Eastward from the Sierras rises a strong red hill known as Pine
Mountain, though the Indians call it The Hill of Summer Snow. At its
foot stands a town of a hundred board houses, given over wholly to the
business of mining. The noise of it goes on by day and night,--the creak
of the windlasses, the growl of the stamps in the mill, the clank of the
cars running down to the dump, and from the open doors of the drinking
saloons, great gusts of laughter and the sound of singing. Billows of
smoke roll up from the tall stacks and by night are lit ruddily by the
smelter fires all going at a roaring blast.
Whenever the charcoal-burner's son looked down on the red smoke, the
glare, and the hot breath of the furnaces, it seemed to him like an
exhalation from the wickedness that went on continually in the town;
though all he knew of wickedness was the word, a rumor from passers-by,
and a kind of childish fear. The charcoal-burner's cabin stood on a spur
of Pine Mountain two thousand feet above the town, and sometimes the boy
went down to it on the back of the laden burros when his father carried
charcoal to the furnaces. All else that he knew were the wild creatures
of the mountain, the trees, the storms, the small flowering things, and
away at the back of his heart a pale memory of his mother like the faint
forest odor that clung to the black embers of the pine. They had lived
in the town when the mother was alive and the father worked in the
mines. There were not many women or children in the town at that time,
but mining men jostling with rude quick ways; and the young mother was
not happy.
"Never let my boy grow up in such a place," she said as she lay dying;
and when they had buried her in the coarse shallow soil, her husband
looked for comfort up toward The Hill of Summer Snow shining purely,
clear white and quiet in the sun. It swam in the upper air above the
sooty reek of the town and seemed as if it called. Then he took the
young child up to the mountain, built a cabin under the tamarack pines,
and a pit for burning charcoal for the furnace fires.
No one could wish for a better place for a boy to grow up in than the
slope of Pine Mountain. There was the drip of pine balm and a wind like
wine, white water in the springs, and as much room for roaming as one
desired. The charcoal-burner's son chose to go far, coming back with
sheaves of strange bloom from the edge of snow banks on the high ridges,
bright spar or peacock-painted ores, hatfuls of berries, or strings of
shining trout. He played away whole mornings in glacier meadows where he
heard the eagle scream; walking sometimes in a mist of cloud he came
upon deer feeding, or waked them from their lair in the deep fern. On
snow-shoes in winter he went over the deep drifts and spied among the
pine tops on the sparrows, the grouse, and the chilly robins wintering
under the green tents. The deep snow lifted him up and held him among
the second stories of the trees. But that was not until he was a great
lad, straight and springy as a young fir. As a little fellow he spent
his days at the end of a long rope staked to a pine just out of reach of
the choppers and the charcoal-pits. When he was able to go about alone,
his father made him give three promises: never to follow a bear's trail
nor meddle with the cubs, never to try to climb the eagle rocks after
the young eagles, never to lie down nor to sleep on the sunny, south
slope where the rattlesnakes frequented. After that he was free of the
whole wood.
When Mathew, for so the boy was called, was ten years old, he began to
be of use about the charcoal-pits, to mark the trees for cutting, to
sack the coals, to keep the house, and cook his father's meals. He had
no companions of his own age nor wanted any, for at this time he loved
the silver firs. A group of them grew in a swale below the cabin, tall
and fine; the earth under them was slippery and brown with needles.
Where they stood close together with overlapping boughs the light among
the tops was golden green, but between the naked boles it was a vapor
thin and blue. These were the old trees that had wagged their tops
together for three hundred years. Around them stood a ring of saplings
and seedlings scattered there by the parent firs, and a little apart
from these was the one that Mathew loved. It was slender of trunk and
silvery white, the branches spread out fanwise to the outline of a
perfect spire. In the spring, when the young growth covered it as with a
gossamer web, it gave out a pleasant odor, and it was to him like the
memory of what his mother had been. Then he garlanded it with flowers
and hung streamers of white clematis all heavy with bloom upon its
boughs. He brought it berries in cups of bark and sweet water from the
spring; always as long as he knew it, it seemed to him that the fir tree
had a soul.
The first trip he had ever made on snow-shoes was to see how it fared
among the drifts. That was always a great day when he could find the
slender cross of its topmost bough above the snow. The fir was not very
tall in those days, but the snows as far down on the slope as the
charcoal-burner's cabin lay shallowly. There was a time when Mathew
expected to be as tall as the fir, but after a while the boy did not
grow so fast and the fir kept on adding its whorl of young branches
every year.
