The Trail of the Lonesome Pine | Page 2

creature dropped

of a sudden to the ground and, like something wild, lay flat.
A human figure had filled the leafy mouth that swallowed up the trail
and it was coming towards her. With a thumping heart she pushed
slowly forward through the brush until her face, fox-like with cunning
and screened by a blueberry bush, hung just over the edge of the cliff,
and there she lay, like a crouched panther-cub, looking down. For a
moment, all that was human seemed gone from her eyes, but, as she
watched, all that was lost came back to them, and something more. She
had seen that it was a man, but she had dropped so quickly that she did
not see the big, black horse that, unled, was following him. Now both
man and horse had stopped. The stranger had taken off his gray
slouched hat and he was wiping his face with something white.
Something blue was tied loosely about his throat. She had never seen a
man like that before. His face was smooth and looked different, as did
his throat and his hands. His breeches were tight and on his feet were
strange boots that were the colour of his saddle, which was deep in seat,
high both in front and behind and had strange long-hooded stirrups.
Starting to mount, the man stopped with one foot in the stirrup and
raised his eyes towards her so suddenly that she shrank back again with
a quicker throbbing at her heart and pressed closer to the earth. Still,
seen or not seen, flight was easy for her, so she could not forbear to
look again. Apparently, he had seen nothing--only that the next turn of
the trail was too steep to ride, and so he started walking again, and his
walk, as he strode along the path, was new to her, as was the erect way
with which he held his head and his shoulders.
In her wonder over him, she almost forgot herself, forgot to wonder
where he was going and why he was coming into those lonely hills
until, as his horse turned a bend of the trail, she saw hanging from the
other side of the saddle something that looked like a gun. He was a
"raider"--that man: so, cautiously and swiftly then, she pushed herself
back from the edge of the cliff, sprang to her feet, dashed past the big
tree and, winged with fear, sped down the mountain--leaving in a spot
of sunlight at the base of the pine the print of one bare foot in the black
earth.

II
He had seen the big pine when he first came to those hills--one
morning, at daybreak, when the valley was a sea of mist that threw soft
clinging spray to the very mountain tops: for even above the mists, that
morning, its mighty head arose--sole visible proof that the earth still
slept beneath. Straightway, he wondered how it had ever got there, so
far above the few of its kind that haunted the green dark ravines far
below. Some whirlwind, doubtless, had sent a tiny cone circling
heavenward and dropped it there. It had sent others, too, no doubt, but
how had this tree faced wind and storm alone and alone lived to defy
both so proudly? Some day he would learn. Thereafter, he had seen it,
at noon--but little less majestic among the oaks that stood about it; had
seen it catching the last light at sunset, clean-cut against the after-glow,
and like a dark, silent, mysterious sentinel guarding the mountain pass
under the moon. He had seen it giving place with sombre dignity to the
passing burst of spring--had seen it green among dying autumn leaves,
green in the gray of winter trees and still green in a shroud of snow--a
changeless promise that the earth must wake to life again. The
Lonesome Pine, the mountaineers called it, and the Lonesome Pine it
always looked to be. From the beginning it had a curious fascination
for him, and straightway within him--half exile that he was--there
sprang up a sympathy for it as for something that was human and a
brother. And now he was on the trail of it at last. From every point that
morning it had seemed almost to nod down to him as he climbed and,
when he reached the ledge that gave him sight of it from base to crown,
the winds murmured among its needles like a welcoming voice. At
once, he saw the secret of its life. On each side rose a cliff that had
sheltered it from storms until its trunk had shot upwards so far and so
straight and so strong that its green crown could lift itself on and on and
bend--blow what might--as proudly and