By and by the summer passed into autumn, and the autumn into winter, and the snowflakes began to fall.
“Halloo!” said the first one, all in a flutter, as she dropped on the Pine Tree. But he shook her off, and she fell still farther down on the ground. The Pine Tree was getting very churlish and cross lately.
However, the snow didn’t stop for all that and very soon there was a white robe over all the narrow valley. The Pine Tree had no one to talk with now. The stream had covered himself in with ice and snow, and wasn’t to be seen.
The hare had to hop around very industriously to get enough for her children to eat; and the sagebushes were always low-minded fellows and couldn’t begin to keep up a ten-minutes’ conversation.
At last there came a solitary figure across the valley, making its way straight for the Pine Tree. It was a lame mule, which had been left behind from some wagon-train. He dragged himself slowly on till he reached the tree. Now the Pine, in shaking off the snow, had shaken down some cones as well, and they lay on the snow. These the mule picked up and began to eat.
“Heigh ho!” said the tree, “I never knew those things were fit to eat before.”
“Didn’t you?” replied the mule. “Why I have lived on these things, as you call them, ever since I left the wagons. I am going back on the Oregon Trail, and I sha’n’t see you again. Accept my thanks for breakfast. Good-bye.”
And he moved off to the other end of the valley and disappeared among the rocks.
“Well!” exclaimed the Pine Tree. “That’s something, at all events.” And he shook down a number of cones on the snow. He was really happier than he had ever been before,—and with good reason, too.
After a while there appeared three people. They were a family of Indians,—a father, a mother, and a little child. They, too, went straight to the tree.