The Shepherd of the Hills Part 33

"Fix--the--light, as it was--please? That's--it. Thank you, Doctor.

How beautiful she is--how beautiful!" He seemed to gather strength, and looked carefully into the face of each member of the little group about the bed; the shepherd, Old Matt, Aunt Mollie, Pete, and the physician. Then he turned his eyes back to the painting. To the watchers, the girl in the picture, holding her br.i.m.m.i.n.g cup, seemed to smile back again.

"I loved her--I loved--her. She was my natural mate--my other self. I belonged to her--she to me. I--I can't tell you of that summer--when we were together--alone in the hills--the beautiful hills--away from the sham and the ugliness of the world that men have made. The beauty and inspiration of it all I put into my pictures, and I knew because of that they were good--I knew they would win a place for me--and--they did. Most of all--I put it there," (He pointed to the painting on the wall) "and the crowd saw it and felt it, and did not know what it was. But I knew--I knew--all the time, I knew. Oh!--if that short summer could have been lengthened--into years, what might I not have done? Oh, G.o.d!

That men--can be--so blind--so blind!"

For a time he lay exhausted, his face still turned toward the picture, but with eyes closed as though he dreamed. Then suddenly, he started up again, raising himself on his elbows, his eyes opened wide, and on his face a look of wondering gladness. They drew near.

"Do--do--you--hear? She is calling--she is calling again. Yes-- sweetheart--yes, dear. I--I am--com--"

Then, Old Matt and Aunt Mollie led the shepherd from the room.

And this way runs the trail that follows the lower level, where those who travel, as they go, look always over their shoulders with eyes of dread, and the gloomy shadows gather long before the day is done.

CHAPTER XLIII.

POOR PETE.

They buried the artist in the cave as he had directed, close under the wall on the ledge above the canon, with no stone or mark of any sort to fix the place. The old mine which he had discovered was reached by one of the side pa.s.sages far below in the depth of the mountain. The grave would never be disturbed.

For two weeks longer, Dr. Coughlan staid with his friend; out on the hills with him all day, helping to cook their meals at the ranch, or sitting on the porch at the Matthews place when the day was gone. When the time finally came that he must go, the little physician said, as he grasped the shepherd's hand, "You're doing just right, Daniel; just right. Always did; always did. Blast it all! I would stay, too, but what would Sarah and the girls do?

I'll come again next spring, Daniel, sure, sure, if I'm alive.

Don't worry, no one will ever know. Blast it all! I don't like to leave you, Daniel. Don't like it at all. But you are right, right, Daniel."

The old scholar stood in the doorway of his cabin to watch the wagon as it disappeared in the forest. He heard it rattle across the creek bottom below the ruined cabin under the bluff. He waited until from away up on Compton Ridge the sound of wheels came to him on the breeze that slipped down the mountain side. Still he waited, listening, listening, until there were only the voices of the forest and the bleating of the sheep in the corral. Slipping a book in his pocket, and taking a luncheon for himself and Pete he opened the corral gate and followed his flock to the hills.

All that summer Pete was the shepherd's constant companion. At first he seemed not to understand. Frequently he would start off suddenly for the cave, only to return after a time, with that look of trouble upon his delicate face. Mr. Howitt tried to help the boy, and he appeared gradually to realize in part. Once he startled his old friend by saying quietly, "When are you goin', Dad?"

"Going where? Where does Pete think Dad is going?"

The boy was lying on his back on the gra.s.sy hillside watching the clouds. He pointed upward, "There, where HE went; up there in the white hills. Pete knows."

The other looked long at the lad before answering quietly, "Dad does not know when he will go. But he is ready any time, now."

"Pete says better not wait long, Dad; 'cause Pete he's a goin' an'

course when he goes I've got to go 'long. Do you reckon Dad can see Pete when he is up there in them white hills? Some folks used to laugh at Pete when he told about the white hills, the flower things, the sky things, an' the moonlight things that play in the mists. An' once a fellow called Pete a fool, an' Young Matt he whipped him awful. But folks wasn't really to blame, 'cause they couldn't see 'em. That's what HE said. An' HE knew, 'cause he could see 'em too. But Aunt Mollie, an' Uncle Matt, an' you all, they don't never laugh. They just say, 'Pete knows.' But they couldn't see the flower things, or the tree things neither. Only HE could see."

The summer pa.s.sed, and, when the blue gray haze took on the purple touch and all the woods and hills were dressed with cloth of gold, Pete went from the world in which he had never really belonged, nor had been at home. Mr. Howitt, writing to Dr. Coughlan of the boy's death, said:

"Here and there among men, there are those who pause in the hurried rush to listen to the call of a life that is more real.

How often have we seen them, David, jostled and ridiculed by their fellows, pushed aside and forgotten, as incompetent or unworthy.

He who sees and hears too much is cursed for a dreamer, a fanatic, or a fool, by the mad mob, who, having eyes, see not, ears and hear not, and refuse to understand.

