performance. He must have felt the insult of Polly’s -babyish heels dangling against his weather-beaten ribs, that were -wont to be decorated with the pendent hoofs and horns of his master’s -vanquished game. - -Relations between the family and their neighbor in the dugout continued -to be friendly and mutually profitable. The old ex-soldier’s venison -was better than could be purchased in town. Charley Moy saved the -picture papers for him, and seldom failed to find the half of a pie, -a cup of cold coffee, or a dish of sweets for him to “discuss” on the -bench by the kitchen door. Discovering that antlers were prized in -camp, he brought his very best pair as a present, bearing them upon his -shoulders, the furry skull of the deer against his own, back to back, -so that in profile he was double-headed, man in front and deer behind. - -But the young men of the camp were ambitious to kill their own venison. -The first light dry snow had fallen, and deer-tracks were discovered -on the trails leading to the river. A deer was seen by John Brown and -Mr. Dane, standing on the beach on the farther side, in a sort of -cul-de-sac formed by the walls of the lava bluffs as they approached -the shore. They fired at and wounded him, but he was not disabled from -running. His only way of escape was by the river in the face of the -enemy’s fire. He swam in a diagonal line down stream, and assisted by -the current gained the shore at a point some distance below, which his -pursuers were unable to reach in time to head him off. - -They followed him over the hills as far and fast as legs and wind could -carry them, but lost him finally, owing to the dog Cole’s injudicious -barking, when the policy of the men would have been to lie quiet and -let the deer rest from his wound. By his track in the snow they saw -that his left hind foot touched the ground only now and then. If Cole -had pressed him less hard the deer would have lain down to ease his -hurt, the wound would have stiffened and rendered it difficult for him -to run, and so he might have met his end shortly, instead of getting -away to die a slow and painful death. - -They lost him, and were reproached for it, needlessly, by the women of -the family. One Saturday morning, when Mr. Dane was busy in the office -over his notebooks, and Jack’s mother was darning stockings by the -fire, Jack came plunging in to say that John Brown was trying to head -off a deer that was swimming down the river--and would Mr. Dane come -with his rifle, quick? - -Below the house a wire-rope suspension bridge for foot passengers only -spanned the river at its narrowest point, from rock to rock of the -steep shore. Mr. Dane looked out and saw John Brown running to and fro -on this bridge, waving his arms, shouting, and firing stones at some -object above the bridge that was heading down stream. Mr. Dane could -just see the small black spot upon the water which he knew was the -deer’s head. He seized his gun and ran down the shore path. Discouraged -in his attempt to pass the bridge, the deer was making for the shore, -when Mr. Dane began firing at him. A stranger now arrived upon the -scene, breathless with running; he was the hunter who had started -the game and chased it till it had taken to the river. The deer was -struggling with the current in midstream, uncertain which way to turn. -Headed off from the bridge and from the nearest shore, he turned and -swam slowly toward the opposite bank. The women on the hill were nearly -crying, the hunt seemed so hopeless for the deer and so unfair: three -men, two of them with guns, combined against him, and the current so -swift and strong! It was Mr. Dane’s bullet that ended it. It struck -the deer as he lifted himself out of the water on the rocks across the -river. - -The venison was divided between the stranger who started the game and -the men of the camp who cut off its flight and prevented its escape. - -The women did not refuse to eat of it, but they continued to protest -that the hunt “was not fair;” or, in the phrase of the country, that -the deer “had no show at all.” - - - - -THE GATES ON GRANDFATHER’S FARM - - -Little Eastern children, transplanted in their babyhood to the far -West, have to leave behind them grandfathers and grandmothers, and all -the dear old places associated with those best friends of childhood. - -Of our cañon children, Jack was the only one who could remember -grandfather’s house, although Polly had romanced about it so much that -she thought she could remember. Polly was born there, but as she was -taken away only eighteen months afterward, it’s hardly likely that she -knew much about it. And Baby was born in the cañon, and never in her -life had heard the words grandpapa or grandmamma spoken in the second -person. - -For the sake of these younger ones, deprived of their natural right -to the possession of grandparents, the mother used to tell everything -she could put into words and that the children could understand about -the old Eastern home where her own childhood was spent, in entire -unconsciousness of any such fate as that which is involved in the words -“Gone West.” - -The catalogue of grandfather’s gates always pleased the children, -because in the cañon there were no gates, but the great rock gate of -the cañon itself, out of which the river ran shouting and clapping its -hands like a child out of a dark room into the sunlight, and into which -the sun took a last peep at night under the red curtain of the sunset. - -Grandfather’s gates were old gates long before Jack began to kick out -the toes of his shoes against them, or practice with their wooden -latches and latchpins. Most of them had been patched and strengthened -in weak places by hands whose work in this world was done. Each had its -own particular creak, like a familiar voice announcing as far as it -could be heard which gate it was that was opening; and to Jack’s eyes, -each one of the farm gates had a distinct and expressive countenance -of its own, which he remembered as well as he did the faces of the men -who worked in the fields. - -Two or three of them were stubborn obstacles in his path, by reason -of queer, unmanageable latches that wouldn’t shove, or weights that -a small boy couldn’t lift, or a heavy trick of yawing at the top and -dragging at the bottom, so that the only way to get through was to -squeeze through a wedge-shaped opening where you scraped the side of -your leg and generally managed to catch some part of your clothing on a -nail or on a splinter. Others fell open gayly on a down-hill grade, but -you had to tug yourself crimson in order to heave them shut again. Very -few of those heavy old field gates seemed to have been intended for the -convenience of boys. The boy on grandfather’s farm who opened a gate -was expected to shut it. If he neglected to do so he was almost sure to -hear a voice calling after him, “Hey, there! Who left that gate open?” -So on the whole it was no saving of time to slip through, besides -being a strain on one’s reputation with the farm hands. - -Some of the gates were swinging and creaking every day of the year; -others were silent for whole months together; others, like the road -gate, stood open always and never creaked, and nobody marked them, -except that the children found them good to swing upon when the grass -was not too long. - -The road gate had once been a smart one, with pickets and gray paint, -but it had stood open so many years with the grass of summer after -summer cumbering its long stride that no one ever thought of repainting -it, any more than they would of decorating the trunk of the Norway -spruce which stood nearest to it, between it and the fountain that had -ceased to play and had been filled up with earth and converted into a -flower bed. - -The road gate being always open, it follows that the garden gate was -always shut. The garden was divided from the dooryard by the lane -that went past the house to the carriage-house and stable. Visitors -sometimes spoke of the lane as the “avenue,” and of the dooryard as the -“lawn;” but these fine names were never used by grandfather himself, -nor by any of the household, nor were they appropriate to the character -of the place. The dooryard grass was left to grow rather long before it -was cut, like grandfather’s beard before he would consent to have it -trimmed. Dandelions went to seed and clover-heads reddened. Beautiful -things had time to grow up and blossom in that rich, dooryard grass, -before it was swept down by the scythe and carried away in wheelbarrow -loads to be fed to the horses. It was toward night, generally, that the -men wheeled it away, and the children used to follow load after load -to the stable, to enjoy the horses’ enjoyment of it. They always felt -that the dooryard grass belonged to them, and yielded it, at the cost -of many a joy, as their own personal contribution to those good friends -of theirs in the stable--Nelly and Duke and Dan and Nelly’s colt (which -was generally a five-year-old before it ceased to be called “the -colt”). - -The garden gate was a small one, of the same rather smart pattern as -the road gate. The grapevine which grew inside the fence--and over, -and under, and through it--had superadded an arch of its tenderest, -broadest, most luminous leaves, which spanned the gate-posts, uplifted -against the blue sky, and was so much more beautiful toward the middle -of summer than any gate could be, that no one ever looked at the little -garden gate at all, except to make sure that it was shut. - -It had a peculiar, lively click of the latch, which somehow suggested -all the pleasures of the garden within. The remembrance of it recalls -the figure of John, the gardener, in his blue denim blouse, with a -bunch of radishes and young lettuces in his clean, earthy hands. He -would take a few steps out of his way to the fountain (it had not then -been filled up), and wash the tender roots, dip the leaves and shake -them, before presenting his offering in the kitchen. - -There was another figure that often came and went when the garden gate -clicked: the little mother, the children’s grandmother, in her morning -gingham and white apron and garden hat, and the gloves without fingers -she wore when she went to cut her roses. Sometimes she wore no hat, -and the sun shone through her muslin cap. It came to a point just -above her forehead, and was finished with a bunch of narrow ribbon, -pale straw-color or lavender. Her face in the open sunlight or under -the shade of her hat had the tender fairness of one of her own faintly -tinted tea-roses. Young girls and children’s faces may be likened to -flowers, but that fairness of the white soul shining through does not -belong to youth. The soul of a mother is hardly in full bloom until her -cheek begins to sink a little and grow soft with age. - -The garden was laid out on an old-fashioned plan, in three low -terraces, each a single step above the other. A long, straight walk -divided the middle terrace, extending from the gate to the seat -underneath the grapevine and pear-tree; and another long, straight path -crossed the first one at right angles from the blackberry bushes at the -top of the garden to the arbor-vitæ hedge at the bottom. The borders -were of box, or polyanthus, or primroses, and the beds were filled with -a confusion of flowers of all seasons, crowding the spaces between the -rose-bushes; so that there where literally layers of flowers, the ones -above half hiding, half supporting the ones beneath, and all uniting to -praise the hand of the gardener that made them grow. Some persons said -the garden needed systematizing; that there was a waste of material -there. Others thought its charm lay in its careless lavishness of -beauty--as if it took no thought for what it was or had, but gave with -both hands and never counted what was left. - -It was certain you could pick armfuls, apronfuls, of flowers there, and -never miss them from the beds or the bushes where they grew. - -The hedge ran along on top of the stone wall that guarded the -embankment to the road. In June, when the sun lay hot on the whitening -dust, Jack used to lean with his arms deep in the cool, green, springy -mass of the hedge, his chin barely above its close-shorn twigs, and -stare at the slow-moving tops of the tall chestnut-trees across the -meadow, and dream of journeys and of circuses passing, with band -wagons and piebald horses and tramp of elephants and zebras with stiff -manes. How queer an elephant would look walking past the gate of Uncle -Townsend’s meadow! - -When the first crop of organ-grinders began to spread along the country -roads, Jack, atilt like a big robin in the hedge, would prick his ear -at the sound of a faint, whining sweetness, far away at the next house -but one. After a silence he would hear it again in a louder strain, at -the very next house; another plodding silence, and the joy had arrived. -The organ-man had actually perceived grandfather’s house, far back as -it was behind the fir-trees, and had stopped by the little gate at the -foot of the brick walk. Then Jack races out of the garden, slamming -the gate behind him, across the dooryard and up the piazza steps, to -beg a few pennies to encourage the man. He has already turned back his -blanket and adjusted his stick. Will grandmother please hurry? It takes -such a long time to find only four pennies, and the music has begun! - -All the neighbors’ children have followed the man, and are congregated -about him in the road below. Looks are exchanged between them and Jack, -dangling his legs over the brink of the wall, but no words are wasted. - -Then come those moments of indecision as to the best plan of bestowing -the pennies. If you give them too soon, the man may pack up the rest -of his tunes and go away; if you keep them back too long, he may get -discouraged and go, anyhow. Jack concludes to give two pennies at the -close of the first air, and make the others apparent in his hands. But -the organ-man does not seem to be aware of the other two pennies in -reserve. His melancholy eyes are fixed on the tops of the fir-trees -that swing in a circle above Jack’s head, as he sits on the wall. -“Poor man,” Jack thinks, “he is disappointed to get only two pennies! -He thinks, perhaps, I am keeping the others for the next man. How good -of him to go on playing all the same!” He plays all his tunes out -to the end. Down goes the blanket. Jack almost drops the pennies in -his haste to be in time. The man stumps away down the road, and Jack -loiters up the long path to the house, dreamy with the droning music, -and flattered to the soul by the man’s thanks and the way he took off -his hat when he said good-day. Nobody need try to make Jack believe -that an organ-grinder can ever be a nuisance. - -The road gate, the garden gate, and the gate at the foot of the path -were the only gates that ever made any pretense to paint. The others -were of the color that wind and weather freely bestow upon a good piece -of old wood that has never been planed. - -Jack became acquainted with the farm gates one by one, as his knowledge -of the fields progressed. At first, for his short legs, it was a long -journey to the barn. Here there was a gate which he often climbed -upon but never opened; for within its protection the deep growl of the -old bull was often heard, or his reddish-black head, lowering eye, and -hunched shoulders were seen emerging from the low, dark passage to the -sheds into the sunny cattle-yard. Even though nothing were in sight -more awful than a clucking hen, that doorway, always agape and always -dark as night, was a bad spot for a small boy to pass, with the gate of -retreat closed behind him and the gate of escape into the comfortable, -safe barnyard not yet open. - -The left-hand gate, on the upper side of the barn, was the children’s -favorite of all the gates. The barn was built against a hill, and the -roof on the upper side came down nearly to the ground. The children -used to go through the left-hand gate when, with one impulse, they -decided, “Let’s go and slide on the roof!” This was their summer -coasting. Soles of shoes were soon so polished that the sliders were -obliged to climb up the roof on hands and knees. It was not good for -stockings, and in those days there were no “knee-protectors;” mothers’ -darning was the only invention for keeping young knees inside of -middle-aged stockings that were expected to “last out” the summer. - -It was a blissful pastime, to swarm up the roof and lie, with one’s -chin over the ridge-pole, gazing down from that thrilling height upon -the familiar objects in the peaceful barnyard. Then to turn round -carefully and get into position for the glorious, downward rush over -the gray, slippery shingles! It could not have been any better for -the shingles than for the shoes and stockings; but no one interfered. -Perhaps grandfather remembered a time when he, too, used to slide on -roofs, and scour the soles of his shoes and polish the knees of his -stockings. - -The upper gate had another, more lasting attraction; it opened -into the lane that went up past the barn into the orchards--the -lovely, side-hill orchards. Grandfather’s farm was a side-hill farm -altogether, facing the river, with its back to the sunset. If you -sat down comfortably, adjusting yourself to the slope of the ground, -the afternoon shadows stretched far before you; you saw the low blue -mountains across the river, and the sails of sloops tacking against the -breeze. One orchard led to another, through gaps in the stone fences, -and the shadow of one tree met the shadow of its neighbor, across -those long, sun-pierced aisles. The trees bent this way and that, and -shifted their limbs under the autumn’s burden of fruit. The children -never thought of eating a whole apple, but bit one and threw it away -for another that looked more tempting, and so on till their palates -were torpid with tasting. Then they were swung up on top of the cold -slippery loads and jolted down the lane to that big upper door that -opened into the loft where the apple bins were. Here the wagon stopped -with a heavy creak. Some one picked up a child and swung it in at the -big door; some one else caught it and placed it safely on its feet at -one side; and then the men began a race,--the one in the wagon bent -upon filling a basket with apples and hoisting it in at the door, -faster than the man inside could carry it to the bin and empty it and -return for the next. - -These bins held the cider apples. The apples for market were brought -down in barrels from the orchards, and then the wagon load of apples -and children went through still another gate that led to another short -lane under more apple-trees, to the fruit-house, where, in the cool, -dim cellar that smelled of all deliciousness, the fruit was sorted -and boxed or barreled for market. And in the late afternoon, or after -supper, if the children were old enough to stay up so late, they were -allowed to ride on the loads of fruit to the steamboat landing. - -It is needless to say that this gate, which led to the fruit cellar, -was one Jack very early learned to open. In fact, it was so in -the habit of being opened that it had never acquired the trick of -obstinacy, and gave way at the least pull. - -When Jack was rather bigger, he was allowed to cross the road with his -cousin, a boy of his own age, and open the gate into Uncle Townsend’s -meadow. This piece of land had been many years in his grandfather’s -possession but it was still called by the name of its earlier owner. -Names have such a persistent habit of sticking in those long-settled -communities where there is always some one who remembers when staid old -horses were colts and gray-haired men were boys, and when the land your -father was born on was part of his grandfather’s farm on the ridge. - -A brook, which was also the waste-way from the mill, ran across Uncle -Townsend’s meadow. Sometimes it overflowed into the grass and made wet -places, and in these spots the grass was of a darker color, and certain -wild flowers were finer than anywhere else; also weeds, among others -the purple, rank “skunk’s cabbage,” which the children admired, without -wishing to gather. - -Water-cresses clung to the brookside; in the damp places the largest, -whitest bloodroot grew; under the brush along the fences and by the -rocks grew the blue-eyed hepatica, coral-red columbine, and anemones, -both pure white and those rare beauties with a pale pink flush. -Dog-tooth violets, wild geraniums, Solomon’s seal, Jack-in-the-pulpit, -came in due season, and ferns of every pattern of leaf and scroll. -Later, when the wet places were dry, came the tall fire-lilies and -brown-eyed Rudbeckias, “ox-eyed daisies” the children called them, -together with all the delicate, flowering grass-heads and stately -bulrushes and patches of pink and white clover,--and all over the -meadow there was a sleepy sound of bees, and shadows with soft edges -lost in deep waves of grass. - -Of course the brook did not stop at the meadow. It went on gurgling -over the stones, dark under the willows; but there were no more gates. -The brook left the home fields and took its own way across everybody’s -land to the river. That was a long walk, which Jack took only when he -was much older. - -Another journey, which he grew up to by degrees, was that one to the -upper barn. How many times over did he repeat his instructions before -he was allowed to set out: “Go up the hill, past the mill, until you -come to the first turn to the left. Turn up that way and follow the -lane straight on”--but this was a figure of speech, for no one could go -straight on who followed that lane--“till you come to the three gates. -Be sure to take the left-hand one of the three. Then you are all right. -That gate opens into the lane that goes past the upper barn.” - -Near the upper barn were three sugar-maples--the only ones on the place -that yielded sap; and in one of the neighboring fields there was a very -great walnut-tree, second in size only to the old chestnut-tree in the -burying-ground which was a hundred and fifty years old and bigger round -the body than three children clasping hands could span. - -Those up-lying fields were rather far away for daily rambles. Jack knew -them less and so cared less for them than for the home acres, which -were as familiar to him as the rooms of grandfather’s house. - -But when grandfather’s children were children, the spring lambs -wintered at the upper barn; and beauteous creatures they were by the -following spring, with broad foreheads and curly forelocks and clear -hazel eyes and small mouths just made for nibbling from the hand. -Often, of a keen April morning, when the thawed places in the lane -were covered with clinking ice, the children used to trudge at their -father’s side to see the lambs get their breakfast of turnips, chopped -in the dark cold hay-scented barn, while the hungry creatures bleated -outside and crowded against the door. - -Half the poetry of the farm life went into the care of the sheep and -the anxieties connected with them. They were a flock of Cotswolds, -carefully bred from imported stock. Their heavy fleeces made them the -most helpless of creatures when driven hard or worried by the dogs, and -every neighbor’s dog was a possible enemy. - -On moonlight nights in spring, when watch-dogs are restless, and -vagabond dogs are keen for mischief, the spirit of the chase would -get abroad. The bad characters would lead on the dogs of uncertain -principles, and now and then one of unspotted reputation, and the evil -work would begin. When the household was asleep, a knock would be heard -upon the window, and the voice of one hoarse with running would give -the alarm:-- - -“The dogs are after the sheep!” - -The big brother would get down his shot-gun, and the father would hunt -for the ointments, the lantern, and the shears (for cutting the wool -away from bleeding wounds), and together they hurried away--the avenger -and the healer. Next day, more than one of the neighbors’ children -came weeping, to identify a missing favorite. Sometimes the innocent -suffered for being found in company with the guilty. There were hard -feelings on both sides. Even the owners of dogs caught with the marks -of guilt upon them disputed the justice of a life for a life. - -There is one more gate, and then we come to the last one--the gate of -the burying-ground. - -A path went over the hill which divided grandfather’s house from that -of his elder brother, whose descendants continued to live there after -him. Uncle Edward’s children were somewhat older, and his grandchildren -were younger than grandfather’s children; but though slightly -mismatched as to ages the two households were in great accord. The path -crossed the “line fence” by a little gate in the stone wall, and this -was the gate of family visiting. - -That way the mothers went of an afternoon with their sewing, or the -last new magazine, or the last new baby; or in the morning to borrow -a cupful of yeast, or to return the last loan of a bowlful of rice, -or to gather ground-ivy (it grew in Uncle Edward’s yard, but not in -grandfather’s) to make syrup for an old cough. That way came the -groups, of a winter evening, in shawls and hoods, creaking over the -snow with lantern-light and laughter to a reading circle, or to one of -those family reunions which took place whenever some relative from a -distance was visiting in the neighborhood. Along that path went those -dear women in haste, to offer their help in sudden, sharp emergencies; -and with slower steps again when all was over, they went to sit with -those in grief, or to consult about the last services for the dead. - -That was the way the young people took on their walks in summer--the -stalwart country boys and their pretty city cousins in fresh muslins, -with light, high voices, pitched to the roar of the street. That way -went the nutting parties in the fall and the skating parties in winter. -All the boys and girls of both houses grew up opening and shutting that -gate on one errand or another, from the little white-headed lad with -the mail, to the soldier cousin coming across to say good-by. - -Between the two neighboring homes was the family burying-ground: all -this pleasant intercourse went on with the silent cognizance and -sympathy, as it were, of the forefathers who trod the path no more. -The burying-ground was by far the best spot for a resting-place on -either of the farms,--in a hollow of the hills, with a stone fence -all round, draped as if to deaden sounds with heavy festoons of -woodbine. Above the gray granite and white marble tombstones, rose the -locust-trees, tall and still. The beds of myrtle, underneath, were -matted into a continuous carpet of thick, shining leaves which caught -the sunlight at broad noon with a peculiar pale glister like moonlight. -The chestnut-tree stood a little apart, with one great arm outstretched -as if calling attention, or asking for silence. Yet no child ever -hushed its laughter as it passed the little gate with the gray pickets, -overhung by a climbing rose, which opened into the burying-ground; -and when, in the autumn, the old chestnut-tree dropped its nuts, the -children never hesitated to go in that way and gather them because of -the solemn neighborhood. They had grown up in the presence of these -memorials of the beloved dead. But no one ever opened that gate without -at least a momentary thoughtfulness. No one ever slammed it, in anger -or in haste. And so it became a dumb teacher of reverence--a daily -reminder to be quiet, to be gentle, for the sake of those at rest on -the other side of the wall. - - - - -THE GARRET AT GRANDFATHER’S - - -The rooms at grandfather’s house had been used so long, they were -almost human themselves. Each room had a look of its own, when you -opened the door, as expressive as a speaking countenance. - -“Come in, children dear!” the sunny sitting-room always seemed to say. - -“Sit still and don’t talk too much, and don’t handle the things on the -tables,” said the large, gleaming, dim-lighted parlors. - -“Dear me, what weather this is!” grumbled the poky back entry where the -overshoes and waterproofs and wood-boxes were kept. - -“There’s a piece--of cake--in the cupboard for you,” quietly ticked the -dining-room clock, its large face looking at no one in particular. - -But of all the rooms in that house, upstairs or down, not one had the -strangeness, the mysterious nod and beck and whisper, of the murky old -garret. - -“Hark, what was that?” it would seem to creak; and then there was -silence. “Hush! I’ll tell you a story,” it sometimes answered. - -Some of its stories were true, but I should not like to vouch for all -of them. - -What a number of queer things it kept hidden away under the eaves that -spread wide, a broad-winged cloak of shadows! What a strange eye it -had, its one half-moon window peering at you from the high, peaked -forehead of the gable. - -The garret door was at the far end of the long upper hall; from it the -stairs (and how they did creak!) led up directly out of the cheerful -daylight into that uncarpeted wilderness where it was always twilight. - -It was the younger children’s business to trot on errands, and they -were not consulted as to where or when they should go. Grown people -seem to forget how early it gets dark up garret in winter, and how far -away the house noises sound with all the doors shut between. - -When the children were sent up garret for nuts,--for Sunday dessert -with mince pie and apples, or to pass around with cider in the -evening,--they were careful to leave the stair door open behind them; -but there was little comfort in that, for all the people were two -flights down and busy with their own concerns. - -Downstairs in the bright western chambers nobody thought of its being -late, but up garret, under the eaves, it was already night. Thick ice -incrusted the half-moon window, curtaining its cold ray that sadly -touched an object here and there, and deepened the neighboring gloom. - -The autumn nut harvest was spread first upon sheets on the garret floor -to dry, and then it was garnered in the big, green bathtub which had -stood, since the children could remember, over against the chimney, to -the right of the gable window. This tub was for size and weight the -father of all bathtubs. It was used for almost anything but the purpose -for which it was intended. - -In summer, when it was empty, the children played “shipwreck” in it; -it was their life-boat, and they were cast away on the high seas. Some -rowed for dear life, with umbrellas and walking-sticks, and some made -believe to cry and call for help,--for that was their idea of the -behavior of a shipwrecked company; and some tramped on the bulging tin -bottom of the tub, which yielded and sprang back with a loud thump, -like the clank of oars. It was very exciting. - -In winter it was the granary. It held bushels and bushels of nuts, and -its smooth, out-sloping sides defeated the clever little mice who were -always raiding and rummaging among the garret stores. - -Well, it seemed a long distance to the timid little errand girl, from -the stairs, across the garret floor to that bathtub. “Noiseless as fear -in a wide wilderness,” she stepped. Then, what a shock it was, when the -first loud handfuls of nuts bumped upon the bottom of the pail! The -nuts were pointed and cold as lumps of ice; they hurt the small hands -that shoveled them up in haste, and a great many handfuls it took to -fill the pail. - -Hanging from the beams that divided the main garret from the eaves, -dangled a perfectly useless row of old garments that seemed to be there -for no purpose but to look dreadful. How they might have appeared in -a different light cannot be said; there seemed to be nothing wrong -with them when the women took them down at house-cleaning time and -shook and beat them about; they were as empty as sacks, every one. But -in that dim, furtive light, seen by over-shoulder glimpses they had -the semblance of dismal malefactors suffering the penalty of their -crimes. Some were hooded and seemed to hang their heads upon their -sunken breasts; all were high-shouldered wretches with dangling arms -and a shapeless, dreary suggestiveness worse than human. The most -objectionable one of the lot was a long, dark weather-cloak, worn -“about the twenties,” as old people say. It was of the fashion of that -“long red cloak, well brushed and neat,” which we read of in John -Gilpin’s famous ride. - -But the great-grandfather’s cloak was of a dark green color, and not -well brushed. It had a high, majestic velvet collar, hooked with a -heavy steel clasp and chain; but for all its respectable and kindly -associations, it looked, hanging from the garret rafters, just as much -a gallows-bird as any of its ruffian company. - -The children could not forgive their great-grandfather for having had -such a sinister-looking garment, or for leaving it behind him to hang -in the grim old garret and frighten them. Solemn as the garret looked, -no doubt this was one of its jokes: to dress itself up in shadows -and pretend things to tease the children, as we have known some real -persons to do. It certainly was not fair, when they were up there all -alone. - -The scuttle in the roof was shut, in winter, to keep out the snow. A -long ladder led up to it from the middle garret, and close to this -ladder stood another uncanny-looking object--the bath-closet. - -The family had always been inveterate bathers, but surely this shower -bath must have capped the climax of its cold-water experiments. - -It was contrived so that a pail of water, carried up by the scuttle -ladder and emptied into a tilting vessel on top of the closet, could be -made to descend on a sudden in a deluge of large drops upon the head of -the person inside. There was no escape for that person; the closet gave -him but just room to stand up under the infliction, and once the pail -was tilted, the water was bound to come. - -The children thought of this machine with shivering and dread. They had -heard it said--perhaps