Mathew told it all his thoughts. When at times there was a heaviness in
his breast which was really a longing for his mother, though he did not
understand it, he would part the low spreading branches and creep up to
the slender trunk of the fir. Then he would put his arms around it and
be quiet for a long beautiful time. The tree had its own way of
comforting him; the branches swept the ground and shut him in dark and
close. He made a little cairn of stones under it and kept his treasures
there.
Often as he sat snuggled up to the heart of the tree, the boy would slip
his hand over the smooth intervals between the whorls of boughs, and
wonder how they knew the way to grow. All the fir trees are alike in
this, that they throw out their branches from the main stem like the
rays of a star, one added to another with the season's growth. They
stand out stiffly from the trunk, and the shape of each new bough in the
beginning and the shape of the last growing twig when they have spread
out broadly with many branchlets, bending with the weight of their own
needles, is the shape of a cross; and the topmost sprig that rises above
all the star-built whorls is a long and slender cross, until by the
springing of new branches it becomes a star. So the two forms go on
running into and repeating each other, and each star is like all the
stars, and every bough is another's twin. It is this trim and certain
growth that sets out the fir from all the mountain trees, and gives to
the young saplings a secret look as they stand straight and stiffly
among the wild brambles on the hill. For the wood delights to grow
abroad at all points, and one might search a summer long without finding
two leaves of the oak alike, or any two trumpets of the spangled
mimulus. So, as at that time he had nothing better worth studying
about, Mathew noticed and pondered the secret of the silver fir, and
grew up with it until he was twelve years old and tall and strong for
his age. By this time the charcoal-burner began to be troubled about the
boy's schooling.
Meantime there was rioting and noise and coming and going of strangers
in the town at the foot of Pine Mountain, and the furnace blast went on
ruddily and smokily. Because of the things he heard Mathew was afraid,
and on rare occasions when he went down to it he sat quietly among the
charcoal sacks, and would not go far away from them except when he held
his father by the hand. After a time it seemed life went more quietly
there, flowers began to grow in the yards of the houses, and they met
children walking in the streets with books upon their arms.
"Where are they going, father?" said the boy.
"To school," said the charcoal-burner.
"And may I go?" asked Mathew.
"Not yet, my son."
But one day his father pointed out the foundations of a new building
going up in the town.
"It is a church," he said, "and when that is finished it will be a sign
that there will be women here like your mother, and then you may go to
school."
Mathew ran and told the fir tree all about it.
"But I will never forget you, never," he cried, and he kissed the trunk.
Day by day, from the spur of the mountain, he watched the church
building, and it was wonderful how much he could see in that clear, thin
atmosphere; no other building in town interested him so much. He saw the
walls go up and the roof, and the spire rise skyward with something that
glittered twinkling on its top. Then they painted the church white and
hung a bell in the tower. Mathew fancied he could hear it of Sundays as
he saw the people moving along like specks in the streets.
"Next week," said the father, "the school begins, and it is time for you
to go as I promised. I will come to see you once a month, and when the
term is over you shall come back to the mountain." Mathew said good-by
to the fir tree, and there were tears in his eyes though he was happy.
"I shall think of you very often," he said, "and wonder how you are
getting along. When I come back I will tell you everything that happens.
I will go to church, and I am sure I shall like that. It has a cross on
top like yours, only it is yellow and shines. Perhaps when I am gone I
shall learn why you carry a cross, also." Then he went a little timidly,
holding fast by his father's hand.
There were so many people in the town that it was quite as strange and
fearful to him as it would be to you who have grown up in town to be
left alone in the wood. At night, when he saw the charcoal-burner's
fires glowing up in the air where the bulk of the mountain melted into
the dark, he would cry a little under the blankets, but after he began
to learn, there was no more occasion for crying. It was to the child as
though there had been a candle lighted in a dark room. On Sunday he
went to the church and then it was both light and music, for he heard
the minister read about God in the great book and believed it all, for
everything that happens in the woods is true, and people who grow up in
it are best at believing. Mathew thought it was all as the minister
said, that there is nothing better than pleasing God. Then when he lay
awake at night he would try to think how it would have been with him if
he had never come to this place. In his heart he began to be afraid of
the time when he would have to go back to the mountain, where there was
no one to tell him about this most important thing in the world, for his
father never talked to him of these things. It preyed upon his mind, but
if any one noticed it, they thought that he pined for his father and
wished himself at home.
