Nelly's Silver Mine Part 43

"I might walk and walk all day," thought Nelly, "and never find it.

How shall I ever manage?"

Fortune favored Nelly. The very next day, Billy came to the house to ask if Mrs. March could spare Nelly to go and stay two days with Lucinda, while he was away. He had an excellent chance to make some money by taking a party of gentlemen across the valley and up into one of the pa.s.ses in the range, where they were going to fish. He would be at home the second night: Nelly need stay only over one night. Lucinda was not well, and Billy did not like to leave her alone.

Mrs. March said, "Certainly: Nelly could go."

As soon as she told Nelly of the plan, Nelly's heart seemed to leap in her bosom with the thought:--

"Now that's just the chance for me to look for the stones."

She set off very early, and reached Lucinda's house before eight o'clock. After she had unpacked her bag, and arranged all her things in the little room where she was to sleep, she asked Lucinda if there were any thing she could do to help her.

Lucinda was quilting a big bedquilt, which was stretched out on chairs and long wooden bars, and took up so much of the room in the kitchen it was hard to get about.

"Mercy, no, child!" said Lucinda. "I hain't got nothin' to do but this quilt, an' I expect you ain't much of a hand at quiltin'.

'Twan't my notion to have ye come,--not but what I'm always glad to see ye; ye know that,--but I wan't afraid to be alone. But Billy he's took it into his head 'tain't safe for me to be alone here nights. Now if there's any thing ye want to do, ye jest go 'n' do it."

"Would it make any difference to you if I were gone all day, so I am here to sleep?" said Nelly.

"Why, no," replied Lucinda; "not a bit. Did ye want to go into the town?"

"No," said Nelly; "but I wanted to find a place I saw once, on the way there. It was a real deep place, almost sunk down in the ground, full of pines and bushes: a real pretty place. But it wasn't on the road. I don't know 's I can find it; but I'd like to."

"All right," said Lucinda: "you go off. I'll give ye some lunch in case ye get hungry. Ye won't be lonesome, will ye, without Rob?"

"Oh, no!" said Nelly: "I like to be all alone out doors."

Then she bade Lucinda good-by, and set off. For a half mile or so, she walked in the road toward Rosita. She recollected that she had pa.s.sed Lucinda's before she turned off from the road. But the more she tried to remember the precise spot where she had turned off the more confused she became. At last she sprang out of the road, on the left hand side, and began running as fast as she could.

"I may as well strike off in one place as another," she thought, "since I can't remember. It cannot be very far from here."

She climbed one steep hill, and ran down into the ravine beyond it; then another hill, and another ravine,--no black stones. The sun was by this time high, and very hot. Nelly had done some severe climbing.

"On the top of the next hill I'll eat my lunch," she thought.

The next hill was the steepest one yet. How Nelly did puff and pant before she reached the top; and when she reached it, there was not a single tree big enough to shade her!

"Oh, dear!" said Nelly; and looked up and down the ravine, to see if she could spy any shade anywhere. A long way off to the north, she saw a little clump of pines and oaks. She walked slowly in that direction, keeping her foothold with difficulty in the rolling gravel on the steep side of the hill. Just as she reached the first oak-bush, her foot slipped, and she clutched hard at the bush to save herself: the bush gave way, and she rolled down, bush and all, to the very bottom of the ravine. Luckily, it was soft, sandy gravel all the way, and she was not in the least hurt: only very dirty and a good deal frightened.

"I'll walk along now at the bottom, where it is level," said Nelly, "and not climb up till I come to where the trees are."

There had been at some time or other a little stream in this ravine, and it was in the stony bed of it that Nelly was walking. She looked very carefully at the stones. They were all light gray or reddish colored: not a black one among them. She had in her pocket the little piece Mr. Kleesman had given her: she took it out, and looked at it again. It was totally unlike all the stones she saw about her.

"Oh, dear!" sighed Nelly: "I expect I won't find it to-day. I'll come again to-morrow. At any rate, I'll go to that nice, shady place to eat my lunch."

It was further than she thought. In Colorado, every thing looks a great deal nearer to you than it really is: the air is so thin and light that mountains twenty miles away look as if they were not more than three or four; and there are a great many funny stories of the mistakes into which travellers are led by this peculiarity of the air. They set off before breakfast, perhaps, to walk to a hill which looks only a little way off; and, after they have walked an hour or two, there stands the hill, still seeming just as far off as ever.

One of the funniest stories is of a man who had been cheated in this way so often that at last he didn't believe his eyes any longer as to whether a distance were long or short; and one day he was found taking off his shoes and stockings to wade through a little ditch that anybody could easily step over.

"Why, man alive!" said the people who stood by, "what are you about?