in the kitchen--that their little grandmother -had “nearly killed herself” in that shower bath, till the doctor -forbade her to use it any more. - -Its walls were screens of white cotton cloth, showing a mysterious -opaque glimmer against the light, also the shadowy outlines of some -objects within which the children could not account for. The narrow -screen door was always shut, and no child ever dreamed of opening it -or of meddling with the secrets of that pale closet. It was enough to -have to pass it on lonesome errands, looming like a “sheeted ghost” in -the garret’s perpetual twilight. - -The garret, like some of the great foreign churches, had a climate of -its own; still and dry, but subject to extremes of heat and cold. In -summer it was the tropics, in winter the frozen pole. - -But it had its milder moods also,--when it was neither hot nor cold, -nor light nor dark; when it beamed in mellow half-tones upon its -youthful visitors, left off its ugly frightening tricks, told them -“once upon a time” stories, and even showed them all its old family -keepsakes. - -These pleasant times occurred about twice every year, at the spring and -fall house-cleaning, when the women with brooms and dust-pans invaded -the garret and made a cheerful bustle in that deserted place. - -The scuttle hole in the roof was then open, to give light to the -cleaners, and a far, bright square of light shone down. It was as if -the garret smiled. - -All the queer old things, stowed away under the eaves, behind boxes and -broken furniture and stoves and rolls of carpets, were dragged forth; -and they were as good as new discoveries to the children who had not -seen them nor heard their stories since last house-cleaning time. - -There was the brass warming-pan, with its shining lid full of holes -like a pepper-box. On this warming-pan, as a sort of sled, the children -used to ride by turns--one child seated on, or in, the pan, two others -dragging it over the floor by the long, dark wood handle. - -And there were the pattens “which step-great-grandmother Sheppard -brought over from England;” one pair with leather straps and one with -straps of cotton velvet, edged with a tarnished gilt embroidery. The -straps were meant to lace over a full-grown woman’s instep, but the -children managed somehow to keep them on their feet, and they clattered -about, on steel-shod soles, with a racket equal to the midnight clatter -of Santa Claus’s team of reindeer. - -There was a huge muff of dark fur, kept in a tall blue paper bandbox; -the children could bury their arms in it up to the shoulder. It had -been carried by some lady in the time of short waists and scant skirts -and high coat collars; when girls covered their bare arms with long kid -gloves and tucked their little slippered toes into fur-lined foot-muffs -and went on moonlight sleighing parties, dressed as girls dress -nowadays for a dance. - -One of these very same foot-muffs (the moths had once got into it) -led a sort of at-arm’s-length existence in the garret, neither quite -condemned nor yet allowed to mingle with unimpeachable articles of -clothing. And there was a “foot-stove” used in old times on long -drives in winter or in the cold country meeting-houses. They were -indefatigable visitors and meeting-goers,--those old-time Friends. -Weather and distance were nothing thought of; and in the most troublous -times they could go to and fro in their peaceful character, unmolested -and unsuspected, though no doubt they had their sympathies as strong as -other people’s. - -A china bowl is still shown, in one branch of grandfather’s family, -which one of the great-aunts, then a young woman, carried on her -saddle-bow through both the British and Continental lines, from her -old home on Long Island to her husband’s house on the west bank of the -Hudson above West Point. - -No traveling member of the society ever thought of “putting-up” for the -night anywhere but at a Friend’s house. Journeys were planned in stages -from such a Friend’s house to such another one’s, or from meeting to -meeting. In days when letter postage was dear and newspapers were -almost unknown, such visits were keenly welcome, and were a chief means -by which isolated country families kept up their communication with the -world. - -There were many old-fashioned household utensils in the garret, the use -of which had to be explained to the children; and all this was as good -as history, and more easily remembered than much that is written in -books. - -There was the old “Dutch oven” that had stood in front of roaring -hearth-fires in days when Christmas dinners were cooked without -the aid of stoves or ranges. And there were the iron firedogs, the -pot-hooks and the crane which were part of the fireplace furniture. And -the big wool-wheel for the spinning of yarn, the smaller and lady-like -flax-wheel, and the tin candle moulds for the making of tallow candles; -and a pleasure it must have been to see the candles “drawn,” when the -pure white tallow had set in the slender tubes and taken the shape of -them perfectly,--each candle, when drawn out by the wick, as cold and -hard and smooth as alabaster. And there was the “baby-jumper” and the -wicker “runaround,” to show that babies had always been babies--just -the same restless little pets then as now--and that mother’s and -nurse’s arms were as apt to get tired. - -The garret had kept a faithful family record, and hence it told of -sickness and suffering as well as of pleasure and business and life and -feasting. - -A little old crutch, padded by some woman’s hand with an attempt to -make it handsome as well as comfortable, stood against the chimney on -the dark side next the eaves. It was short enough for a child of twelve -to lean upon. It had seen considerable use, for the brown velvet pad -was worn quite thin and gray. Had the little cripple ever walked again? -With what feelings did the mother put that crutch away up-garret when -it was needed no more? The garret did not say how that story of pain -had ended; or whether it was long or short. The children never sought -to know. It was one of the questions which they did not ask: they knew -very little about pain themselves, and perhaps they did not fully enter -into the meaning of that sad little relic. - -Still less did they understand the reverence with which the -house-cleaning women handled a certain bare wooden frame, neither -handsome nor comfortable looking. It had been made to support an -invalid in a sitting posture in bed; and the invalid for whom it was -provided, in her last days, had suffered much from difficulty of -breathing, and had passed many weary hours, sometimes whole nights, -supported by this frame. It had for those who knew its use the -sacredness of association with that long ordeal of pain, endured with -perfect patience and watched over with constant love. - -But these were memories which the little children could not share. When -their prattling questions touched upon the sore places, the wounds in -the family past, they were not answered, or were put aside till some -more fitting occasion, or until they were old enough to listen with -their hearts. - -Under the eaves there was an old green chest whose contents, year after -year, the children searched through in the never-failing hope that -they should find something which had not been there the year before. -There were old account-books with their stories of loss and gain which -the children could not read. There were bundles of old letters which -they were not allowed to examine. There were “ink-portraits,” family -profiles in silhouette, which they thought very funny, especially in -the matter of coat collars and “back hair.” There were schoolgirl -prizes of fifty years ago; the schoolgirls had grown into grandmammas, -and some were dead. There was old-fashioned art-work, paintings on -velvet or satin; boxes covered with shells; needlebooks and samplers -showing the most exemplary stitches in colors faded by time. There -were handsomely bound volumes of “Extracts,” containing poems and long -passages of elegant prose copied in pale-brown ink, in the proper -penmanship of the time. And there was a roll of steel-plate engravings -which had missed the honor of frames; and of these the children’s -favorite picture was one called The Wife. - -It is some time since I have seen that picture; I may be wrong about -some of the details. But as I remember her, the wife was a long-necked -lady with very large eyes, dressed in white, with large full sleeves -and curls falling against her cheek. She held a feather hand-screen, -and she was doing nothing but look beautiful and sweetly attentive to -her husband, who was seated on the other side of the table and was -reading aloud to her by the light of an old-fashioned astral lamp. - -This, of course, was the ideal wife, so thought the little girls. Every -other form of wifehood known to them was more or less made up of sewing -and housework and everyday clothes. Even in the family past, it had the -taint of the Dutch oven and the spinning-wheel and the candle moulds -upon it. They looked at their finger-tips; no, it was not likely theirs -would ever grow to be long and pointed like hers. _The_ wife no one of -them should ever be--only _a_ wife perhaps, with the usual sewing-work, -and not enough white dresses to afford to wear one every evening. - -It took one day to clean the garret and another to put things away. -Winter clothing had to be brushed and packed in the chests where it was -kept; the clothes closet had to be cleaned; then its door was closed -and locked. The last of the brooms and dust-pans beat a retreat, the -stair door was shut, and the dust and the mystery began to gather as -before. - -But summer, though no foe to dust, was a great scatterer of the garret -mysteries. Gay, lightsome summer peeped in at the half-moon window and -smiled down from the scuttle in the roof. Warm weather had come, the -sash that fitted the gable window was taken out permanently. Outdoor -sounds and perfumes floated up. Athwart the sleeping sunbeams golden -dust motes quivered, and bees from the garden sailed in and out on -murmuring wing. - -If a thunderstorm came up suddenly, then there was a fine race up two -flights of stairs!--and whoever reached the scuttle ladder first had -the first right to climb it, and to pull in the shutter that covered -the scuttle hole. There was time, perhaps, for one breathless look down -the long slope of bleached shingles,--at the tossing treetops, the -meadow grass whipped white, the fountain’s jet of water bending like -a flame and falling silent on the grass, the neighbor’s team hurrying -homeward, and the dust rising along the steep upward grade of the -village road. - -Then fell the first great drop--another, and another; the shutter hid -the storm-bright square of sky, and down came the rain--trampling on -the shingles, drumming in the gutters, drowning the laughing voices -below; and suddenly the garret grew cool, and its mellow glow darkened -to brown twilight. - -Under the gable window there stood for many years a white pine box, -with a front that let down on leather hinges. It was very clean inside -and faintly odorous. The children called it the bee-box, and they had a -story of their own to account for the tradition that this box had once -held rich store of honey in the comb. - -A queen bee, they said, soaring above the tops of the cherry-trees in -swarming-time, had drifted in at the garret window with all the swarm -in tow; and where her royal caprice had led them, the faithful workers -remained and formed a colony in the bee-box, and, like honest tenants, -left a quantity of their sweet wares behind to pay for their winter’s -lodging. - -There may have been some truth in this story, but the honey was long -since gone, and so were the bees. The bee-box, in the children’s -time, held only files of old magazines packed away for binding. Of -course they never were bound; and the children who used to look at -the pictures in them, grew into absent-minded girls with half-lengths -of hair falling into their eyes when they stooped too low over their -books,--as they always would, to read. The bee-box was crammed till the -lid would no longer shut. And now the dusty pages began to gleam and -glow, and voices that all the world listened to spoke to those young -hearts for the first time in the garret’s stillness. - -The rapt young reader, seated on the garret floor, never thought of -looking for a date, nor asked, “Who tells this story?” Those voices -were as impersonal as the winds and the stars of the summer night. - -It might have been twenty years, it might have been but a year before, -that Lieutenant Strain led his brave little band into the deadly tropic -wilderness of Darien. It is doubtful if those child-readers knew why -he was sent, by whom, or what to do. The beginning of the narrative -was in a “missing number” of the magazine. It mattered not; they read -from the heart, not from the head. It was the toils, the resolves, the -sufferings of the men that they cared about,--their characters and -conduct under trial. They agonized with “Truxton” over his divided -duty, and they wept at his all but dying words:-- - -“Did I do right, Strain?” - -They worshiped, with unquestioning faith, at the shrine of that -factitious god of battles, Abbot’s “Napoleon.” With beating hearts and -burning cheeks they lived in the tragic realism of “Witching Times.” -“Maya, the Princess,” and “The Amber Gods,” “In a Cellar,” “The South -Breaker,” stormed their fresh imaginations, and left them feverishly -dreaming; and there in the garret’s tropic warmth and stillness they -first heard the voice of the great master who gave us Colonel Newcome, -and who wrought us to such passionate sympathy with the fortunes of -Clive and Ethel. And here, too, the last number was missing, and for a -long time the young readers went sorrowing for Clive, and thinking that -he and Ethel had been parted all their lives. - -These garret readings were frequently a stolen joy, but perhaps -“mother” was in the secret of the bee-box, and did not search very -closely or call very loud when a girl was missing, about the middle of -the warm, midsummer afternoons. - -About midsummer the sage was picked and spread upon newspapers upon the -garret floor to dry. That was a pleasant task. Children are sensitive -to the touch of beauty connected with their labors. Their eyes lingered -with delight upon the color, the crêpe-like texture of the fragrant -sage, bestrewing the brown garret floor with its delicate life already -wilting in the dry, warm air. - -“September winds should never blow upon hops,” the saying is; therefore -the hops for a whole year’s yeast-making were gathered in the wane of -summer; and here, too, was a task that brought its own reward. The -hops made a carpet for the garret floor, more beautiful even than the -blue-green sage; and as the harvest was much larger, so the fair living -carpet spread much wider. It was a sight to see, in the low light of -the half-moon window, all the fragile pale green balls, powdered to the -heart’s core with gold-colored pollen--a field of beauty spread there -for no eye to see. Yet it was not wasted. The children did not speak -of what they felt, but nothing that was beautiful, or mysterious, or -stimulating to the fancy in those garret days, was ever lost. It is -often the slight impressions that, like the “scent of the roses,” wear -best and most keenly express the past. - -No child ever forgot the physiognomy of those rooms at grandfather’s: -the mid-afternoon stillness when the sun shone on the lemon-tree, and -its flowers shed their perfume on the warm air of the sitting-room; -the peculiar odor of the withering garden when October days were -growing chill; the soft rustle of the wind searching among the dead -leaves of the arbor; the cider-mill’s drone in the hazy distance; the -creaking of the loaded wagons; the bang of the great barn doors when -the wind swung them to. - -No child of all those who have played in grandfather’s garret ever -forgot its stories, its solemn, silent make-believes, the dreams they -dreamed there when they were girls, or the books they read. - - - - -THE SPARE BEDROOM AT GRANDFATHER’S - - -It was the hour for fireside talks in the cañon: too early, as dusk -falls on a short December day, for lamps to be lighted; too late to -snatch a page or two more of the last magazine, by the low gleam that -peered in the western windows. - -Jack had done his part in the evening’s wood-carrying, and now was -enjoying the fruits of honest toil, watching the gay red flames that -becked and bowed up the lava-rock chimney. The low-ceiled room, with -its rows of books, its guns and pipes and idols in Zuñi pottery, -darkled in corners and glowed in spots, and the faces round the -hearth were lighted as by footlights, in their various attitudes of -thoughtfulness. - -“Now, what is _that_?” cried Jack’s mamma, putting down the fan screen -she held, and turning her head to listen. - -It was only the wind booming over the housetop, but it had found a new -plaything; it was strumming with a free hand and mighty on the long, -taut wires that guyed the wash-shed stovepipe. The wash-shed was a -post-script in boards and shingles hastily added to the main dwelling -after the latter’s completion. It had no chimney, only four feet of -pipe projecting from the roof, an item which would have added to the -insurance had there been any insurance. The risk of fire was taken -along with the other risks, but the family was vigilant. - -Mrs. Gilmour listened till she sighed again. The wind, she said, -reminded her of a sound she had not thought of for years,--the whirring -of swallows’ wings in the spare bedroom chimney at home. - -“Swallows in the chimney?” cried Jack, suddenly attentive. “How could -they build fires then, without roasting the birds?” - -“The chimneys were three stories high, and the swallows built near -the top, I suppose. They had the sky and the stars for a ceiling to -their dark little bedrooms. In spring there was never more than a -blaze of sticks on the hearth--not that, unless we had visitors to -stay. Sometimes a young swallow trying to fly fell out of the nest and -fluttered across the hearth into the room. That was very exciting to us -children. But at house-cleaning time a great bag of straw was stuffed -up the chimney’s throat to save the hearth from falling soot and dried -mud and the litter from the nests. It was a brick hearth painted red, -and washed always with milk to make it shine. The andirons were such as -you will see in the garret of any good old house in the East,--fluted -brass columns with brass cones on top. - -“It was in summer, when the bird colony was liveliest, that we used to -hear the beating of wings in the chimney,--a smothered sound like the -throbbing of a steamer’s wheels far off in a fog, or behind a neck of -land.” - -Jack asked more questions; the men seemed not inclined to talk, and -the mother fell to remembering aloud, speaking sometimes to Jack, but -often to the others. All the simple features of her old Eastern home -had gained a priceless value, as things of a past gone out of her life -which she had scarcely prized at the time. She was half jealous of her -children’s attachment to the West, and longed to make them know the -place of the family’s nativity, through such pictures of it as her -memory could supply. - -But her words meant more to herself than to any that listened. - -“Did we ever sleep in that bedroom with the chimney-swallows?” asked -Jack. He was thinking, What a mistake to stop up the chimney and cut -off communication with such jolly neighbors as the swallows! - -Yes, his mother said; he had slept there, but before he could remember. -It was the winter he was three years old, when his father was in -Deadwood. - -There used to be such beautiful frost-pictures on the eastern window -panes; and when the sun rose and the fire was lighted and the pictures -faded, a group of little bronze-black cedars appeared, half a mile -away, topping the ridge by the river, and beyond them were the solemn -blue hills. Those hills and the cedars were as much a part of a -winter’s sunrise on the Hudson as the sun himself. - -Jack used to lie in bed and listen for the train, a signal his mother -did not care to hear, for it meant she must get up and set a match -to the fire, laid overnight in the big-bellied, air-tight stove that -panted and roared on its four short legs, shuddering in a transport of -sudden heat. - -When the air of the room grew milder, Jack would hop out in his wrapper -and slippers, and run to the north window to see what new shapes the -fountain had taken in the night. - -The jet of water in winter was turned low, and the spray of it froze -and piled above the urn, changing as the wind veered and as the sun -wasted it. On some mornings it looked like a weeping white lady in a -crystal veil; sometimes a Niobe group, children clinging to a white, -sad mother, who clasped them and bowed her head. When the sun peeped -through the fir-trees, it touched the fountain statuary with sea tints -of emerald and pearl. - -Had Jack been old enough to know the story of Undine, he might have -fancied that he saw her, on those winter mornings, and I am sure he -would have wanted to fetch her in and warm her and dry her icy tears. - -The spare-room mantelpiece was high. Jack could see only the tops -of things upon it, even by walking far back into the room; but of a -morning, mounted on the pillows of the great four-poster, he could -explore the mantel’s treasures, which never varied nor changed places. -There was the whole length and pattern of the tall silver-plated -candlesticks and the snuffers in their tray; the Indian box of -birch-bark overlaid with porcupine quills, which held concealed riches -of shells and coral and dark sea beans; there was the centre vase -of Derbyshire spar, two dolphins wreathing their tails to support a -bacchante’s bowl crowned with grape leaves. In winter this vase held -an arrangement of dried immortelles, yellow and pink and crimson, -and some that verged upon magenta and should have been cast out as an -offense to the whole; but grandmother had for flowers a charity that -embraced every sin of color they were capable of. When her daughters -grew up and put on airs of superior taste, they protested against these -stiff mementos; but she was mildly inflexible; she continued to gather -and to dry her “everlastings,” with faithful recognition of their -prickly virtues. She was not one to slight old friends for a trifling -mistake in color, though Art should put forth her edict and call them -naught. - -In the northeast corner of the room stood a great invalid chair, -dressed, like a woman, in white dimity that came down to the floor -all round. The plump feather cushion had an apron, as little Jack -called it, which fell in neat gathers in front. The high stuffed sides -projected, forming comfortable corners where a languid head might rest. - -Here the pale young mothers of the family “sat up” for the first time -to have their hair braided, or to receive the visits of friends; here, -in last illnesses, a wan face sinking back showed the truth of the -doctor’s verdict. - -White dimity, alternating with a dark-red reps in winter, covered the -seats of the fiddle-backed mahogany chairs. White marseilles or dimity -covers were on the washstand, and the tall bureau had a swinging glass -that rocked back against the wall and showed little Jack a picture of -himself walking into a steep background of the room--a small chap in -kilts, with a face somewhat out of drawing and of a bluish color; the -floor, too, had a queer slant like the deck of a rolling vessel. But -with all its faults, this presentation of himself in the glass was an -appearance much sought after by Jack, even to the climbing on chairs to -attain it. - -When grandmother came to her home as a bride, the four-poster was -in full panoply of high puffed feather-bed, valance and canopy and -curtains of white dimity, “English” blankets, quilted silk comforter, -and counterpane of heavy marseilles, in a bygone pattern. No pillow -shams were seen in the house; its fashions never changed. The best -pillow-cases were plain linen, hemstitched,--smooth as satin with much -use, as Jack’s mother remembered them,--and the slender initials, in an -old-fashioned hand, above the hem, had faded sympathetically to a pale -yellow-brown. - -Some of the house linen had come down from great-grandmother’s -trousseau. It bore her maiden initials, E. B., in letters that were -like the marking on old silver of that time; the gracious old Quaker -names, sacred to the memory of gentle women and good housewives whose -virtues would read like the last chapter of Proverbs, the words of King -Lemuel, the prophecy which his mother taught him. - -It was only after the daughters of the house grew up and were married -and came home on visits with their children, that the spare bedroom -fell into common use, and new fashions intruded as the old things wore -out. - -When Jack’s mother was a child, it still kept its solemn and festal -character of birth and marriage and death chamber; and in times less -vital it was set apart for such guests as the family delighted to -honor. Little girls were not allowed to stray in there by themselves; -even when sent to the room on errands, they went and came with a -certain awe of the empty room’s cold dignity. - -But at the semi-annual house-cleaning, when every closet and bureau -drawer resigned itself to the season’s intrusive spirit of research, -the spare room’s kindly mysteries were given to the light. The children -could look on and touch and handle and ask questions; and thus began -their acquaintance with such relics as had not been consigned to the -darker oblivion of the garret, or suffered change through the family -passion for “making over.” - -In the bottom drawer of the bureau was the “body” of grandmother’s -wedding gown. The narrow skirt had served for something useful,--a -cradle quilt, perhaps, for one of the babies. Jack could have put the -tiny dress waist into one of his trousers’ pockets with less than -their customary distention. It was a mere scrap of dove-colored silk, -low necked, and laced in the back. Grandmother must have worn over her -shoulders one of the embroidered India muslin capes that were turning -yellow in that same drawer. - -The dress sleeves were “leg o’ mutton,” but these, too, had been -sacrificed in some impulse of mistaken economy. - -There was the high shell comb, not carved, but a solid piece of shell -which the children used to hold up to the light to see the colors glow -like a church window. There were the little square-toed satin slippers, -heelless, with flat laces that crossed over the instep; and there were -the flesh-colored silk stockings and white embroidered wedding shawl. - -Little grandmother must have been rather a gay Friend; she never wore -the dress, as did her mother, who put on the “plain distinguishing cap” -before she was forty. She dressed as one of the “world’s people,” but -always plainly, with a little distance between herself and the latest -fashion. She had a conscientious scorn of poor materials. Ordinary -self-respect would have prevented her wearing an edge of lace that was -not “real,” or a stuff that was not all wool, if wool it professed to -be, or a print that would not “wash;” and her contempt for linen that -was part cotton, for silk that was part linen, or velvet with a “cotton -back,” was of a piece with her truthfulness and horror of pretense. - -Among the frivolities in the lower drawer was a very dainty little -nightcap, embroidered mull or some such frailness; the children used to -tie it on over their short hair, framing the round cheeks of ten and -twelve years old. It was the envelope for sundry odd pieces of lace, -“old English thread,” and yellow Valenciennes, ripped from the necks -and sleeves of little frocks long outgrown. - -The children learned these patterns by heart; also the scrolls and -garlands on certain broad collars and cuffs of needlework which always -looked as if something might be made of them; but nothing was, although -Jack’s mamma was conscious of a long felt want in doll’s petticoats, -which those collars would have filled to ecstasy. - -In that lower drawer were a few things belonging to grandmother’s -mother, E. B. of gracious memory. There were her gauze -neck-handkerchiefs, and her long-armed silk mitts which reported her -a “finer woman” than any of her descendants of the third generation, -since not a girl of them all could show an arm that would fill out -these cast coverings handsomely from wrist to biceps. - -And there was a bundle of her silk house shawls, done up in one -of the E. B. towels, lovely in color and texture as the fair, -full grandmotherly throat they once encircled. They were plain, -self-fringed, of every shade of white that was not white. - -There they lay and no one used them; and after a while it began to -seem a waste to the little girls who had grown to be big girls. The -lightest minded of them began to covet those sober vanities for their -own adornment. Mother’s scruples were easily smiled away; so the old -Quaker shawls came forth and took their part in the young life of the -house--a gayer part, it would be safe to say, than was ever theirs -upon the blessed shoulders of E. B. One or two of them were made into -plaited waists to be worn with skirts and belts of the world’s fashion. -And one soft cream-white shawl wrapped little Jack on his first journey -in this world; and afterward on many journeys, much longer than that -first one “from the blue room to the brown.” - -No advertised perfumes were used in grandmother’s house, yet the things -in the drawers had a faint sweet breath of their own. Especially it -lingered about those belongings of her mother’s time--the odor of -seclusion, of bygone cleanliness and household purity. - -The spare bedroom was at its gayest in summer-time, when, after the -daughters of the house grew up, young company was expected. Swept -and dusted and soberly expectant, it waited, like a wise but prudent -virgin, with candles unlighted and shutters darkened. Its very colors -were cool and decorous, white and green and dark mahogany polish, door -knobs and candlesticks gleaming, andirons reflected in the dull-red -shine of the hearth. - -After sundown, if friends were expected by the evening boat, the -shutters were fastened back, and the green Venetian blinds raised, -to admit the breeze and a view of the garden and the grass and the -plashing fountain. Each girl hostess visited the room in turn on a -last, characteristic errand,--one with her hands full of roses, new -blown that morning; another to remove the sacrificed leaves and broken -stems which the rose-gatherer had forgotten; and the mother last of all -to look about her with modest pride, peopling the room with the friends -of her own girlhood, to be welcomed there no more. - -Then, when the wagon drove up, what a joyous racket in the hall; and -what content for the future in the sound of heavy trunks carried -upstairs! - -If only one girl guest had come, she must have her particular friend -of the house for a bedfellow; and what in all the world did they not -talk of, lying awake half the summer night in pure extravagance of -joy--while the fountain plashed and paused, and the soft wind stirred -in the cherry-trees, and in the moonlit garden overblown roses dropped -their petals on the wet box-borders. - -Visitors from the city brought with them--besides new books, new -songs, sumptuous confectionery and the latest ideas in dress--an odor -of the world; something complex rich and strange as the life of the -city itself. It spread its spell upon the cool, pure atmosphere of -the Quaker home, and set the light hearts beating and the young heads -dreaming. - -In after years came the Far West, with its masculine incense of camps -and tobacco and Indian leather and soft-coal smoke. It arrived in -company with several pieces of singularly dusty male baggage; but it -had not come to stay. - -For a few days of confusion and bustle it pervaded the house, and then -departed, on the “Long Trail,” taking little Jack and his mother away. -And in the chances and changes of the years that followed, they were -never again to sleep in the spare bedroom at grandfather’s. - - - - - ELECTROTYPED AND PRINTED - BY H. O. HOUGHTON AND CO. - - The Riverside Press - - CAMBRIDGE, MASS., U. S. A. - - - - -Transcriber’s Notes - -Page 9: “a snow flaw came” changed to “a snow fall came” - -Page 66: “those were bad places, for” changed to “those were bad places -for” - -*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LITTLE FIG-TREE -STORIES *** - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will -be renamed. - -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the -United States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. Special rules, set forth in the General Terms of Use part -of this license, apply to copying and distributing Project -Gutenberg-tm electronic works to protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm -concept and trademark. 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You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms -of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online -at <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a>. If you -are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the -country where you are located before using this eBook. -</div> - -<p style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Title: The Little Fig-tree Stories</p> -<p style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:0; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Author: Mary Hallock Foote</p> -<p style='display:block; text-indent:0; margin:1em 0'>Release Date: February 24, 2022 [eBook #67485]</p> -<p style='display:block; text-indent:0; margin:1em 0'>Language: English</p> - <p style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:0; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em; text-align:left'>Produced by: Charlene Taylor and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)</p> -<div style='margin-top:2em; margin-bottom:4em'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LITTLE FIG-TREE STORIES ***</div> - - - - - - - - -<div class="bbox wide"> - -<p class="center p0 big">Books by Mary Hallock Foote.