Dixie Martin, the Girl of Woodford's Cañon

by Grace May North

Then he chuckled as he started down the trail on the other side of the low peak. “Dixie’s the one in our family who is supposed to have ’magination,” he thought; “but this morning my head seems to be full of queer notions.”

At first he started to sing, a glad shouting kind of song without words or meaning except that he was eager, excited, and happy. But suddenly he stopped as though fearing that some wanton wind would carry his voice to the lone man who was probably then breakfasting.

Ken was following the trail that had been made by the Washoe Indians from the cañon, when they went over to Lake Tahoe to fish, but at last the boy left it and broke through the sagebrush and other tangled growths and began climbing a trailless way toward the highest mountain near Woodford’s, which rose bare, gray, grim, lonely, forbidding.

There were times in the ascent when Ken came to a sheer wall, higher than his head, and, to scale it, he took off his shoes, knotted the strings, flung them over his shoulder, and then went up, clinging to crevices with his toes and finger-tips.

It was lucky that Dixie, the little mother of them all, could not see just then, the brother she so loved, for he was often in most perilous positions, where a single slip would have sent him hurtling on the jagged rocks far below. But his desire to reach the goal of his dreams gave him strength and skill, it would seem, and soon he reached the first small plateau and there he sat, the sun at its zenith assuring him that it was noon. Taking the inevitable sandwich from his pocket, he ate it hungrily. Then he stretched out on the flat rock, conscious of strained muscles and glad of a moment’s rest. But it wasn’t long before he had leaped to his feet and rejoiced to find that, around the outjutting rocks, there was a belt of scraggly low-growing pines. To these he could cling and make greater progress. How near was he to the camp, he wondered. Suddenly he paused and listened intently.

A gunshot rang out so close to the boy that instinctively he dropped to the ground, pressing close behind a boulder. What could it mean? Was he nearer the camp than he had supposed? Had the bandit, or whoever was in hiding, seen him or heard him? This was possible, as but a moment before he had slipped, displacing some loose stones that had rattled noisily down the mountain-side.

Or, if he had caused a motion among the dwarf pines to which he was clinging, as he made the ascent, he might have been taken for a skulking coyote or a mountain-lion.

Almost breathlessly the lad waited, listening, watching, but he heard nothing and no one came. Fifteen minutes passed before he dared to go on, and even then he did not stand erect, but crouched, keeping hidden by the stunted growths about him.

This was the big adventure that his boyish heart had yearned for, and the real element of danger but enhanced his joy in it.

He was wondering how much farther he would have to go before he saw signs of a camp, when suddenly he rounded a denser and higher clump of trees and found himself looking directly into a clearing on a small plateau, which was protected on three sides, the fourth opening toward the lake. Darting back under cover of the low-growing pines, Ken peered out and beheld a rude structure that was neither cabin nor wigwam, but a shelter made of green branches. The campfire in front of it was still smoldering, proving that either the man was not far away, or that he had not long been gone. Then a terrible fear smote the heart of the lad. What if that had been the camper’s last meal on the mountain! What if he had now departed, not to return!