OFF TO THE BIG TREES.
The radical change that had come into Job's life cut him off from the companions of other days and left him without a chum. It showed the manliness of his nature that as he started out in the new life, seeing quickly that he must part company with the old companions who had nearly wrecked his life, he acted on the conviction at once.
Perhaps it was this, perhaps the fact that his life was now almost altogether on the ranch, that made Job and Bess boon companions. Many a mountain trip they took together. It was on one of these that they went to the Big Trees. That bright September morning, gayly attired with new sombrero and red bandanna above his white outing-shirt, astride Bess, Job rode slowly up the Chichilla mountain on his way to visit those giant trees. Up by "Doc" Trainer's place, over the smooth, hard county turnpike, where the toll-road, ever winding round and round the mountain-side, climbs on through the passes of the live-oak belt to the scraggly pines of the low hills, on to the endless giant forests of the cloud-kissed summits, the young horseman made his way. Now and then the road descended to a little ravine, where a mountain torrent had torn a path to the deep cañons below: again it stretched through a dim, royal archway of green where the great trees linked branches as over a king's pathway; and then it turned a bend where the steep sides sank so suddenly that even the trees had no foothold and the bare space disclosed a view over boundless forests of dark green, and the vast, yawning cañons and distant rolling hills, to where, far-off, like some dream of the past, one caught glimpses of the endless plains covered with the autumn haze and golden in the morning sunlight.
The grandeur of the scenery, the roar of the brook in deep cañons below, whose echo he caught from afar, the exhilarating ride, the fresh morning breeze, combined with the spiritual experiences of his nature, which were daily deepening, to rouse all the poetry in Job's soul, of which he had more than the average rough country lad who rode over those eternal hills. He shouted, he whistled patriotic airs and snatches of the popular songs he heard on the Gold City streets; then the old songs of church and the heart-life came to him, and he sang them, while he laid his head over on Bess' neck as she silently climbed ever higher and higher.
Suddenly Bess gave a start that nearly threw him, as the delicate form of a deer rose behind a fallen tree. For an instant the beautiful animal stood looking with great soft eyes in a bewildered stare at the cause of his sudden awakening, then plunged his horns into the bushes and leaped away down the mountain-side.
Job quickly reached for his rifle, only to discover what he well knew—that it was far away at home; of which he was glad as he thought of those tender, pleading eyes, and a great love for the harmless creature, the forests, the mountains and all the world welled up in his soul. "My!" he said, "I'd like to hug that deer! I'd like to hug everything, everybody! I used to hate them; I would even hug Dan. Bess, dear old girl, I'll just love you!" and he flung his arms around her neck and hummed away as they passed up the hill.
Soon a turn in the road brought them to the summit, where for a moment the trees part and one catches glimpses of the long winding road over which one has come, and the ever-rolling forests beyond, climbing far up to a still higher ridge that reaches toward the Yosemite and the high Sierras. The view thrilled Job. The psalm he had learned for last Sunday came to him. He repeated it solemnly with cap off, as he sat still on Bess' back: "I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help; my help cometh from the Lord, which made heaven and earth."
"Father of the Forest," Calaveras Grove.
Only a moment be paused, and then started on a gallop down the hill. The ring of Bess' feet on the hard road scared the shy gray squirrels, which ran chattering up the tall pines, leaving their feast of nuts on the ground beneath.
A few minutes later and all the solemnity of his soul and the beauty of the forests was sadly interrupted as he rode round a curve and came out at the junction of the Signal Point and the Yosemite toll-road.
There stood, or lay rather, half on its side, a rickety, old two-seated structure shaded by white canvas supported by four rough-hewn posts. It leaned far to the side on one wheel and a splintered hub. Down the hill a broken wheel was bounding; while, on the dusty road, four women—one tall and angular in a yellow duster, one little and weazened, arrayed in a prim gray traveling suit, a weeping maiden of uncertain age, and a portly dame of ponderous proportions, dressed not in a duster but a very dusty black silk—were pulling themselves up. Near by three little tots were howling vigorously, yet making no impression on the poor, lone, lank white mare which stood stock still in the shafts, with a contented air that showed an immense satisfaction in the privilege of one good stop.
