eastward from the sierras rises a strong red hill known as pine mountain, though the indians call it the hill of summer snow. at its foot stands a town of a hundred board houses, given over wholly to the business of mining. the noise of it goes on by day and night,—the creak of the windlasses, the growl of the stamps in the mill, the clank of the cars running down to the dump, and from the open doors of the drinking saloons, great gusts of laughter and the sound of singing. billows of smoke roll up from the tall stacks and by night are lit ruddily by the smelter fires all going at a roaring blast.
whenever the charcoal-burner's son looked down on the red smoke, the glare, and the hot breath of the furnaces, it seemed to him like an exhalation from the wickedness that went on continually in the town; though all he knew of wickedness was the word, a rumor from passers-by, and a kind of childish fear. the charcoal-burner's cabin stood on a spur of pine mountain two thousand feet above the town, and sometimes the boy went down to it on the back of the laden burros when his father carried charcoal to the furnaces. all else that he knew were the wild creatures of the mountain, the trees, the storms, the small flowering things, and away at the back of his heart a pale memory of his mother like the faint forest odor that clung to the black embers of the pine. they had lived in the town when the mother was alive and the father worked in the mines. there were not many women or children in the town at that time, but mining men jostling with rude quick ways; and the young mother was not happy.
"never let my boy grow up in such a place," she said as she lay dying; and when they had buried her in the coarse shallow soil, her husband looked for comfort up toward the hill of summer snow shining purely, clear white and quiet in the sun. it swam in the upper air above the sooty reek of the town and seemed as if it called. then he took the young child up to the mountain, built a cabin under the tamarack pines, and a pit for burning charcoal for the furnace fires.
no one could wish for a better place for a boy to grow up in than the slope of pine mountain. there was the drip of pine balm and a wind like wine, white water in the springs, and as much room for roaming as one desired. the charcoal-burner's son chose to go far, coming back with sheaves of strange bloom from the edge of snow banks on the high ridges, bright spar or peacock-painted ores, hatfuls of berries, or strings of shining trout. he played away whole mornings in glacier meadows where he heard the eagle scream; walking sometimes in a mist of cloud he came upon deer feeding, or waked them from their lair in the deep fern. on snow-shoes in winter he went over the deep drifts and spied among the pine tops on the sparrows, the grouse, and the chilly robins wintering under the green tents. the deep snow lifted him up and held him among the second stories of the trees. but that was not until he was a great lad, straight and springy as a young fir. as a little fellow he spent his days at the end of a long rope staked to a pine just out of reach of the choppers and the charcoal-pits. when he was able to go about alone, his father made him give three promises: never to follow a bear's trail nor meddle with the cubs, never to try to climb the eagle rocks after the young eagles, never to lie down nor to sleep on the sunny, south slope where the rattlesnakes frequented. after that he was free of the whole wood.
when mathew, for so the boy was called, was ten years old, he began to be of use about the charcoal-pits, to mark the trees for cutting, to sack the coals, to keep the house, and cook his father's meals. he had no companions of his own age nor wanted any, for at this time he loved the silver firs. a group of them grew in a swale below the cabin, tall and fine; the earth under them was slippery and brown with needles. where they stood close together with overlapping boughs the light among the tops was golden green, but between the naked boles it was a vapor thin and blue. these were the old trees that had wagged their tops together for three hundred years. around them stood a ring of saplings and seedlings scattered there by the parent firs, and a little apart from these was the one that mathew loved. it was slender of trunk and silvery white, the branches spread out fanwise to the outline of a perfect spire. in the spring, when the young growth covered it as with a gossamer web, it gave out a pleasant odor, and it was to him like the memory of what his mother had been. then he garlanded it with flowers and hung streamers of white clematis all heavy with bloom upon its boughs. he brought it berries in cups of bark and sweet water from the spring; always as long as he knew it, it seemed to him that the fir tree had a soul.
the first trip he had ever made on snow-shoes was to see how it fared among the drifts. that was always a great day when he could find the slender cross of its topmost bough above the snow. the fir was not very tall in those days, but the snows as far down on the slope as the charcoal-burner's cabin lay shallowly. there was a time when mathew expected to be as tall as the fir, but after a while the boy did not grow so fast and the fir kept on adding its whorl of young branches every year.
mathew told it all his thoughts. when at times there was a heaviness in his breast which was really a longing for his mother, though he did not understand it, he would part the low spreading branches and creep up to the slender trunk of the fir. then he would put his arms around it and be quiet for a long beautiful time. the tree had its own way of comforting him; the branches swept the ground and shut him in dark and close. he made a little cairn of stones under it and kept his treasures there.
often as he sat snuggled up to the heart of the tree, the boy would slip his hand over the smooth intervals between the whorls of boughs, and wonder how they knew the way to grow. all the fir trees are alike in this, that they throw out their branches from the main stem like the rays of a star, one added to another with the season's growth. they stand out stiffly from the trunk, and the shape of each new bough in the beginning and the shape of the last growing twig when they have spread out broadly with many branchlets, bending with the weight of their own needles, is the shape of a cross; and the topmost sprig that rises above all the star-built whorls is a long and slender cross, until by the springing of new branches it becomes a star. so the two forms go on running into and repeating each other, and each star is like all the stars, and every bough is another's twin. it is this trim and certain growth that sets out the fir from all the mountain trees, and gives to the young saplings a secret look as they stand straight and stiffly among the wild brambles on the hill. for the wood delights to grow abroad at all points, and one might search a summer long without finding two leaves of the oak alike, or any two trumpets of the spangled mimulus. so, as at that time he had nothing better worth studying about, mathew noticed and pondered the secret of the silver fir, and grew up with it until he was twelve years old and tall and strong for his age. by this time the charcoal-burner began to be troubled about the boy's schooling.
