Novel 1968 - Down The Long Hills (v5.0) Read Free Page A

the south. Knowing the stallion might smell water, Hardy walked in that direction, with the stallion almost leading him. And then he saw the trees.
    At first it appeared to be only a long shadow in the bottom of a shallow valley, but as they drew nearer the shadow became willows and cottonwoods, and there was the bed of a winding stream. No more than a dozen feet wide and scarcely that many inches deep, the water was cold and clear, and there was grass for Big Red and a place to hide.
    He helped Betty Sue down and led the horse to water. There at the stream’s edge his heart almost stopped. In the sand right at the water’s edge was a moccasin track.
    Filling the canteen with water without stepping off the rock, he hurried back and hid the stallion in a small clearing deep among the willows. The area was not large, but it gave the horse a bit of grazing and room to roll if he wished…and he wished.
    Having made a bed for Betty Sue, Hardy then opened another can. They were eating it when he saw something growing among the brush, something dark and about as thick as a stubby banana. Gleefully, he plucked it from the branch. “Paw-paws!” he exclaimed. “There’s pawpaws!”
    “I don’t like pawpaws,” Betty Sue said quietly.
    “I didn’t either, one time. Now I like them. You try one.”
    The fruit was almost four inches long and an inch and a half thick, greenish-yellow when he saw it close up. Searching the bushes, he found half a dozen more. Suddenly they tasted good, better than he remembered. Betty Sue ate hers quickly, then took another.
    Excited as he was at finding the pawpaws, he kept remembering that moccasin track. He was not much of a judge of the age of tracks, but this one must be fresh. The edges of the track had not crumbled the least bit, and there were no marks of insects crossing it. That track had certainly been made that day, and probably within the last hour or two.
    Though the moccasin track stayed in his mind, another thought was that he wanted a fire. There was something mighty comforting about a fire. That was what pa always said, and it must be so, because after ma died pa spent a lot of time just looking into the fire. It was then he started talking about going west.
    Not that he wasn’t doing well. Pa was a hard worker, and Hardy had heard folks talk of him, saying he was a man who would always do well. Mr. Andy had said it more than once. “You just watch that Scott Collins,” he would say; “there’s a man who is going to make tracks in the land.”
    A fire would have been a comfort now, especially for Betty Sue, but when he looked over at her she was already fast asleep on the grass, a half-eaten pawpaw in her hand. He covered her with his coat and curled up close to her, and looked up at the stars.
    Where was pa now? How long would it be before he knew what had happened to the wagons?
    It would be a month before the wagons were due. Why, he and Betty Sue might even get there before pa realized the wagons were not coming! Suddenly Hardy hoped so…no use pa to worry more. He had been hard hurt when ma died.
    Hardy had started following pa into the field when he was not more than two, toddling and falling, but watching and listening, too. By the time he was a year older he was helping drop seed potatoes, fetching and carrying for pa, and sitting under the elms with pa while he ate his noon meal. Pa used to talk to him about his work, and sometimes about his dreams too. Other times they talked about birds, and ants, and animals. Pa taught him to set snares and to stalk game, as well as to build quick shelters in the woods from any material at hand.
    As there were only the two of them, he helped his father with everything. He used to pick up the big, flat chips his father cut from logs that he was shaping into square beams with an adze and a broadaxe. The big logs would be notched every eight inches or so along the four sides, and then with the broadaxe pa would flake off the big