</p> -<hr class="r5" /> - -<div class="blockquot"> -<p><b>THE CHOSEN VALLEY.</b> A Novel. 16mo, $1.25; paper, 50 cents.</p> - -<p><b>THE LED-HORSE CLAIM.</b> Illustrated. 16mo, $1.25; paper, 50 cents.</p> - -<p><b>JOHN BODEWIN’S TESTIMONY.</b> 12mo, $1.50; paper, 50 cents.</p> - -<p><b>THE LAST ASSEMBLY BALL</b>, and <b>THE FATE OF A VOICE</b>. 16mo, -$1.25.</p> - -<p><b>IN EXILE, AND OTHER STORIES.</b> 16mo, $1.25.</p> - -<p><b>CŒUR D’ALÉNE.</b> A Novel. 16mo, $1.25.</p> - -<p><b>THE CUP OF TREMBLING, AND OTHER STORIES.</b> 16mo, $1.25.</p> -</div> - - -<p class="center p0 p2"> -HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & <abbr title="company">CO.</abbr><br /> -<span class="smcap">Boston and New York.</span><br /> -</p> -</div> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<p class="center p0 p2"><span class="figcenter" id="img001"> - <img src="images/001.jpg" class="w50" alt="UP THE LADDER TO THE SCUTTLE" /> -</span></p> -<p class="center p0 caption">UP THE LADDER TO THE SCUTTLE (<i><a href="#Page_160">Page 160</a></i>)<br /></p> - - -</div> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<h1><span class="small">THE</span><br /> -LITTLE FIG-TREE STORIES</h1> - -<p class="center p0 p2"><span class="small">BY</span></p> - -<p class="center p0"><span class="big">MARY HALLOCK FOOTE</span></p> - -<p class="center p0 p2"><i>WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY THE AUTHOR</i></p> - -<p class="center p0 p2"><span class="figcenter" id="img000"> - <img src="images/000.jpg" class="w10" alt="Decorative image with publisher info" /> -</span></p> - - -<p class="center p0 p2"> BOSTON AND NEW YORK<br /> - HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY<br /> - The Riverside Press, Cambridge<br /> - <span class="small">1899</span> -</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> - - -<p class="center p0"><span class="small">COPYRIGHT, 1899, BY MARY HALLOCK FOOTE<br /> - ALL RIGHTS RESERVED</span>. -</p> -</div> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<h2 class="nobreak" id="AUTHORS_NOTE">AUTHOR’S NOTE</h2> -</div> - - -<p>These stories were originally published in the <abbr title="saint">St.</abbr> Nicholas Magazine, -and are reprinted here by kind permission of the Century Company.</p> - -<p>The profits of the volume are dedicated to the Children’s Hospital of -San Francisco.</p> - - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<h2 class="nobreak" id="CONTENTS">CONTENTS</h2> -</div> - - -<table class="autotable"> -<tr> -<th colspan="2" class="tdr page"> -PAGE -</th> -</tr> -<tr> -<td> -<a href="#FLOWER_OF_THE_ALMOND_AND_FRUIT_OF_THE_FIG"><span class="smcap">Flower of the Almond and Fruit of the Fig</span></a> -</td> -<td class="tdr page"> -<a href="#Page_1">1</a> -</td> -</tr> -<tr> -<td> -<a href="#THE_LAMB_THAT_COULDNT_KEEP_UP"><span class="smcap">The Lamb that couldn’t “keep up”</span></a></td> -<td class="tdr page"> -<a href="#Page_17">17</a> -</td> -</tr> -<tr> -<td> -<a href="#DREAM-HORSES"><span class="smcap">Dream Horses</span></a></td> -<td class="tdr page"> -<a href="#Page_32">32</a> -</td> -</tr> -<tr> -<td> -<a href="#AN_IDAHO_PICNIC"><span class="smcap">An Idaho Picnic</span></a></td> -<td class="tdr page"> -<a href="#Page_44">44</a> -</td> -</tr> -<tr> -<td> -<a href="#A_VISIT_TO_JOHNS_CAMP"><span class="smcap">A Visit to John’s Camp</span></a></td> -<td class="tdr page"> -<a href="#Page_92">92</a> -</td> -</tr> -<tr> -<td> -<a href="#NOVEMBER_IN_THE_CANON"><span class="smcap">November in the Cañon</span></a></td> -<td class="tdr page"> -<a href="#Page_107">107</a> -</td> -</tr> -<tr> -<td> -<a href="#THE_GATES_ON_GRANDFATHERS_FARM"><span class="smcap">The Gates on Grandfather’s Farm</span></a></td> -<td class="tdr page"> -<a href="#Page_120">120</a> -</td> -</tr> -<tr> -<td> -<a href="#THE_GARRET_AT_GRANDFATHERS"><span class="smcap">The Garret at Grandfather’s</span></a></td> -<td class="tdr page"> -<a href="#Page_144">144</a> -</td> -</tr> -<tr> -<td> -<a href="#THE_SPARE_BEDROOM_AT_GRANDFATHERS"><span class="smcap">The Spare Bedroom at Grandfather’s</span></a></td> -<td class="tdr page"> -<a href="#Page_167">167</a> -</td> -</tr> -</table> - - - - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_1">[Pg 1]</span></p> - - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<h2 class="nobreak" id="THE">THE<br /> -LITTLE FIG-TREE STORIES</h2> -</div> - - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<h2 class="nobreak" id="FLOWER_OF_THE_ALMOND_AND_FRUIT_OF_THE_FIG">FLOWER OF THE ALMOND AND FRUIT OF THE FIG</h2> -</div> - - -<p>There is a garden on a hill slope between the snows of the Sierra -Nevada and the warm, rich valleys of the coast. It is in that region of -Northern California where the pine belt and the fruit belt interlace. -Both pine and fruit trees grow in that mountain garden, and there, in -the new moon of February, six young Almond trees burst into flower.</p> - -<p>The Peach and Plum trees in the upper garden felt a glow of sympathy -with their forward sisters of the south, but the matronly Cherry trees -shook their heads at such an untimely show of blossoms. They foresaw -the trouble to come.</p> - -<p>“The Almond trees,” they said, “will lose their fruit buds this year, -as they did last and<span class="pagenum" id="Page_2">[Pg 2]</span> the year before. Poor things, they are so -emotional! The first whisper of spring that wanders up the foothills -sets them all aflame; out they rush, with their hearts on their -sleeves, for the frosts to peck at. But what can one do? If you try -to reason with them, ‘Our parents and grandparents always bloomed in -February,’ they will tell you, ‘and <em>they</em> did not lose their -fruit buds.’”</p> - -<p>“The Almond trees come of very ancient stock,” said the Normandy -Pear, who herself bore one of the oldest names in France. “Inherited -tendencies are strong in people of good blood. One of their ancestors, -I have heard, was born in a queen’s garden in Persia, a thousand years -ago; and beautiful women, whose faces the sun never shone upon, wore -its blossoms in their hair. And as you probably know, their forefathers -are spoken of in the Bible.”</p> - -<p>“A number of persons, my dear, are spoken of in the Bible who were no -better than they should be,” said the eldest Apple tree. “We go back to -the ‘Mayflower,’—that is far<span class="pagenum" id="Page_3">[Pg 3]</span> enough for us; and none of our family -ever dreamed of putting on white and pink in February. It would be -flying in the face of Providence.”</p> - -<p>“White and pink are for Easter,” said the Pear tree, whose grandparents -were raised in a bishop’s garden. “I should not wish to put my blossoms -on in Lent.”</p> - -<p>The Apple tree straightened herself stiffly.</p> - -<p>“We do not keep the church fasts and feasts,” she said; “but every one -knows that faith without works is dead. What are these vain blossoms -that we put forth for a few days in the spring, without the harvest -that comes after?”</p> - -<p>“Now the Apple tree is going to preach,” said the light-hearted Peach -tree, stepping on the Plum tree’s toes. “If we must have preaching, I -had rather listen to the Pines. They, at least, have good voices.”</p> - -<p>“Those misguided Almonds are putting out all their strength in fleshly -flowers,” the Apple tree continued; “but how when the gardener comes -to look for his crop? We all know, as<span class="pagenum" id="Page_4">[Pg 4]</span> the Cherry trees said, what -happened last year and the year before. It cannot be expected that the -Master of the Garden will have patience with them forever.”</p> - -<p>“The Master of the Garden!” Four young Fig trees, who stood apart and -listened in sorrowful silence to this talk of blossoms, repeated the -words with fear and trembling.</p> - -<p>“How long,—how much longer,”—they asked themselves, “will he have -patience with us?”</p> - -<p>It was now the third spring since they had been planted, but not one -of the four sisters had yet produced a single flower. With deep, shy -desire they longed to know what the flower of the fig might be like. -They were all of one age, and they had no parent tree to tell them. -They knew nothing of their own nature or race or history. Two seasons -in succession, a strange, distressful change had come upon them. They -had felt the spring thrills, and the sap mounting in their veins; but -instead of breaking out into pink and white flowers, like the happy -trees around<span class="pagenum" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</span> them, ugly little hard green knobs had crept out of their -tender bark, and these had swollen and increased in size till they were -bowed with the burden of their deformity. Fruit this could not be, for -they had seen that fruit comes from a flower, and no sign of blossom or -bud had ever been vouchsafed them. When inquisitive hands came groping, -and feeling of the purple excrescences upon their limbs, they covered -them up in shame and tried to hide them with their broad green leaves. -In time they were mercifully eased of this affliction; but then the -frosts came, and the winter’s dull suspense, and then another spring’s -awakening to hope and fear.</p> - -<p>“Perhaps we were not old enough before,” they whispered encouragement -to one another. “Blossoms no doubt are a great responsibility. Had we -had them earlier, we might have been foolish and brought ourselves to -blame, like the Almond trees. Let us not be impatient; the sun is warm, -but the nights are cold. Do not despair, dear sisters; we may have -flowers yet. And when they do<span class="pagenum" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</span> come, no doubt they will be fair enough -to reward us for our long waiting.”</p> - -<p>They passed the word on softly, even to the littlest Fig-tree sister -that stood in rocky ground close to the wall that shut the garden -in from the pine wood at its back. The Pines were always chanting -and singing anthems in the wood; but though the sound was beautiful, -it oppressed the little Fig tree, and filled her with melancholy. -Moreover, it was very dry in the ground where she stood, and a Fig tree -must have drink.</p> - -<p>“Sisters, I am very thirsty!” she cried. “Have you a little, a very -little water that you could spare?”</p> - -<p>The sister Fig trees had not much of anything to spare; they were -spreading and growing fast, and their own soil was coarse and stony. -The water that had so delicious a sound in coming seemed to leak away -before their eager rootlets had more than tasted it; still they would -have shared what they had, could they have passed it to their weaker -sister. But the water would not go uphill;<span class="pagenum" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</span> it ran away down, instead, -and the Peach and Plum and Pear trees grew fat with what the Fig trees -lacked.</p> - -<p>“Courage, little sister!” they called to the fainting young tree by the -wall. “The morning sun is strong, but soon the shadow of the wood will -reach us. Cover thy face and keep a good heart. When our turn shall -come, it will be thy turn too; one of us will not bloom without the -others.”</p> - -<p>It was only February, and the Almond trees stood alone, without a rival -in their beauty. They stood in the proudest place in the garden, in -full view both from the road and from a high gallery that ran across -the front of the house where the Master of the Garden lived. The -house faced the west, and whenever the people came out to look at the -sunset they admired the beauty of the Almond trees, with their upright -shoots, tipped and starred with luminous blossoms, against the deep, -rich colors in the west; and when the west faded, as it did every -evening, a lamp on a high post by the gate, bigger and brighter<span class="pagenum" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</span> than -the brightest star, was set burning,—“for what purpose,” thought the -Almond trees, “but to show our beauty in the night?” So they watched -through the dark hours, and felt the intoxication of the keen light -upon them, and marveled at their own shadows on the grass.</p> - -<p>They were somewhat troubled because so many of their blossoms were -being picked; but the tree that stood nearest the house windows rose -on tiptoe, and behold! each gathered spray had been kept for especial -honor. Some were grouped in vases in the room, or massed against the -chimney-piece; others were set in a silver bowl in the centre of a -white table, under a shaded lamp, where a circle of people gazed at -them, and every one praised their delicate, sumptuous beauty.</p> - -<p>But peepers as well as listeners sometimes learn unpleasant truths -about themselves.</p> - -<p>“Aren’t we picking too many of these blossoms?” asked the lady of the -house. “I’m afraid we are wasting our almond crop.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</span></p> - -<p>“Almond trees will never bear in this climate,” said the Master of the -Garden. “Better make the most of the blossoms while they last. The -frost will catch them in a week or two.”</p> - -<p>So the mother and children gathered the blossoms recklessly,—to save -them, they said. Then a snow fall came, and those that had been left -on the trees were whiter than ever for one day, and the next day they -were dead. Each had died with a black spot at its core, which means the -death that has no resurrection in the fruit to come.</p> - -<p>After the snow came rain and frost, and snow again. The white Sierra -descended and shook its storm cloak in the face of laughing Spring, and -she fled away downward into the warm valleys. Alas, the flatterer! But -the Almond trees alone had trusted her, and again their hope of fruit -was lost.</p> - -<p>“Did we not say so?” muttered the Apple tree between her chattering -teeth. She was the most crabbed and censorious of the sisters, and by -her talk of fruit one might have supposed<span class="pagenum" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</span> her own to be of the finest -quality; but this was not the case, and the gardener only that year had -been threatening, though she did not know it, to cut off her top and -graft her with a sweeter kind.</p> - -<p>The leaves of the Almond tree are not beautiful, neither is her shape -a thing to boast of. When spring did at last come back to stay, the -Almonds were the plainest of all the trees. Their blossoms were like -bright candles burned to the socket, that would light no more; their -“corruptible crown” of beauty had passed to other heads. No one looked -at them, no one pitied them, except the Fig trees, who wondered which -had most cause to mourn,—they, who had never had a blossom, or the -Almond trees, who had risked theirs and lost them all before the time -of blossoms came.</p> - -<p>The Fig trees’ reproach had not been taken away. While every tree -around them was dressed in the pride of the crop to come, they stood -flowerless and leafless, and burned with shame through all their barren -shoots.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</span></p> - -<p>When the Master of the Garden came with his children to look at them, -they hung their heads and were afraid.</p> - -<p>“When will they blossom, like the other trees,” the children asked, -“and what sort of flower will <em>they</em> bear?”</p> - -<p>The Fig trees held their breath to hear the answer.</p> - -<p>“A Fig tree has no flower, like the other fruit trees,” said the Master -of the Garden. “Its blossom is contained in the fruit. You cannot see -it unless you cut open the budding figs, and then you would not know it -was a flower.”</p> - -<p>“What is the use of having blossoms, if no one ever sees them?” one of -the children asked.</p> - -<p>“What is the use of doing good, unless we tell everybody and brag about -it beforehand?” the father questioned, smiling.</p> - -<p>“I thought the best way was—you know—to do it in secret,” said the -child.</p> - -<p>“That’s what we are taught; and some persons do good in that way, and -cover it up<span class="pagenum" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</span> as if they were ashamed of it. And so the Fig tree doesn’t -tell anybody when it is going to bear fruit.”</p> - -<p>The Fig trees had heard their doom. To the words that followed they had -not listened; nor would they have understood much more of it than the -child of its father’s meaning.</p> - -<p>“What is this he calls our fruit?” they asked each other in fear -and loathing. “Was <em>that</em> our fruit,—those green and purple -swellings, that unspeakable weight of ugliness? Will it come year after -year, and shall we never have a flower? The burden without the honor, -without the love and praise, that beauty brings. That is the beginning -and the end with us. Little sister, thou art happier than we, for soon -thy burden-bearing will be done. Uncover thy head and let the sunbeams -slay thee, for why should such as we encumber the ground!”</p> - -<p>Trees that grow in gardens may have long memories and nature teaches -them a few things by degrees, but they can know little of what goes on -in the dwellings or the brains<span class="pagenum" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</span> of men, or why one man should plant -and call it good and later another come and dig up the first man’s -planting. But so it happened in this garden. “The stone which the -builders rejected, the same was made the head of the corner.”</p> - -<p>“These little Fig trees with their strange, great leaves,—why were -they put off here by themselves, I wonder?” A lady spoke who had lately -come to the cottage. She was the wife of the new Master of the Garden. -“I wish we had them where we could see them from the house,” she said. -“All the other trees are commonplace beside them.”</p> - -<p>“They are not doing well here,” said her husband. “This one, you see, -is nearly dead. They must be transplanted, or we shall lose them all.”</p> - -<p>Then followed talk which set the Fig trees a-tremble with doubt and -amazement and joy. They were to be moved from that arid spot,—where, -they knew not, but to some place of high distinction! They—the -little aliens who had stood nearest the wall and thirsted<span class="pagenum" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</span> for a bare -existence—were to be called to the front of the garden and have honor -in the presence of all! The despised burden which they had called their -deformity they heard spoken of as the rarest fruit of the garden, and -themselves outvalued beyond all the other trees, for that, having so -little, they had done so much.</p> - -<p>Beauty too was theirs, it appeared, as well as excellence, though they -could scarcely believe what their own ears told them; and they had -a history and a family as old as those of the Almond tree, who can -remember nothing that did not happen a thousand years ago and so has -never learned anything in the present.</p> - -<p>But the Fig trees would have been deeply troubled at their promotion -could they have known what it was to cost their neighbors the Almond -trees.</p> - -<p>“Two we will keep for the sake of their flowers, but the others must -go, and give room for the Figs.” So said the new Master, and so it -was done. The unfruitful Almond trees were dug up and thrown over the -wall,—all<span class="pagenum" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</span> but the two whom their sisters had ransomed with their -lives; for beauty has its price in this world and there must be some -one to pay it.</p> - -<p>When another spring came round, it was the little Fig tree that stood -in the bright corner where the splendor of the road lamp shone upon its -leaves all night. Its leaves were now as broad as a man’s outspread -hand, and its fruit was twice the size it had been the season before.</p> - -<p>Its sister trees stood round and interlaced their boughs about it.</p> - -<p>“Lean on us, little one,” they said, regarding it with pride.</p> - -<p>“But you have your own load to bear.”</p> - -<p>“We scarcely feel it,” said the happy trees.</p> - -<p>This was true; for the burden that had seemed beyond their strength, -when their hearts were heavy with shame and despondency, they could -bear up lightly now, since they had learned its meaning and its worth.</p> - -<p>The new Master’s children were so full of the joy of spring in that -mountain garden—for<span class="pagenum" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</span> they too, like the little Fig trees, had been -transplanted from arid ground—they had no words of their own in which -to utter it. So their mother taught them some words from a song as old, -almost, as the oldest garden that was ever planted:—</p> - -<p>“For, lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone; the flowers -appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds is come, and the -voice of the turtle is heard in our land; the fig tree putteth forth -her green figs, and the vines with the tender grape give a good smell.”</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>“Awake, O north wind; and come, thou south; blow upon my garden, that -the spices thereof may flow out.”</p> -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</span></p> - -<h2 class="nobreak" id="THE_LAMB_THAT_COULDNT_KEEP_UP">THE LAMB THAT COULDN’T “KEEP UP”</h2> -</div> - - -<p>Until Jack Gilmour was seven years old his home had been at his -grandfather’s house in a country “well wooded and watered,” as the -Dutch captain who discovered it described it to his king.</p> - -<p>There was water in the river; there was water in the ponds that lay -linked together by falling streams among the hills above the mill; -there was water in the spring lot; there was water in the brook that -ran through the meadow across the road; there was water in the fountain -that plashed quietly all through the dark, close summer nights, when -not a leaf stirred, even of the weeping ash, and the children lay -tossing in their beds, with only their nightgowns covering them. And -besides all these living, flowing waters, there was water in the -cistern that lay concealed under the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</span> foundations of the house. Not one -of the grandchildren knew who had dug it, or cemented it, or sealed -it up, for children and children’s children to receive their first -bath from its waters. The good grandfather’s care had placed it there; -but even that fact the little ones took for granted, as they took the -grandfather himself,—as they took the fact that the ground was under -their feet when they ran about in the sunshine.</p> - -<p>In an outer room, which had been a kitchen once (before Jack’s mother -was born), there was a certain place in the floor that gave out a -hollow sound, like that from the planking of a covered bridge, whenever -Jack stamped upon it. Somebody found him, one day, trying the echoes -on this queer spot in the floor, and advised him to keep off it. It -was the trapdoor which led down into the cistern; and although it was -solidly made and rested upon a broad ledge of wood—well, it had rested -there on that same ledge for many years, and it wasn’t a pleasant -thought that a little boy in kilts should be prancing about<span class="pagenum" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</span> with only -a few ancestral planks between him and a hidden pit of water.</p> - -<p>Once, when the trapdoor had been raised for the purpose of measuring -the depth of the water in the cistern, Jack had looked down and had -watched a single spot of light wavering over the face of the dark, -still pool. It gave him a strange, uncomfortable feeling, as if this -water were something quite unlike the outdoor waters, which reflected -the sky instead of the under side of a board floor. This water was -imprisoned, alone and silent; and if ever a sunbeam reached it, it was -only a stray gleam wandering where it could not have felt at home, and -must have been glad to leap out again when the sunbeam moved away from -the crack in the floor that had let it in.</p> - -<p>That same night a thunderstorm descended; the chimneys bellowed, and -the rain made a loud trampling upon the roof. Jack woke and felt for -his mother’s hand. As he lay still, listening to the rain lessening to -a steady, quiet drip, drip, he heard another<span class="pagenum" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</span> sound, very mysterious -in the sleeping house,—a sound as of a small stream of water falling -from a height into an echoing vault. His mother told him it was the -rain water pouring from all the roofs and gutters into the cistern, and -that the echoing sound was because the cistern was “low.” Next morning -the bath water was deliciously fresh and sweet; and Jack had no more -unpleasant thoughts about the silent, sluggish old cistern.</p> - -<p>Now, there are parts of our country where the prayer “Give us this day -our daily water” might be added to the prayer “Give us this day our -daily bread;” unless we take the word “bread” to mean all that men and -women require to preserve life to themselves and their children. That -sad people of the East to whom this prayer was given so long ago could -never have forgotten the cost and value of water.</p> - -<p>If you turn the pages of a Bible concordance to the word “water,” -you will find it repeated hundreds of times, in the language of -supplication, of longing, of prophecy, of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</span> awful warning, of beautiful -imagery, of love and aspiration. The history of the Jewish people in -their wanderings, their wars and temptations, to their final occupation -of the promised land, might be traced through the different meanings -and applications of this one word. It was bargained, begged, and fought -for, and was apportioned from generation to generation. We read among -the many stories of those thirsty lands how Achsah, daughter of Caleb -the Kenizzite, not content with her dowry, asked of her father yet -another gift, without which the first were valueless: “For thou hast -given me a south land; give me also springs of water. And Caleb gave -her the upper springs and the nether springs.”</p> - -<p>Now, our little boy Jack was seven years old, and had to be taken more -than halfway across the continent before he learned that water is a -precious thing. He was taken to an engineer’s camp in a cañon of a -little, wild river that is within the borders of that region of the far -West known as the “arid belt.”</p> - -<p>Well, there was water in this river; but<span class="pagenum" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</span> after the placer-mining -began, in the month of May, and Moore’s Creek brought down the -“tailings” from the mines and mingled them with the current of the -river, its waters became as yellow as those of the famous Tiber as -it “rolls by the towers of Rome,”—yellow with silt, which is not -injurious; but it is not pleasant to drink essence of granite rock, -nor yet to wash one’s face in it. They made a filter and filtered it; -but every pailful had to be “packed,” as they say in the West, by the -Chinese cook and the cook’s assistant. Economy in the use of water -became no more than a matter of common consideration for human flesh.</p> - -<p>In addition to the river there was a stream that came down the gulch -close beside the camp. This little stream was a spendthrift in the -spring and wasted its small patrimony of water; by the middle of summer -it had begun to economize, and by September it was a niggard,—letting -only a small dribble come down for those at its mouth to cherish in -pools or pots or pails, or in whatever it could be gathered. This -water of the gulch was frequently<span class="pagenum" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</span> fouled by the range cattle that -came crowding down to drink, mornings and evenings. Dead leaves and -vegetation lay soaking in it, as summer waned. It was therefore -condemned for drinking, but served for bathing or for washing the camp -clothing, and was exceedingly precious by reason of its small and -steadily decreasing quantity.</p> - -<p>One morning, late in July, Jack was fast asleep and dreaming. The -sun was hot on the great hills toward the east,—hills that had been -faintly green for a few weeks in the spring, but were now given up to -the mingled colors of the gray-green sagebrush and the dun-yellow soil.</p> - -<p>They would have been hills of paradise, could rain have fallen upon -them as often as it falls upon the cedar-crowned knolls of the Hudson; -for these hills are noble in form and of great size,—a family of -giants as they march skyward, arm in arm and shoulder to shoulder,—and -the sky above them is the sky we call “Italian.” The “down-cañon -wind,” that all night long had swept the gulch from<span class="pagenum" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</span> its source in the -hills to its mouth in the river, had fainted dead away in the heat of -the sun. Presently the counter wind from the great hot plains would -begin to blow, but this was the breathless pause between.</p> - -<p>The flies were tickling Jack’s bare legs and creeping into the neck -of his nightgown, where the button was off, as usually it is from a -seven-year-old’s nightgown. He was restless, “like a dog that hunts in -dreams,” for he was taking the old paths again that once he had known -so well.</p> - -<p>From the eastern hills came the mingled, far-off bleating, the -ululation of a multitude of driven sheep. The sound had reached Jack’s -dreaming ear. Suddenly his dream took shape, and for an instant he was -a happy boy.</p> - -<p>He was “at home” in the East. It was sheep-washing time, the last week -in May; the apple orchards were a mass of bloom and the deep, old, -winding lanes were sweet with their perfume. Jack was hurrying up the -lane by the Long Pond to the sheep-washing place, where the water came -down from the pond in<span class="pagenum" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</span> a dark, old, leaky, wooden flume, and was held -in a pool into which the sheep were plunged by twos and by threes, -squeezed and tumbled about and lifted out to stagger away under the -apple trees and dry their heavy fleeces in the sun. Jack was kicking in -his sleep, when his name was called by a voice outside the window and -he woke. Nothing was left of the dream, with all its sweets of sight -and sound and smell, but the noise of the river’s continuous wrestle -with the rocks of the upper bend, and that far-off multitudinous clamor -from over the sun-baked hills.</p> - -<p>“Jack, come out!” said the voice of Jack’s big cousin. “They are going -to ‘sheep’ us. There’s a band of eight thousand coming!”</p> - -<p>There was a great scattering of flies and of bedclothes, as Jack -leaped out. He wasted no regrets upon the past,—one isn’t so foolish -as that at seven years old,—but was ready for the joys of the -present. Eight thousand sheep, or half that number (allowing for a big -cousin’s liberal computation), were a sight worth seeing. As to being -“sheeped,”<span class="pagenum" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</span> what was there in an engineer’s camp to “sheep,” unless the -eight thousand woolly range-trotters should trot over tents and house -roofs and stovepipes and all, like Santa Claus’s team of reindeer!</p> - -<p>Jack was out of bed and into his clothes in a hurry, and off over the -hill with his cousin, buttoning the buttons of his “star” shirt waist -on the way.</p> - -<p>The “band” was pouring over the hill slopes in all directions, making -at full speed for the river. The hills themselves seemed to be dizzily -moving. The masses of distant small gray objects swarmed, they drifted, -they swam, with a curious motionless motion. They looked like nothing -more animated than a crop of gray stones, nearly of a size, spreading -broadly over the hills and descending toward the river with an impulse -which seemed scarcely more than the force of gravitation.</p> - -<p>The dogs were barking, the shepherds were racing and shouting to head -off the sheep and check their speed, lest the hundreds behind<span class="pagenum" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</span> should -press upon the hundreds in front and force them out into deep water. -The hot air throbbed with the tumult.</p> - -<p>When the thirst of every panting throat had been slaked and the band -began to scatter along the hill slopes, the boys went forward to speak -with the sheepmen.</p> - -<p>A few moments afterward both lads were returning to the camp on a run, -to ask permission to accept from the shepherds the gift of a lamb that -couldn’t “keep up” with the band. It had run beside its mother as -far as its strength would carry it, and then it had fallen and been -trampled; and there it must lie unless help could revive it. A night on -the hills, with the coyotes about, would finish it.</p> - -<p>Permission was given, and breakfast was a perfunctory meal for the -children by reason of the lamb lying on the strip of shade outside. -After breakfast they sopped its mouth with warm milk, they sponged -it with cold water, they tried to force a spoonful of mild stimulant -between its teeth. They hovered and watched for signs of returning -life. The<span class="pagenum" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</span> lamb lay with its eyes closed; its sides, that were -beginning to swell, rose and sank in long, heavy gasps. Once it moved -an ear, and the children thought it must be “coming to.” Upon this -hopeful sign they began at once to make plans for the lamb’s future -life and joys with them in the cañon.