"Mary Jane, this is awful! Every bone in me is cracked and this silk dress is ruined—yes, is ruined! I tell yer it ain't fit for Mirandy's little gal's doll! And my! I know my heart is broken, too; I can hear it rattle! I'll never come with you and that horrid runaway horse again!"
The poor horse flapped her ears as if in appreciation of this last remark, while Mary Jane, rising up like a yellow-draped beanpole, retorted in a shrill voice:
"Aunt Eliza, ain't you ashamed to be deriding me, a poor lone widder with three helpless children! I hope ye are cracked—cracked bad! Horse, humph! I guess my horse is the likeliest in Grizzly county! Yer know yer made all the trouble; any decent wheel would give way when it had a square mile of bones and stuffin's and silk above it!"
"Now, sister Mary and Aunt Eliza," spoke up, in a thin, metallic voice, that of the diminutive dame in gray, as she adjusted her bonnet strings, "let us not grow unduly aggravated at the disconcerting providence which has overwhelmed us in the journey of life. There are compensating circumstances which should alleviate our sorrow. Our lives are spared, and the immeasurable forests are undisturbed by the trifling event which has overtaken us poor, insignificant creatures, whose—"
"Insignificant!" roared Aunt Eliza, "I guess I ain't insignificant! I own twenty town lots down in Almedy, as purty as yer ever saw. Insignificant! I—the mother of ten children and goodness knows how many grandchildren! And as for them trees that yer say yer can't measure, I'd rather see the clothes-poles in Sally's back yard!"
"Yes," chimed in Mary Jane, "and 'trifles' yer call it, for a poor woman that raises spuds and washes clothes for the men at the mines for a livin', to lose her fine coach Pete built the very year he took sick of the heart-failure and died, and left me a lone widder in a cold and friendless world!" At which she wiped her eyes with the yellow duster.
"'Trifles'!" cried Aunt Eliza again. "'Trifles,' for us poor guileless wimmen to be left here alone in the wilderness, twenty mile from a livin' creature, and nobody knows what wild animals and awful men may come along any minute!"
For a moment Job halted Bess and watched the scene. An almost uncontrollable desire to laugh possessed him; but, restraining himself, he took the first chance he had to make his presence known, at which Aunt Eliza groaned, "Oh, my!" and Mary Jane instinctively grasped her yelling children, and the prim spinster curtsied and asked if he used tobacco. At Job's surprised look and negative reply, she said, "Very well. I never employ a male being who permeates his environment with the noxious weed. As you do not, I will offer you proper remuneration if you will assist us in this unforeseen calamity."
Assuring her that he would, without pay, do all he could, Job went to work. It was well on in the day ere, by his repeated errands down to the big hotel barn some distance below, he had procured enough material to get the rickety old structure in order and help Aunt Eliza back up its high side to the seat she had left so unceremoniously that morning. The last he heard, as the white horse slowly pulled out of sight through the forest, was Aunt Eliza's, "Go slow, Mary Jane, for mercy's sake! Don't let her run away!" while the prim spinster shouted back in a high key, "Good-by, young man! You're a great credit to your sex;" and Mary Jane, pounding the poor mare vigorously, yelled, "G'lang! Get up! We'll never get home!"
It was nearer sunset than it should have been when Job reached the sign-board far up the toll-road that read, "To the Big Trees." Putting spurs to Bess, he galloped on at a rapid pace for a mile or more, when he became conscious that the sugar pines and cedars were giving place to strange trees which had loomed up before him so gradually that he was not aware the far-famed Sequoias, the giants of the forest, were all about him.
