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Updated: June 6, 2025
A jay posed his deep shining blue on a cluster of scarlet sumac, and, cocking his crested head, screamed at him mockingly. The cañon's cool breath fanned him and the pine-tops sighed and sang. At first he was disheartened; but then his eyes caught a gleam of white and red under the pine, touched to movement by a low-swinging breeze.
"Mother," said Moonlight, with the spirit of her little father stirring in her breast, "I don't fear Rushing River more than I do the sighing of the wind among the pine-tops. Is not my father here, and Whitewing? And does not Bounding Bull guard our wigwams?" Brighteyes said no more.
A music soft, deep, sighing, like the murmur of an organ under the fingers of a master musician, rolled through the pine-tops as the band of campers, guides included, followed Doc into the forest. They passed the clumps of slender trees near the camp, and reached a dimly-lit green aisle.
Peace lay softly upon it, from the waters of the small stream to the east where nine canoes lay bottom up upon the pebbly shore, to the great dark wall of the forest shouldering near on three sides. To him ran little Francette, light on her moccasined feet as the wind in the tender pine-tops, her eloquent small hands outstretched and clutching at his sleeve audaciously.
It was reached by a long avenue winding through pines mingled with birches and rowan trees; and stood in a clearing where all the day and all the night the sound of the waves on the cliff answered the whispering of the wind in the pine-tops.
Two miles of this pleasant shade, fragrant with the spicy balsam of the forest, and the road began to turn to the left, across the spine of the ridge and into the deep ravine. Presently he heard the bawling of the stream somewhere through the undergrowth below him, its gurgle and clatter making merry music with the swish of the stirring pine-tops.
It was twilight when he dismounted, the fireflies thick in the oak scrub and up and down the pale roads, a crescent moon in the sky, and from somewhere the sound of wind in the pine-tops. Young Isham and the hostler took away the horses, and Rand, mounting the steps to the porch, found lounging there the inn's usual half-dozen haphazard guests.
In my kitchen and two chambers, I burned fifteen thousand weight of wood in four weeks, exclusive of charcoal for the kitchen stoves, and of pine-tops for lighting the fires. These last are as large as pineapples, which they greatly resemble in shape, and to which, indeed, they give their name; and being full of turpentine, make a wonderful blaze.
Even the melancholy plaint of sad-eyed dun doves was hushed, as they slowly swung in the swaying pine-tops; and two young lambs, neglected by the wandering flock, lay sleeping quietly, with their snowy heads pillowed on clustering violets, far from the fold, forgotten by their mothers, at the mercy of strolling dogs, watched only by the Great Shepherd.
There was a hollow moaning in the pine-tops; and by fits a gusty breeze swept the surface of the water, raising it into rough, short, white-crested ridges. These signs were pointed out by Indiana as the harbingers of a rising hurricane; and now a swift spark of light, like a falling star, glanced on the water, as if there to quench its fiery light.
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