</p> - -<p>It should be led down to the river, night and morning, to drink; it -should have bran soaked in milk; it should nibble the grass on the -green strip; they would build it a house, for fear the coyotes should -come prowling about at night; it should follow them up the gulch and -over the hills, and race with them in the evenings on the river beach, -as “Daisy,” the pet fawn, had done—until something happened to her -(the children never knew what), and the lovely creature disappeared -from the cañon and out of their lives forever.</p> - -<p class="center p0 p2"><span class="figcenter" id="img002"> - <img src="images/002.jpg" class="w50" alt="THE LAMB THAT COULDN’T KEEP UP" /> -</span></p> -<p class="center p0 caption">THE LAMB THAT COULDN’T KEEP UP<br /></p> - -<p>When the strip of morning shadow was gone, they lifted the lamb -tenderly and carried it to the strip of afternoon shadow on the other -side of the house; and still it took no<span class="pagenum" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</span> notice of the water or the -milk, or of all the children’s care, nor seemed to hear that they were -planning a happy life for it, if only it would get well.</p> - -<p>When twilight came, and still it had not moved, the children held -anxious consultation on the subject of their neighbors, the coyotes; -but their father assured them there would be no danger, so near to the -house; and it seemed a pity to disturb the poor lamb.</p> - -<p>When the cool night wind began to blow down the cañon again, and the -children were asleep, the lamb made its last effort. It is the instinct -of all dumb creatures to keep upon their feet as long as they can -stand; for when they have fallen the herd has no compassion,—or it -may be that its comrades press around the sufferer out of curiosity or -mistaken sympathy, and so trample it out of existence without meaning -the least harm. The little nursling of the range obeyed this instinct -in its last moments,—struggled to its feet and fell, a few steps -farther on; and the lamb that couldn’t keep up was at rest.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</span></p> - -<p>No more toiling over hills and mountains and across hot valleys, packed -in the midst of the band, breathing the dust, stunned with the noise, -always hungry, almost always athirst, baked by the sun, chilled by the -snow, driven by the wind,—drifting on, from mountain to river, from -river to plain.</p> - -<p>This one, out of eight thousand, could rest at last, on cool grass, -with the peace and the silence and the room of a summer night around it.</p> - -<p>The band slept upon the hills that night; the next morning they crossed -the gulch above the camp, and drank up by the way <em>all</em> the water -of the little stream. Not another drop was seen for days. At length it -gathered strength enough to trickle down again, but it was necessary -to dip it up and let it stand in casks to settle before it was fit for -use; and meanwhile the Chinamen carriers did double duty.</p> - -<p>Those eastern hills in spring had been covered with wild flowers,—the -moss pink, lupines both white and blue, wild phlox, the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</span> small yellow -crocus, beds of tiny sweet-scented wild pansies, the camas flower, and -a tall-stemmed, pale lilac lily,—the queen of the hill garden. But -when spring came again, the old pathways were like an ash heap. The -beautiful hill garden was a desert.</p> - -<p>When these great sheep bands pass over the country, from range to -range, from territory to territory, they devour not only the vegetation -of one year, but the seeds, the roots, and, with these, the promise of -the next.</p> - -<p>It is the migration of the Hungry and the Thirsty; and a cry goes out -against them, like the cry of Moab when the children of Israel camped -within its borders:—</p> - -<p>“Surely this multitude will lick up all that is round about us.”</p> -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</span></p> - -<h2 class="nobreak" id="DREAM-HORSES">DREAM-HORSES</h2> -</div> - - -<p>There is a little girl who hangs upon her mother’s chair, getting her -head between her mother’s work and the light, and begs for pictures.</p> - -<p>She expects her mother to make these pictures on some bit of paper -treasured for the purpose which she offers, with a book to rest it -on, and a stubby pencil notched with small toothmarks, the record of -moments of perplexity when Polly was making her own pictures.</p> - -<p>It is generally after a bad failure of her own that she comes to her -mother. The pang of disappointment with her own efforts is apt to -sharpen her temper a little; it does not make Polly more patient with -her mother’s mistakes that she makes mistakes herself. But between -critic and artist, with such light as the dark lantern of a little -girl’s head permits<span class="pagenum" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</span> to fall upon the paper, the picture gets made -somehow, and before it is finished Polly’s heart will be so full of -sunshine that she will insist upon comparisons most flattering to the -feelings of her artist, between their different essays at the same -subject.</p> - -<p>It is a subject they are both familiar with; and it is wonderful, -considering the extent of Polly’s patronage, that her artist’s work -does not better itself.</p> - -<p>It is always a picture of a young person on horseback,—a young person -about the age of Polly, but much handsomer and more grown-up looking. -And the horse must be a pony with a flowing mane and tail, and his legs -must be flung out, fore and aft, so that in action he resembles one of -those “crazy-bugs” (so we children used to call them) that go scuttling -like mad things across the still surface of a pond. In other respects -he may be as like an ordinary pony as mamma and the stubby pencil can -make him. But the young person on the pony must be drawn in profile, -because Polly cannot make profiles, except<span class="pagenum" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</span> horses’ profiles; her young -persons always look straight out of the picture as they ride along, and -the effect, at full speed, on a horse with his legs widely extended -from his body, is extremely gay and nonchalant.</p> - -<p>With the picture in her hand, the little girl will go away by herself -and proceed to “dream and to dote.”</p> - -<p>She lives in a horsey country. Horses in troops or “bands” go past -by the trails, on the one side of the river or the other. Sometimes -they ford where the water is breast-high over the bar. It is wild and -delicious to hear the mares whinnying to their foals in midstream, and -the echo of their voices, with the rushing of the loud water pent among -the hills.</p> - -<p>Often the riders who are in charge of the band encamp for the night -on the upper bend of the river, and the red spark of their camp-fire -glows brightly about the time the little girl must be going to bed; -for it is in spring or fall the bands of horses go up into the hills -or down into the valleys, or off, one does not<span class="pagenum" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</span> know where,—to a -“round up,” perhaps, where each stockman counts his own, and puts his -brand on the young colts. Over the hills, where Polly and her big -brother go wild-flower hunting, horses wander loose and look down from -the summits, mere specks, like black mice, against the sky; they are -plainly to be seen from miles away, for there is not a tree anywhere -upon these hills. Sometimes a single horse, the chieftain of a troop, -will stand alone on a hilltop and take a look all the wide country -round, and call, in his splendid voice like “sounding brass,” to -the mares and colts that have scattered in search of alkali mud to -lick, or just to show, perhaps, that they are able to get on without -his lordship. He will call, and if his troop do not answer, he will -condescend to go a little way to meet them, halting and inquiring with -short whinnies what they are about. Sometimes, in spite of discipline, -they will compel him to go all the way to meet them; for even a horse -soon tires of dignity on a hilltop all alone, with no one to see how it -becomes him.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</span></p> - -<p>Polly likes to meet stray horses on her walks, close enough to see -their colors and tell which are the pretty ones, the ones she calls -hers. They stare at her from under breezy forelocks, and no doubt think -themselves much finer creatures than little girls who have only two -feet to go upon. And the little girl thinks so, too,—or so it would -seem; for every evening after sunset when she runs about the house -bareheaded she plays she is a horse herself. And not satisfied with -being a horse, she plays she is a rider, too. Such a complex ideal as -that surely never came into the brain of a “cayuse,” for all his big -eyes and his tangle of hair which Polly thinks so magnificent.</p> - -<p>The head and the feet of Polly and her tossing locks are pure horse; -that is evident at a glance as she prances past the window. But the -clinched, controlling hands are the hands of the rider,—a thrilling -combination on a western summer evening, when the brassy sunset in the -gate of the cañon is like a trumpet-note, and the cold, pink light on<span class="pagenum" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</span> -the hills is as keen as a bugle-call, and the very spirit of “boots and -saddles” is in the wind that gustily blows up from the plains, turning -all the poplars white, and searching the quiet house from room to room -for any laggard stay-indoors.</p> - -<p>Within a mile of the house, in the cañon which Polly calls home, there -is a horse ranch in a lovely valley opening toward the river. All -around it are these treeless hills that look so barren and feed so -many wild lives. The horses have a beautiful range, from the sheltered -valley up the gulches to the summits of the hills and down again to the -river to drink. The men live in a long, low cabin, attached to a corral -much bigger than the cabin, and have an extremely horsey time of it.</p> - -<p>I shouldn’t be surprised if it were among Polly’s dreams to be one -of a picked company of little-girl riders, in charge of a band of -long-tailed ponies, just the right size for little girls to manage; -to follow the ponies over the hills all day, and at evening to fetch<span class="pagenum" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</span> -water from the river and cook their own little-girl suppers in the -dingy cabin by the corral; to have envious visits from other little -girls, and occasionally to go home and tell mother all about it.</p> - -<p>Now, in this country of real horses there were not many play-horses, -and these few not of the first quality. Hobby-horses in the shops of -the town were most trivial in size, meant only for riders of a very -tender age. Some of them were merely heads of horses, fastened to a -seat upon rockers, with a shelf in front to keep the inexperienced -rider in his place.</p> - -<p>There were people in the town, no doubt, who had noble rocking-horses -for their little six-year-olds, but they must have sent for them on -purpose; the storekeepers did not “handle” this variety.</p> - -<p>So Polly’s papa, assisted by John Brown, the children’s most delightful -companion and slave and story-teller, concluded to build a hobby-horse -that would outdo the hobby-horse of commerce. (Brown was a modest,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</span> -tender-hearted man, who had been a sailor off the coast of Norway, -among the islands and fiords, a miner where the Indians were “bad,” a -cowboy, a ranchman; and he was now irrigating the garden and driving -the team in the cañon.)</p> - -<p>Children like best the things they invent and make themselves, and -plenty of grown people are children in this respect; they like their -own vain imaginings better than some of the world’s realities.</p> - -<p>But Polly’s rocking-horse was no “vain thing,” although her father and -John did have their own fun out of it before she had even heard of it.</p> - -<p>His head wasn’t “made of pease-straw,” nor his tail “of hay,” but in -his own way he was quite as successful a combination.</p> - -<p>His eyes were two of Brother’s marbles. They were not mates, which was -a pity, as they were set somewhat closely together so you couldn’t help -seeing them both at once; but as one of them soon dropped out it didn’t -so much matter. His mane was a strip of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</span> long leather fringe. His tail -was made up of precious contributions extorted from the real tails -of Billy and Blue Pete and the team-horses, and twined most lovingly -together by John, the friend of all the parties to the transfer.</p> - -<p>The saddle was a McClellan tree, which is the framework of a kind of -man’s saddle; a wooden spike, fixed to the left side of it and covered -with leather, made a horn, and the saddle-blanket was a Turkish towel.</p> - -<p>It was rainy weather, and the cañon days were short, when this unique -creation of love and friendship—which are things more precious, it is -to be hoped, even than horseflesh—took its place among Polly’s idols, -and was at once clothed on with all her dreams of life in action.</p> - -<p>When she mounted the hobby-horse she mounted her dream-horse as well; -they were as like as Don Quixote’s helmet and the barber’s basin.</p> - -<p>She rode him by firelight in the last half-hour before bedtime. She -rode him just after<span class="pagenum" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</span> breakfast in the morning. She “took” to him when -she was in trouble, as older dream-riders take to <em>their</em> favorite -“hobbies.” She rocked and she rode, from restlessness and wretchedness -into peace, from unsatisfied longings into temporary content, from bad -tempers into smiles and sunshine.</p> - -<p>She rode out the winter, and she rode in the wild and windy spring. She -got well of the measles pounding back and forth on that well-worn seat. -She took cold afterward, before the winds grew soft, experimenting with -draughts in a corner of the piazza.</p> - -<p>Now that summer gives to her fancies and her footsteps a wider range, -the hard-worked hobby gets an occasional rest. (Often he is to be seen -with his wooden nose resting on the seat of a chair which is bestrewed -with clover blossoms, withered wild-roses, and bits of grass; for -Polly, like other worshipers of graven images, believes that her idol -can eat and drink and appreciate substantial offerings.) But when the -dream grows too strong, the picture too vivid,—not mamma’s picture,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</span> -but the one in the child’s heart,—she takes to the saddle again, and -the horsehair switch and the leather fringes float upon the wind, and -her fancies mount, far above the lava bluffs that confine her vision.</p> - -<p>Will our little girl-riders be as happy on their real horses, when they -get them, as they are upon their dream-horses? Is the actual possession -of “back hair” and the wearing of long petticoats more blissful than -the knot, hard-twisted, of the ends of a silk handkerchief, which the -child-woman binds about her brows when she walks—like Troy’s proud -dames whose garments sweep the ground—in the skirt of her mother’s -“cast-off gown”?</p> - -<p>It depends upon the direction these imperious dream-horses will take -with our small women. Will the rider be in bondage to the steed? Heaven -forbid! for dream-horses make good servants but very bad masters. Will -they bear her fast and far, and will she keep a quiet eye ahead and a -constant hand upon the rein? Will they flag and flounder down in the -middle-ways, where so many of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</span> us have parted with our dream-steeds and -taken the footpath, consoled to find that we have plenty of company and -are not altogether dismayed? The dream-horses carry their child-riders -beyond the mother’s following, so that the eyes and the heart ache with -straining after the fleeting vision.</p> - -<p>It is better she should not see too much nor too far along the way they -go, since “to travel joyfully is better than to arrive.”</p> - -<p>If only they could know their own “blessedness” while the way is long -before them!</p> -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</span></p> - -<h2 class="nobreak" id="AN_IDAHO_PICNIC">AN IDAHO PICNIC</h2> -</div> - - -<p>At the camp in the cañon they had a cow. It is true she sometimes broke -away and went off with the herds on the range and had to be chased -on horseback and caught with a lasso. They had chickens,—all that -were left them from night raids by the coyotes;<span class="fnanchor" id="fna1"><a href="#fn1">[1]</a></span> and a garden, the -products of which they shared with the jack-rabbits and the gophers. -But the supply wagon brought fresh fruit from the town, ten miles away, -and new butter from the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</span> valley ranches. There were no mosquitoes, -no peddlers, no tramps, no book agents, no undesirable neighbor’s -children, whom one cannot scare away as one may the neighbor’s dogs -and chickens when they creep through the fence, but must be civil -to for the sake of peace and good-will,—which are good things in a -neighborhood.</p> - -<p>Jack Gilmour worked at his crude inventions in the shop, and was -allowed to use grown-up tools under certain not too hard conditions; -and Polly rode up and down the steep path to the river beach on -the shoulders of the young assistant engineers—and assistant -everything-elses. The mother was waited on and spoiled, as women are in -camp; she was even invited to go fishing with her husband and <abbr title="mister">Mr.</abbr> Dane, -one of the young assistants-in-general. It was a dull time for work -in the camp, and there were good care-takers with whom Mrs. Gilmour -could trust the children. The boy was the elder. He was learning those -two most important elements of a boy’s education, up to nine years, -according to Sir Walter Scott,—to<span class="pagenum" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</span> ride and to speak the truth. But he -was only eight, and perhaps was not quite perfect in either.</p> - -<p>He watched the three happy ones ride away, and as they turned on the -hilltop and waved good-by to the little figure on the trail below, he -was longing, with all the strength of desire an eight-year-old heart -can know, for the time to come when he too should climb the hills and -wave his hand against the sky before turning the crest, where he had so -often stood and felt so small, gazing up into those higher hills that -locked the last bright bend of the river from sight.</p> - -<p>They were to go up Charcoal Creek; they were to cross the “Divide;” -they were to go down Grouse Creek on the other side and camp on some -unknown bit of the river’s shore.</p> - -<p>The boy went stumbling back down the dusty path to his unfinished work -in the shop,—the engine for a toy elevated road he was making. But the -painfully fashioned fragments of his plan had no meaning for eyes that -still saw only the hills against the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</span> morning sky, and the three happy -ones riding away.</p> - -<p>This first trip led to a second and longer one, to the fishing-grounds -up the river, by the trail on the opposite shore. Jack heard his -father and <abbr title="mister">Mr.</abbr> Dane talking one morning at the breakfast-table about -riding down to Turner’s and getting a pack-animal and some more riding -animals,—and mamma was going again! What good times the grown-ups did -have! And John Brown, Jack’s particular crony from the men’s camp, was -going, to cook and take care of the animals. This word “animal” is used -in the West to describe anything that is ridden or “packed,”—horse, -mule, Indian pony, or “burro.” It is never applied to cattle or -unbroken horses on the range; these are “stock.”</p> - -<p>The party were to take a tent and stay perhaps a week, if no word came -from the home camp to call them back.</p> - -<p>Jack slipped away from the table and went out and hung upon the railing -of a footbridge that crossed the brook. Beside learning how<span class="pagenum" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</span> to ride -and to speak the truth, Jack was learning to whistle. He was practicing -this last more persistently, perhaps, than either of the more important -branches of knowledge,—let us hope because there was more need of -practice; for he was as yet very far from being a perfect whistler. It -was but a melancholy, tuneless little note in which he gave vent to his -feelings, as he watched the trickling water.</p> - -<p>“I’d like to take the boy,” his father was that moment saying at the -breakfast-table in the cook-tent, “if we had anything he could ride.” -And then he added, smiling, “There’s Mrs. O’Dowd.” The smile went -around the table.</p> - -<p>Mrs. O’Dowd, or “Peggy,” as she was variously called, was a gray donkey -of uncertain age and mild but inflexible disposition who sometimes -consented to carry the children over the hills at a moderate pace, -her usual equipment being a side-saddle, which did not fit her oval -figure (the curves of which turned the wrong way for beauty); so the -side-saddle was always slipping off, obliging the children to slide -down and “cinch up.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</span></p> - -<p>The engineer’s house was built against a hill; from the end of the -upper piazza a short bridge, or gang-plank, joined the hill and met a -steep trail which led upward to the tents, the garden, the road to the -lower camp, the road up the bluffs, and all the rest of the children’s -world beyond the gulch. One of their favorite exercises with Mrs. -O’Dowd was to ride her down the trail, and try to force her over this -gang-plank. She would put her small feet cautiously one before the -other, hanging her great white head and sniffing her way. The instant -her toes touched the resonant boards of the bridge, she stopped, and -then the exercises began. Mrs. O’Dowd’s gravity and resignation, in the -midst of the children’s laughing and shouting and pulling and whacking, -was most edifying to see; but she never budged. She saw the darlings of -the household dance back and forth before her in safety; the engineers -in their big boots would push past her and tramp over the bridge. Mrs. -O’Dowd was a creature of fixed habits. Useless, flighty children, and -people with<span class="pagenum" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</span> unaccountable ways of their own might do as they liked; it -had never been her habit to trust Mrs. O’D. on such a place as that, -and she never did.</p> - -<p>“Yes, the boy might ride Peggy,” said Jack’s father. “He could keep her -up with John and the pack-mule, if not with us.”</p> - -<p>“Oh, I should not want him behind with the men,” said Jack’s -mother,—“and those high trails! If he’s to go over such places, he -must ride where you can look after his saddle-girths.” She could hear -Jack’s disconsolate whistle as she spoke. “I hope he does not hear us,” -she said. “It would break his heart to think he is going, and be left -behind after all.”</p> - -<p>“If the boy’s heart is going to break as easily as that, it is time it -was toughened,” said his father, but not ungently. “I should tell him -there is a chance of his going; but if it can’t be managed, he must not -whine about it.”</p> - -<p>Jack went to bed by himself, except on Sunday nights; then his mother -went with<span class="pagenum" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</span> him, and saw that he laid his clothes in a neat pile on the -trunk by his bed,—for in a camp bedroom trunks sometimes take the -place of chairs,—and heard him say his prayers, and sometimes they -talked together a little while before she kissed him good-night. That -night was Sunday night, and Jack’s mother asked him, while she watched -his undressing, if it ever made him dizzy to stand on high places and -look down. Jack did not seem to know what that feeling was like; and -then she asked him how far he had ever ridden on Mrs. O’Dowd at one -time. Jack thought he had never ridden farther than <abbr title="mister">Mr.</abbr> Hensley’s -ranch—that was three miles away, six miles in all, going and coming; -but he had rested at the ranch, and had walked for a part of the -journey when his sister Polly had resolved to ride by herself, instead -of behind him, holding on to his jacket.</p> - -<p>It made his mother very happy to tell the boy that the next day, if -nothing happened to prevent, he was to set out with the fishing party -for a week’s camping up the river. She<span class="pagenum" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</span> knew how, in his reticent -child’s heart, he had envied them. He was seated on the side of his -bed, emptying the beach sand out of his stockings, when she told him. -He said nothing at first, and one who did not know his plain little -face as his mother knew it might have thought he was indifferent. She -took a last look at him, before leaving the room. It seemed but a very -little while ago that the close-cropped whity-brown head on the pillow -had been covered with locks like thistle-down, which had never been -touched with the scissors; that the dark little work-hardened hands -(for Jack’s play was always work) lying outside the sheet had been -kissed a dozen times a day for joy of their rosy palms and dimples. -And to-morrow the boy would put on spurs,—no, not <em>spurs</em>, -but <i>a</i> spur, left over from the men’s accoutrements,—and he -would ride—to be sure it was only Mrs. O’Dowd, but no less would the -journey be one of the landmarks in his life. And many older adventurers -than Jack have set out in this way on their first emprise,—not very -heroically<span class="pagenum" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</span> equipped, except for brave and joyous dreams and good faith -in their ability to keep the pace set by better-mounted comrades.</p> - -<p>Jack woke next morning with a delightful feeling that this day was -not going to be like any other day he had known. Preparations for -the journey had already begun. In the cook-tent two boxes were being -filled with things to eat and things to cook them with. These were to -be covered with canvas, roped, and fastened, one on each side of the -pack-mule’s pack-saddle. On the piazza, saddle-bags were being packed; -guns, ammunition, fishing-rods, rubber coats, and cushions were being -collected in a heap for John to carry down to the beach to be ferried -across the river, where the man from Turner’s horse-ranch was already -waiting with the animals. The saddle-horses and Mrs. O’Dowd were to -cross by the ford above the rapids. The boat went back and forth two -or three times, and in the last load went Jack and his mother and -Polly in the care of one of the young engineers. The stir of departure -had fired Polly’s imagination. It<span class="pagenum" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</span> was not mamma saying good-by to -Polly,—it was Polly saying good-by to mamma, before riding off with -“bubba” on an expedition of their own. She was telling about it, in a -soft, joyous recitative, to any one who had time to listen. The man -from Turner’s had brought, for Mrs. Gilmour to ride, a mule he called a -lady’s animal, but remarked that for his own use he preferred one that -would go. Mrs. Gilmour thought that she did, too; so the side-saddle -was changed from the “lady’s animal” to the mule that “would go.”</p> - -<p>The pack-mule was “packed,” the men’s horses were across the ford, -mamma had kissed Polly, two pairs and a half of spurs were jingling -impatiently on the rocks,—but where was Mrs. O’Dowd?</p> - -<p>She was dallying at the ford,—she was coy about taking to the water. -Sticks and straps and emphatic words of encouragement had no effect -upon her. She had unfortunately had time to make up her mind, and she -had made it up not to cross the river. She was persuaded finally, by -means of a<span class="pagenum" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</span> “lass’ rope” around her neck. Everybody was laughing at her -subdued way of making herself conspicuous, delaying the whole party and -meekly implying that it was everybody’s fault but her own.</p> - -<p>The camp of the engineers was on a little river of Idaho that rises -in the Bitter-root range of the Rocky Mountains, and flows into the -swift, silent current of the great Snake River, which flows into the -Columbia, which flows into the Pacific; so that the waters of this -little inland river see a great deal of grand and peculiar scenery -on their way to the ocean. But the river as it flows past the camp -is still very young and inexperienced. Its waters have carried no -craft larger than a lumberman’s pirogue, or the coffin-shaped box the -Chinese wood-drivers use for a boat. Its cañons have never echoed to -a locomotive’s scream; it knows not towns nor villages; not even a -telegraph pole has ever been reared on its banks. It is just out of -the mountains, hurrying down through the gate of its last cañon to the -desert plains. But young<span class="pagenum" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</span> and provincial as it is, it has an ancestral -history very ancient and respectable, if mystery and tragedy and -years of reticence can give dignity to a family history. The river’s -story has been patiently recorded on the tablets of the black basalt -bluffs that face each other across its channel. Their language it is -not given to everybody to read. The geologists tell a wonderful tale -which they learned from those inscriptions on the rocks. They do not -say how many years ago, but long enough to have given a very ancient -name to our river,—had there been any one living at that time to -call it by a name,—it met with a fearful obstruction, a very dragon -in its path, which threatened to devour it altogether, or to scatter -it in little streams over the face of the earth. A flood of melted, -boiling-hot lava burst up suddenly in the river’s bed, making it to -boil like a pot, and crowded into the granite gorges through which the -river had found its way, half filling them. It was a battle between the -heavens and the earth,—the stream of molten rock, blinding<span class="pagenum" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</span> hot from -the caverns beneath the earth’s crust, meeting the sweet cool waters -from the clouds that troop about the mountains or hide their tops in -mist and snow. The life-giving flood prevailed over that which brought -only defacement and death. The sullen lava flux settled, shrank, and -hardened at last, fitting into the granite gorges as melted lead fits -the mould into which it is poured. The waters kept flowing down, never -resting till they had worn a new channel in the path of the old one, -only narrower and deeper, down through the intruding lava. When the -river was first known to men, wherever its course lay through a granite -gorge the granite was seen to be lined in places, often continuously -for miles, with black lava rock, or basalt, standing in lofty palisades -with deeply scarred and graven fronts and with long slides of crumbled -rock at their feet, descending to the level of the river.</p> - -<p>Another part of the river’s story has been toilsomely written in -the trails that wind along its shores, worn by the feet of men and<span class="pagenum" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</span> -animals. Whose feet were the first to tread them, and on what errands? -This is the part of the river’s story some of us would like best to -know. But this the geologist cannot tell us.</p> - -<p>It was one of these hunters’, miners’, cowboys’, packers’, ranchmen’s -trails the fishing-party followed on its way up the river. Through the -cañon they wound along the base of the lava bluffs; then entered a -crooked fold of the hills called Sheep Gulch, passing through willow -thickets, rattling over the pebbles of a summer-dried stream, losing -the breeze and getting more than they wanted of the sun. Sheep Gulch -is one of the haunts of grouse, wood-doves, and “cotton-tails” (as -the little gray rabbits are called to distinguish them from the tall -leaping “jack-rabbits” of the sage-brush plains, which are like the -English hare).</p> - -<p>Above Turner’s horse-ranch, Sheep Gulch divides into two branches; up -one of these goes the old Idaho City road. Where the gulch divides -there is a disused cabin, (which<span class="pagenum" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</span> Jack remembered afterward because -there they saw some grouse which they didn’t get,) and there they left -the trail for the old stage-road. As they climbed the little divide -which separates the waters (when there are any) of Sheep Gulch from -those of Moore’s Creek, they were met by a fresh breeze which cooled -their hot faces and seemed to welcome them to the hills. The hills were -all around them now,—the beautiful mountain pastures, golden with -their wind-sown harvest of wild, strong-stemmed grasses. As the grass -becomes scarce on the lower ranges the herds of cattle climb to the -higher, along the spiral trails they make in grazing, taking always, -like good surveyors, the easiest upward grade.</p> - -<p>In the fall the cattle-men send out their cowboys, or “riders,” to -drive the herds down from these highest ranges, where snow falls early, -and to collect them in some valley chosen for the autumn “round-up.”</p> - -<p>At Giles’s ranch, on the divide, the party halted to cinch up and to -ask a drink all<span class="pagenum" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</span> around from the spring which every traveler who has -tasted it remembers.