Shadows of Shasta Part 15

"Well, then, father, when I die take me back, take me back to the mountains. I want to hear the water--the cool, sweet, clear water, where I lie; and the wind in the trees--the cool, pure wind in the trees, father. And you know the three trees just above the old cabin on the hill by the water-fall? Bury me, bury me there. Yes, there, where I can hear the cool water all the time, and the wind in the trees. And--and won't you please cut my name on the tree by the water? My name, Carrie--just Carrie, that's all. I have no other name--just Carrie. Will you? Will you do this for me?"

"As there is a G.o.d--as I live, I will!" and the old man lifted his face as he bared his head, and looked toward heaven.

The girl's mind wandered now. She spoke incoherently for a few moments, and then was silent. Her form was convulsed, her breast heaved just a little, her helpless hands reached about the old man's neck as if they would hold him from pa.s.sing from her presence; they fell away, and then all was still. It was now gray dawn.

This man's heart was bursting with rage and a savage sorrow. He was now stung with a sense of awful injustice. His heart was swelling with indignation. He took up the form before him; up in his arms, as if it had been that of an infant. He threw his handkerchief across the face as he pa.s.sed out, stooping low through the dark and narrow doorway, and strode in great, long and hurried steps down the street and over toward the hills beyond, where his horse was tethered in the long, brown gra.s.s.

As the old man pa.s.sed the post on the hill, where the officers slept under the protection of loaded cannon, the guard stopped him with his bayonet.

"Halt! Where are you going? And what have you there? Come, where are you going?"

The old man threw back the handkerchief as the guard approached, and the new sunlight fell on the girl's face.

"I am going to bury my dead."

The guard started back. He almost dropped his gun as he saw that face; then, recovering himself, he bared his head, bowed his face reverently, and motioned the old man on.

Forty-nine reached his horse in the brown gra.s.s, laid his burden down, threw on the saddle, drew the girth with sudden strength and energy, as if for a long and desperate ride. Then resuming his load, tenderly, as if it were a sleeping infant, he vaulted into the saddle and dashed away for the Sierras, that lay before him, and lifted like a city of snowy temples, reared to the worship of the Eternal.

It was a desperate ride for life. The girl's long soft black hair was in the wind. The air was purer, sweeter here; there was a sense of liberty, of life, in this ride, right in the face of the rising sun as it streamed down over the snowy summits of the Sierras. Every plunge of the strong swift mustang, brought them nearer to home, to hope, to life.

The horse seemed to know that now was his day of mighty enterprise.

Perhaps he was glad to get away and up and out of that awful valley of death; for he forged ahead as horse never plunged before, with his strange double burthen, that had frightened many a better trained mustang than he.

At last they began to climb the chapparal hills. Then they touched the hills of pine, and the breath of balsam had a sense of health and healing in it that only the invalid who is dying for his mountain home can appreciate.

The horse was in a foam; the day was hot; the old man was fainting in the saddle.

Water! Water at last! Down a steep, mossy crag, hung with brier and blossom, came tumbling, with loud laughter like merry girls at play, a little mountain stream. Cool as the snow, sweet as the blossom, it fell foaming in its pebbly bed at the base of the crag, under the deep, cool shadows of the pines.

The old man threw himself from his horse, and beast and man drank together as he held the girl in his arms, where the spray dashed down like a holy baptismal from the very hand of G.o.d upon her hair and face.

The hands clutched, the breast heaved a little, the lips moved as if to drink in the cool sweet water. Her eyes feebly opened. And then the old man bore her back under the pines, and laid her on the soft bed of dry sweet-smelling pine-quills.

Then clasping his hands above her, as he bent his face to hers, he uttered his first prayer--the first for many and many a weary year. It was a prayer of thanksgiving, of grat.i.tude. The girl would live; and he would now have something to live for--to love.

It had been a strange weird sight, that old man, his long hair in the wind, his strong horse plunging madly ahead, all white with foam, climbing the Sierras as the sun climbed up. The girl lay in his arms before him, her long dark hair all down over the horse's neck, tangled in the horse's mane, catching in the brush and the wild vines and leaves that hung over the trail as they flew past.

And oftentime back over his shoulder the old man threw his long white beard and looked back. He felt, he knew, that he was pursued. He fancied he could all the time hear the sound of horses' feet.

Perhaps if his eyes had been gifted with the vision of the prophets of old, he would indeed have seen the pursuer. That pursuer was also an old man, and not much unlike himself; an old man with a scythe--death. Death following fast from the hot valley of pestilence, where he, death, kept, if possible, closer watch than the Agents, that no Indian ever returned to his native mountains. But death gave up the pursuit, and turned back from the moment the baptismal fountain touched the girl's fevered forehead. At last the old man who held her in his arms, rose up, rode on and down to his cabin in the twilight, all secure from pursuit of Agents, death, or any one. The girl, quite conscious, opened her eyes and looked around on the tall, nodding pine trees, that stood in long, dusky lines, as if drawn up to welcome her return to the heart of the Sierras.