"We build temples and churches, but will not wors.h.i.+p in them; we hire spiritual advisers, but refuse to heed them; we buy bibles, but will not read them; believing in G.o.d, we do not fear Him; acknowledging Christ, we neither follow nor obey Him. Only when we can no longer strive in the battle for earthly honors or material wealth, do we turn to the unseen but more enduring things of life; and, with ears deafened by the din of selfish war and cruel violence, and eyes blinded by the glare of pa.s.sing pomp and folly, we strive to hear and see the things we have so long refused to consider.

"Pete knew a world unseen by us, and we, therefore, fancied ourselves wiser than he. The wind in the pines, the rustle of the leaves, the murmur of the brook, the growl of the thunder, and the voices of the night were all understood and answered by him. The flowers, the trees, the rocks, the hills, the clouds were to him, not lifeless things, but living friends, who laughed and wept with him as he was gay or sorrowful.

"'Poor Pete,' we said. Was he in truth, David, poorer or richer than we?"

They laid the boy beside his mother under the pines on the hills; the pines that showed so dark against the sky when the sun was down behind the ridge. And over his bed the wild vines lovingly wove a coverlid of softest green, while all his woodland friends gathered about his couch. Forest and hill and flower and cloud sang the songs he loved. All day the sunlight laid its wealth in bars of gold at his feet, and at night the moonlight things and the shadow things came out to play.

Summer and autumn slipped away; the winter pa.s.sed; spring came, with all the wonder of the resurrection of flower and leaf and blade. So peace and quiet came again into the shepherd's life.

When no answer to his letter was received, and the doctor did not return as he had promised, the old man knew that the last link connecting him with the world was broken.

CHAPTER XLIV.

THE TRAIL ON THE SUNLIT HILLS.

When Young Matt first knew that Sammy had sent Ollie back to the city with no promise to follow, he took to the woods, and returned only after miles of tramping over the wildest, roughest part of the country. The big fellow said no word, but on his face was a look that his father understood, and the old mountaineer felt his own blood move more quickly at the sight.

But when Sammy with her books was fully established in the Matthews home, and Young Matt seemed always, as the weeks went by, to find her reading things that he could not understand, he was made to realize more fully what her studies with the shepherd meant. He came to feel that she had already crossed the threshold into that world where Mr. Howitt lived. And, thinking that he himself could never enter, he grew lonely and afraid.

With the quickness that was so marked in her character, Sammy grasped the meaning of his trouble almost before Young Matt himself knew fully what it was. Then the girl, with much care and tact, set about helping him to see the truths which the shepherd had revealed to her.

All through the summer and fall, when the day's work was done, or on a Sunday afternoon, they were together, and gradually the woods and the hills, with all the wild life that is in them, began to have for the young man a new meaning; or, rather, he learned little by little to read the message that lay on the open pages; first a word here and there, then sentences, then paragraphs, and soon he was reading alone, as he tramped the hills for stray stock, or worked in the mountain field. The idle days of winter and the long evenings were spent in reading aloud from the books that had come to mean most to her.

So she led him on slowly, along the way that her teacher had pointed out to her, but always as they went, he saw her going before, far ahead, and he knew that in the things that men call education, he could never hope to stand by her side. But he was beginning to ask, are there not after all things that lie still deeper in life than even these?

Often he would go to his old friend in the Hollow with some thought, and the shepherd, seeing how it was, would smile as he helped the lad on his way. The scholar looked forward with confidence to the time when young Matt would discover for himself, as Sammy had found for herself, that the only common ground whereon men and women may meet in safety is the ground of their manhood and womanhood.

And so it was, on that spring morning when the young giant felt the red life throbbing strongly in his great limbs, as he followed his team to and fro across the field. And in his voice, as he shouted to his horses at the end of the furrow, there was something under the words, something of a longing, something also of a challenge.

Sammy was going to spend the day with her friends on Jake Creek.

She had not been to see Mandy since the night of her father's death. As she went, she stopped at the lower end of the field to shout a merry word to the man with the plow, and it was sometime later when the big fellow again started his team. The challenge in his tone had grown bolder.

Sammy returned that afternoon in time for the evening meal, and Aunt Mollie thought, as the girl came up the walk, that the young woman had never looked so beautiful. "Why, honey," she said, "you're just a bubblin' over with life. Your cheeks are as rosy; your eyes are as sparklin', you're fairly s.h.i.+nin' all over. Your ride sure done you good."

The young woman replied with a hug that made her admirer gasp.

"Law, child; you're strong as a young panther. You walk like one too; so kind of strong, easy like."

The girl laughed. "I hope I don't impress everybody that way, Aunt Mollie. I don't believe I want to be like a panther. I'd rather be like--like--"

"Like what, child?"

"Like you, just like you; the best, the very best woman in the whole world, because you've got the best and biggest heart." She looked back over her shoulder laughing, as she ran into the house.

When Young Matt came in from the field, Sammy went out to the barn, while he unharnessed his team. "Are you very tired to- night?" she asked.

The big fellow smiled, "Tired? Me tired? Where do you want to go?