</p> - -<p>The women of the household—a slender, dark-haired daughter and a -stout, fair, flushed mother with a year-old baby—were busy, baby and -all, in an outdoor kitchen, a delightful-looking place, part light and -part shadow, and full of all manner of tools and rude conveniences that -told of cheerful, busy living and making the best of things. They were -preparing for the coming, next week, of the threshers,—a yearly event -of consequence at a ranch,—fifteen men with horses for their machines -and saddle-horses besides, all to be fed and lodged at the ranch. In -the corral behind the big new barn, there were stacks of yellow and -stacks of green, and between them a hay press, painted pink, which one -could see as far as one could see Giles’s. Altogether it was lovely at -Giles’s; but they were building a new house,—which, of course, they -had a perfect right to do. But whoever stops there next year will find -them all snugly roofed and gabled and painted<span class="pagenum" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</span> white; and it is to be -feared the outdoor kitchen, with its dim corners full of “truck” and -its lights and shadows, will be seen no more.</p> - -<p>The old stage-road went gayly along a bit of high plain, and then, -without the slightest hesitation or circumlocution, dropped off into -the cañon of Moore’s Creek. These reckless old pioneer roads give one -a vivid idea of the race for possession of a new mining-camp, and of -the pluck it took to win. At the “freeze-out” stage-passengers probably -got out and walked, and the driver “rough-locked” the wheels; but the -horsemen of that new country doubtless took a fresh hitch on their -cinches and went jouncing down the breakneck grade, with countenances -as calm as those of the illustrious riders of bronze and marble horses -we see in the public squares, unless they were tired of the saddle and -walked down to rest themselves,—never their horses.</p> - -<p>Jack’s short legs were getting numb with pressing the saddle, and he -was glad to walk,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</span> and to linger on his way down the wild descent -into the cañon. It was the middle of September; Moore’s Creek had -not more than enough water left to float the “Chinaman’s drive” of -cord-wood, cut higher up on its banks. Its waters, moreover, were -turbid with muddy tailings emptied into them from the sluice-boxes of -the placer-miners who had been working all summer on the bars. Above -Moore’s Creek the water of the river is clear as that of a trout-stream -and iridescent with reflections from sky and shore; but after its union -with that ill-fated stream it is obliged to carry the poor creek’s -burden, and its own bright waters thenceforth wear the stain of labor. -A breath of coolness, as of sunless rocks and damp, spicy shade, came -up to them from the cañon; and a noise of waters, mingled with queer, -discordant cries. It was dinner-time at the Chinamen’s camp and word -was being passed up stream, from man to man, calling the wood-drivers -to leave their work. They were not the sleek-braided, white-bloused, -silk-sashed Chinese of the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</span> house-servant variety. They had wild black -hair, rugged, not fat, sleepy faces, and little clothing except the -boots,—store boots, in which a Chinaman is queerer than in anything -except a store hat. They struggled with the jam of cord-wood as if it -were some sort of water-prey they had hunted down, and were now meeting -at bay, spearing, thrusting, hooking with their long boat-hooks, -skipping from rock to rock in midstream, hoarse with shouting.</p> - -<p>The party had now left the stage-road and turned down the pack-trail -along the creek toward its junction with the river. The pack-trail here -crosses the creek by a bridge high above the stream; the bridge was -good enough, but it was a question whether Mrs. O’Dowd, with her known -prejudices, could be induced to go over it. It was quickly decided to -get a “good ready,” as Jack said, and hustle the old lady down the -trail between two of the horses and crowd her on the bridge before she -had time to make up that remarkable mind of hers. This simple plan was<span class="pagenum" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</span> -carried out with enthusiasm on the part of all but Mrs. O’D. herself.</p> - -<p>Soon after leaving Giles’s, they had met a wagon-load of people -townward bound from Gillespie’s, the beautiful river ranch above -Moore’s Creek. <abbr title="mister">Mr.</abbr> Gilmour had stopped them to inquire if a pack-animal -and two riding animals, mules or horses, could be sent from the ranch -up to the fishing-camp, on a day set for the journey home; for the -mules from Turner’s were to go back that same day, to start the next -day but one, as part of a pack-train bound for Atlanta.</p> - -<p>The people in the wagon “couldn’t say.” Most of the horses were -out on the range; those at the ranch were being used for hauling -peaches to town, fording Moore’s Creek and the river, and scaling the -“freeze-out.” But <abbr title="mister">Mr.</abbr> Gillespie himself was at home; the travelers had -better stop on the way up and find out.</p> - -<p>So, after crossing the bridge and gaining the good trail along the -river-bank, <abbr title="mister">Mr.</abbr> Dane spurred on ahead and forded the river, to<span class="pagenum" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</span> make -the necessary inquiries at the ranch. Gillespie’s is on the opposite -side of the river from the packer’s trail. It is most beautiful with -the sun in the western sky, its hills and water-front of white beech -and pine trees all in shadow, and a broad reflection floating out into -the river at its feet.</p> - -<p>The sun was still high and the shadows were short; but the river ranch -was a fair picture of a frontier home as they looked back at it passing -by on the other side,—the last home they should see on the wild way -they were taking.</p> - -<p>The trail went winding up and up, and still higher, until they were -far above the river and could see, beyond the still reflections that -darkened it by Gillespie’s, the white-whipped waters of the rapids -above. And the higher they went, the more hills beyond hills rose along -the horizon widening their view.</p> - -<p><abbr title="mister">Mr.</abbr> Dane had rejoined the party, with a satisfactory report from -the ranch. He rode ahead on his blue-roan Indian pony twirling<span class="pagenum" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</span> his -<em>romál</em>, a long leathern strap attached to the bridle, the end -divided like a double whip-lash by means of which and a pair of -heavy blunt spurs “Blue Pete” and his rider had come to a perfect -understanding. Blue Pete was a sulky little brute, with a broad white -streak down his nose and a rather vicious eye, but he was tough and -unsensitive and minded his business.</p> - -<p>Next came Jack’s mamma on the “mule that would go”—with a will, as -far as Turner’s,—but after that needed the usual encouragement; a -gentle-paced creature though, and sure-footed on a bad trail. Then came -Jack on Mrs. O’Dowd. The poor old girl had been vigorously cinched and -it wasn’t becoming to her figure; but those were bad places for a -saddle to turn, even with an active, eight-year-old boy on it.</p> - -<p>The boy was deeply content, gazing about him at the river, the hills, -the winding trail ahead, and serenely poking up Mrs. O’Dowd with his -one spur in response to the packer’s often-repeated command to “Keep -her up!”<span class="pagenum" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</span> When Mrs. O’Dowd refused to be kept up Jack’s father made -a rush at her—a kind of business his good horse Billy must have -despised, for Billy had points that indicated better blood than that -which is usually found in the veins of those tough little “rustlers” of -the desert and the range. He loved to lead on a hard trail, with his -long, striding walk, his cheerful, well-opened eyes to the front. He -was gentle, but he was also scornful; he was not a “lady’s animal;” he -had a contempt for paltry little objectless canters over the hills with -limp-handed women and children flopping about on his back. He liked -to feel there was work ahead; a long climb and a bad trail did not -frighten him; he looked his best when he was breasting a keen ascent -with the wind of the summit parting his thin forelock, his ears pointed -forward, his breath coming quick and deep, his broad haunches working -under the saddle. Poor work indeed he must have thought it, hustling -a lazy, sulky old donkey along a trail that was as nothing to his own -sinewy legs.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</span></p> - -<p>After Billy came the pack-mule, driven by the man from Turner’s, -a square-jawed, bronzed young fellow, mounted also on a mule and -conversing amicably with John Brown. The lunch-bag had been passed -down the line, but there was no halt, except for water at the crossing -of a little gulch. The trail wound in and out among the spurs of the -hills and up and down the rock-faced heights. They passed a roofless -cabin, once the dwelling of some placer-miners, and farther on the -half-obliterated ditch they had built leading to the deserted bars, -where a few gray, warped sluice-boxes were falling to pieces in the sun.</p> - -<p>Between two and three o’clock they came in sight of some large -pine-trees, sheltering a half circle of white sand beach that sloped -smoothly to the river. Above the pines a granite cliff rose, two -hundred and fifty feet of solid rock against a hill five hundred or -more feet higher, that shut off the morning sun. Between the cliff and -the lava bluffs opposite, the eastern and western shadows<span class="pagenum" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</span> nearly met -across the river. There were deep, still pools among the rocks near -shore, where the large trout congregate. Below the shadowed bend, the -river spread out again suddenly in the sunlight that flashed white as -silver on the ripples of a gravelly bar. This was the spot chosen at -sight for the fishing-camp.</p> - -<p>A bald eagle perched on a turret of the lava bluffs across the river -watched the party descending the trail. At the report of a rifle -echoing among the rocks, he rose and wheeled away over the pine-trees -without hurrying himself or dropping a single feather in acknowledgment -of the shot. It was a dignified, rather scornful retreat.</p> - -<p>Where the trail hugs the cliff closest on its way around the bend, it -passes under a big overhanging rock. No one, I am sure, ever rode under -it for the first time without looking up at the black crack between -it and the cliff, and wondering how far up the crack goes, and when -the huge mass will fall. There is a story that the Bannock braves, -following<span class="pagenum" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</span> this trail on the war-path, always fired a passing arrow up -into the crack,—perhaps out of the exuberance of youth and war-paint, -perhaps to propitiate the demon of the rocks, lest he should drop one -of his superfluous boulders on their feathered heads. The white men who -followed the trail after the Indians had left it, amused themselves by -shooting at the arrows and dislodging them from the crack. The story -must be true, because there are no arrows left in the crack! Jack -stared up at it many times, and never could see one.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>So now they were at home for a week in the wilderness. Jack followed -Brown about as he was “making camp,” cutting tent-pegs and poles -and putting up the old A-tent, which had seen service in the army -and in many frontier camps since it was “condemned” and sold at -quartermaster’s sale.</p> - -<p>The man from Turner’s had taken another bite of lunch and returned with -his animals. He bade Jack to watch for him as he passed<span class="pagenum" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</span> the camp, day -after to-morrow, with his mule-train for Atlanta.</p> - -<p>The kitchen was unpacked down on the beach and the fireplace chosen,—a -big, wedge-shaped rock,—in the lee of which John built a fire, not -for warmth, but for the sake of a good bed of coals for cooking. Mrs. -Gilmour was resting in the tent, under the pine-trees. <abbr title="mister">Mr.</abbr> Gilmour had -gone up the river to catch some trout for supper.</p> - -<p>After four o’clock the sun left the river bank, but all the colors were -distinct and strong,—the white beach, the dark pine boughs against the -sky, the purple colors in the rocks, and the spots of pale green and -yellow lichen on them, the changing tints in the dark water swinging -smoothly around the bend and then flashing out into a broad sheet of -silvery sparkles over the bar. It was as if it went gravely around the -shadowy bend, and then broke out laughing in the bright light.</p> - -<p>As it grew darker, the kitchen fire began to glow red against the big -gray rock. In<span class="pagenum" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</span> front of it John was stooping to heap coals on the lid -of the bake-kettle, where the bread was spread in a thin, round cake -for cooking.</p> - -<p>There were three big trout for supper and four or five little ones. The -big ones were a noble weight to tell of, but the little ones tasted the -best when they were taken out of the bake-kettle on hot tin plates and -served with thin slices of bacon and camp bread.</p> - -<p>The horses had been turned loose up the trail but now came wandering -back, Billy leading, followed by Pete, who was hobbled but managed to -keep up with him, and Mrs. O’Dowd meandering meekly in the rear. They -were on their way home, having decided that was the best place to pass -the night, but John turned them back. After supper he watered them at -the river and took them up the trail to a rudely fenced inclosure on -the bluffs, where there was better pasture.</p> - -<p>Sleepy-time for Jack came very soon after supper, but as the tent was -some distance from the camp-fire,—a lonesome bedroom for a little boy -to lie in by himself,—he was<span class="pagenum" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</span> rolled up in a blanket and allowed to -sleep by the camp-fire. The last thing he could remember was the sound -of the river and the wind in the great pine boughs overhead and voices -around him talking about the stars that could be seen in the night -sky between the fire-illumined tree branches. The great boughs moved -strangely in the hot breath of the fire that lit them from below. The -sky between looked black as ink and the stars blazed far and keen. -John was washing up the dishes on his knees by the light of a candle -fastened in a box set upon end to shield it from draughts. Jack watched -the light shining up into his face and on his hands as he moved them -about. It seemed as if he had slept but a moment, when they were -shaking him and trying to stand him on his feet and he was stumbling -along to the tent with his father’s arm around him.</p> - -<p>How they crawled about in the low tent, by the light of a candle -fastened by its own drippings to a stone, and took off a few clothes -and put on more (for the September nights<span class="pagenum" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</span> were cold); how cosy it was, -lying down in his blankets inside the white walls of the tent with the -curtain securely tied against the wind, with his father close beside -him and his father’s gun on the outside within reach of an outstretched -hand; how the light went out and the river sounded on and some twigs -scraped against the tent in the wind,—this is about all Jack can -remember of his first night under canvas.</p> - -<p>The morning was gray and cold. The sun had been up several hours before -it was seen in the camp. <abbr title="mister">Mr.</abbr> Gilmour and <abbr title="mister">Mr.</abbr> Dane were out with the -earliest light for trout. Jack was the next to leave the tent and go -shivering down to the river to wash, and then run to warm his red hands -and button his jacket at the kitchen fire, where John was again cooking -bread. John and <abbr title="mister">Mr.</abbr> Dane had slept on the beach with only the pine -boughs for a roof and saddle-bags for a pillow.</p> - -<p>When Mrs. Gilmour appeared, last of all, Jack was just finishing his -second chunk of last night’s bread, leaning against the angle<span class="pagenum" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</span> of the -rock fireplace out of the smoke that made a pale blue wavering flight -upward and aslant the dark pine boughs.</p> - -<p>The fishermen had returned with trout, but not a surfeit of trout, for -breakfast. The bread was taken out of the bake-kettle and the trout put -in to plump up in their own steam over the coals. The coffee smelled -deliciously in the sweet, cold air. The broiled ham was welcome, -even after a first course of trout, and Jack was good for a third -of bread and honey. He could use his fingers and wipe up the honey -with the broken bread until his tin plate shone, not to speak of his -countenance, and nobody observed him except to smile.</p> - -<p>But something had happened that morning besides breakfast. <abbr title="mister">Mr.</abbr> Dane had -lost a tremendous trout, after playing him a long time and tiring him -out. He had been fishing from a rock, with deep water all around him. -The big fish seemed quite still and tame as he was drawn in, but as his -tail touched the rock, with a frantic rebound he made one last<span class="pagenum" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</span> plunge -for the water and got off. If there had been but a beach to land him on!</p> - -<p>Then, a man had been shot the evening before at Atlanta, the big -mining-camp of the Saw-tooth range; and another man riding a tired -horse had passed the camp at daybreak, on his way to Boise for a -surgeon. The horse he had started with from Atlanta had given out about -twenty miles from that place; he had walked ten or fifteen miles along -the mountain trail in the darkness before he could get another horse. -He wished to change this for one of the horses from the fishing-camp, -but they were back on the bluffs and he concluded to go on and change -at Gillespie’s. He had traveled about fifty miles that night, on -horseback and on foot, over a trail that some of us would not enjoy -riding over by daylight.</p> - -<p>His wife and their young child were at his horse-ranch away back on -the hills, alone, except for some of the cowboys. He had gone up to -Atlanta to attend the ball. The man who had been shot was a stranger to -him,—had<span class="pagenum" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</span> a brother in Boise, he believed. He had breathed his horse a -moment while he talked to John and took a bite of something to eat, and -then went on his way.</p> - -<p>It was strange to think that all this was part of those dark hours of -the night that had passed so peacefully to the sleepers on the river -beach,—the miners’ ball, the shooting, the night ride in haste, the -wife waiting at the lonely ranch in the hills for her husband’s return.</p> - -<p>The day passed with fishing and sketching and eating, and beauty of -sunlight and shadow on rocks and trees and river.</p> - -<p>Brown had built a table and placed boxes around it for seats. The -gray rock fireplace had got well blackened, and the camp had taken on -a homelike look. Jack had gone for a glorious walk up the trail with -Brown, to see if the fence on the bluffs was all right, and if there -was a way down to the river from the bluffs by which the horses could -go down to drink. There was one, a rather obscure way; but Billy was -clever, and<span class="pagenum" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</span> Pete was a “rustler,” and Mrs. O’Dowd could be relied upon -to follow the lead of her betters. But they did not seem to be eating, -and Jack fancied they looked homesick in their high pasture, as if the -scenery did not console them for being sent off so far from camp.</p> - -<p>That second day <abbr title="mister">Mr.</abbr> Gilmour went fishing alone down the river. John -was gathering firewood; the boy and his mother were in the tent; <abbr title="mister">Mr.</abbr> -Dane sat in the doorway, tending a little fire he had made outside, and -reading aloud, while Mrs. Gilmour made a languid sketch of him, in his -red-hooded blanket robe. <abbr title="mister">Mr.</abbr> Dane was the first to hear a shout from -down the river. He threw off the red robe, seized a rifle, and ran down -the shore in the direction <abbr title="mister">Mr.</abbr> Gilmour had taken. The shout meant, to -him, game of a kind that could not be tackled with a fly-rod.</p> - -<p>In a moment or two he came running back for more cartridges. <abbr title="mister">Mr.</abbr> -Gilmour had met a black bear, and they were going after him. John -followed with the axe. Some time passed, but no shots were heard. At -last the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</span> men came back, warm and merry, though disappointed of their -game. The bear had got away. It was tantalizing to think how fat and -sleek he must have been, after his summer in the mountains. There would -be no bear-steaks for supper that night, and no glossy dark skin to -carry back in triumph to the home camp and spread before next winter’s -hearth wherever the house-fires might be lighted.</p> - -<p><abbr title="mister">Mr.</abbr> Gilmour had been walking down the trail when he saw the bear ahead -of him, crossing the high flat toward the trail and making straight -for the river. If both had continued to advance, there would have been -a meeting, and as <abbr title="mister">Mr.</abbr> Gilmour was armed only with a fly-rod and a -pistol, he preferred the meeting should be postponed. Then he stopped -and shouted for Dane. The bear came on, and <abbr title="mister">Mr.</abbr> Gilmour fell back, -leisurely, he said, toward camp. He did not care to bring his game in -alive, he said, without giving the camp due warning, so he shouted -again. It was the second shout Dane had heard. The<span class="pagenum" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</span> way of his retreat -led him down into a little gulch, where he lost sight of the bear.</p> - -<p>It did not take very long to tell the story of the hunt, and then <abbr title="mister">Mr.</abbr> -Gilmour went back to his fishing. The sun came out. The fire in front -of the tent was a heap of smoking ashes; the magazine story palled; the -sketch was pronounced not worth finishing; and then the pack-train for -Atlanta came tinkling and shuffling down the trail. Fourteen sleek, -handsome mules, with crisp, clipped manes, like the little Greek horses -on ancient friezes, passed in single file between a man riding ahead -on the “bell-mare,” and another bringing up the rear of the train, -swinging his leathern “blind” as he rode. This one was the man from -Turner’s. He had met <abbr title="mister">Mr.</abbr> Gilmour farther down the river, and heard the -story about the bear, and offered to leave his dog, which he said was -a good bear-dog. But the dog wouldn’t be left, and so the picturesque -freight-train went its way, under the Indian’s rock, and up the steep -climb beyond. High above the river they could be<span class="pagenum" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</span> seen, footing with -neat steps the winding trail, their packs swinging and shuffling with -a sidelong motion, in time to the regular pace, while the bell sounded -fainter and fainter.</p> - -<p>Bear stories were told by the camp-fire that night; and <abbr title="mister">Mr.</abbr> Dane slept -with his rifle handy, and John with an axe. John said he was a better -shot with an axe than with a rifle. Jack thought he should dream of -bears, but he didn’t. The next morning he went with John Brown up to -the high pasture to bring down one of the horses. Brown was to ride -down to Gillespie’s and make sure of transportation for the party home, -the next day but one.</p> - -<p>Jack had the happiness of riding Billy barebacked down the trail, -following John on Pete, Mrs. O’Dowd, as usual, in the rear. <abbr title="mister">Mr.</abbr> Gilmour -was surprised to see all the animals coming down, and he noticed at -once how hollow and drooping the horses looked. John explained that -they had evidently not been able to find the trail leading down to the -river, and had been without water all the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</span> time they had been kept -upon the bluffs. He could see by their tracks where they had wandered -back and forth along the edge of the bluffs, seeking a way down. How -glad they must have been of that deep draught from the river, that -had mocked them so long with the sound of its waters! No one liked to -find fault with Brown, who was faithful and tender-hearted; and it was -stupid of horses, used to the range, not to have gone back from the -bluffs and followed the fence until they found the outlet to the river. -They quickly revived with water and food, which they could once more -enjoy now that their long thirst was quenched. Brown rode Pete down to -Gillespie’s, and returned in the afternoon with word that <abbr title="mister">Mr.</abbr> Gillespie -himself would come for the party on Saturday, with the outfit required.</p> - -<p>The evening was cool and cloudy; twilight came on early, and Brown -cooked supper with the whole family gathered around his fire, hungrily -watching him. There was light enough from the fire, mingled with the -wan<span class="pagenum" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</span> twilight on the beach, by which to eat supper. John was filling -the tin cups with coffee, when horses’ feet were heard coming down -the trail from the direction of Boise. A man on a gray horse stopped -under the Indian’s rock and looking down on the group on the beach -below asked what was “the show for a bite of something to eat.” He was -invited to share what there was, and throwing the bridle loose on his -horse’s neck he dropped out of the saddle and joined the party at the -table.</p> - -<p>He was the man from Atlanta, returning from his errand to Boise. No -doctor had been willing to go up from Boise, so he said, and the -friends of the wounded man had telegraphed to C—, and a doctor had -gone across from there. The messenger had stayed over a day in Boise to -rest, and was now on his way home to his ranch in the hills. He gave -the details of the shooting,—the usual details, received with the -usual comments and speculations as to the wounded man’s recovery,—then -the talk turned upon sport,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</span> and bear stories and fish stories were in -order. The man from Atlanta knew what good hunting was, from his own -account. He told how he had struck a bear track about as big as a man’s -hand in the woods and followed it some distance, thinking it was “about -his size,” and all of a sudden he had come upon a fresh track about -as big—he picked up the cover of the bake-kettle—“as big as that.” -Then he turned around and came home. It was suggested (after the man -from Atlanta had gone) that the big track he saw was where the bear had -<em>sat down</em>.</p> - -<p>It was now deep dusk in the woods; only the latest and palest sky -gleams touched the water. The stranger included the entire party in -his cordial invitation to stop at his place if they ever got so far up -the river, mounted his horse and quickly disappeared up the trail. He -expected to reach his home some time that night.</p> - -<p>The next day was the last in camp. It was still gray, cold weather, and -the tent among the pine-trees looked inviting, with a suggestion<span class="pagenum" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</span> of a -fire outside; but there were sketches to be finished and last walks to -be taken and a big mess of trout to be caught to take home. Jack had -a little enterprise of his own to complete,—the filling of a tin can -Brown had given him with melted pine gum, which hardened into clear, -solid resin. The can was nearly full, and Jack had various experiments -in his mind which he intended to try with it on his return. Brown had -told him it would make an excellent boot-grease mixed with tallow—and -if he <em>should</em> want to make a pair of Norwegian snowshoes next -winter, it would be just the thing to rub on the bottom of the wood to -make it slip easily over the snow.</p> - -<p>Brown was going back on the hills to try to get some grouse and the boy -was allowed to go with him. They tramped off together, and the walk was -one of the memorable ones in Jack’s experience; but Jack’s mother would -not have been so contented in his absence, had she known they were -coming home by way of Deer Gulch, one of the most likely<span class="pagenum" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</span> places in the -neighborhood of the camp for a meeting with a bear.</p> - -<p><abbr title="mister">Mr.</abbr> Gilmour was the enthusiast about fishing, and so it happened that -<abbr title="mister">Mr.</abbr> Dane was generally the one to stay about camp if John were off -duty. The fishing should have been good, but it was not, partly because -the Chinese placer-miners on the river had a practice of emptying the -deep pools of trout by means of giant-powder, destroying a hundred -times as many fish as they ate. The glorious fishing was higher up the -river and in its tributaries, the mountain streams. However, not a day -had passed without one meal of trout at least, and many of the fish -were of great size, and an enthusiast like <abbr title="mister">Mr.</abbr> Gilmour cares for the -sport, not for the fish!</p> - -<p>The last camp-fire, Jack thought, was the best one of all; it was built -farther down the beach, since a change of wind had made the corner by -the rock fireplace uncomfortable. A big log, rolled up near the fire on -its wind-ward side, made an excellent settle-back, the seat of which -was the sand with blankets<span class="pagenum" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</span> spread over it. The company sat in a row -facing the fire, and Mrs. Gilmour was provided with a tin plate for a -hand-screen. Perhaps they all were rather glad they were going home -to-morrow. Mrs. Gilmour wanted to see Polly, the sand floor of the tent -was getting lumpy, and they all were beginning to long for the wider -outlook and the fuller life of the home camp at headquarters. Beautiful -as the great pine-trees, the sheltered beach, and the shadows on the -water had looked to them after their long, hot ride over the mountain -trail, there were always the granite cliff on one side and the lava -bluffs on the other, and no far-off lines for the eye to rest upon. -People who have lived in places where there is a great deal of sky and -a wide horizon are never long contented in nooks and corners of the -earth, however lovely their detail may be.</p> - -<p>At all events, the talk was gayer that last night by the camp-fire -than any night except the first one of their stay. At last one of -the company—the smallest one—slid quietly out<span class="pagenum" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</span> of sight among the -blankets, and no more was heard of him until the time came to dig him -out, and restore him to consciousness.</p> - -<p>After <abbr title="mister">Mr.</abbr> and Mrs. Gilmour and Jack—poor little sleepy Jack—had gone -down the shore to their tent, <abbr title="mister">Mr.</abbr> Dane and Brown rolled the log settle -upon the fire. It burned all night, and there were brands left with -which to light the kitchen fire.</p> - -<p>Breakfast was a sort of “clean-up,” as the miners say. The last of the -ham, the last of the honey, one trout, left over from last night’s -supper which the company quarreled about, each in turn refusing -it,—even Jack, who seldom refused anything in the eating line,—and -leaving it finally for John, who perhaps suspecting there was something -wrong with it threw it out upon the beach.</p> - -<p>After breakfast everybody fell to packing, except Jack, who roamed -around, with his leggings and his one spur on, watching for <abbr title="mister">Mr.</abbr> -Gillespie and the animals.</p> - -<p>Mrs. Gilmour had finished her small share of the packing, and with Jack -climbed up<span class="pagenum" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</span> among the rocks in the shadow of the cliff. <abbr title="mister">Mr.</abbr> Gillespie -had arrived and on the beach below he and Brown were loading the -pack-horse with the camp stuff.</p> - -<p>The two boxes in which the kitchen was packed went up first, one on -each side of the pack-saddle, set astride the horse’s back, and in -shape something like a saw-horse. The boxes were balanced and made fast -with ropes. The roll of blankets filled the space between them; an axe -was poked in, or a fishing-pole protruded from the heap; more blankets -went up, then the tent was spread over all and the load securely roped -into place,—<abbr title="mister">Mr.</abbr> Gillespie and Brown, one on either side, pulling -against each other, and the patient old horse being squeezed between.</p> - -<p><abbr title="mister">Mr.</abbr> Gillespie had brought the usual “lady’s animal” for Mrs. Gilmour to -ride which, in the West always means an article of horseflesh which no -man would care to bestride, but on which it will do to “pack” women and -children about.</p> - -<p>The chief event of the journey home was<span class="pagenum" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</span> the fording of the river, once -above Gillespie’s and once below, thus avoiding the highest and hottest -part of the trail which they would pass at midday. Neither Jack nor his -mother had ever forded a stream on horseback before. The sun was high, -the breeze was strong, the river bright and noisy. Giddily rippling and -sparkling, it rushed past the low willows along its shore.