CHRISTMAS-TREE HILL
When Beatrice opened her eyes, a soft, insistent nose was passing over
her face and hands and breathing warmly against her cheek. She sat up,
holding her whirling head, to discover that Buck was standing over her,
apparently puzzled and distressed at the mishap to his mistress. It
seemed strange, after her last glimpse of that barren mountain-side of
sliding shale, to find herself lying half buried in grass and flowers
with the warm sunshine laying a level ray across her face. She got to
her knees and then to her feet, and found that she was possessed of a
dizzy head and an aching shoulder, that she was bruised and lame, but
otherwise uninjured. Looking up, she could see where the slope of loose
stone, down which she and the horse had slid, ended in a straight wall,
a drop of eight or ten feet, over which she had plunged into the soft
grass below. Buck, wiser than she, had evidently managed to slide less
precipitately, and in the end had saved himself by jumping. His legs
were cut by the sharp stones and he was still nervous and quivering, but
he was not seriously harmed.
Although she made an effort to climb into the saddle, Beatrice found
that her knees were shaking and her head was so dizzy that she was
forced to give up the attempt. With her hand upon the horse’s neck, she
walked along the crooked path trodden in the tall grass of this high
mountain meadow. Bright flowers whose names she did not know brushed her
skirts. The whole hillside, sloping to the west, was bathed in the last
brightness of the waning sunlight. They passed through a tangle of
poplar woods whose dense underbrush showed that it was second growth,
springing up after the pine forest had been cut. Then out into the open
they came again, to look down into a broad, irrigated valley whose
checker-board of fields followed the winding silver ribbon of the river.
And this hillside at her feet—was it a forest or a garden into which she
had stumbled? Hundreds of little spruce-trees, as tall as her shoulder
and all of the same height, marched in straight rows across the slope of
the mountain, clothing the steep ground in a smooth mantle of lusty
green. A stream wound downward through the plantation, and on its bank,
on a level bench below her, were a clump of willows and a white cottage
with a red roof and a wide-open door.
“That must be Dr. Minturn’s house,” Beatrice reflected and a moment
later caught sight of Dr. Minturn himself.
He was sitting on a knoll at the edge of the woods, gazing down over his
domain and humming a song in a deep, buzzing voice like a bumble-bee. He
was a very tall man, with tremendous shoulders and a heavy thatch of
gray hair. He did not notice Beatrice and Buck, even when they came
close, but sat very still, his big hands lying idle on his knees. He had
the air, however, of being intently busy about some project of his own.
Beatrice watched him, fascinated, wondering what it could be that
absorbed him so.
“What—what are you doing?” she asked at last.
He turned around to her, smiling slowly, seeming neither startled nor
surprised.
“I’m getting rich,” he said.
She looked so bewildered by his reply that he jumped up at once.
“That is one of my stupid jokes and I’ve startled you with it,” he
exclaimed in a tone of self-reproach. “And you have come over that trail
all alone—why, you’ve had an accident. Come down to the house at once
and let Miriam and me see what we can do for you.”
He helped her into the saddle, took Buck’s bridle, and conducted them
down through the rows of spicy-smelling little trees to the door of the
cottage. On the way Beatrice managed to explain why she had come and at
whose suggestion. The doctor nodded his head in immediate agreement.
“To be sure, I will go,” he said. “I would do anything for John Herrick
or a friend of his, so that’s all settled. Here’s Miriam coming to the
gate to meet you.”
The cottage was square and neat and white and had a garden before it,
surrounded by a white paling fence—the first garden Beatrice had seen
since she came to Broken Bow Valley. It gave her a pang of homesickness
to look at the tangled hedge of pink wild roses, the clumps of yellow
lilies and forget-me-nots, and the bright borders of pansies. Miriam, at
the gate, was a plump, quiet-voiced person with smooth gray hair and a
placid smile.
“Miriam would have a garden,” Dr. Minturn said when the greetings were
over and Beatrice had admired the flowers. “Almost everything in it is
just what runs wild over the mountains, but she prefers them behind a
fence. I think she dreams at night of how to make those big, wild
forget-me-nots look like the little cultivated ones.”
