THE middle of a fragrant afternoon of May in the green wilderness of
Kentucky: the year 1795.
High overhead ridges of many-peaked cloud--the gleaming, wandering Alps of
the blue ether; outstretched far below, the warming bosom of the earth,
throbbing with the hope of maternity. Two spirits abroad in the air,
encountering each other and passing into one: the spirit of scentless spring
left by melting snows and the spirit of scented summer born with the
earliest buds. The road through the forest one of those wagon-tracks that
were being opened from the clearings of the settlers, and that wound along
beneath trees of which those now seen in Kentucky are the unworthy
survivors--oaks and walnuts, maples and elms, centuries old, gnarled,
massive, drooping, majestic, through whose arches the sun hurled down only
some solitary spear of gold, and over whose gray-mossed roots some cold
brook crept in silence; with here and there billowy open spaces of wild rye,
buffalo grass, and clover on which the light fell in sheets of radiance;
with other spots so dim that for ages no shoot had sprung from the deep
black mould; blown to and fro across this wagon-road, odours of ivy,
pennyroyal and mint, mingled with the fragrance of the wild grape; flitting
to and fro across it, as low as the violet-beds, as high as the sycamores,
unnumbered kinds of birds, some of which like the paroquet are long since
vanished.
Down it now there came in a drowsy amble an old white bob-tail horse, his
polished coat shining like silver when he crossed an expanse of sunlight,
fading into spectral paleness when he passed under the rayless trees; his
foretop floating like a snowy plume in the light wind, his unshod feet,
half-covered by the fetlocks, stepping noiselessly over the loamy earth; the
rims of his nostrils expanding like flexible ebony; and in his eyes that
look of peace which is never seen but in those of petted animals.
He had on an old bridle with knots of blue violets hanging, down at his
ears; over his broad back was spread a blanket of buffalo-skin; on this
rested a worn black side-saddle, and sitting in the saddle was a girl, whom
every young man of the town not far away knew to be Amy Falconer, and whom
many an old pioneer dreamed of when he fell asleep beside his rifle and his
hunting-knife in his lonely cabin of the wilderness. She was perhaps the
first beautiful girl of aristocratic birth ever seen in Kentucky, and the
first of the famous train of those who for a hundred years since have
wrecked or saved the lives of the men.
Her pink calico dress, newly starched and ironed, had looked so pretty to
her when she had started from home, that she had not been able to bear the
thought of wearing over it this lovely afternoon her faded, mud-stained
riding-skirt; and it was so short that it showed, resting against the
saddle-skirt, her little feet loosely fitted into new bronze morocco shoes.
On her hands she had drawn white half-hand mittens of home-knit; and on her
head she wore an enormous white scoop-bonnet, lined with pink and tied under
her chin in a huge muslin bow. Her face, hidden away under the
pink-and-white shadow, showed such hints of pearl and rose that it seemed
carved from the inner surface of a sea-shell. Her eyes were gray, almond
shaped, rather wide apart, with an expression changeful and playful, but
withal rather shrewd and hard; her light brown hair, as fine as unspun silk,
was parted over her brow and drawn simply back behind her ears; and the lips
of her little mouth curved against each other, fresh, velvet-like, smiling.
On she rode down the avenue of the primeval woods; and Nature seemed
arranged to salute her as some imperial presence; with the waving of a
hundred green boughs above on each side; with a hundred floating odours;
with the swift play of nimble forms up and down the boles of trees; and all
the sweet confusion of innumerable melodies.
Then one of those trifles happened that contain the history of our lives, as
a drop of dew draws into itself the majesty and solemnity of the heavens.
>From the pommel of the side-saddle there dangled a heavy roll of home-spun
linen, which she was taking to town to her aunt's merchant as barter for
queen's-ware pitchers; and behind this roll of linen, fastened to a ring
under the seat of the saddle, was swung a bundle tied up in a large
blue-and-white checked cotton neckkerchief. Whenever she fidgeted in the
saddle, or whenever the horse stumbled as he often did because he was clumsy
and because the road was obstructed by stumps and roots, the string by which
this bundle was tied slipped a little through the lossening knot and the
bundle hung a little lower down. Just where the wagon-trail passed out into
the broader public road leading from Lexington to Frankfort and the
travelling began to be really good, the horse caught one of his forefeet
against the loop of a root, was thrown violently forward, and the bundle
slipped noiselessly from the saddle to the earth.
She did not see it. She indignantly gathered the reins more tightly in her
hand, pushed back her bonnet, which now hung down over her eyes like the
bill of a pelican, and applied her little switch of wild cherry to the
horse's flank with such vehemence that a fly which was about to alight on
that spot went to the other side. The old horse himself--he bore the
peaceable name of William Penn--merely gave one of the comforting switches
of his bob-tail with which he brushed away the thought of any small
annoyance, and stopped a moment to nibble at the wayside cane mixed with
purple blossoming peavine.
Out of the lengthening shadows of the woods the girl and the horse passed on
toward the little town; and far behind them in the public road lay the lost
bundle.