A Mountain Woman | Page 5

But I don't mean those pretty green hills such as we
saw com- ing here. They are not like my mountains. I like mountains
that go beyond the clouds, with terrible shadows in the hollows, and
belts of snow lying in the gorges where the sun cannot reach, and the
snow is blue in the sunshine, or shining till you think it is silver, and
the mist so wonderful all about it, changing each moment and drifting

up and down, that you cannot tell what name to give the colors. These
mountains of yours here in the East are so quiet; mine are shouting all
the time, with the pines and the rivers. The echoes are so loud in the
valley that sometimes, when the wind is rising, we can hardly hear a
man talk unless he raises his voice. There are four cataracts near where
I live, and they all have different voices, just as people do; and one of
them is happy -- a little white cataract -- and it falls where the sun
shines earliest, and till night it is shining. But the others only get the
sun now and then, and they are more noisy and cruel. One of them is
always in the shadow, and the water looks black. That is partly because
the rocks all underneath it are black. It falls down twenty great ledges
in a gorge with black sides, and a white mist dances all over it at every
leap. I tell father the mist is the ghost of the waters. No man ever goes
there; it is too cold. The chill strikes through one, and makes your heart
feel as if you were dying. But all down the side of the mountain, toward
the south and the west, the sun shines on the granite and draws long
points of light out of it. Father tells me soldiers marching look that way
when the sun strikes on their bayonets. Those are the kind of mountains
I mean, Mr. Grant."
She was looking at me with her face trans- figured, as if it, like the
mountains she told me of, had been lying in shadow, and wait- ing for
the dazzling dawn.
"I had a terrible dream once," she went on; "the most terrible dream
ever I had. I dreamt that the mountains had all been taken down, and
that I stood on a plain to which there was no end. The sky was burn-
ing up, and the grass scorched brown from the heat, and it was twisting
as if it were in pain. And animals, but no other person save myself,
only wild things, were crouch- ing and looking up at that sky. They
could not run because there was no place to which to go."
"You were having a vision of the last man," I said. "I wonder myself
sometimes whether this old globe of ours is going to collapse suddenly
and take us with her, or whether we will disappear through slow
disastrous ages of fighting and crushing, with hunger and blight to help
us to the end. And then, at the last, perhaps, some luckless fellow,

stronger than the rest, will stand amid the ribs of the rotting earth and
go mad."
The woman's eyes were fixed on me, large and luminous. "Yes," she
said; "he would go mad from the lonesomeness of it. He would be
afraid to be left alone like that with God. No one would want to be
taken into God's secrets."
"And our last man," I went on, "would have to stand there on that
swaying wreck till even the sound of the crumbling earth ceased. And
he would try to find a voice and would fail, because silence would have
come again. And then the light would go out --"
The shudder that crept over her made me stop, ashamed of myself.
"You talk like father," she said, with a long-drawn breath. Then she
looked up suddenly at the sun shining through a rift in those reckless
gray clouds, and put out one hand as if to get it full of the headlong
rollicking breeze. "But the earth is not dying," she cried. "It is well and
strong, and it likes to go round and round among all the other worlds. It
likes the sun and moon; they are all good friends; and it likes the people
who live on it. Maybe it is they instead of the fire within who keep it
warm; or maybe it is warm just from always going, as we are when we
run. We are young, you and I, Mr. Grant, and Leroy, and your beautiful
sister, and the world is young too!" Then she laughed a strong splendid
laugh, which had never had the joy taken out