CHAPTER I.
WHERE the great highway of the Sierra nears the summit, and the pines begin tohow sterile
reaches of rock and waste intheir drawn-up files, there are signs of occasional departures from the main
road, as if the weary traveller had at times succumbed to the long ascent, and turned aside for restand
breath again. The tired eyes of manya dusty passenger on the old overland coachhave gazed wistfully
on those sylvan , and imagined recesses of
primevalshade and virgin wilderness in their
dimperspectives. Had he descended, however,and followed one of these diverging paths,he would have
come upon some rude wagontrack, or logslide, leading from a clearing on the slope, or the ominous
saw-mill,half hidden in the forest it was slowly deci-mating. The woodland hush might havebeen
broken by the sound of water passingover some unseen dam in the hoIIow, or thehiss of escaping steam
and throb of an invisible engine in the covert.
Such, at least, was the experience of ayoung fellow of five-and-twenty, who, knap-sack on back
and stick in hand, had turnedaside from the highway and entered thewoods one pleasant afternoon in
July. But he was evidently a deliberate pedestrian,and not a recent deposit of the proceedingstagecoach;
and although his stout walking-shoes were covered with dust, he had neitherthe habitual slouch and
slovenliness of thetramp, nor the hurried fatigue and growingnegligence of an involuntary wayfarer.
Hisclothes, which were strong and serviceable,were better fitted for their present usagethan the
ordinary garments of the Califor-nian travellers, which were too apt to be either above or below their
requirements.But perhaps the stranger's greatest claim to originality was the absence of any weaponin
his equipment. He carried neither riflenor gun in his hand, and his narrow leathernbelt was empty of
either knife or revolver.
A half-mile from the main road, which seemed to him to have dropped out of sight the moment
he had left it, he came upon a half-cleared area, where the hastily-cutstumps of pines, of irregular
height, borean odd resemblance to the broken columnsof some vast and ruined temple. A fewfallen
shafts, denuded of their bark andtessellated branches, sawn into symmetricalcylinders, lay beside the
stumps, and lent them selves to the illusion. But the freshly-cut chips, so damp that they still clung
inlayers to each other as they had fallen from the axe, and the stumps them selves, still wetand viscous
from their drained life-blood, were redolent of an odor of youth and freshness.
The young man seated himself on one of the logs and deeply inhaled the sharp bal-samic
fragrance — albeit with a slight coughand a later hurried respiration. This, and a certain drawn look
about his upper lip, semed to indicate, in spite of his strengthand color, some pulmonary weakness.
He,how ever, rose after a moment's rest with undiminished energy and cheerfulness, read-justed his
knapsack, and began to lightlypick his way across the fallen timber. A few paces on, the muffled whir
of machin-ery became more audible, with the lazy,monotonous command of "Gee thar," from some
unseen ox-driver. Presently, the slow,deliberately-swaying heads of a team of oxenemerged from the
bushes, followed by the clanking chain of the " skids" of sawnplanks, which they were ponderously
drag-ging with that ostentatious submissivenesspeculiar to their species. They had nearlypassed him
when there was a sudden hitchin the procession. From where he stood he could see that a projecting
plank had strucka pile of chips and become partly imbeddedin it. To run to the obstruction and, with
afew dexterous strokes and the leverage of his stout stick, dislodge the plank was the work not only of
the moment but of anevidently energetic hand. The teamsterlooked back and merely nodded his
appreciation.elation, and with a " Gee up 1 Out of that, now ! " the skids movedon.
"Much obliged, there !" said a heartyvoice, as if supplementing the teamster's imperfect
acknowledgment.
The stranger looked up. The voice camefrom the open, sashless, shutterless windowof a rude
building — a mere shell of boardsand beams half hidden in the atill leafy cov-ert before him. He had
completely over-looked it in his approach, even as he hadignored the nearer throbbing of the
machinery, which was so violent as to impart adecided tremor to the slight edifice, and to shake the
2
Стр.4
A Phyllis of the sierras.
speaker so strongly that he was obliged while speaking to steady himself by the sashless frame of the
window at whichhe stood. He had a face of goodnaturedand alert intelligence, a master's independ-ence
and authority of manner, in spite of his blue jean overalls and flannel shirt.