“The doctor likes to make fun of my garden,” Mrs. Minturn said in her
pleasant soft voice. “But it is not very different from what he has done
with the whole mountain-side. It was as bare as your hand when we came
here, and he has planted every one of the little pines himself and has
nursed each tree as though it were a baby. We call it Christmas-tree
Hill. But come in, my dear; you must rest and wash that cut on your
cheek.”
She led Beatrice to the house and, in taking it quite for granted that
her guest was to spend the night, conducted her to what the girl thought
was the smallest and cleanest bedroom she had ever seen. Here Mrs.
Minturn insisted that she must lie down and be tucked up under the
patchwork quilt and “go to sleep for an hour if she could.” Beatrice did
not sleep, but lay very peacefully, staring at the rough plastered walls
of the tiny room or, through the window, at the myriad little trees
stepping in their straight, decorous rows across the side of the hill.
Long before the hour was over she was beginning to feel quite rested and
herself again, and when her hostess came to announce that supper was
ready she was sitting at the window, gazing out at the sunset light on
the white peaks of the range opposite.
After they had eaten, Dr. Minturn insisted that she make a tour of the
place and, “Go on, my dear, I don’t need any help with the dishes,” Mrs.
Minturn said when her guest wished to stay and assist her. “It isn’t
often that the doctor has a chance to show things off to a new person,
so don’t deny him the pleasure.”
Beatrice accordingly saw everything: the horses, the contented cows,
even the cheerful pig grunting happily to himself in his spotless sty.
The chickens occupied a substantial residence on account of the owls,
coyotes, martens, and other wild animals that lent difficulty and
excitement to poultry raising in the Rocky Mountains. Then the doctor
led Beatrice beyond the garden and the clump of willows to where she
could see the whole sweep of the mountain and the shadows flooding the
valley as darkness crept up the hill.
“It was a plan of my own, this replanting where the pine forest has been
cut,” he explained, as he sat down by Beatrice on the grassy slope,
evidently delighted to have some one to listen to his enthusiasm. “The
Government does a good deal of this reforesting where tracts have been
cut down or burned, but they can’t give the trees the care that I do.
Nobody could except a man who loves them. As they grow big I keep taking
out some for Christmas-trees or for small timber, but the bulk of them
shall never be cut until they have grown to be giants, a hundred feet
high. I love to sit here and watch them, each year a little bigger, each
year more valuable. It will be a wonderful piece of timber land fifty,
sixty, seventy years from now.”
“But—but——” began Beatrice and stopped. She had almost blurted out that
a man who was gray-haired at the planting of these trees could not hope
to see them grow to that mighty forest of which he dreamed.
“Oh, I know I will be gone long before then,” he replied serenely, “but
what does it matter? We live here in the mountains to keep Miriam well;
she doesn’t get on in the valleys and towns. She has her garden and I
have my trees and we are happy enough, thinking about the future, even
if it is a future long beyond our time. Mines that we never heard of
will be timbered from these trees, to bring out gold and silver for our
children’s children; there will be ships with these pines for masts that
will sail to ports I never saw. There will be houses built—I can almost
see the people that will be born and live and die under the roofs that
my trees will make.”
His eyes had been on the far distance, but he turned to fix them
intently on Beatrice’s.
“If you live on a mountain,” he said, “you can see much more than if you
belong to the crowded, pushing, hurrying people that stay in the
valley.”
“And now,” he declared, after a little pause, “here I have talked and
talked just as Miriam said I would, but I want you to have a turn. You
have told us your name and that you know John Herrick, but may I hear
the rest? Where are you living and how did you happen to come to Ely?
Strangers are not so common but that we backwoods people like to know
all about them.”
Rather to her own surprise Beatrice found herself telling not only what
she hoped he would do for her aunt, but all about why they had come to
Ely, even to her own puzzle as to what Aunt Anna’s special reason had
been for insisting so earnestly that she would not go away. She told him
of the strike, of her acquaintance with Christina, the visit of Dabney
Mills, and her new-found friendship with Hester Herrick. He looked
concerned over some portions of her tale and smiled over others. He
laughed aloud when she described the midnight departure of Joe Ling.