</p> - -<p>Mrs. O’Dowd was whacked into her place in the line between Billy and -the lady’s animal, and kept her feet, if not her temper. And so, in due -time, they arrived at the home ford and the ferry.</p> - -<p>Brown and <abbr title="mister">Mr.</abbr> Gillespie took the animals across the ford, but the -others were glad to exchange the saddle for the boat. Polly, in a -fresh, white frock, with her hair blown over her cheeks, was watching -from the hilltop, and came flying down the trail to meet them. Every -one said how Polly had grown, and how fair she looked—and the house, -which they called a camp for its rudeness, looked quite splendid with -its lamps and books and curtains,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</span> to the sunburnt, dusty, <em>real</em> -campers; and as Jack said, it did seem good to sit in a chair again. It -was noticeable, however, that Jack sat lightly in chairs for several -days after the ride home; but he had not flinched nor whined, and -everybody acknowledged that he had won his single spur fairly well for -an eight-year-old.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</span></p> - -<p class="footnote" id="fn1"><a href="#fna1">[1]</a> Poisoned meat was laid near the chicken-house one night after -the coyotes had carried off some fine young Plymouth Rocks (with a -baleful instinct they always picked out the best of the fowls), and was -eaten by them. Two of the robbers were found next day, dead, by the -irrigation ditch, where they had crept to quench their thirst, and one -was afterward seen, from time to time, in the sage-brush, a hairless -spectre. The coyote mothers no doubt told their babies of this gruesome -outcast as a warning, not against chicken-stealing, which must be one -of the coyote virtues, but against poison and other desperate arts of -man.</p> - - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<h2 class="nobreak" id="A_VISIT_TO_JOHNS_CAMP">A VISIT TO JOHN’S CAMP</h2> -</div> - - -<p>John Brown had concluded to “quit work and go to mining.” Not that -mining is not work; but a man doesn’t get so tired working for himself, -choosing his own hours and resting when he pleases, as he does working -in another man’s time. It is like picking tame blackberries inside the -garden fence for the family table, and picking wild blackberries in the -fields and hedgerows and eating as one goes. Every boy knows how that -is; and some of these good-natured, wandering, Western men are very -like big boys.</p> - -<p>John was still the teamster at the engineers’ camp in the cañon. He -had been a sailor in his native Northern seas. He had been a fisherman -of the Skager Rack; and more than once, by his own story, he had been -driven out to sea, when drifting from his trawls, and picked up by one -of the numerous vessels of the fishing-fleet<span class="pagenum" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</span> that is always lying off -or on the entrance to the strait. He had been a teamster on the plains -where the Indians were “bad.” Once, when crossing the great Snake River -plains, he had picked up a curious stone shaped by the Indians which he -recognized as a “sinker,” such as he himself had made and used on the -fishing-grounds of the far North. John had a little ranch of his own, -and he owned half a house. The other half of the house was on the land -of the adjoining settler. The two men had taken up preëmption claims, -side by side, and to save expense had built a joint-dwelling on the -boundary line between the two claims. Each man lived in his own side -of the house—the half that rested on his land. John had lived six -months on his claim, as the law requires before a settler can secure -a title to his land. He was now working to get the money to improve -it into a farm. He was a bit of a carpenter; and in many odd ways he -was clever with his hands, as fishermen and sailors almost always are. -Jack Gilmour possessed a riding-whip, such as the cowboys call<span class="pagenum" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</span> a -“quirt,” which John had braided for him, with skill and economy, out -of leather thongs cut from scraps of waste leather, old boot-legs, or -saddle-straps, discarded by the camps.</p> - -<p>Such a companion as this, so experienced and variously gifted, and -so uniformly gentle, was sure to be missed. Jack found the cañon a -much duller place without his friend. He and Charley Moy, the Chinese -cook, used to discourse about John, and recount his virtues, much as -we linger over praises of the dead—although John’s camp was but five -miles away, and he himself in good health, for all any one knew to the -contrary.</p> - -<p>After a while, Jack got permission to ride up the river to John’s camp -and pay him a visit; and he was to be allowed to make the trip alone. -Jack had been promoted, since his fishing expedition of two summers -before, from a donkey and one spur to a pony of his own, a proper boy’s -saddle, and two spurs, all in consequence of his advancing years and -the increasing length of his legs. The pony was called “Lollo,” for -just when he came the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</span> children had been reading “Jackanapes,” and -the new pony, like the pony in the story, was “red-haired.” He had -belonged, not to the gypsies, but to the Indians, who had broken and -branded him. One of his ears was clipped, and the brand on his flank -was a circle with a bar through the centre. He had the usual thick mane -and tail of a “cayuse,” a white nose, and four white feet.</p> - -<p>Now, there is an ancient rhyme which says:</p> - -<p class="poetry p0"> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">“One white foot, buy him;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Two white feet, try him;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Three white feet, deny him;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Four white feet and a white nose,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Take off his hide and give him to the crows!”</span><br /> -</p> - -<p>But Lollo shook the dust of the trail from his four white feet, in -defiance of the crows; nor was he ever known to hide the light of his -white nose under a bushel, except when there were oats in the bottom of -it.</p> - -<p>Jack’s mother advised him to make sure of his lunch by taking it with -him, in case John might be absent from the camp in the hills. But for -some reason (it is very difficult to know<span class="pagenum" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</span> a boy’s real reasons) Jack -preferred to take the chances of the trip without provisions.</p> - -<p>His father told him that when he had ridden as far as John Turner’s, -by the river trail, he must take the upper trail which runs along the -bluffs.</p> - -<p>As it turned out, this was mistaken advice. The upper trail was not a -good one, as Jack soon discovered; and in certain places, where it was -highest and steepest above the river, it had been nearly rubbed out by -the passage of herds of stock, crowding and climbing past one another -and sliding over the dry and gritty slope.</p> - -<p>In one spot it disappeared as a footing altogether, and here Jack was -obliged to dismount and creep along on all fours, Lollo following as he -could. A horse can go, it is said, wherever a man can go without using -his hands. As Jack used his hands it was hardly fair to expect Lollo to -follow; but the pony did so. These Western horses seem as ready as the -men to risk themselves on dangerous trails, and quite as sure of what -they are about.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</span></p> - -<p>What with all these ups and downs, the breeze on the bluffs, and the -natural state of a boy’s appetite about midday, Jack was hoping that -lunch would be ready at John’s camp by the time he reached it; and it -is possible that he wished he had not been so proud, and had taken a -“bite” in his pocket, as his mother advised him.</p> - -<p>John’s camp was in a gulch where a cool stream came down from the -hills. There were shade and grass and flowers in the season of flowers. -The prospect-holes were higher up beneath the basalt bluffs which rise -like palisades along the river. Earlier prospectors had driven tunnels, -such as prisoners dig under the foundations of a wall, some extending a -few feet, some farther, under the base of the bluffs. John was pushing -these burrows farther still and “panning out” the dirt he obtained in -his progress.</p> - -<p>Jack soon found the sluice-boxes that John had built, and the “head” he -had made by damming the little stream, but he could not find John nor -John’s camp.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</span></p> - -<p>He argued with himself that John would not be likely to “make camp” -below the pool of water; it was clear and cold, much better for -drinking than the murky river water. His searching, therefore, was all -up the gulch instead of down toward the river; but nowhere could he -discover a sign of John nor of his belongings.</p> - -<p>Jack’s mother asked him afterwards, when he told his story, why he did -not call or make a noise of some kind. He said that he did whistle, but -the place was so “still and lonesome” that he “did not like the sound -of it.”</p> - -<p>His hope now was that John might be at work in one of the tunnels under -the bluffs. So he climbed up there; and by this time he was quite -empty and weak-hearted with hunger. He had a fine view of the river -and its shores, rising or sinking as the bluffs came to the front, or -gave place to slopes of dry summer pastures. There was a strong wind -blowing up there, and the black lava rocks in the sun were like heated -ovens. The<span class="pagenum" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</span> wind and the river’s faint ripple, so far below, were the -only sounds he could hear. There were no living sounds of labor, or of -anything that was human or homelike.</p> - -<p>At the entrance to one of the tunnels he saw John’s canvas overalls, -his pick and shovel, a gold-pan, and a wheelbarrow of home -construction. Jack examined the latter and saw that the only shop-made -part of it was the wheel, an old one which John must have found, and -that John by his own ingenuity had added the other parts out of such -materials as he could find.</p> - -<p>The sight of these things, lying unused and unclaimed by their owner, -made Jack feel more dismal than ever. The overalls, in particular, were -like a picture of John himself. The whole place began to seem strange -and awesome.</p> - -<p>Jack crept into the short tunnels, where it was light even at the far -end; and he saw nothing there, either to explain or to add to his -fears. But the long tunnel was as black as night. Into that he dared -not go.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</span></p> - -<p>He looked once more at the dreary little heap of tools and clothing, -and with an ache that was partly in his heart, partly no doubt in the -empty region of his stomach, he climbed down again into the gulch, -mounted Lollo and rode away.</p> - -<p>When he came to the bad place on the trail, he slid down, keeping ahead -of Lollo, who shuffled along cautiously behind him. Lollo would not -have stepped on Jack, but he might have slipped and fallen on him. -However, a cayuse on a bad trail attends strictly to business, and is -quite safe if he can keep but two of his feet on firm ground.</p> - -<p>If Jack’s father had known about that place on the trail he never -would have sent Jack by that way; and it was well that his mother had -no notion of it. As it was, they were merely surprised to see the boy -returning about the middle of the hottest part of the afternoon, and -were not a little sorry for his disappointment when they heard the -story of the trip.</p> - -<p>Mrs. Gilmour shared the boy’s anxiety<span class="pagenum" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</span> about John; and Charley Moy, -while he was giving Jack his dinner, told some very painful stories of -miners done away with on their solitary claims for the sake of their -supposed earnings. <abbr title="mister">Mr.</abbr> Gilmour said there might be a dozen explanations -of John’s absence; and, moreover, that Jack hadn’t found the camp at -all, and the camp should be there, or some sign of its having been -there must remain to indicate the spot.</p> - -<p>Still the boy could not dismiss his fears, until two or three days -later John himself stopped at the cañon, on his way to town, not only -alive but in excellent health and spirits.</p> - -<p>He told Jack that he <em>had</em> been at his camp all the time the boy -was searching for him; but the camp was at the mouth of the gulch, -close to the river, where he had found a spring of pure cold water. -Very near the spring was a miner’s shanty, deserted but still quite -habitable. The advantages of house and spring together had decided John -to camp there, instead of higher up and nearer<span class="pagenum" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</span> to his ditches. He -urged Jack to make the trip again, and in a week or so the boy repeated -his visit.</p> - -<p>This time he did not take the upper trail. John said that that trail -was only used at high water in the spring, when the river rose above -the lower trail.</p> - -<p>The lower trail along the river bank was safe and pleasant, and not -so hot as the upper one; and this time there were no adventures. -Adventures do very well to tell of afterward, but they do not always -make a happy journey.</p> - -<p>John was at home, and seemed very glad to see the boy. He took him -up on the bluffs to show him his workings, and Jack found it very -different, up there by the tunnels,—not at all strange and anxious. He -did not mind the dark tunnel a bit, with John’s company and a candle to -guide him.</p> - -<p>John showed him the under surface of the bluffs, exposed where he had -undermined them and scraped away the dirt. These lava bluffs were once -a boiling flood of melted<span class="pagenum" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</span> rock. The ground it flowed over and rested -upon after it cooled had been the bed of a river. In its soft state -the lava had taken the impression of the surface of the river-bed, -and after it cooled the forms remained the same; so that the under -surface of these ancient bluffs was like a plaster cast of the ancient -river-bed. The print could be seen of stones smoothed by water, and -some of the stones were still embedded in the lava crust.</p> - -<p>Now this river came down from the mountains, where every prospector in -Idaho knows there is plenty of gold for those who can discover it. John -argued that the old river-bed must have had, mixed with its sand, fine -gold for which no one had ever prospected. The new bed which the river -had worn for itself at the foot of the bluffs probably contained quite -as much gold, sunk between stones or lodged in potholes in the rocks -(as it lodges against the riffles in a sluice-box), but no one could -hope to get <em>that</em> gold, for the water which covered it. The old -river-bed was<span class="pagenum" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</span> covered only with rock, which “stays put” while you dig -beneath it.</p> - -<p>So, on the strength of this ingenious theory, John was digging where -the other theorists had dug before him. He was not getting rich, but -he was “making wages” and enjoying himself in the pleasant camp in the -gulch; and as yet he had not found any of the rich holes.</p> - -<p>He made a great feast in the boy’s honor. The chief dish was stewed -grouse, rolled up in paste and boiled like dumplings. Jack said those -grouse dumplings were about the best eating he had ever “struck.” They -also had potatoes, baked in the ashes, and canned vegetables and stewed -apples and baking-powder biscuits and honey; and to crown the feast, -John made a pot of strong black coffee and sweetened it very sweet.</p> - -<p>But here the guest was in a quandary. He refused the coffee, because -he was not allowed to drink coffee at home; but he could see that his -refusal made John uncomfortable, for there was no milk; there was -nothing<span class="pagenum" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</span> else that he could offer the boy to drink but water, and water -seemed very plain at a feast.</p> - -<p>Jack wondered which was worse—for a boy to break a rule without -permission, or to seem to cast reproach upon a friend’s entertainment -by refusing what was set before him. He really did not care for the -coffee; it looked very black and bitter; but he cared so much for John -that it was hard to keep on refusing. Still, he did refuse, but he did -not tell John his reason. Somehow he didn’t think that it would sound -manly for a big boy, nearly twelve years old, to say he was forbidden -to drink coffee.</p> - -<p>Afterward he told his mother about it, and asked her if he had done -right. His mother’s opinion was that he had, but that he might have -done it in a better way by telling John his reason for refusing the -coffee. Then there would have been no danger of John’s supposing that -the boy refused because he did not like that kind of coffee.</p> - -<p>Jack’s little problem set his mother thinking how often we do what -is right, at some<span class="pagenum" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</span> cost to ourselves, perhaps, but do it in such an -awkward, proud way, that we give pain to others and so undo the value -of our honest effort to be good; and how, in the matter of feasts, it -is much easier in our time for a guest to decline anything that does -not suit him in the way of eating and drinking than it used to be long -ago, when a gentleman was thought not to have “dined” unless he had -both eaten and drunk more than was good for him; and how, in the matter -of rules, it is only little silly boys who are ashamed to confess -that they are not their own masters. The bravest and wisest men have -been keepers of simple rules in simple matters, and in greater ones -respecters of a loving Intelligence above their own, whose laws they -were proud to obey.</p> - -<p>The courage that displays itself in excesses is happily no longer the -fashion; rather the courage that keeps modestly within bounds, and can -say “no” without offense to others.</p> -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</span></p> - -<h2 class="nobreak" id="NOVEMBER_IN_THE_CANON">NOVEMBER IN THE CAÑON</h2> -</div> - - -<p>The long season of fair autumn weather was drawing to a close. -Everybody was tired of sunshine; there had been nearly six months of -it, and the face of nature in southern Idaho was gray with dust. A dark -morning or a cloudy sunset was welcome, even to the children, who were -glad of the prospect of any new kind of weather.</p> - -<p>But no rain came. The river had sunk so low in its bed it barely -murmured on the rocks, like a sleeper disturbed in his dream. When the -children were indoors, with windows shut and fire crackling, they could -hear no sound of water; and this cessation of a voice inseparable from -the life of the cañon added to the effect of waiting which belonged to -these still fall days.</p> - -<p>The talk of the men was of matters suited to the season. It was said -the Chinamen’s<span class="pagenum" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</span> wood-drive had got lodged in Moore’s Creek on its way -to the river, there being so little water in the creek this year, and -might not get down at all, which would be almost a total loss to the -Chinamen. Charley Moy knew the boss Chinaman of the “drive,” and said -that he had had bad luck now two seasons running.</p> - -<p>The river was the common carrier between the lumber-camps in the -mountains and the consumers of wood in the towns and ranches below. -Purchasers who lived on the river-bank were accustomed to stop their -winter’s supply of firewood as it floated by. It was taken account -of and paid for when the owners of the drive came to look up their -property.</p> - -<p>Every year three drives came down the river. Goodwin’s log-drive came -first, at high water, early in the summer. The logs were from twelve to -twenty feet long. Each one was marked with the letters M H. These were -the first two of <abbr title="mister">Mr.</abbr> Goodwin’s initials, and were easily cut with an -axe; the final<span class="pagenum" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</span> initial, G, being difficult to cut in this rude way, -was omitted; but everybody knew that saw-logs marked M H belonged to -Goodwin’s drive. They looked like torpedo-boats as they came nosing -along with an ugly rolling motion through the heavy current.</p> - -<p>The men who followed this first drive were rather a picked lot for -strength and endurance, but they made slow progress past the bend in -the cañon. Here a swift current and an eddy together combined to create -what is called a jam. The loggers were often seen up to their waists in -water for hours, breaking up the jam and working the logs out into the -current. When the last one was off the men would get into their boat—a -black, flat-bottomed boat, high at stem and stern like a whaleboat—and -go whooping down in mid-current like a mob of schoolboys upon some -dangerous sort of lark. These brief voyages between the jams must have -been the most exciting and agreeable part of log-driving.</p> - -<p>After Goodwin’s drive came the Frenchmen’s cord-wood drive; and last of -all, when<span class="pagenum" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</span> the river was lowest, came the Chinamen’s drive, making the -best of what water was left.</p> - -<p>There is a law of the United States which forbids that an alien -shall cut timber on the public domain. A Chinaman, being an alien -unmistakably and doubly held as such in the West, cannot therefore -cut the public timber for his own immediate profit or use; but he can -take a contract to furnish it to a white dealer in wood, at a price -contingent upon the safe delivery of the wood. But if the river should -fail to bring it in time for sale, the cost of cutting and driving, for -as far as he succeeds in getting it down, is a dead loss to the Chinese -contractor, and the wood belongs to whoever may pick it out of the -water when the first rise of the creek in spring carries it out.</p> - -<p>The Chinese wood-drivers are singular, wild-looking beings. Often at -twilight, when they camped on the shore below the house, the children -would hover within sight of the curious group the men made around their -fire—an<span class="pagenum" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</span> economical bit of fire, sufficient merely to cook the supper -of fish and rice.</p> - -<p>All is silence before supper, in a camp of hungry, wet white men, but -the Chinamen were always chattering. The children were amused to see -them “doing” their hair like women,—combing out the long, black, -witch-locks in the light of the fire and braiding them into pigtails, -or twisting them into “Psyche knots.” They wore several layers of -shirts and sleeveless vests, one over another, long waterproof -boots drawn up over their knees, and always the most unfitting of -hats perched on top of the coiled braids or above the Psyche knots. -Altogether, take them wet or dry, on land or in the water, no male or -female of the white race could show anything in the way of costume to -approach them.</p> - -<p>The cloudy weather continued. The nights grew sharper, and the men said -it was too cold for rain; if a storm came now it would bring snow. -There was snow already upon the mountains and the high pastures, for -the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</span> deer were seeking feeding-grounds in the lower, warmer gulches, -and the stock had been driven down from the summer range to winter in -the valleys.</p> - -<p>One afternoon an old man, a stranger, was seen coming down the gulch -back of the house, followed by a pack-horse bearing a load. The gulch -was now all yellow and brown, and the man’s figure was conspicuous for -the light, army-blue coat he wore—the overcoat of a private soldier. -He “hitched” at the post near the kitchen door, and uncovering his load -showed two fat haunches of young venison which he had brought to sell.</p> - -<p>No peddler of the olden time, unstrapping his pack in the lonely -farmhouse kitchen, could have been more welcome than this stranger with -his wild merchandise to the children of the camp. They stood around so -as not to miss a word of the conversation while Charley Moy entertained -him with the remnants of the camp lunch. The old buckskin-colored horse -seemed as much of a character as his master. Both his ears were cropped -half off, giving a<span class="pagenum" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</span> sullen and pugilistic expression to his bony head. -There was no more arch to his neck than to the handle of a hammer. His -faded yellow coat was dry, matted and dusty as the hair of a tramp who -sleeps in haymows. Without bit or bridle, he followed his master like -a dog. In the course of conversation it appeared that the cropped ears -were not scars of battle nor marks of punishment, but the record of a -journey when he and his master were caught out too late in the season, -and the old horse’s ears had both been frozen.</p> - -<p>The children were surprised to learn that their new acquaintance was a -neighbor, residing in a dugout in Cottonwood Gulch, only three miles -away. They knew the place well, had picnicked there one summer day, -and had played in the dugout. Had not Daisy, the pet fawn, when they -had barred him out of the dugout because he filled up the whole place, -jumped upon the roof and nearly stamped it in?—like Samson pulling -down the pillars of the temple? But no one had been living there then. -The old man said he used the dugout<span class="pagenum" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</span> only in winter. It was his town -house. In summer he and the old horse took their freedom on the hills, -hunting and prospecting for mineral—not so much in the expectation -of a fortune as from love of the chances and risks of the life. Was -it not lonely in Cottonwood Gulch when the snows came? the children -asked. Sometimes it was lonely, but he had good neighbors: the boys at -Alexander’s (the horse-ranch) were down from the summer range, and they -came over to his place of an evening for a little game of cards, or he -went over to their place. He would be very glad, however, of any old -newspapers or novels that might be lying around camp; for he was short -of reading-matter in the dugout.</p> - -<p>There was always a pile of old periodicals and “picture papers” on -Charley Moy’s ironing-table; he was proud to contribute his entire -stock on hand to the evening company in the dugout. The visitor then -modestly hinted that he was pretty tired of wild meat: had Charley such -a thing as the rough end of a slab of bacon lying around, or a ham bone -to spare?<span class="pagenum" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</span> A little mite of lard would come handy, and if he could let -him have about five pounds of flour, it would be an accommodation, and -save a journey to town. These trifles he desired to pay for with his -venison; but that was not permitted, under the circumstances.</p> - -<p>Before taking his leave the old hunter persuaded Polly to take a -little tour on his horse, up and down the poplar walk, at a slow and -courteous pace. Polly had been greatly interested in her new friend -at a distance, but this was rather a formidable step toward intimacy. -However, she allowed herself to be lifted upon the back of the old -crop-eared barbarian, and with his master walking beside her she paced -sedately up and down between the leafless poplars.</p> - -<p>The old man’s face was pale, notwithstanding the exposure of his life; -the blood in his cheek no longer fired up at the touch of the sun. His -blue coat and the yellow-gray light of the poplar walk gave him an -added pallor. Polly was a pink beside him, perched aloft in her white -bonnet and ruffled pinafore.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</span></p> - -<p>The old sway-backed horse sulked along, refusing to “take any hand” in -such a trifling performance. He must have felt the insult of Polly’s -babyish heels dangling against his weather-beaten ribs, that were -wont to be decorated with the pendent hoofs and horns of his master’s -vanquished game.</p> - -<p>Relations between the family and their neighbor in the dugout continued -to be friendly and mutually profitable. The old ex-soldier’s venison -was better than could be purchased in town. Charley Moy saved the -picture papers for him, and seldom failed to find the half of a pie, -a cup of cold coffee, or a dish of sweets for him to “discuss” on the -bench by the kitchen door. Discovering that antlers were prized in -camp, he brought his very best pair as a present, bearing them upon his -shoulders, the furry skull of the deer against his own, back to back, -so that in profile he was double-headed, man in front and deer behind.</p> - -<p>But the young men of the camp were ambitious to kill their own venison. -The first light dry snow had fallen, and deer-tracks were<span class="pagenum" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</span> discovered -on the trails leading to the river. A deer was seen by John Brown and -<abbr title="mister">Mr.</abbr> Dane, standing on the beach on the farther side, in a sort of -cul-de-sac formed by the walls of the lava bluffs as they approached -the shore. They fired at and wounded him, but he was not disabled from -running. His only way of escape was by the river in the face of the -enemy’s fire. He swam in a diagonal line down stream, and assisted by -the current gained the shore at a point some distance below, which his -pursuers were unable to reach in time to head him off.</p> - -<p>They followed him over the hills as far and fast as legs and wind could -carry them, but lost him finally, owing to the dog Cole’s injudicious -barking, when the policy of the men would have been to lie quiet and -let the deer rest from his wound. By his track in the snow they saw -that his left hind foot touched the ground only now and then. If Cole -had pressed him less hard the deer would have lain down to ease his -hurt, the wound would have stiffened and rendered it difficult for him -to<span class="pagenum" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</span> run, and so he might have met his end shortly, instead of getting -away to die a slow and painful death.</p> - -<p>They lost him, and were reproached for it, needlessly, by the women of -the family. One Saturday morning, when <abbr title="mister">Mr.</abbr> Dane was busy in the office -over his notebooks, and Jack’s mother was darning stockings by the -fire, Jack came plunging in to say that John Brown was trying to head -off a deer that was swimming down the river—and would <abbr title="mister">Mr.</abbr> Dane come -with his rifle, quick?</p> - -<p>Below the house a wire-rope suspension bridge for foot passengers only -spanned the river at its narrowest point, from rock to rock of the -steep shore. <abbr title="mister">Mr.</abbr> Dane looked out and saw John Brown running to and fro -on this bridge, waving his arms, shouting, and firing stones at some -object above the bridge that was heading down stream. <abbr title="mister">Mr.</abbr> Dane could -just see the small black spot upon the water which he knew was the -deer’s head. He seized his gun and ran down the shore path. Discouraged -in his attempt to pass the bridge, the deer was making for the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</span> shore, -when <abbr title="mister">Mr.</abbr> Dane began firing at him. A stranger now arrived upon the -scene, breathless with running; he was the hunter who had started -the game and chased it till it had taken to the river. The deer was -struggling with the current in midstream, uncertain which way to turn. -Headed off from the bridge and from the nearest shore, he turned and -swam slowly toward the opposite bank. The women on the hill were nearly -crying, the hunt seemed so hopeless for the deer and so unfair: three -men, two of them with guns, combined against him, and the current so -swift and strong! It was <abbr title="mister">Mr.</abbr> Dane’s bullet that ended it. It struck -the deer as he lifted himself out of the water on the rocks across the -river.</p> - -<p>The venison was divided between the stranger who started the game and -the men of the camp who cut off its flight and prevented its escape.</p> - -<p>The women did not refuse to eat of it, but they continued to protest -that the hunt “was not fair;” or, in the phrase of the country, that -the deer “had no show at all.”</p> -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</span></p> - -<h2 class="nobreak" id="THE_GATES_ON_GRANDFATHERS_FARM">THE GATES ON GRANDFATHER’S FARM</h2> -</div> - - -<p>Little Eastern children, transplanted in their babyhood to the far -West, have to leave behind them grandfathers and grandmothers, and all -the dear old places associated with those best friends of childhood.</p> - -<p>Of our cañon children, Jack was the only one who could remember -grandfather’s house, although Polly had romanced about it so much that -she thought she could remember. Polly was born there, but as she was -taken away only eighteen months afterward, it’s hardly likely that she -knew much about it. And Baby was born in the cañon, and never in her -life had heard the words grandpapa or grandmamma spoken in the second -person.