"Don't mention it," said the stranger,smiling with equal but more deliberate good-humor. Then,
seeing that his interlocutor still lingered a hospitable moment in spite of his quick eyes and the jarring
impatience of the machinery, he added he sitatingly, "Ifancy I've wandered off the track a bit. Do you
know a Mr. Bradley — some where here? "
The stranger's hesitation seemed to bemore from some habitual conscientiousnessof statement
than awkwardness. The manin the window replied, " I 'm Bradley."
"Ah! Thank you: I've a letter for you — some where. Here it is." He produced a note from his
breast-pocket. Bradley stooped to a sitting posture in the window."Pitchit up." It was thrown and
caught cleverly.Bradley opened it, read it hastily, smiledand nodded, glanced behind him as if to
implore further delay from the impatientmachinery, leaned perilously from the window, and said, —
"Look here! Do you see that silver-firstraight a head?"
"Yes."
"A little to the left there's a trail. Follow it and skirt along the edge of the can-yon until you see
my house. Ask for my wife — that's Mrs. Bradley — and give hery our letter. Stop!" He drew a
carpenter'spencil from his pocket, scrawled two or three words across the open sheet and tossedit back
to the stranger. "See you at tea!Excuse me — Mr. Mainwaring — we'reshort-handed — and — the
engine." — But here he disappeared suddenly With out glancing at the note again, thes tranger quietly
replaced it in his pocket, and struck out across the fallen trunkstowards the silver-fir. He quickly found
the trail indicated by Bradley, although it was faint and apparently worn by a single pairof feet as a
shorter and private cut from some more travelled path. It was well for the stranger that he had a keen
eye or hewould have lost it; it was equally fortunate that he had a mountaineering instinct, for a sudden
profound deepening of the blue mistseen dimly through the leaves before him caused him to slacken his
steps. The trailbent abruptly to the right; a gulf fully twothousand feet deep was at his feet! It was the
Great Canyon At the first glance it seemed so narro wthat a rifleshot could have crossed its tranquil
depths; but a second look at the comparative size of the trees on the oppositemountain convinced him
of his error. Anearer survey of the a byss also showed him that instead of its walls being perpendicular
they were made of successive ledges or ter-races to the valley below. Yet the air was so still, and the
out lines so clearly cut, that they might have been only the reflections of the mountains around him cast
upon the placid mirror of a lake. The spectacle ar-rested him, as it arrested all men, by someoccult
power beyond the mere attraction of beauty or magnitude; even the teamsternever passed it with out the
tribute of a stoneor broken twig tossed into its immeasurableprofundity.
Reluctantly leaving the spot, the strangerturned with the trail that now began to skirtits edge.
This was no easy matter, as theundergrowth was very thick, and the foliagedense to the perilous brink
of the precipice.He walked on, how ever, wondering why BradlIey had chosen so circuitous and
dangerous a route to his house, which naturally would be some distance back from the can-yon. At the
end of ten minutes' struggling through the " brush," the trail became vague, and, to all appearances,
ended. Had hear rived? The thicket was as dense as before; through the interstices of leaf and spray he
could see the blue void of the canyon at his side, and he even fancied that the foliage a head of him was
more symmetrical and lessirregular, and was touched here and there with taint bits of color. To
complete his utter mystification, a woman's voice, very fresh, very youthful, and by no means onmusical,
rose apparently from the cir cum-ambient air. He looked hurriedly to theright and left, and
even hopelessly into the trees above him. suspended conversation," it was too funny for anything.
There were the two Missouri girls from Skinner's, with their auburn hair greletted, my dear, like the old
' Books of Beauty' — in white frocks and sashes of an Unripe greenish yellow, that puckered your
mouth like persimmons. One of the mas speechless from good behavior, and they her — well! the other
3
Стр.5