“You were right to give up when he went away,” he commented. “The
Chinamen in these valleys seem to know everything and just when to get
out of the way of trouble. I know Joe. He has a little house and truck
garden outside of Ely. He will stay there quietly until, in his own
strange way, he has found out that the disturbance is over for good, and
then he will come back.” He nodded with satisfaction when she spoke of
the Herricks.
“I am glad you know them,” he said. “We—we think a lot of Hester
ourselves, and John Herrick—there are few men I like and admire as
much.”
“I like them too,” agreed Beatrice. “I don’t understand just how they
belong to each other; she says he isn’t really her father.”
“I’ll not forget,” Dr. Minturn began slowly; “I’ll not forget in a long
time the day I first saw John Herrick. I was up at the edge of the woods
where you found me and he came riding down the trail: had been riding
all night or longer than that, perhaps. By the look on his face I could
see that black trouble rode behind him and that he had not been able to
gallop away from it. I didn’t say much to him, but I brought him home—he
and the horse were dead tired—and we got him to stay with us for three
days, until that strained look began to disappear from his face. I
didn’t know what had happened to him and I didn’t dare to ask. That was
ten years ago and I know him nearly as well as I know myself, but I have
never asked him yet.”
“And did he have Hester with him then?” Beatrice asked.
“Bless you, no. Hester lived with us. She was born at our house and her
mother died there; her father had died before. They were some far kin of
Miriam’s, and we kept the baby when the others were gone. Our own two
children were grown up and married, so we were glad enough to have her
ourselves. She was six years old, a fat, merry little thing, and the way
she and John took to each other would do your heart good. He would sit
on the door-stone and play with her for hours, or they would take walks
together, up and down the rows of pine-trees, the first ones that had
been planted then. He came back to see us many times, for he rode back
and forth among the mountains, looking at mines, buying up ranches.
Everything he touched seemed to prosper, but he never looked happy. It
was a whole year after, that he came one day and said he wanted Hester.”
“Oh, how could you give her up?” exclaimed Beatrice.
“I thought I couldn’t,” returned the doctor rather glumly, “and I vowed
I wouldn’t, but Miriam said to me, ‘Look at his face, can’t you see how
he needs her?’ and of course in the end I had to give in. The care of a
small child was really too much for Miriam. If John had not seen that,
he would never have asked for her. Herrick is better off than we; he can
do a great deal for Hester that we never could. While she has been
growing up she has had everything that a sensible rich man’s money could
give her. He built that house just for her, and, oh, he is a lonely man
in it when she is away at school. She came back to stay with us when he
went overseas during the war, but they surely were glad to be together
again.”
“And you never knew where he came from?” the girl questioned
wonderingly.
“Neither that nor what trouble drove him to our mountains. We don’t go
too deep into a man’s past in the West. We like him and stand by him for
what he is.”
It was quite dark now, and a white blot, moving through the dusk toward
them, proved to be Mrs. Minturn’s gown, as her quiet voice presently
proved.
“I am sure the doctor must have told you the history of every tree by
now, even to the ones that the badgers dug up and the rows the deer
nibbled. It is time you both came in.”
“Only think, she lives in the cabin where you planted the pansies,” her
husband returned as he raised his long length from the bank where they
had been sitting.
“Oh, did you plant them?” asked Beatrice. “I believe they were what made
me love the place the first time I saw it.”
“Yes, it was I that put them there. We had been over to see Hester and I
had bought a basketful of the plants in Ely, though the doctor laughed
at me and said I had no room for them in the crowded garden. He was
quite right, so, when Hester and I took a walk while he was talking
business with John, we happened to go by the cabin and it looked so
lonely that I just stopped and we planted the pansies by the steps. I am
glad they are growing. And now you must come in for you need sleep, I
know. As I say, the doctor loves to talk of his trees but I feel sure he
has told you everything.”
“All but one thing,” Dr. Minturn said as he tucked Miriam’s arm under
his and turned toward the house. “That is, that Christmas-tree Hill is
to belong to Hester some day when you and I can’t enjoy it any more.”