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The needle of his nature urged him forward, straight along a narrow valley lane that ambled between mildewed fences and their inclosed fields; between untouched walls of wild-grape, red-bud and blossoming dog-wood; and he knew that his intuition was not sending him astray.
A few more days and the blossoms were out mingling their pink and white with the green; the red-bud, the hawthorne, and the dog-wood were in bloom, checkering the hillsides. "Bessie, spring is here," said Col. Zane, as he stood in the doorway. "The air is fresh, the sun shines warm, the birds are singing; it makes me feel good."
I have already casually mentioned the fact that the tulip-tree's bloom is scarcely known to exist by even intelligent and well-informed Americans. Every one has heard of the mimosa, the dogwood, the red-bud, and the magnolia, but not of the tulip-bearing tree, with its incomparably bold, dashing, giantesque flower, once so common in the great woods of our Western and Middle States.
A piece of bark struck me in the face, and a dead leaf fluttered to the ground. Almost instantly there was another shot, and a blue wisp of smoke rose from the red-bud bushes, where Tom was. The horses whinnied, there was a rustle in the cane, and silence. Weldon bent over. "My God!" he whispered hoarsely, "he hit one. Tom hit one." I felt Polly Ann's hand on my face.
My clerical friend who brought home the fairy tale about the red-bud, or Judas-tree, might well have based his story on the American persimmon, but for the fact that this puckery little globe, so brilliant and so deceptive before frost, loses both its beauty and its astringency when slightly frozen. Then its tender flesh is suave and delicious, and old Jove might well choose it for his own.
"Schools of fishes salmon, bass, red-horse and pike swam close along the shore, catching at the bottoms of the red-bud and plum that floated on the surface of the water, which was so clear that myriads of the finny tribe could be seen darting hither and thither amidst the limpid element, turning up their silvery sides as they sped out into deeper water."
"It did not look like much of a tree to me," said he; "it looked like a dead tree. It was black and bare." "What makes you say that?" said the second son. "The tree has hundreds of beautiful red buds. This is why it is called the Red-Bud Tree." The third prince said: "Red buds, did you say? Why do you say it has red buds? It is covered with green leaves."
An observer who saw it in the early part of the last century pens this picture: "Its green banks were lined with the richest verdure. Wild flowers intermingled with the tall grass that nodded in the passing breeze. Nature seemed clothed in her bridal robe. Blossoms of the wild plum, hawthorn and red-bud, made the air redolent."
Tender greens were showing along the river and in the fields, and the purple of red-bud mingled with the white of wild plum all along the Wabash. The sunny side of the hill that sloped down to Rainbow Bottom was a mass of spring beauties, anemones, and violets; thread-like ramps rose rank to the scent among them, and round ginger leaves were thrusting their folded heads through the mold.
The Cumberlands were covered with rich undergrowth of the red and white rhododendron, the delicate laurel, the mountain ivy, the flameazalea, the spicewood, and the cane; while the white stars of the dogwood and the carmine blossoms of the red-bud, strewn across the verdant background of the forest, gleamed in the eager air of spring.
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