Sheperd Of The Hills

3

huge -pawed catamount, on some overhanging rock, would
lie in wait for fawn or doe. Or perhaps a gaunt timber wolf would sniff the trail, and with wild echoing howls call his
comrades to the chase.
Jim Lane, young then, followed that winding way from the distant river, and from nobody knows where beyond,
when he came to build his lonely hunter's shack by the spring on the southern slope of Dewey. And later, when
the shack in the timber was replaced by a more substantial settler's cabin , Jim led Sammy's mother along the same old way. Then came the giant Grant Matthews with Aunt Mol
lie and their little family. They followed the path three miles farther and built their home where the trail climbs
over the ridge.
When Grant Matthews, Jr. , was eighteen, his father mortgaged the hard -won homestead to purchase the sheep ranch in Mutton Hollow . Then it was that another path
was made, branching off in the belt of timber from the Old
Trail and following the spur down into the little valley where the corral was snugly sheltered from the winter winds.
So the Lane cabin , the Matthews homestead, and the
sheep ranch in Mutton Hollow were all connected by well marked paths; but it is the trail that leads from Sammy Lane's home to the big log house where young Matthews lives, that is, nobody knows, how old .