</p> - -<p>For the sake of these younger ones, deprived of their natural right -to the possession of grandparents, the mother used to tell everything -she could put into words and<span class="pagenum" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</span> that the children could understand about -the old Eastern home where her own childhood was spent, in entire -unconsciousness of any such fate as that which is involved in the words -“Gone West.”</p> - -<p>The catalogue of grandfather’s gates always pleased the children, -because in the cañon there were no gates, but the great rock gate of -the cañon itself, out of which the river ran shouting and clapping its -hands like a child out of a dark room into the sunlight, and into which -the sun took a last peep at night under the red curtain of the sunset.</p> - -<p>Grandfather’s gates were old gates long before Jack began to kick out -the toes of his shoes against them, or practice with their wooden -latches and latchpins. Most of them had been patched and strengthened -in weak places by hands whose work in this world was done. Each had its -own particular creak, like a familiar voice announcing as far as it -could be heard which gate it was that was opening; and to Jack’s eyes, -each one of the farm gates had a distinct and expressive<span class="pagenum" id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</span> countenance -of its own, which he remembered as well as he did the faces of the men -who worked in the fields.</p> - -<p>Two or three of them were stubborn obstacles in his path, by reason -of queer, unmanageable latches that wouldn’t shove, or weights that -a small boy couldn’t lift, or a heavy trick of yawing at the top and -dragging at the bottom, so that the only way to get through was to -squeeze through a wedge-shaped opening where you scraped the side of -your leg and generally managed to catch some part of your clothing on a -nail or on a splinter. Others fell open gayly on a down-hill grade, but -you had to tug yourself crimson in order to heave them shut again. Very -few of those heavy old field gates seemed to have been intended for the -convenience of boys. The boy on grandfather’s farm who opened a gate -was expected to shut it. If he neglected to do so he was almost sure to -hear a voice calling after him, “Hey, there! Who left that gate open?” -So on the whole it was no saving of time to slip<span class="pagenum" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</span> through, besides -being a strain on one’s reputation with the farm hands.</p> - -<p>Some of the gates were swinging and creaking every day of the year; -others were silent for whole months together; others, like the road -gate, stood open always and never creaked, and nobody marked them, -except that the children found them good to swing upon when the grass -was not too long.</p> - -<p>The road gate had once been a smart one, with pickets and gray paint, -but it had stood open so many years with the grass of summer after -summer cumbering its long stride that no one ever thought of repainting -it, any more than they would of decorating the trunk of the Norway -spruce which stood nearest to it, between it and the fountain that had -ceased to play and had been filled up with earth and converted into a -flower bed.</p> - -<p>The road gate being always open, it follows that the garden gate was -always shut. The garden was divided from the dooryard by the lane -that went past the house to the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</span> carriage-house and stable. Visitors -sometimes spoke of the lane as the “avenue,” and of the dooryard as the -“lawn;” but these fine names were never used by grandfather himself, -nor by any of the household, nor were they appropriate to the character -of the place. The dooryard grass was left to grow rather long before it -was cut, like grandfather’s beard before he would consent to have it -trimmed. Dandelions went to seed and clover-heads reddened. Beautiful -things had time to grow up and blossom in that rich, dooryard grass, -before it was swept down by the scythe and carried away in wheelbarrow -loads to be fed to the horses. It was toward night, generally, that the -men wheeled it away, and the children used to follow load after load -to the stable, to enjoy the horses’ enjoyment of it. They always felt -that the dooryard grass belonged to them, and yielded it, at the cost -of many a joy, as their own personal contribution to those good friends -of theirs in the stable—Nelly and Duke and Dan and Nelly’s colt (which -was generally<span class="pagenum" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</span> a five-year-old before it ceased to be called “the -colt”).</p> - -<p>The garden gate was a small one, of the same rather smart pattern as -the road gate. The grapevine which grew inside the fence—and over, -and under, and through it—had superadded an arch of its tenderest, -broadest, most luminous leaves, which spanned the gate-posts, uplifted -against the blue sky, and was so much more beautiful toward the middle -of summer than any gate could be, that no one ever looked at the little -garden gate at all, except to make sure that it was shut.</p> - -<p>It had a peculiar, lively click of the latch, which somehow suggested -all the pleasures of the garden within. The remembrance of it recalls -the figure of John, the gardener, in his blue denim blouse, with a -bunch of radishes and young lettuces in his clean, earthy hands. He -would take a few steps out of his way to the fountain (it had not then -been filled up), and wash the tender roots, dip the leaves and shake -them, before presenting his offering in the kitchen.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</span></p> - -<p>There was another figure that often came and went when the garden gate -clicked: the little mother, the children’s grandmother, in her morning -gingham and white apron and garden hat, and the gloves without fingers -she wore when she went to cut her roses. Sometimes she wore no hat, -and the sun shone through her muslin cap. It came to a point just -above her forehead, and was finished with a bunch of narrow ribbon, -pale straw-color or lavender. Her face in the open sunlight or under -the shade of her hat had the tender fairness of one of her own faintly -tinted tea-roses. Young girls and children’s faces may be likened to -flowers, but that fairness of the white soul shining through does not -belong to youth. The soul of a mother is hardly in full bloom until her -cheek begins to sink a little and grow soft with age.</p> - -<p>The garden was laid out on an old-fashioned plan, in three low -terraces, each a single step above the other. A long, straight walk -divided the middle terrace, extending<span class="pagenum" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</span> from the gate to the seat -underneath the grapevine and pear-tree; and another long, straight path -crossed the first one at right angles from the blackberry bushes at the -top of the garden to the arbor-vitæ hedge at the bottom. The borders -were of box, or polyanthus, or primroses, and the beds were filled with -a confusion of flowers of all seasons, crowding the spaces between the -rose-bushes; so that there where literally layers of flowers, the ones -above half hiding, half supporting the ones beneath, and all uniting to -praise the hand of the gardener that made them grow. Some persons said -the garden needed systematizing; that there was a waste of material -there. Others thought its charm lay in its careless lavishness of -beauty—as if it took no thought for what it was or had, but gave with -both hands and never counted what was left.</p> - -<p>It was certain you could pick armfuls, apronfuls, of flowers there, and -never miss them from the beds or the bushes where they grew.</p> - -<p>The hedge ran along on top of the stone<span class="pagenum" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</span> wall that guarded the -embankment to the road. In June, when the sun lay hot on the whitening -dust, Jack used to lean with his arms deep in the cool, green, springy -mass of the hedge, his chin barely above its close-shorn twigs, and -stare at the slow-moving tops of the tall chestnut-trees across the -meadow, and dream of journeys and of circuses passing, with band -wagons and piebald horses and tramp of elephants and zebras with stiff -manes. How queer an elephant would look walking past the gate of Uncle -Townsend’s meadow!</p> - -<p>When the first crop of organ-grinders began to spread along the country -roads, Jack, atilt like a big robin in the hedge, would prick his ear -at the sound of a faint, whining sweetness, far away at the next house -but one. After a silence he would hear it again in a louder strain, at -the very next house; another plodding silence, and the joy had arrived. -The organ-man had actually perceived grandfather’s house, far back as -it was behind the fir-trees, and had stopped by the little gate at the -foot of the brick walk. Then Jack races out of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</span> the garden, slamming -the gate behind him, across the dooryard and up the piazza steps, to -beg a few pennies to encourage the man. He has already turned back his -blanket and adjusted his stick. Will grandmother please hurry? It takes -such a long time to find only four pennies, and the music has begun!</p> - -<p>All the neighbors’ children have followed the man, and are congregated -about him in the road below. Looks are exchanged between them and Jack, -dangling his legs over the brink of the wall, but no words are wasted.</p> - -<p>Then come those moments of indecision as to the best plan of bestowing -the pennies. If you give them too soon, the man may pack up the rest -of his tunes and go away; if you keep them back too long, he may get -discouraged and go, anyhow. Jack concludes to give two pennies at the -close of the first air, and make the others apparent in his hands. But -the organ-man does not seem to be aware of the other two pennies in -reserve. His melancholy eyes are fixed on the tops of the fir-trees -that swing in a circle above Jack’s head, as he sits<span class="pagenum" id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</span> on the wall. -“Poor man,” Jack thinks, “he is disappointed to get only two pennies! -He thinks, perhaps, I am keeping the others for the next man. How good -of him to go on playing all the same!” He plays all his tunes out -to the end. Down goes the blanket. Jack almost drops the pennies in -his haste to be in time. The man stumps away down the road, and Jack -loiters up the long path to the house, dreamy with the droning music, -and flattered to the soul by the man’s thanks and the way he took off -his hat when he said good-day. Nobody need try to make Jack believe -that an organ-grinder can ever be a nuisance.</p> - -<p>The road gate, the garden gate, and the gate at the foot of the path -were the only gates that ever made any pretense to paint. The others -were of the color that wind and weather freely bestow upon a good piece -of old wood that has never been planed.</p> - -<p>Jack became acquainted with the farm gates one by one, as his knowledge -of the fields progressed. At first, for his short legs, it was a long -journey to the barn. Here<span class="pagenum" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</span> there was a gate which he often climbed -upon but never opened; for within its protection the deep growl of the -old bull was often heard, or his reddish-black head, lowering eye, and -hunched shoulders were seen emerging from the low, dark passage to the -sheds into the sunny cattle-yard. Even though nothing were in sight -more awful than a clucking hen, that doorway, always agape and always -dark as night, was a bad spot for a small boy to pass, with the gate of -retreat closed behind him and the gate of escape into the comfortable, -safe barnyard not yet open.</p> - -<p>The left-hand gate, on the upper side of the barn, was the children’s -favorite of all the gates. The barn was built against a hill, and the -roof on the upper side came down nearly to the ground. The children -used to go through the left-hand gate when, with one impulse, they -decided, “Let’s go and slide on the roof!” This was their summer -coasting. Soles of shoes were soon so polished that the sliders were -obliged to climb up the roof on hands and knees. It was not good for -stockings,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</span> and in those days there were no “knee-protectors;” mothers’ -darning was the only invention for keeping young knees inside of -middle-aged stockings that were expected to “last out” the summer.</p> - -<p>It was a blissful pastime, to swarm up the roof and lie, with one’s -chin over the ridge-pole, gazing down from that thrilling height upon -the familiar objects in the peaceful barnyard. Then to turn round -carefully and get into position for the glorious, downward rush over -the gray, slippery shingles! It could not have been any better for -the shingles than for the shoes and stockings; but no one interfered. -Perhaps grandfather remembered a time when he, too, used to slide on -roofs, and scour the soles of his shoes and polish the knees of his -stockings.</p> - -<p>The upper gate had another, more lasting attraction; it opened -into the lane that went up past the barn into the orchards—the -lovely, side-hill orchards. Grandfather’s farm was a side-hill farm -altogether, facing the river, with its back to the sunset. If you -sat<span class="pagenum" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</span> down comfortably, adjusting yourself to the slope of the ground, -the afternoon shadows stretched far before you; you saw the low blue -mountains across the river, and the sails of sloops tacking against the -breeze. One orchard led to another, through gaps in the stone fences, -and the shadow of one tree met the shadow of its neighbor, across -those long, sun-pierced aisles. The trees bent this way and that, and -shifted their limbs under the autumn’s burden of fruit. The children -never thought of eating a whole apple, but bit one and threw it away -for another that looked more tempting, and so on till their palates -were torpid with tasting. Then they were swung up on top of the cold -slippery loads and jolted down the lane to that big upper door that -opened into the loft where the apple bins were. Here the wagon stopped -with a heavy creak. Some one picked up a child and swung it in at the -big door; some one else caught it and placed it safely on its feet at -one side; and then the men began a race,—the one in the wagon bent -upon filling<span class="pagenum" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</span> a basket with apples and hoisting it in at the door, -faster than the man inside could carry it to the bin and empty it and -return for the next.</p> - -<p>These bins held the cider apples. The apples for market were brought -down in barrels from the orchards, and then the wagon load of apples -and children went through still another gate that led to another short -lane under more apple-trees, to the fruit-house, where, in the cool, -dim cellar that smelled of all deliciousness, the fruit was sorted -and boxed or barreled for market. And in the late afternoon, or after -supper, if the children were old enough to stay up so late, they were -allowed to ride on the loads of fruit to the steamboat landing.</p> - -<p>It is needless to say that this gate, which led to the fruit cellar, -was one Jack very early learned to open. In fact, it was so in -the habit of being opened that it had never acquired the trick of -obstinacy, and gave way at the least pull.</p> - -<p>When Jack was rather bigger, he was allowed<span class="pagenum" id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</span> to cross the road with his -cousin, a boy of his own age, and open the gate into Uncle Townsend’s -meadow. This piece of land had been many years in his grandfather’s -possession but it was still called by the name of its earlier owner. -Names have such a persistent habit of sticking in those long-settled -communities where there is always some one who remembers when staid old -horses were colts and gray-haired men were boys, and when the land your -father was born on was part of his grandfather’s farm on the ridge.</p> - -<p>A brook, which was also the waste-way from the mill, ran across Uncle -Townsend’s meadow. Sometimes it overflowed into the grass and made wet -places, and in these spots the grass was of a darker color, and certain -wild flowers were finer than anywhere else; also weeds, among others -the purple, rank “skunk’s cabbage,” which the children admired, without -wishing to gather.</p> - -<p>Water-cresses clung to the brookside; in the damp places the largest, -whitest bloodroot grew; under the brush along the fences and<span class="pagenum" id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</span> by the -rocks grew the blue-eyed hepatica, coral-red columbine, and anemones, -both pure white and those rare beauties with a pale pink flush. -Dog-tooth violets, wild geraniums, Solomon’s seal, Jack-in-the-pulpit, -came in due season, and ferns of every pattern of leaf and scroll. -Later, when the wet places were dry, came the tall fire-lilies and -brown-eyed Rudbeckias, “ox-eyed daisies” the children called them, -together with all the delicate, flowering grass-heads and stately -bulrushes and patches of pink and white clover,—and all over the -meadow there was a sleepy sound of bees, and shadows with soft edges -lost in deep waves of grass.</p> - -<p>Of course the brook did not stop at the meadow. It went on gurgling -over the stones, dark under the willows; but there were no more gates. -The brook left the home fields and took its own way across everybody’s -land to the river. That was a long walk, which Jack took only when he -was much older.</p> - -<p>Another journey, which he grew up to by<span class="pagenum" id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</span> degrees, was that one to the -upper barn. How many times over did he repeat his instructions before -he was allowed to set out: “Go up the hill, past the mill, until you -come to the first turn to the left. Turn up that way and follow the -lane straight on”—but this was a figure of speech, for no one could go -straight on who followed that lane—“till you come to the three gates. -Be sure to take the left-hand one of the three. Then you are all right. -That gate opens into the lane that goes past the upper barn.”</p> - -<p>Near the upper barn were three sugar-maples—the only ones on the place -that yielded sap; and in one of the neighboring fields there was a very -great walnut-tree, second in size only to the old chestnut-tree in the -burying-ground which was a hundred and fifty years old and bigger round -the body than three children clasping hands could span.</p> - -<p>Those up-lying fields were rather far away for daily rambles. Jack knew -them less and so cared less for them than for the home acres,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</span> which -were as familiar to him as the rooms of grandfather’s house.</p> - -<p>But when grandfather’s children were children, the spring lambs -wintered at the upper barn; and beauteous creatures they were by the -following spring, with broad foreheads and curly forelocks and clear -hazel eyes and small mouths just made for nibbling from the hand. -Often, of a keen April morning, when the thawed places in the lane -were covered with clinking ice, the children used to trudge at their -father’s side to see the lambs get their breakfast of turnips, chopped -in the dark cold hay-scented barn, while the hungry creatures bleated -outside and crowded against the door.</p> - -<p>Half the poetry of the farm life went into the care of the sheep and -the anxieties connected with them. They were a flock of Cotswolds, -carefully bred from imported stock. Their heavy fleeces made them the -most helpless of creatures when driven hard or worried by the dogs, and -every neighbor’s dog was a possible enemy.</p> - -<p>On moonlight nights in spring, when watch-dogs<span class="pagenum" id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</span> are restless, and -vagabond dogs are keen for mischief, the spirit of the chase would -get abroad. The bad characters would lead on the dogs of uncertain -principles, and now and then one of unspotted reputation, and the evil -work would begin. When the household was asleep, a knock would be heard -upon the window, and the voice of one hoarse with running would give -the alarm:—</p> - -<p>“The dogs are after the sheep!”</p> - -<p>The big brother would get down his shot-gun, and the father would hunt -for the ointments, the lantern, and the shears (for cutting the wool -away from bleeding wounds), and together they hurried away—the avenger -and the healer. Next day, more than one of the neighbors’ children -came weeping, to identify a missing favorite. Sometimes the innocent -suffered for being found in company with the guilty. There were hard -feelings on both sides. Even the owners of dogs caught with the marks -of guilt upon them disputed the justice of a life for a life.</p> - -<p>There is one more gate, and then we come<span class="pagenum" id="Page_140">[Pg 140]</span> to the last one—the gate of -the burying-ground.</p> - -<p>A path went over the hill which divided grandfather’s house from that -of his elder brother, whose descendants continued to live there after -him. Uncle Edward’s children were somewhat older, and his grandchildren -were younger than grandfather’s children; but though slightly -mismatched as to ages the two households were in great accord. The path -crossed the “line fence” by a little gate in the stone wall, and this -was the gate of family visiting.</p> - -<p>That way the mothers went of an afternoon with their sewing, or the -last new magazine, or the last new baby; or in the morning to borrow -a cupful of yeast, or to return the last loan of a bowlful of rice, -or to gather ground-ivy (it grew in Uncle Edward’s yard, but not in -grandfather’s) to make syrup for an old cough. That way came the -groups, of a winter evening, in shawls and hoods, creaking over the -snow with lantern-light and laughter to a reading circle, or to one of -those family<span class="pagenum" id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</span> reunions which took place whenever some relative from a -distance was visiting in the neighborhood. Along that path went those -dear women in haste, to offer their help in sudden, sharp emergencies; -and with slower steps again when all was over, they went to sit with -those in grief, or to consult about the last services for the dead.</p> - -<p>That was the way the young people took on their walks in summer—the -stalwart country boys and their pretty city cousins in fresh muslins, -with light, high voices, pitched to the roar of the street. That way -went the nutting parties in the fall and the skating parties in winter. -All the boys and girls of both houses grew up opening and shutting that -gate on one errand or another, from the little white-headed lad with -the mail, to the soldier cousin coming across to say good-by.</p> - -<p>Between the two neighboring homes was the family burying-ground: all -this pleasant intercourse went on with the silent cognizance and -sympathy, as it were, of the forefathers who trod the path no more. -The<span class="pagenum" id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</span> burying-ground was by far the best spot for a resting-place on -either of the farms,—in a hollow of the hills, with a stone fence -all round, draped as if to deaden sounds with heavy festoons of -woodbine. Above the gray granite and white marble tombstones, rose the -locust-trees, tall and still. The beds of myrtle, underneath, were -matted into a continuous carpet of thick, shining leaves which caught -the sunlight at broad noon with a peculiar pale glister like moonlight. -The chestnut-tree stood a little apart, with one great arm outstretched -as if calling attention, or asking for silence. Yet no child ever -hushed its laughter as it passed the little gate with the gray pickets, -overhung by a climbing rose, which opened into the burying-ground; -and when, in the autumn, the old chestnut-tree dropped its nuts, the -children never hesitated to go in that way and gather them because of -the solemn neighborhood. They had grown up in the presence of these -memorials of the beloved dead. But no one ever opened that gate without -at least a momentary thoughtfulness.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</span> No one ever slammed it, in anger -or in haste. And so it became a dumb teacher of reverence—a daily -reminder to be quiet, to be gentle, for the sake of those at rest on -the other side of the wall.</p> -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</span></p> - -<h2 class="nobreak" id="THE_GARRET_AT_GRANDFATHERS">THE GARRET AT GRANDFATHER’S</h2> -</div> - - -<p>The rooms at grandfather’s house had been used so long, they were -almost human themselves. Each room had a look of its own, when you -opened the door, as expressive as a speaking countenance.</p> - -<p>“Come in, children dear!” the sunny sitting-room always seemed to say.</p> - -<p>“Sit still and don’t talk too much, and don’t handle the things on the -tables,” said the large, gleaming, dim-lighted parlors.</p> - -<p>“Dear me, what weather this is!” grumbled the poky back entry where the -overshoes and waterproofs and wood-boxes were kept.</p> - -<p>“There’s a piece—of cake—in the cupboard for you,” quietly ticked the -dining-room clock, its large face looking at no one in particular.</p> - -<p>But of all the rooms in that house, upstairs or down, not one had the -strangeness, the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</span> mysterious nod and beck and whisper, of the murky old -garret.</p> - -<p>“Hark, what was that?” it would seem to creak; and then there was -silence. “Hush! I’ll tell you a story,” it sometimes answered.</p> - -<p>Some of its stories were true, but I should not like to vouch for all -of them.</p> - -<p>What a number of queer things it kept hidden away under the eaves that -spread wide, a broad-winged cloak of shadows! What a strange eye it -had, its one half-moon window peering at you from the high, peaked -forehead of the gable.</p> - -<p>The garret door was at the far end of the long upper hall; from it the -stairs (and how they did creak!) led up directly out of the cheerful -daylight into that uncarpeted wilderness where it was always twilight.</p> - -<p>It was the younger children’s business to trot on errands, and they -were not consulted as to where or when they should go. Grown people -seem to forget how early it gets dark up garret in winter, and how far -away the house noises sound with all the doors shut between.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_146">[Pg 146]</span></p> - -<p>When the children were sent up garret for nuts,—for Sunday dessert -with mince pie and apples, or to pass around with cider in the -evening,—they were careful to leave the stair door open behind them; -but there was little comfort in that, for all the people were two -flights down and busy with their own concerns.</p> - -<p>Downstairs in the bright western chambers nobody thought of its being -late, but up garret, under the eaves, it was already night. Thick ice -incrusted the half-moon window, curtaining its cold ray that sadly -touched an object here and there, and deepened the neighboring gloom.</p> - -<p>The autumn nut harvest was spread first upon sheets on the garret floor -to dry, and then it was garnered in the big, green bathtub which had -stood, since the children could remember, over against the chimney, to -the right of the gable window. This tub was for size and weight the -father of all bathtubs. It was used for almost anything but the purpose -for which it was intended.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</span></p> - -<p>In summer, when it was empty, the children played “shipwreck” in it; -it was their life-boat, and they were cast away on the high seas. Some -rowed for dear life, with umbrellas and walking-sticks, and some made -believe to cry and call for help,—for that was their idea of the -behavior of a shipwrecked company; and some tramped on the bulging tin -bottom of the tub, which yielded and sprang back with a loud thump, -like the clank of oars. It was very exciting.</p> - -<p>In winter it was the granary. It held bushels and bushels of nuts, and -its smooth, out-sloping sides defeated the clever little mice who were -always raiding and rummaging among the garret stores.</p> - -<p>Well, it seemed a long distance to the timid little errand girl, from -the stairs, across the garret floor to that bathtub. “Noiseless as fear -in a wide wilderness,” she stepped. Then, what a shock it was, when the -first loud handfuls of nuts bumped upon the bottom of the pail! The -nuts were pointed and cold as lumps of ice; they hurt the small hands -that<span class="pagenum" id="Page_148">[Pg 148]</span> shoveled them up in haste, and a great many handfuls it took to -fill the pail.</p> - -<p>Hanging from the beams that divided the main garret from the eaves, -dangled a perfectly useless row of old garments that seemed to be there -for no purpose but to look dreadful. How they might have appeared in -a different light cannot be said; there seemed to be nothing wrong -with them when the women took them down at house-cleaning time and -shook and beat them about; they were as empty as sacks, every one. But -in that dim, furtive light, seen by over-shoulder glimpses they had -the semblance of dismal malefactors suffering the penalty of their -crimes. Some were hooded and seemed to hang their heads upon their -sunken breasts; all were high-shouldered wretches with dangling arms -and a shapeless, dreary suggestiveness worse than human. The most -objectionable one of the lot was a long, dark weather-cloak, worn -“about the twenties,” as old people say. It was of the fashion of that -“long red cloak, well brushed and neat,” which we read of in John -Gilpin’s famous ride.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_149">[Pg 149]</span></p> - -<p>But the great-grandfather’s cloak was of a dark green color, and not -well brushed. It had a high, majestic velvet collar, hooked with a -heavy steel clasp and chain; but for all its respectable and kindly -associations, it looked, hanging from the garret rafters, just as much -a gallows-bird as any of its ruffian company.</p> - -<p>The children could not forgive their great-grandfather for having had -such a sinister-looking garment, or for leaving it behind him to hang -in the grim old garret and frighten them. Solemn as the garret looked, -no doubt this was one of its jokes: to dress itself up in shadows -and pretend things to tease the children, as we have known some real -persons to do. It certainly was not fair, when they were up there all -alone.</p> - -<p>The scuttle in the roof was shut, in winter, to keep out the snow. A -long ladder led up to it from the middle garret, and close to this -ladder stood another uncanny-looking object—the bath-closet.</p> - -<p>The family had always been inveterate bathers, but surely this shower -bath must have<span class="pagenum" id="Page_150">[Pg 150]</span> capped the climax of its cold-water experiments.</p> - -<p>It was contrived so that a pail of water, carried up by the scuttle -ladder and emptied into a tilting vessel on top of the closet, could be -made to descend on a sudden in a deluge of large drops upon the head of -the person inside. There was no escape for that person; the closet gave -him but just room to stand up under the infliction, and once the pail -was tilted, the water was bound to come.</p> - -<p>The children thought of this machine with shivering and dread. They had -heard it said—perhaps in the kitchen—that their little grandmother -had “nearly killed herself” in that shower bath, till the doctor -forbade her to use it any more.</p> - -<p>Its walls were screens of white cotton cloth, showing a mysterious -opaque glimmer against the light, also the shadowy outlines of some -objects within which the children could not account for. The narrow -screen door was always shut, and no child ever dreamed of opening it -or of meddling with the secrets of that<span class="pagenum" id="Page_151">[Pg 151]</span> pale closet. It was enough to -have to pass it on lonesome errands, looming like a “sheeted ghost” in -the garret’s perpetual twilight.</p> - -<p>The garret, like some of the great foreign churches, had a climate of -its own; still and dry, but subject to extremes of heat and cold. In -summer it was the tropics, in winter the frozen pole.</p> - -<p>But it had its milder moods also,—when it was neither hot nor cold, -nor light nor dark; when it beamed in mellow half-tones upon its -youthful visitors, left off its ugly frightening tricks, told them -“once upon a time” stories, and even showed them all its old family -keepsakes.</p> - -<p>These pleasant times occurred about twice every year, at the spring and -fall house-cleaning, when the women with brooms and dust-pans invaded -the garret and made a cheerful bustle in that deserted place.</p> - -<p>The scuttle hole in the roof was then open, to give light to the -cleaners, and a far, bright square of light shone down. It was as if -the garret smiled.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_152">[Pg 152]</span></p> - -<p>All the queer old things, stowed away under the eaves, behind boxes and -broken furniture and stoves and rolls of carpets, were dragged forth; -and they were as good as new discoveries to the children who had not -seen them nor heard their stories since last house-cleaning time.</p> - -<p>There was the brass warming-pan, with its shining lid full of holes -like a pepper-box. On this warming-pan, as a sort of sled, the children -used to ride by turns—one child seated on, or in, the pan, two others -dragging it over the floor by the long, dark wood handle.