Quill's Window

by George Barr McCutcheon

"Thought you said you was going up to town, Courtney," said the old man, with a detestable grin on his wrinkled visage.

"I didn't say anything of the kind," snapped Courtney, and strode off angrily.

His stroll,—and his reflections,—took him up the old Indian trail along the bank of the river. He wanted solitude. He wanted to be where he could talk without fear of being overheard. There was much that he had to say to himself.

The rarely used path through the willows and underbrush ran along the steep bank, sometimes within a few feet of water. Once before he had walked a couple of hundred yards over this ancient, hard-packed trail of Tecumseh's people, but had been turned back by the sight of a small snake wriggling off into the long grass ahead of him. That was in the warm days of early September. There was no likelihood of serpents being abroad on this chill October morning.

Leaving the road at the cut above the ferry landing, he turned into the trail. A half hour's walk brought him to the gradually rising, rock-covered slope that led to the base of Quill's Window. On all sides were great, flat slabs of stone, some of them almost buried in the earth, others sticking their jagged points up above the brush and weeds. Back in ages dim these drab, moss-covered rocks had been sliced from the side of the towering mound by the forces that shaped the earth, to be hurled hither and thither with the calm disdain of the mighty. No human agency had blasted them from their insecure hold on the shoulders of the cliff. Uncounted centuries ago they had come bounding, crashing down from the heights, shaken loose by the convulsions of Mother Earth, tearing their way through the feeble barrier of trees to a henceforth place of security.

The trail wound in and out among these boulders, dividing at a point several hundred feet south of the steep ascent to the top of the great black mound. The main-travelled path turned in from the river at this point, to skirt the hill at its rear. A more tortuous way, traversed presumably by the fishers and hunters of the tribes, or perhaps by war parties in swift pursuit or retreat, held directly to the bank of the stream and passed along the front of the cliff.

Courtney took the latter branch. Presently he was picking his way carefully along the base of the cliff, scrambling over and between the rocks that formed a narrow ledge between the river and the sheer face of Quill's Window. He was now some fifty or sixty feet above the cold, grey water. Below him grew a line of stunted, ragged underbrush, springing from the earth-filled fissures among the boulders. Across the river stretched far away the farms and fields of the far-famed grain-belt.

He sat down upon a rock and gazed out over these fertile lands, now crowded with shocks of corn or rusty with the dead glories of summer. There were great square fields of stubble, fenced-in patches of pasture-land, small oases of woodland, houses and barns and silos as far as the eye could reach,—and always the huge red barns dwarfed the houses in which the farmers dwelt. Cattle and sheep and horses, wagons and men, all made small and insignificant in the sweep of this great and solemn panorama.

The home of Amos Vick was visible, standing half-a-mile back from the river. He looked hard and long at the house in which he had spent the first three weeks of his stay in the country. So young Cale had gone off to join the Navy, eh? Good! And Rosabel,—what of her? What was she doing over at the old Windom house that day? Could it have been she who was watching him? Looking badly, too, they said. Such a strong, pretty, wind-tanned young thing she was! How long ago was it? Not two months....He lit a cigarette and resumed his way, the shadow of a fond smile lingering in his eyes.

Rounding the curve, he came to that side of the stone hill which faced up the river. He had passed many small, shallow niches along the base of the eminence, miniature caves from which oozed what might well have been described as sweat. There were, besides, deep upright slashes in the side of the rock, higher than his head, suggesting to the imagination the vain effort of some unhappy giant to burst through the walls of his rocky prison,—some monster of a man who now lay dead in the heart of the hill. The turn took him farther away from the river.