THE SHEPHERD OF THE HILLS
on the bare shoulder of Dewey Bald, which partly shuts in the little valley on the south.
From the big rock that Sammy Lane calls her Lookout, the Old Trail leaves the rim of Mutton Hollow and slips easily down into the lower valleys; down past the little cabin on the southern slope of the mountain where Sammy lived with her father; down to the banks of Fall Creek and to the distant river bottom. Here the thread-like path finds,a wider way, leading, somehow, out of the wilderness to the great world that lies miles, and miles, beyond the farthest blue line of hills; the world that Sammy said "seemed mighty fine to them that knowed nothin' about it."
No one seems to know how long that narrow path has lain along the mountain; but it must be very long for it is deeply worn at places.
Often, in the years of our story, swift leaping deer would cross the ridge at the low gap and follow along the benches to the spring. And sometimes a lithe bodied panther, in the belt of timber, watched hungrily for their coming, or a huge-pawed catamount, on some over-hanging rock, would lie in wait for fawn or doe. Or perhaps a gaunt timber wolf would sniff the trail, and with wild echoing howls call his comrades to the chase.
Jim Lane, young then, followed that winding way from the distant river, and from nobody knows where
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