The Shepherd of the Hills

TO FRANCES, MY WIFE
IN MEMORY OF THAT BEAUTIFUL SUMMER IN THE OZARK HILLS, WHEN, SO OFTEN, WE FOLLOWED THE OLD TRAIL AROUND THE RISE OF MUTTON HOLLOW—THE TRAIL THAT IS NOBODY KNOWS HOW OLD—AND FROM SAMMY’S LOOKOUT WATCHED THE DAY GO OVER THE WESTERN RIDGES.
“That all with one consent praise new-born gawds, Tho they are made and moulded of things past, And give to dust that is a little gilt More laud than gilt o’er-dusted.”
TROILUS AND CRESSIDA. ACT 3; SC. 3.
It was corn-planting time, when the stranger followed the Old Trail into the Mutton Hollow neighborhood.
All day a fine rain had fallen steadily, and the mists hung heavy over the valley. The lower hills were wrapped as in a winding sheet; dank and cold. The trees were dripping with moisture. The stranger looked tired and wet.
By his dress, the man was from the world beyond the ridges, and his carefully tailored clothing looked strangely out of place in the mountain wilderness. His form stooped a little in the shoulders, perhaps with weariness, but he carried himself with the unconscious air of one long used to a position of conspicuous power and influence; and, while his well-kept hair and beard were strongly touched with white, the brown, clear lighted eyes, that looked from under their shaggy brows, told of an intellect unclouded by the shadows of many years. It was a face marked deeply by pride; pride of birth, of intellect, of culture; the face of a scholar and poet; but it was more—it was the countenance of one fairly staggering under a burden of disappointment and grief.
As the stranger walked, he looked searchingly into the mists on every hand, and paused frequently as if questioning the proper course. Suddenly he stepped quickly forward. His ear had caught the sharp ring of a horse’s shoe on a flint rock somewhere in the mists on the mountain side above. It was Jed Holland coming down the trail with a week’s supply of corn meal in a sack across his horse’s back.
As the figure of the traveler emerged from the mists, the native checked his horse to greet the newcomer with the customary salutation of the backwoods, “Howdy.”