INTRODUCTORY.
THE TWO TRAILS.
This, my story, is a very old story.
In the hills of life there are two trails. One lies along the higher sunlit fields where those who journey see afar, and the light lingers even when the sun is down; and one leads to the lower ground, where those who travel, as they go, look always over their shoulders with eyes of dread, and gloomy shadows gather long before the day is done.
This, my story, is the story of a man who took the trail that leads to the lower ground, and of a woman, and how she found her way to the higher sunlit fields.
In the story, it all happened in the Ozark Mountains, many miles from what we of the city call civilization. In life, it has all happened many, many times before, in many, many places. The two trails lead afar. The story, so very old, is still in the telling.
"Preachin' Bill" who runs the ferry says, "When God looked upon th' work of his hands an' called hit good, he war sure a lookin' at this here Ozark country. Rough? Law yes! Hit war made that a way on purpose. Ain't nothin' to a flat country nohow. A man jest naturally wear hisself plumb out a walkin' on a level 'thout ary down hill t' spell him. An' then look how much more there is of hit I Take forty acres o' flat now an' hit's jest a forty, but you take forty acres o' this here Ozark country an' God 'lmighty only knows how much 'twould be if hit war rolled out flat. 'Taint no wonder 't all, God rested when he made these here hills; he jest naturally had t' quit, fer he done his beatenest an' war plumb gin out."
Of all the country Bill had seen, "from Ant Creek Head t' the mouth of James an' plumb to Pilot Knob," he "’'lowed the Mutton Hollow neighborhood was the prettiest."
From the Matthews place on the ridge that shuts in the valley on the north and east, there is an Old Trail leading down the mountain. Two hundred yards below the log barn, the narrow path finds a bench on the steep slope of the hillside, and, at that level, follows around the rim of the Hollow. Dipping a little at the head of the ravine east of the spring, then lifting itself over a low, heavily timbered spur of one of the higher hills, it comes out again into the open. Following a rocky ledge, the way, farther on, leads through a clump of sumac bushes, and past the deer lick in the big low gaps, then around the base of Boulder Bald, along another ledge, and out 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 beyond, when he came to build his lonely hunter's shack by the spring on the southern slope of Dewey. And later, when the shack in the timber was replaced by a more substantial settler's cabin, Jim led Sammy's mother along the same old way. Then came the giant Grant Matthews with Aunt Mollie and their little family. They followed the path three miles farther and built their home where the trail climbs over the ridge.
When Grant Matthews, Jr., was eighteen, his father mortgaged the hard-won homestead to purchase the sheep ranch in Mutton Hollow. Then it was that another path was made, branching off in the belt of timber from the Old Trail and following the spur down into the little valley where the corral was snugly sheltered from the winter winds.
So the Lane cabin, the Matthews homestead, and the sheep ranch in Mutton Hollow were all connected by well-marked paths; but it is the trail that leads from Sammy Lane's home to the big log house where young Matthews lives, that is, nobody knows, how old.