Virginia of Elk Creek Valley

by Mary Ellen Chase

Yet daylight had come—it was early afternoon of the next day—and she was still ready if Carver would only come. She allowed Siwash to sink his warm nose in the amber waters of the ford while she waited. It was very still up there. In fact, only Virginia’s repeated assurances that there 240 were no cattle on the hills and her own knowledge that a homesteader’s cabin was just out of sight beyond the quaking-asps on her left, made Vivian endure that stillness, broken only by the hurrying creek waters and the lazy humming of tiny, hidden insects.

To her right rose the mountain wall, dark with pine and spruce, though here and there a flaming service-berry or a hawthorn broke through the evergreens like sudden fire. The tangle of trees and shrubs seemed impenetrable, and yet Virginia had told of a trail which led from the creek not three rods from the ford—led up, up, up for five miles until it reached the Cinnamon Creek Station.

Why did not Carver come? She wished she could be as patient as Siwash who stood knee deep in the ford, hung his shaggy, homely head, and stole a nap gratefully. For the twentieth time Vivian rehearsed her speeches, the one to Carver and the other to the insulted ranger. That is, he had every cause to be insulted, though her memory of the smile with which he had received her thrust would seem to dispute his justifiable indignation. Perhaps 241 here in the mountains people were not so easily insulted. They, the mountains, were so big and generous that they made one ashamed of littleness.

Being sure of the speeches, she grew more and more impatient. Carver, waiting in Elk Creek for a stock train to load up with its living freight, was even more uneasy than she. He could not leave Donald and there was no way of letting Vivian know that he could not meet her at the ford. At last, having convinced himself that he could not help matters, he sat down on the station platform, disturbed in spirit and conscience, and hoped that Vivian had already turned back home.

But Vivian did not turn back. It grew hot by the ford, and she decided to tie Siwash in the shadow of some quaking-asps across the creek, and go up the trail herself to a shady place. Carver would see Siwash and call to her if she did not hear him come.

It was cool and shady beneath the trees that bordered the rocky trail. She would willingly have rested had not her eyes spied the red berries of 242 some kinnikinnick growing on either side of the path. Farther away in an open space she saw more and larger. They were far prettier than holly for Christmas boxes, and would be so different to her friends back East. She loved the tiny leaves and graceful trailing of the vines, which seemed hardly sturdy enough to hold the big, round, jolly-looking berries.

Virginia was right. They did grow more luxuriantly in the infrequent open places, and she climbed farther and farther up the mountain side, seeking like Hansel and Gretel for bigger berries than she had found. Sometimes she stood still and listened. The silence made a queer catch in her throat. Had it not been for her eagerness to find more and better kinnikinnick, and her knowledge that the homesteader’s cabin was very near, she would have been frightened. But Carver must be there very soon, and though she often left the trail, the sound of the creek was proof against her being lost. Her own woodsman instinct was not strong, but Virginia had told her always to trust the creek, which would ever lead one down whence she had come. 243

Once her heart almost stopped beating. Away in the top of a great spruce she heard a hammering sound. It echoed through the silent woods like great blows of an ax, and some long moments passed before Vivian could assure her frightened heart that it was only a flicker searching for his dinner.

Her box was filled with kinnikinnick and she would go back. If Carver were not at the ford, they must make the trip up the trail the next day in spite of Virginia’s plan for a ride to Lone Mountain. If necessary, she would be brave enough to explain matters, and then they would understand.

She turned to go down the mountain, when suddenly from above her came a sound of breaking underbrush as though some creature were bursting from its covert. Vivian stood motionless, too terrified to move or to scream. It was not Carver—that was certain. He would never be upon the mountain. It was far more likely to be a bear. Why not one here as well as farther up the canyon where they had caught that monster from the sight of which she had not yet recovered? Thoughts passed like flashes through her brain while that 244 awful sound of breaking twigs continued. Hundreds and hundreds of them came, crowding one another for space—thoughts of St. Helen’s, snatches of poems she had learned, memories of things which had frightened her as a child. And last of all, perhaps because without knowing it she had reached a great tree and sunk in a little heap at its foot, came the picture of a sallow youth in eye-glasses and a linen duster, who had once, ages ago, crashed through some underbrush somewhere else!