You don't need to wade a little ditch like that! Step across it."

"Ha!" said he, "you needn't try to fool me any more. I expect that ditch is ten feet wide."

Nelly walked on and on in the narrow stony bed of the dried-up stream. The stones hurt her feet, but it was easier walking than on the rolling gravel of the steep sides above. She stopped thinking about the black stones. She was so hot and tired and hungry, all she thought of was getting to the trees to sit down. At last she reached the place just below them. They were much higher up on the hillside than she had supposed. She stood looking up at them.

"I expect I'll tumble before I get up there," she thought. It looked about as steep as the side of the roof to a house. But the shade was so cool and inviting that Nelly thought it worth trying for.

Half-way up her feet slipped, and down she came on her knees. She scrambled up; and, as she looked down, what should she see, in the place where her knees pressed into the gravel, but a bit of the black stone! At first she thought it was the very piece she had had in her pocket; but she felt in her pocket, and there was her own piece all safe. She took it out, held the two together, looked at them, turned them over and over: yes! the stones were really, exactly the same color! Now she was so excited that she forgot all about the heat, and all about her hunger.

"This must be the very ravine!" she said, and began to look eagerly about her for more of the stones. Not another bit could she find! In her eager search, she did not observe that she was slowly working down the hill, till suddenly she found herself again at the bottom of the ravine, in the dried bed of the brook. Then she stood still, and looked around her, considering what to do. At last she decided to walk on up the ravine.

"The big pile of them was right in such a deep place as this,"

thought Nelly: "I guess it's farther up."

It was very hard walking, and Nelly was beginning to grow tired and discouraged again, when lo! right at her feet, in among the gray stones and the red ones, lay a small black one. She picked it up: it was of the same kind. A few steps farther on, another, and another: she began to stoop fast, picking them up, one by one. She had one hand full: then she looked ahead, and, only a little farther on, there she saw the very place she recollected so well,--the ravine full of bushes, and low pine trees, and piles of stones among them.

She had found it! Can you imagine how Nelly felt? You see she believed that it was just the same thing as if she had found a great sum of money. How would you feel if you should suddenly find at your feet thousands and thousands of dollars, if your father and mother were very poor, and needed money very much? I think you would feel just as Nelly did. She sat straight down on the ground, and looked at the stones, and felt as if she should cry,--she was so glad! Then the thought came into her mind:--

"Perhaps this land belongs to somebody who won't sell it. Perhaps he knows there is a mine here!" She looked all about, but she could not see any stakes set up to show that it was owned by any one: so she hoped it was not.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _There she saw the very place she recollected so well._ _Page 257._]

Now that the excitement of the search was over, she began to feel very hungry again, and ate her lunch with a great relish. The thoughtful Lucinda had put in the basket a small bottle of milk.

Nelly thought she had never tasted any thing so good in her life as that milk. When you are very thirsty, milk tastes much better than water. After Nelly had eaten her lunch, she filled her basket with the black stones, and set off for home. Presently she began to wonder if she could find her way back again to the spot.

"That would be too dreadful," thought she: "to lose it, now I've just found it." Then she recollected how, in the story of Hop o' My Thumb, it said that when he was carried off into the forest he slyly dropped beans all along the way, to mark the path, and thus found his way back, very easily by means of them. So she resolved to walk along in the bed of the stream, till it was time to climb up and strike off toward Lucinda's, and then to drop red stones all along the way she went, till she reached the beaten road. She took up the skirt of her gown in front, and filled it full with little red stones. Then she trudged along with as light a heart as ever any little girl had, scattering the stones along the way, like a farmer planting corn.

When she reached the road, she was surprised to see that she had come out the other side of Lucinda's house, full quarter of a mile nearer home.

"Now this isn't anywhere near where I left the road before," she said. "How'll I ever tell the place?"

At first she thought she would put a bush up in the crotch of a little pine-tree that stood just there.

"No, that won't do," she said: "the wind might blow it out."

Then she thought she would stick the bush in the sand; but she feared some horse or cow might munch it and pull it up. At last she decided to break down a small bough of the pine-tree, and leave it hanging.

"We can't make a mistake, then, possibly," she thought.

When she reached the house, Lucinda had cleared the bedquilt all away, and had the table set for supper, though it was only half-past four o'clock. Nelly was not hungry. It seemed to her only a few minutes since she ate her lunch.

"Did you find the place, Nelly?" said Lucinda.

"Yes," said Nelly.

"Was it as pretty as it was before?" Lucinda asked.

"Oh, yes!" said Nelly; "but it was awful steep getting down to it. I kept tumbling down."

"Well, you're the curiousest child ever was!" exclaimed Lucinda.

"Anybody'd think you got walkin' enough in a week without trampin'