The valley was quite barren. Nothing grew there but a few scrubby bushes; and, to tell the truth, it was about as desolate a place as you can well imagine. Far up over it hung the great, snowy caps of the Rocky Mountains, where the clouds played hide and seek all day, and chased each other merrily across the snow. There was a little stream, too, that gathered itself up among the snows and came running down the side of the mountain; but for all that the valley was very dreary.
Once in a while there went a large grey rabbit, hopping among the sagebushes; but look as far as you could you would find no more inhabitants. Poor, solitary little valley, with not even a cottonwood down by the stream, and hardly enough grass to furnish three oxen with a meal! Poor, barren little valley lying always for half the day in the shadow of those tall cliffs—burning under the summer sun, heaped high with the winter snows—lying there year after year without a friend! Yes, it had two friends, though they could do it but little good, for they were two pine trees. The one nearest the mountain, hanging quite out of reach in a cleft of the rock, was an old, gnarled tree, which had stood there for a hundred years. The other was younger, with bright green foliage, summer and winter. It curled up the ends of its branches, as if it would like to have you understand that it was a very fine, hardy fellow, even if it wasn’t as old as its father up there in the cleft of the rock.
Now the young Pine Tree grew very lonesome at times, and was glad to talk with any persons who came along, and they were few, I can tell you. Occasionally, it would look lovingly up to the father pine, and wonder if it could make him hear what it said. It would rustle its branches and shout by the hour, but the father pine heard him only once, and then the words were so mixed with falling snow that it was really impossible to say what they meant.
So the Pine Tree was very lonesome and no wonder. “I wish I knew of what good I am,” he said to the grey rabbit one day. “I wish I knew,—I wish I knew,” and he rustled his branches until they all seemed to say, “Wish I knew—wish I knew.”
“O pshaw!” said the rabbit, “I wouldn’t concern myself much about that. Some day you’ll find out.”
“But do tell me,” persisted the Pine Tree, “of what good you think I am.”
“Well,” answered the rabbit, sitting up on her hind paws and washing her face with her front ones, in order that company shouldn’t see her unless she looked trim and tidy—“well,” said the rabbit, “I can’t exactly say myself what it is. If you don’t help one, you help another—and that’s right enough, isn’t it? As for me, I take care of my family. I hop around among the sagebushes and get their breakfast and dinner and supper. I have plenty to do, I assure you, and you must really excuse me now, for I have to be off.”
“I wish I was a hare,” muttered the Pine Tree to himself, “I think I could do some good then, for I should have a family to support, but I know I can’t now.”
Then he called across to the little stream and asked the same question of him. And the stream rippled along, and danced in the sunshine, and answered him. “I go on errands for the big mountain all day. I carried one of your cones not long ago to a point of land twenty miles off, and there now is a pine tree that looks just like you. But I must run along, I am so busy. I can’t tell you of what good you are. You must wait and see.” And the little stream danced on.
“I wish I were a stream,” thought the Pine Tree. “Anything but being tied down to this spot for years. That is unfair. The rabbit can run around, and so can the stream; but I must stand still forever. I wish I were dead.”