A dim, strange light filled the place. The twilight was coming fast in that far, lonely spot shaded by the close ranks of the Titanic forms. He walked Bess slowly down the shadowy corridor along the line of those straight giants, whose tapering spires seemed lost in heaven's blue.
How long it took to pass a tree! Bess and he were but toys beside them, yet he could scarcely realize their vastness till he slid off her back, and, throwing the rein over her neck, started around one, and lost Bess from view as he turned the corner and walked a full hundred feet before he had encircled the monster. How ponderous the bark, how strangely small the cones!
Mounting Bess, he rode down through the vast aisle of these monarchs of the mountains. A feeling of awe came over him. The world of Gold City and strife and jealousy and struggle, the realm of Mary Jane and Aunt Eliza, the world of petty humanity, seemed far away. He was alone with God and the eternities. Silent he stood, with bared head, and looked along the monster trunks that stretched far up, up, up, towards where the soft blue of evening twilight seemed to rest on them for support. He found himself praying—he could not help it. It was the litany of his soul rising with Nature's silent prayer: "Our Father which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name." All through he said it, to the reverent "Amen," then, putting on his hat, rode on toward the farther grove.
"Grizzly Giant," Mariposa Grove.
On he went past "Grizzly Giant," standing lone and bare, its foliage gone, its old age come—"Grizzly Giant," which was old before Christ was born; on by vigorous saplings, already rivals of the biggest pines. One time-worn veteran had succumbed to some Titanic stroke of Nature's power and lay prostrate on the ground. Decay and many generations of little denizens of the forest had hollowed its great trunk like some vast tunnel. Job, looking in, could see the light in the distance.
It was big enough for Bess and him—he was sure it was; he would try it. So, whispering lovingly to the horse, he rode into the gaping monster, rode through the dark heart of the old giant, clear to the other end and on into daylight. Enthused by his achievement, Job hurried on down the road and around the great curve, to see looming up before him "Wawona," far-famed Wawona, the portal of the silent cathedral through whose wide-spreading base and under whose towering form a coach and six can drive.
The sun was down, the shadows were fast gathering, the great trees were retreating one by one in the gloom, when Job found the little one-roomed log cabin with open door where he had planned to spend the night. Unsaddling Bess and giving her the bag of grain on the back of the saddle, hurriedly eating a lunch, and gathering some sticks for a fire in the old stone fireplace in case he needed one, throwing a drink into his mouth, Indian style, from the spring just back of the cabin, he prepared for the night. A little later, tying Bess securely to the nearest sapling, he closed the cabin door behind him, rolled down the old blankets he found there, and lay down to sleep.
How dark it was! How still the world! A feeling of intense loneliness stole over Job, and then a sense of God's nearness soothed him and he fell asleep.
It must have been after midnight when he awoke with a start, a feeling of something dreadful filling him. He listened. All was still save for Bess' occasional pawing near by. Then he heard a sound that set the blood curdling in his veins, that sent his hair up straight, and made his heart beat like an engine—from far off in the mountains came a weird, heart-breaking cry as of a lost child.
Job knew it well. It was the call of a mountain lion. Again it came, but nearer on the other side. It was voice answering voice. Bess snorted, pawed, and seemed crazed. What should he do? He trembled, hesitated; then, breathing a prayer, he hurriedly opened the cabin door, cut Bess' rope, led her in through the low portal, barred the door behind, and, soothing her with low whispers of tenderness, tied her to the further wall of the cabin, and crept back into bed. Then he lay and waited breathlessly for another cry, and thought all was well, till in a distant moan, far down the road, he heard it again.
For a moment fear almost overpowered him; then the old Psalm whispered, "He that keepeth thee will not slumber nor sleep." A sweet consciousness of the absolute safety of God's children stole over the youth; and catching, from a rift in the roof, one glimpse of the stars struggling through the tree tops, he turned over and fell asleep as peacefully as if in his bed at home.