</p> - -<p>And there were the pattens “which step-great-grandmother Sheppard -brought over from England;” one pair with leather straps and one with -straps of cotton velvet, edged with a tarnished gilt embroidery. The -straps were meant to lace over a full-grown woman’s instep, but the -children managed somehow to keep them on their feet, and they clattered -about, on steel-shod soles, with a racket equal to the midnight clatter -of Santa Claus’s team of reindeer.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_153">[Pg 153]</span></p> - -<p>There was a huge muff of dark fur, kept in a tall blue paper bandbox; -the children could bury their arms in it up to the shoulder. It had -been carried by some lady in the time of short waists and scant skirts -and high coat collars; when girls covered their bare arms with long kid -gloves and tucked their little slippered toes into fur-lined foot-muffs -and went on moonlight sleighing parties, dressed as girls dress -nowadays for a dance.</p> - -<p>One of these very same foot-muffs (the moths had once got into it) -led a sort of at-arm’s-length existence in the garret, neither quite -condemned nor yet allowed to mingle with unimpeachable articles of -clothing. And there was a “foot-stove” used in old times on long -drives in winter or in the cold country meeting-houses. They were -indefatigable visitors and meeting-goers,—those old-time Friends. -Weather and distance were nothing thought of; and in the most troublous -times they could go to and fro in their peaceful character, unmolested -and unsuspected, though no doubt they had their sympathies as strong as -other people’s.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_154">[Pg 154]</span></p> - -<p>A china bowl is still shown, in one branch of grandfather’s family, -which one of the great-aunts, then a young woman, carried on her -saddle-bow through both the British and Continental lines, from her -old home on Long Island to her husband’s house on the west bank of the -Hudson above West Point.</p> - -<p>No traveling member of the society ever thought of “putting-up” for the -night anywhere but at a Friend’s house. Journeys were planned in stages -from such a Friend’s house to such another one’s, or from meeting to -meeting. In days when letter postage was dear and newspapers were -almost unknown, such visits were keenly welcome, and were a chief means -by which isolated country families kept up their communication with the -world.</p> - -<p>There were many old-fashioned household utensils in the garret, the use -of which had to be explained to the children; and all this was as good -as history, and more easily remembered than much that is written in -books.</p> - -<p>There was the old “Dutch oven” that had stood in front of roaring -hearth-fires in days<span class="pagenum" id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</span> when Christmas dinners were cooked without -the aid of stoves or ranges. And there were the iron firedogs, the -pot-hooks and the crane which were part of the fireplace furniture. And -the big wool-wheel for the spinning of yarn, the smaller and lady-like -flax-wheel, and the tin candle moulds for the making of tallow candles; -and a pleasure it must have been to see the candles “drawn,” when the -pure white tallow had set in the slender tubes and taken the shape of -them perfectly,—each candle, when drawn out by the wick, as cold and -hard and smooth as alabaster. And there was the “baby-jumper” and the -wicker “runaround,” to show that babies had always been babies—just -the same restless little pets then as now—and that mother’s and -nurse’s arms were as apt to get tired.</p> - -<p>The garret had kept a faithful family record, and hence it told of -sickness and suffering as well as of pleasure and business and life and -feasting.</p> - -<p>A little old crutch, padded by some woman’s hand with an attempt to -make it handsome<span class="pagenum" id="Page_156">[Pg 156]</span> as well as comfortable, stood against the chimney on -the dark side next the eaves. It was short enough for a child of twelve -to lean upon. It had seen considerable use, for the brown velvet pad -was worn quite thin and gray. Had the little cripple ever walked again? -With what feelings did the mother put that crutch away up-garret when -it was needed no more? The garret did not say how that story of pain -had ended; or whether it was long or short. The children never sought -to know. It was one of the questions which they did not ask: they knew -very little about pain themselves, and perhaps they did not fully enter -into the meaning of that sad little relic.</p> - -<p>Still less did they understand the reverence with which the -house-cleaning women handled a certain bare wooden frame, neither -handsome nor comfortable looking. It had been made to support an -invalid in a sitting posture in bed; and the invalid for whom it was -provided, in her last days, had suffered much from difficulty of -breathing, and had passed many weary hours, sometimes whole nights,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_157">[Pg 157]</span> -supported by this frame. It had for those who knew its use the -sacredness of association with that long ordeal of pain, endured with -perfect patience and watched over with constant love.</p> - -<p>But these were memories which the little children could not share. When -their prattling questions touched upon the sore places, the wounds in -the family past, they were not answered, or were put aside till some -more fitting occasion, or until they were old enough to listen with -their hearts.</p> - -<p>Under the eaves there was an old green chest whose contents, year after -year, the children searched through in the never-failing hope that -they should find something which had not been there the year before. -There were old account-books with their stories of loss and gain which -the children could not read. There were bundles of old letters which -they were not allowed to examine. There were “ink-portraits,” family -profiles in silhouette, which they thought very funny, especially in -the matter of coat collars<span class="pagenum" id="Page_158">[Pg 158]</span> and “back hair.” There were schoolgirl -prizes of fifty years ago; the schoolgirls had grown into grandmammas, -and some were dead. There was old-fashioned art-work, paintings on -velvet or satin; boxes covered with shells; needlebooks and samplers -showing the most exemplary stitches in colors faded by time. There -were handsomely bound volumes of “Extracts,” containing poems and long -passages of elegant prose copied in pale-brown ink, in the proper -penmanship of the time. And there was a roll of steel-plate engravings -which had missed the honor of frames; and of these the children’s -favorite picture was one called The Wife.</p> - -<p>It is some time since I have seen that picture; I may be wrong about -some of the details. But as I remember her, the wife was a long-necked -lady with very large eyes, dressed in white, with large full sleeves -and curls falling against her cheek. She held a feather hand-screen, -and she was doing nothing but look beautiful and sweetly attentive to -her husband, who was seated on the other<span class="pagenum" id="Page_159">[Pg 159]</span> side of the table and was -reading aloud to her by the light of an old-fashioned astral lamp.</p> - -<p>This, of course, was the ideal wife, so thought the little girls. Every -other form of wifehood known to them was more or less made up of sewing -and housework and everyday clothes. Even in the family past, it had the -taint of the Dutch oven and the spinning-wheel and the candle moulds -upon it. They looked at their finger-tips; no, it was not likely theirs -would ever grow to be long and pointed like hers. <em>The</em> wife no -one of them should ever be—only <em>a</em> wife perhaps, with the usual -sewing-work, and not enough white dresses to afford to wear one every -evening.</p> - -<p>It took one day to clean the garret and another to put things away. -Winter clothing had to be brushed and packed in the chests where it was -kept; the clothes closet had to be cleaned; then its door was closed -and locked. The last of the brooms and dust-pans beat a retreat, the -stair door was shut,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_160">[Pg 160]</span> and the dust and the mystery began to gather as -before.</p> - -<p>But summer, though no foe to dust, was a great scatterer of the garret -mysteries. Gay, lightsome summer peeped in at the half-moon window and -smiled down from the scuttle in the roof. Warm weather had come, the -sash that fitted the gable window was taken out permanently. Outdoor -sounds and perfumes floated up. Athwart the sleeping sunbeams golden -dust motes quivered, and bees from the garden sailed in and out on -murmuring wing.</p> - -<p>If a thunderstorm came up suddenly, then there was a fine race up two -flights of stairs!—and whoever reached the scuttle ladder first had -the first right to climb it, and to pull in the shutter that covered -the scuttle hole. There was time, perhaps, for one breathless look down -the long slope of bleached shingles,—at the tossing treetops, the -meadow grass whipped white, the fountain’s jet of water bending like -a flame and falling silent on the grass, the neighbor’s team hurrying -homeward,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_161">[Pg 161]</span> and the dust rising along the steep upward grade of the -village road.</p> - -<p>Then fell the first great drop—another, and another; the shutter hid -the storm-bright square of sky, and down came the rain—trampling on -the shingles, drumming in the gutters, drowning the laughing voices -below; and suddenly the garret grew cool, and its mellow glow darkened -to brown twilight.</p> - -<p>Under the gable window there stood for many years a white pine box, -with a front that let down on leather hinges. It was very clean inside -and faintly odorous. The children called it the bee-box, and they had a -story of their own to account for the tradition that this box had once -held rich store of honey in the comb.</p> - -<p>A queen bee, they said, soaring above the tops of the cherry-trees in -swarming-time, had drifted in at the garret window with all the swarm -in tow; and where her royal caprice had led them, the faithful workers -remained and formed a colony in the bee-box,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_162">[Pg 162]</span> and, like honest tenants, -left a quantity of their sweet wares behind to pay for their winter’s -lodging.</p> - -<p>There may have been some truth in this story, but the honey was long -since gone, and so were the bees. The bee-box, in the children’s -time, held only files of old magazines packed away for binding. Of -course they never were bound; and the children who used to look at -the pictures in them, grew into absent-minded girls with half-lengths -of hair falling into their eyes when they stooped too low over their -books,—as they always would, to read. The bee-box was crammed till the -lid would no longer shut. And now the dusty pages began to gleam and -glow, and voices that all the world listened to spoke to those young -hearts for the first time in the garret’s stillness.</p> - -<p>The rapt young reader, seated on the garret floor, never thought of -looking for a date, nor asked, “Who tells this story?” Those voices -were as impersonal as the winds and the stars of the summer night.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_163">[Pg 163]</span></p> - -<p>It might have been twenty years, it might have been but a year before, -that Lieutenant Strain led his brave little band into the deadly tropic -wilderness of Darien. It is doubtful if those child-readers knew why -he was sent, by whom, or what to do. The beginning of the narrative -was in a “missing number” of the magazine. It mattered not; they read -from the heart, not from the head. It was the toils, the resolves, the -sufferings of the men that they cared about,—their characters and -conduct under trial. They agonized with “Truxton” over his divided -duty, and they wept at his all but dying words:—</p> - -<p>“Did I do right, Strain?”</p> - -<p>They worshiped, with unquestioning faith, at the shrine of that -factitious god of battles, Abbot’s “Napoleon.” With beating hearts and -burning cheeks they lived in the tragic realism of “Witching Times.” -“Maya, the Princess,” and “The Amber Gods,” “In a Cellar,” “The South -Breaker,” stormed their fresh imaginations, and left them feverishly -dreaming; and there in the garret’s tropic<span class="pagenum" id="Page_164">[Pg 164]</span> warmth and stillness they -first heard the voice of the great master who gave us Colonel Newcome, -and who wrought us to such passionate sympathy with the fortunes of -Clive and Ethel. And here, too, the last number was missing, and for a -long time the young readers went sorrowing for Clive, and thinking that -he and Ethel had been parted all their lives.</p> - -<p>These garret readings were frequently a stolen joy, but perhaps -“mother” was in the secret of the bee-box, and did not search very -closely or call very loud when a girl was missing, about the middle of -the warm, midsummer afternoons.</p> - -<p>About midsummer the sage was picked and spread upon newspapers upon the -garret floor to dry. That was a pleasant task. Children are sensitive -to the touch of beauty connected with their labors. Their eyes lingered -with delight upon the color, the crêpe-like texture of the fragrant -sage, bestrewing the brown garret floor with its delicate life already -wilting in the dry, warm air.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_165">[Pg 165]</span></p> - -<p>“September winds should never blow upon hops,” the saying is; therefore -the hops for a whole year’s yeast-making were gathered in the wane of -summer; and here, too, was a task that brought its own reward. The -hops made a carpet for the garret floor, more beautiful even than the -blue-green sage; and as the harvest was much larger, so the fair living -carpet spread much wider. It was a sight to see, in the low light of -the half-moon window, all the fragile pale green balls, powdered to the -heart’s core with gold-colored pollen—a field of beauty spread there -for no eye to see. Yet it was not wasted. The children did not speak -of what they felt, but nothing that was beautiful, or mysterious, or -stimulating to the fancy in those garret days, was ever lost. It is -often the slight impressions that, like the “scent of the roses,” wear -best and most keenly express the past.</p> - -<p>No child ever forgot the physiognomy of those rooms at grandfather’s: -the mid-afternoon stillness when the sun shone on the lemon-tree, and -its flowers shed their perfume<span class="pagenum" id="Page_166">[Pg 166]</span> on the warm air of the sitting-room; -the peculiar odor of the withering garden when October days were -growing chill; the soft rustle of the wind searching among the dead -leaves of the arbor; the cider-mill’s drone in the hazy distance; the -creaking of the loaded wagons; the bang of the great barn doors when -the wind swung them to.</p> - -<p>No child of all those who have played in grandfather’s garret ever -forgot its stories, its solemn, silent make-believes, the dreams they -dreamed there when they were girls, or the books they read.</p> -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_167">[Pg 167]</span></p> - -<h2 class="nobreak" id="THE_SPARE_BEDROOM_AT_GRANDFATHERS">THE SPARE BEDROOM AT GRANDFATHER’S</h2> -</div> - - -<p>It was the hour for fireside talks in the cañon: too early, as dusk -falls on a short December day, for lamps to be lighted; too late to -snatch a page or two more of the last magazine, by the low gleam that -peered in the western windows.</p> - -<p>Jack had done his part in the evening’s wood-carrying, and now was -enjoying the fruits of honest toil, watching the gay red flames that -becked and bowed up the lava-rock chimney. The low-ceiled room, with -its rows of books, its guns and pipes and idols in Zuñi pottery, -darkled in corners and glowed in spots, and the faces round the -hearth were lighted as by footlights, in their various attitudes of -thoughtfulness.</p> - -<p>“Now, what is <em>that</em>?” cried Jack’s mamma, putting down the fan -screen she held, and turning her head to listen.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_168">[Pg 168]</span></p> - -<p>It was only the wind booming over the housetop, but it had found a new -plaything; it was strumming with a free hand and mighty on the long, -taut wires that guyed the wash-shed stovepipe. The wash-shed was a -post-script in boards and shingles hastily added to the main dwelling -after the latter’s completion. It had no chimney, only four feet of -pipe projecting from the roof, an item which would have added to the -insurance had there been any insurance. The risk of fire was taken -along with the other risks, but the family was vigilant.</p> - -<p>Mrs. Gilmour listened till she sighed again. The wind, she said, -reminded her of a sound she had not thought of for years,—the whirring -of swallows’ wings in the spare bedroom chimney at home.</p> - -<p>“Swallows in the chimney?” cried Jack, suddenly attentive. “How could -they build fires then, without roasting the birds?”</p> - -<p>“The chimneys were three stories high, and the swallows built near -the top, I suppose. They had the sky and the stars for a ceiling<span class="pagenum" id="Page_169">[Pg 169]</span> to -their dark little bedrooms. In spring there was never more than a -blaze of sticks on the hearth—not that, unless we had visitors to -stay. Sometimes a young swallow trying to fly fell out of the nest and -fluttered across the hearth into the room. That was very exciting to us -children. But at house-cleaning time a great bag of straw was stuffed -up the chimney’s throat to save the hearth from falling soot and dried -mud and the litter from the nests. It was a brick hearth painted red, -and washed always with milk to make it shine. The andirons were such as -you will see in the garret of any good old house in the East,—fluted -brass columns with brass cones on top.</p> - -<p>“It was in summer, when the bird colony was liveliest, that we used to -hear the beating of wings in the chimney,—a smothered sound like the -throbbing of a steamer’s wheels far off in a fog, or behind a neck of -land.”</p> - -<p>Jack asked more questions; the men seemed not inclined to talk, and -the mother fell to remembering aloud, speaking sometimes to Jack, but -often to the others. All the simple<span class="pagenum" id="Page_170">[Pg 170]</span> features of her old Eastern home -had gained a priceless value, as things of a past gone out of her life -which she had scarcely prized at the time. She was half jealous of her -children’s attachment to the West, and longed to make them know the -place of the family’s nativity, through such pictures of it as her -memory could supply.</p> - -<p>But her words meant more to herself than to any that listened.</p> - -<p>“Did we ever sleep in that bedroom with the chimney-swallows?” asked -Jack. He was thinking, What a mistake to stop up the chimney and cut -off communication with such jolly neighbors as the swallows!</p> - -<p>Yes, his mother said; he had slept there, but before he could remember. -It was the winter he was three years old, when his father was in -Deadwood.</p> - -<p>There used to be such beautiful frost-pictures on the eastern window -panes; and when the sun rose and the fire was lighted and the pictures -faded, a group of little bronze-black cedars appeared, half a mile<span class="pagenum" id="Page_171">[Pg 171]</span> -away, topping the ridge by the river, and beyond them were the solemn -blue hills. Those hills and the cedars were as much a part of a -winter’s sunrise on the Hudson as the sun himself.</p> - -<p>Jack used to lie in bed and listen for the train, a signal his mother -did not care to hear, for it meant she must get up and set a match -to the fire, laid overnight in the big-bellied, air-tight stove that -panted and roared on its four short legs, shuddering in a transport of -sudden heat.</p> - -<p>When the air of the room grew milder, Jack would hop out in his wrapper -and slippers, and run to the north window to see what new shapes the -fountain had taken in the night.</p> - -<p>The jet of water in winter was turned low, and the spray of it froze -and piled above the urn, changing as the wind veered and as the sun -wasted it. On some mornings it looked like a weeping white lady in a -crystal veil; sometimes a Niobe group, children clinging to a white, -sad mother, who clasped them and<span class="pagenum" id="Page_172">[Pg 172]</span> bowed her head. When the sun peeped -through the fir-trees, it touched the fountain statuary with sea tints -of emerald and pearl.</p> - -<p>Had Jack been old enough to know the story of Undine, he might have -fancied that he saw her, on those winter mornings, and I am sure he -would have wanted to fetch her in and warm her and dry her icy tears.</p> - -<p>The spare-room mantelpiece was high. Jack could see only the tops -of things upon it, even by walking far back into the room; but of a -morning, mounted on the pillows of the great four-poster, he could -explore the mantel’s treasures, which never varied nor changed places. -There was the whole length and pattern of the tall silver-plated -candlesticks and the snuffers in their tray; the Indian box of -birch-bark overlaid with porcupine quills, which held concealed riches -of shells and coral and dark sea beans; there was the centre vase -of Derbyshire spar, two dolphins wreathing their tails to support a -bacchante’s bowl crowned with grape leaves. In winter this vase held -an arrangement of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_173">[Pg 173]</span> dried immortelles, yellow and pink and crimson, -and some that verged upon magenta and should have been cast out as an -offense to the whole; but grandmother had for flowers a charity that -embraced every sin of color they were capable of. When her daughters -grew up and put on airs of superior taste, they protested against these -stiff mementos; but she was mildly inflexible; she continued to gather -and to dry her “everlastings,” with faithful recognition of their -prickly virtues. She was not one to slight old friends for a trifling -mistake in color, though Art should put forth her edict and call them -naught.</p> - -<p>In the northeast corner of the room stood a great invalid chair, -dressed, like a woman, in white dimity that came down to the floor -all round. The plump feather cushion had an apron, as little Jack -called it, which fell in neat gathers in front. The high stuffed sides -projected, forming comfortable corners where a languid head might rest.</p> - -<p>Here the pale young mothers of the family “sat up” for the first time -to have their hair<span class="pagenum" id="Page_174">[Pg 174]</span> braided, or to receive the visits of friends; here, -in last illnesses, a wan face sinking back showed the truth of the -doctor’s verdict.</p> - -<p>White dimity, alternating with a dark-red reps in winter, covered the -seats of the fiddle-backed mahogany chairs. White marseilles or dimity -covers were on the washstand, and the tall bureau had a swinging glass -that rocked back against the wall and showed little Jack a picture of -himself walking into a steep background of the room—a small chap in -kilts, with a face somewhat out of drawing and of a bluish color; the -floor, too, had a queer slant like the deck of a rolling vessel. But -with all its faults, this presentation of himself in the glass was an -appearance much sought after by Jack, even to the climbing on chairs to -attain it.</p> - -<p>When grandmother came to her home as a bride, the four-poster was -in full panoply of high puffed feather-bed, valance and canopy and -curtains of white dimity, “English” blankets, quilted silk comforter, -and counterpane of heavy marseilles, in a bygone pattern.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_175">[Pg 175]</span> No pillow -shams were seen in the house; its fashions never changed. The best -pillow-cases were plain linen, hemstitched,—smooth as satin with much -use, as Jack’s mother remembered them,—and the slender initials, in an -old-fashioned hand, above the hem, had faded sympathetically to a pale -yellow-brown.</p> - -<p>Some of the house linen had come down from great-grandmother’s -trousseau. It bore her maiden initials, E. B., in letters that were -like the marking on old silver of that time; the gracious old Quaker -names, sacred to the memory of gentle women and good housewives whose -virtues would read like the last chapter of Proverbs, the words of King -Lemuel, the prophecy which his mother taught him.</p> - -<p>It was only after the daughters of the house grew up and were married -and came home on visits with their children, that the spare bedroom -fell into common use, and new fashions intruded as the old things wore -out.</p> - -<p>When Jack’s mother was a child, it still kept its solemn and festal -character of birth<span class="pagenum" id="Page_176">[Pg 176]</span> and marriage and death chamber; and in times less -vital it was set apart for such guests as the family delighted to -honor. Little girls were not allowed to stray in there by themselves; -even when sent to the room on errands, they went and came with a -certain awe of the empty room’s cold dignity.</p> - -<p>But at the semi-annual house-cleaning, when every closet and bureau -drawer resigned itself to the season’s intrusive spirit of research, -the spare room’s kindly mysteries were given to the light. The children -could look on and touch and handle and ask questions; and thus began -their acquaintance with such relics as had not been consigned to the -darker oblivion of the garret, or suffered change through the family -passion for “making over.”</p> - -<p>In the bottom drawer of the bureau was the “body” of grandmother’s -wedding gown. The narrow skirt had served for something useful,—a -cradle quilt, perhaps, for one of the babies. Jack could have put the -tiny dress waist into one of his trousers’ pockets<span class="pagenum" id="Page_177">[Pg 177]</span> with less than -their customary distention. It was a mere scrap of dove-colored silk, -low necked, and laced in the back. Grandmother must have worn over her -shoulders one of the embroidered India muslin capes that were turning -yellow in that same drawer.</p> - -<p>The dress sleeves were “leg o’ mutton,” but these, too, had been -sacrificed in some impulse of mistaken economy.</p> - -<p>There was the high shell comb, not carved, but a solid piece of shell -which the children used to hold up to the light to see the colors glow -like a church window. There were the little square-toed satin slippers, -heelless, with flat laces that crossed over the instep; and there were -the flesh-colored silk stockings and white embroidered wedding shawl.</p> - -<p>Little grandmother must have been rather a gay Friend; she never wore -the dress, as did her mother, who put on the “plain distinguishing cap” -before she was forty. She dressed as one of the “world’s people,” but -always plainly, with a little distance between herself and the latest -fashion. She<span class="pagenum" id="Page_178">[Pg 178]</span> had a conscientious scorn of poor materials. Ordinary -self-respect would have prevented her wearing an edge of lace that was -not “real,” or a stuff that was not all wool, if wool it professed to -be, or a print that would not “wash;” and her contempt for linen that -was part cotton, for silk that was part linen, or velvet with a “cotton -back,” was of a piece with her truthfulness and horror of pretense.</p> - -<p>Among the frivolities in the lower drawer was a very dainty little -nightcap, embroidered mull or some such frailness; the children used to -tie it on over their short hair, framing the round cheeks of ten and -twelve years old. It was the envelope for sundry odd pieces of lace, -“old English thread,” and yellow Valenciennes, ripped from the necks -and sleeves of little frocks long outgrown.</p> - -<p>The children learned these patterns by heart; also the scrolls and -garlands on certain broad collars and cuffs of needlework which always -looked as if something might be made of them; but nothing was, although -Jack’s<span class="pagenum" id="Page_179">[Pg 179]</span> mamma was conscious of a long felt want in doll’s petticoats, -which those collars would have filled to ecstasy.</p> - -<p>In that lower drawer were a few things belonging to grandmother’s -mother, E. B. of gracious memory. There were her gauze -neck-handkerchiefs, and her long-armed silk mitts which reported her -a “finer woman” than any of her descendants of the third generation, -since not a girl of them all could show an arm that would fill out -these cast coverings handsomely from wrist to biceps.</p> - -<p>And there was a bundle of her silk house shawls, done up in one -of the E. B. towels, lovely in color and texture as the fair, -full grandmotherly throat they once encircled. They were plain, -self-fringed, of every shade of white that was not white.</p> - -<p>There they lay and no one used them; and after a while it began to -seem a waste to the little girls who had grown to be big girls. The -lightest minded of them began to covet those sober vanities for their -own adornment. Mother’s scruples were easily smiled away;<span class="pagenum" id="Page_180">[Pg 180]</span> so the old -Quaker shawls came forth and took their part in the young life of the -house—a gayer part, it would be safe to say, than was ever theirs -upon the blessed shoulders of E. B. One or two of them were made into -plaited waists to be worn with skirts and belts of the world’s fashion. -And one soft cream-white shawl wrapped little Jack on his first journey -in this world; and afterward on many journeys, much longer than that -first one “from the blue room to the brown.”</p> - -<p>No advertised perfumes were used in grandmother’s house, yet the things -in the drawers had a faint sweet breath of their own. Especially it -lingered about those belongings of her mother’s time—the odor of -seclusion, of bygone cleanliness and household purity.</p> - -<p>The spare bedroom was at its gayest in summer-time, when, after the -daughters of the house grew up, young company was expected. Swept -and dusted and soberly expectant, it waited, like a wise but prudent -virgin, with candles unlighted and shutters darkened. Its very colors -were cool and decorous,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_181">[Pg 181]</span> white and green and dark mahogany polish, door -knobs and candlesticks gleaming, andirons reflected in the dull-red -shine of the hearth.</p> - -<p>After sundown, if friends were expected by the evening boat, the -shutters were fastened back, and the green Venetian blinds raised, -to admit the breeze and a view of the garden and the grass and the -plashing fountain. Each girl hostess visited the room in turn on a -last, characteristic errand,—one with her hands full of roses, new -blown that morning; another to remove the sacrificed leaves and broken -stems which the rose-gatherer had forgotten; and the mother last of all -to look about her with modest pride, peopling the room with the friends -of her own girlhood, to be welcomed there no more.</p> - -<p>Then, when the wagon drove up, what a joyous racket in the hall; and -what content for the future in the sound of heavy trunks carried -upstairs!</p> - -<p>If only one girl guest had come, she must have her particular friend -of the house for a<span class="pagenum" id="Page_182">[Pg 182]</span> bedfellow; and what in all the world did they not -talk of, lying awake half the summer night in pure extravagance of -joy—while the fountain plashed and paused, and the soft wind stirred -in the cherry-trees, and in the moonlit garden overblown roses dropped -their petals on the wet box-borders.</p> - -<p>Visitors from the city brought with them—besides new books, new -songs, sumptuous confectionery and the latest ideas in dress—an odor -of the world; something complex rich and strange as the life of the -city itself. It spread its spell upon the cool, pure atmosphere of -the Quaker home, and set the light hearts beating and the young heads -dreaming.</p> - -<p>In after years came the Far West, with its masculine incense of camps -and tobacco and Indian leather and soft-coal smoke. It arrived in -company with several pieces of singularly dusty male baggage; but it -had not come to stay.</p> - -<p>For a few days of confusion and bustle it pervaded the house, and then -departed, on the “Long Trail,” taking little Jack and his<span class="pagenum" id="Page_183">[Pg 183]</span> mother away. -And in the chances and changes of the years that followed, they were -never again to sleep in the spare bedroom at grandfather’s.</p> - - - - -<p class="center p0 small p4"> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">ELECTROTYPED AND PRINTED</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">BY H. O. HOUGHTON AND <abbr title="company">CO.</abbr></span></p> -<hr class="r5" /> -<p class="center p0 small"><span style="margin-left: 1em;">The Riverside Press</span></p> -<hr class="r5" /> -<p class="center p0 small"> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">CAMBRIDGE, <abbr title="Massachusetts">MASS.</abbr>, <abbr title="United States of America">U. S. A.</abbr></span><br /> -</p> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter transnote"> - -<h2 class="nobreak">Transcriber’s Notes</h2> -<p><a href="#Page_9">Page 9:</a> “a snow flaw came” changed to “a snow fall came”</p> - -<p><a href="#Page_66">Page 66:</a> “those were bad places, for” changed to “those were bad places for”</p> -</div> -<div style='display:block; margin-top:4em'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LITTLE FIG-TREE STORIES ***</div> -<div style='text-align:left'> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> -Updated editions will replace the previous one—the old editions will -be renamed. -</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United -States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. 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