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White stars were whirling, the ground was white, the forest was half obliterated. He shook Adan and dragged him to his feet. "We must get into the redwoods at once," he said. "We shall be buried here." Adan gasped but cinched his saddle; the boys sprang upon the now tractable mustangs and plunged into the forest below.
Scrub oaks and bay trees grew in a tangle all about it, even a few young redwoods and an occasional bronze and white madrona tree. Wild roses and field flowers crowded against its very walls, and under the trees there were iris and brown lilies, and a dense undergrowth of manzanita and hazelnut bushes, wild currant and wild lilac trees.
Gradually the beauty and grandeur of the mountains and the giant redwoods brought her peace and refreshment, putting to flight "all the old six-days story and the 6,000 jeers." Bearing the brunt of the censure in California, Susan expected Mrs. Stanton to come to her defense in letters to the newspapers.
"Natalie Ivanhoff is there in her copper coffin," said Estenega, "forgotten already." The curve of the mountain was so perfect that it seemed to reach down a long arm on either side and grasp the cliffs. The redwoods on its crown and upper slopes were a mass of rigid shadows, the points, only, sharply etched on the night sky. They might have been a wall about an undiscovered country.
An hour later they began to descend the mountain on the other side, and by dawn espied a ranch house in a valley. The white walls were pink under the first streamers of the morning. The redwoods rose like a solid black wall on the towering mountains on every side. "Ay!" exclaimed Roldan, drawing a deep sigh. "Sleep and a hot breakfast. They will be good once more."
He was on the alert at dawn next morning, and long before the sun had spurned the tops of the Coast range, his assumption of meditated treachery was confirmed. A rising wind had set the young redwoods in motion. Before long the practised eye of Captain Mesa saw an increased agitation among the feathery branches, his ear caught a slight crackling. His men were flat on the ground.
Nor was it even necessary to speak their language in order to use their labor, for the agent told me that, of the Potter Valley tribe, nine-tenths speak English; of the Pitt Rivers, four-fifths; of the Little Lakes, two-thirds; of the Redwoods, three-quarters; of the Concows and Capellos, two-thirds. The Wylackies and Ukies speak less; they have been, I believe, longer on the reservation.
It rears its tall head from a jungle of laurel, madrone, oak, and other trees; and I doubt if so many as fifty large redwoods often stand upon a single acre. I was told that an average tree would turn out about fifteen thousand feet of lumber, and thus even thirty such trees to the acre would yield nearly half a million feet. The topography of California, like its climate, has decided features.
The great redwoods, too, add to the colored-edition impression of the whole country. A redwood, as perhaps you know, is a tremendous big tree sometimes as big as twenty feet in diameter. It is exquisitely proportioned like a fluted column of noble height.
Den when it come night, de she-bird keep close onter de nest, and de he-bird go in de scrub or de redwoods or de gin'gos, nigh de clarin', maybe right on de cabin roof, and he say to hisself 'Now dem niggers done dere work, I'll gib 'em a tune ter courage 'em like. Den he jes' let hisself onter his singin'. Sometime he sing brave and bold, like he say big words like missis and de folks dat lib in de big house.
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