Eben Holden: A Tale of the North Country

  Chapter 6

  The lone pine stood in Brower's pasture, just clear of the woods. Whenthe sun rose, one could see its taper shadow stretching away to thefoot of Woody Ledge, and at sunset it lay like a fallen mast athwartthe cow-paths, its long top arm a flying pennant on the side of Bowman'sHill. In summer this bar of shadow moved like a clock-hand on the greendial of the pasture, and the help could tell the time by the slantof it. Lone Pine had a mighty girth at the bottom, and its bare bodytapered into the sky as straight as an arrow. Uncle Eb used to say thatits one long, naked branch that swung and creaked near the top of it,like a sign of hospitality on the highway of the birds, was two hundredfeet above ground. There were a few stubs here and there upon itsshaft--the roost of crows and owls and hen-hawks. It must have passedfor a low resort in the feathered kingdom because it was only therobbers of the sky that halted on Lone Pine.

  This towering shaft of dead timber commemorated the ancient forestthrough which the northern Yankees cut their trails in the beginning ofthe century. They were a tall, big fisted, brawny lot of men who cameacross the Adirondacks from Vermont, and began to break the green canopythat for ages had covered the valley of the St Lawrence. Generally theydrove a cow with them, and such game as they could kill on the journeysupplemented their diet of 'pudding and milk'. Some settled where thewagon broke or where they had buried a member of the family, and therethey cleared the forests that once covered the smooth acres of today.Gradually the rough surface of the trail grew smoother until it becameParadise Road--the well-worn thoroughfare of the stagecoach with its'inns and outs', as the drivers used to say--the inns where the 'menfolks' sat in the firelight of the blazing logs after supper andtold tales of adventure until bedtime, while the women sat with theirknitting in the parlour, and the young men wrestled in the stableyard.The men of middle age had stooped and massive shoulders, anddeep-furrowed brows: Tell one of them he was growing old and he mightanswer you by holding his whip in front of him and leaping over itbetween his hands.

  There was a little clearing around that big pine tree when David Browersettled in the valley. Its shadows shifting in the light of sun andmoon, like the arm of a compass, swept the spreading acres of his farm,and he built his house some forty rods from the foot of it on higherground. David was the oldest of thirteen children. His father had diedthe year before he came to St Lawrence county, leaving him nothing butheavy responsibilities. Fortunately, his great strength and his kindlynature were equal to the burden. Mother and children were landed safelyin their new home on Bowman's Hill the day that David was eighteen. Ihave heard the old folks of that country tell what a splendid figure ofa man he was those days--six feet one in his stockings and broad at theshoulder. His eyes were grey and set under heavy brows. I have neverforgotten the big man that laid hold of me and the broad clean-shavenserious face, that looked into mine the day I came to Paradise Valley.As I write I can see plainly his dimpled chin, his large nose, his firmmouth that was the key to his character. 'Open or shet,' I have heardthe old folks say, 'it showed he was no fool.'

  After two years David took a wife and settled in Paradise Valley. Heprospered in a small way considered handsome thereabouts. In a few yearshe had cleared the rich acres of his farm to the sugar bush that was thenorth vestibule of the big forest; he had seen the clearing widen untilhe could discern the bare summits of the distant hills, and, far ashe could see, were the neat white houses of the settlers. Children hadcome, three of them--the eldest a son who had left home and died in afar country long before we came to Paradise Valley--the youngest a baby.

  I could not have enjoyed my new home more if I had been born in it. Ihad much need of a mother's tenderness, no doubt, for I remember withwhat a sense of peace and comfort I lay on the lap of Elizabeth Brower,that first evening, and heard her singing as she rocked. The littledaughter stood at her knees, looking down at me and patting my bare toesor reaching over to feel my face.

  'God sent him to us--didn't he, mother?' said she.

  'Maybe,' Mrs Brower answered, 'we'll be good to him, anyway.'

  Then that old query came into my mind. I asked them if it was heavenwhere we were.

  'No,' they answered.

  ''Tain't anywhere near here, is it?' I went on.

  Then she told me about the gate of death, and began sowing in me theseed of God's truth--as I know now the seed of many harvests. I sleptwith Uncle Eb in the garret, that night, and for long after we came tothe Brower's. He continued to get better, and was shortly able to givehis hand to the work of the farm.

  There was room for all of us in that ample wilderness of hisimagination, and the cry of the swift woke its echoes every evening fora time. Bears and panthers prowled in the deep thickets, but the swiftstook a firmer grip on us, being bolder and more terrible. Uncle Ebbecame a great favourite in the family, and David Brower came to knowsoon that he was 'a good man to work' and could be trusted 'to lookafter things'. We had not been there long when I heard Elizabeth speakof Nehemiah--her lost son--and his name was often on the lips of others.He was a boy of sixteen when he went away, and I learned no more of himuntil long afterwards.

  A month or more after we came to Faraway, I remember we went 'cross lotsin a big box wagon to the orchard on the hill and gathered apples thatfell in a shower when Uncle Eb went up to shake them down. Then cane theraw days of late October, when the crows went flying southward beforethe wind--a noisy pirate fleet that filled the sky at times--and when weall put on our mittens and went down the winding cow-paths to the groveof butternuts in the pasture. The great roof of the wilderness hadturned red and faded into yellow. Soon its rafters began to showthrough, and then, in a day or two, they were all bare but for somepatches of evergreen. Great, golden drifts of foliage lay higher thana man's head in the timber land about the clearing. We had our best funthen, playing 'I spy' in the groves.

  In that fragrant deep of leaves one might lie undiscovered a long time.He could hear roaring like that of water at every move of the finder,wallowing nearer and nearer possibly, in his search. Old Fred camegenerally rooting his way to us in the deep drift with unerringaccuracy.

  And shortly winter came out of the north and, of a night, after rappingat the windows and howling in the chimney and roaring in the big woods,took possession of the earth. That was a time when hard cider flowedfreely and recollection found a ready tongue among the older folk, andthe young enjoyed many diversions, including measles and whooping cough.