The Shepherd of the Hills

by Harold Bell Wright

When the three, who with her teacher loved her best, had come, Sammy told her story; repeating almost word for word what she had heard her father say to the men. When she had finished, she turned her face again to the open window. The mists were gone. The landscape lay bright in the sun. But Sammy could not see.

“It is much better, so much better, as it is, my child,” said the old scholar. “You see, dear, they would have taken him away. Nothing could have saved him. It would have been a living death behind prison walls away from you.”

“Yes, I know, Dad. I understand. It is better as it is. Now, we will go to him, please.” They led her into the other room. The floor in the corner of the cabin where the shepherd had washed it was still damp.

Through it all, Sammy kept her old friend constantly by her side. “It is easier, Dad, when you are near.” Nor would she leave the house until it was all over, save to walk a little way with her teacher.

Young Matt and his father made the coffin of rough boards, sawed at the mill; and from the country round about, the woods-people came to the funeral, or, as they called it in their simple way, the “burying.” The grave was made in a little glen not far from the house. When some of the neighbors would have brought a minister from the settlement, Sammy said, “No.” Dad would say all that was necessary. So the shepherd, standing under the big trees, talked a little in his simple kindly way, and spoke the words, “Earth to earth, dust to dust, ashes to ashes.” “As good,” declared some, “as any preacher on earth could o’ done hit;” though one or two held “it warn’t jest right to put a body in th’ ground ’thout a regular parson t’ preach th’ sermon.”

When the last word was spoken, and the neighbors had gone away over the mountains and through the woods to their homes, Aunt Mollie with her motherly arm about the girl, said, “Come, honey; you’re our girl now. As long as you stay in the hills, you shall stay with us.” And Old Matt added, “You’re the only daughter we’ve got, Sammy; and we want you a heap worse than you know.”

When Sammy told them that she was not going to the city to live, they cried in answer, “Then you shall be our girl always,” and they took her home with them to the big log house on the ridge.

For a week after that night at the Lane cabin, Pete was not seen. When at last, he did appear, it was to the shepherd on the hill, and his voice and manner alarmed Dad. But the boy’s only reply to Mr. Howitt’s question was, “Pete knows; Pete knows.” Then in his own way he told something that sent the shepherd to Young Matt, and the two followed the lad to a spot where the buzzards were flying low through the trees.

By the shreds of clothing and the weapons lying near, they knew that the horrid thing, from which as they approached, carrion birds flapped their wings in heavy flight, was all that remained of the giant, Wash Gibbs.

Many facts were brought out at the trial of the outlaws and it was made clear that Jim Lane had met his death at the hands of Wash Gibbs, just at the beginning of the attack, and that Gibbs himself had been wounded a moment later by one of the attacking posse.