It drew toward midwinter, and the white cap on The Hill of Summer Snow,
which never quite melted even in the warmest weather, began to spread
downward until it reached the charcoal-burner's home. There was a great
stir and excitement among the children, for it had been decided to have
a Christmas tree in the church. Every Sunday now the Christ-child story
was told over and grew near and brighter like the Christmas star. Mathew
had not known about it before, except that on a certain day in the year
his father had bought him toys. He had supposed that it was because it
was stormy and he had to be indoors. Now he was wrapped up in the story
of love and sacrifice, and felt his heart grow larger as he breathed it
in, looking upon clear windless nights to see if he might discern the
Star of Bethlehem rising over Pine Mountain and the Christ-child come
walking on the snow. It was not that he really expected it, but that the
story was so alive in him. It is easy for those who have lived long in
the high mountains to believe in beautiful things. Mathew wished in his
heart that he might never go away from this place. He sat in his seat in
church, and all that the minister said sank deeply into his mind.
When it came time to decide about the tree, because Mathew's father was
a charcoal-burner and knew where the best trees grew, it was quite
natural to ask him to furnish the tree for his part. Mathew fairly
glowed with delight, and his father was pleased, too, for he liked to
have his son noticed. The Saturday before Christmas, which fell on
Tuesday that year, was the time set for going for the tree, and by that
time Mathew had quite settled in his mind that it should be his silver
fir. He did not know how otherwise he could bring the tree to share in
his new delight, nor what else he had worth giving, for he quite
believed what he had been told, that it is only through giving the best
beloved that one comes to the heart's desire. With all his heart Mathew
wished never to live in any place where he might not hear about God. So
when his father was ready with the ropes and the sharpened axe, the boy
led the way to the silver firs.
"Why, that is a little beauty," said the charcoal-burner, "and just the
right size."
They were obliged to shovel away the snow to get at it for cutting, and
Mathew turned away his face when the chips began to fly. The tree fell
upon its side with a shuddering sigh; little beads of clear resin stood
out about the scar of the axe. It seemed as if the tree wept. But how
graceful and trim it looked when it stood in the church waiting for
gifts! Mathew hoped that it would understand.
The charcoal-burner came to church on Christmas eve, the first time in
many years. It makes a difference about these things when you have a son
to take part in them. The church and the tree were alight with candles;
to the boy it seemed like what he supposed the place of dreams might be.
One large candle burned on the top of the tree and threw out pointed
rays like a star; it made the charcoal-burner's son think of Bethlehem.
Then he heard the minister talking, and it was all of a cross and a
star; but Mathew could only look at the tree, for he saw that it
trembled, and he felt that he had betrayed it. Then the choir began to
sing, and the candle on top of the tree burned down quite low, and
Mathew saw the slender cross of the topmost bough stand up dark before
it. Suddenly he remembered his old puzzle about it, how the smallest
twigs were divided off in each in the shape of a cross, how the boughs
repeated the star form every year, and what was true of his fir was true
of them all. Then it must have been that there were tears in his eyes,
for he could not see plainly: the pillars of the church spread upward
like the shafts of the trees, and the organ playing was like the sound
of the wind in their branches, and the stately star-built firs rose up
like spires, taller than the church tower, each with a cross on top. The
sapling which was still before him trembled more, moving its boughs as
if it spoke; and the boy heard it in his heart and believed, for it
spoke to him of God. Then all the fear went out of his heart and he had
no more dread of going back to the mountain to spend his days, for now
he knew that he need never be away from the green reminder of hope and
sacrifice in the star and the cross of the silver fir; and the thought
broadened in his mind that he might find more in the forest than he had
ever thought to find, now that he knew what to look for, since
everything speaks of God in its own way and it is only a matter of
understanding how.
It was very gay in the little church that Christmas night, with laughter
and bonbons flying about, and every child had a package of candy and an
armful of gifts. The charcoal-burner had his pockets bulging full of
toys, and Mathew's eyes glowed like the banked fires of the
charcoal-pits as they walked home in the keen, windless night.
"Well, my boy," said the charcoal-burner, "I am afraid you will not be
wanting to go back to the mountain with me after this."
"Oh, yes, I will," said Mathew happily, "for I think the mountains know
quite as much of the important things as they know here in the town."
"Right you are," said the charcoal-burner, as he clapped his boy's hand
between both his own, "and I am pleased to think you have turned out
such a sensible little fellow." But he really did not know all that was
in his son's heart.