meantime there was rioting and noise and coming and going of strangers in the town at the foot of pine mountain, and the furnace blast went on ruddily and smokily. because of the things he heard mathew was afraid, and on rare occasions when he went down to it he sat quietly among the charcoal sacks, and would not go far away from them except when he held his father by the hand. after a time it seemed life went more quietly there, flowers began to grow in the yards of the houses, and they met children walking in the streets with books upon their arms.
"where are they going, father?" said the boy.
"to school," said the charcoal-burner.
"and may i go?" asked mathew.
"not yet, my son."
but one day his father pointed out the foundations of a new building going up in the town.
"it is a church," he said, "and when that is finished it will be a sign that there will be women here like your mother, and then you may go to school."
mathew ran and told the fir tree all about it.
"but i will never forget you, never," he cried, and he kissed the trunk. day by day, from the spur of the mountain, he watched the church building, and it was wonderful how much he could see in that clear, thin atmosphere; no other building in town interested him so much. he saw the walls go up and the roof, and the spire rise skyward with something that glittered twinkling on its top. then they painted the church white and hung a bell in the tower. mathew fancied he could hear it of sundays as he saw the people moving along like specks in the streets.
"next week," said the father, "the school begins, and it is time for you to go as i promised. i will come to see you once a month, and when the term is over you shall come back to the mountain." mathew said good-by to the fir tree, and there were tears in his eyes though he was happy. "i shall think of you very often," he said, "and wonder how you are getting along. when i come back i will tell you everything that happens. i will go to church, and i am sure i shall like that. it has a cross on top like yours, only it is yellow and shines. perhaps when i am gone i shall learn why you carry a cross, also." then he went a little timidly, holding fast by his father's hand.
there were so many people in the town that it was quite as strange and fearful to him as it would be to you who have grown up in town to be left alone in the wood. at night, when he saw the charcoal-burner's fires glowing up in the air where the bulk of the mountain melted into the dark, he would cry a little under the blankets, but after he began to learn, there was no more occasion for crying. it was to the child as though there had been a candle lighted in a dark room. on sunday he went to the church and then it was both light and music, for he heard the minister read about god in the great book and believed it all, for everything that happens in the woods is true, and people who grow up in it are best at believing. mathew thought it was all as the minister said, that there is nothing better than pleasing god. then when he lay awake at night he would try to think how it would have been with him if he had never come to this place. in his heart he began to be afraid of the time when he would have to go back to the mountain, where there was no one to tell him about this most important thing in the world, for his father never talked to him of these things. it preyed upon his mind, but if any one noticed it, they thought that he pined for his father and wished himself at home.
it drew toward midwinter, and the white cap on the hill of summer snow, which never quite melted even in the warmest weather, began to spread downward until it reached the charcoal-burner's home. there was a great stir and excitement among the children, for it had been decided to have a christmas tree in the church. every sunday now the christ-child story was told over and grew near and brighter like the christmas star. mathew had not known about it before, except that on a certain day in the year his father had bought him toys. he had supposed that it was because it was stormy and he had to be indoors. now he was wrapped up in the story of love and sacrifice, and felt his heart grow larger as he breathed it in, looking upon clear windless nights to see if he might discern the star of bethlehem rising over pine mountain and the christ-child come walking on the snow. it was not that he really expected it, but that the story was so alive in him. it is easy for those who have lived long in the high mountains to believe in beautiful things. mathew wished in his heart that he might never go away from this place. he sat in his seat in church, and all that the minister said sank deeply into his mind.
when it came time to decide about the tree, because mathew's father was a charcoal-burner and knew where the best trees grew, it was quite natural to ask him to furnish the tree for his part. mathew fairly glowed with delight, and his father was pleased, too, for he liked to have his son noticed. the saturday before christmas, which fell on tuesday that year, was the time set for going for the tree, and by that time mathew had quite settled in his mind that it should be his silver fir. he did not know how otherwise he could bring the tree to share in his new delight, nor what else he had worth giving, for he quite believed what he had been told, that it is only through giving the best beloved that one comes to the heart's desire. with all his heart mathew wished never to live in any place where he might not hear about god. so when his father was ready with the ropes and the sharpened axe, the boy led the way to the silver firs.
"why, that is a little beauty," said the charcoal-burner, "and just the right size."
they were obliged to shovel away the snow to get at it for cutting, and mathew turned away his face when the chips began to fly. the tree fell upon its side with a shuddering sigh; little beads of clear resin stood out about the scar of the axe. it seemed as if the tree wept. but how graceful and trim it looked when it stood in the church waiting for gifts! mathew hoped that it would understand.
the charcoal-burner came to church on christmas eve, the first time in many years. it makes a difference about these things when you have a son to take part in them. the church and the tree were alight with candles; to the boy it seemed like what he supposed the place of dreams might be. one large candle burned on the top of the tree and threw out pointed rays like a star; it made the charcoal-burner's son think of bethlehem. then he heard the minister talking, and it was all of a cross and a star; but mathew could only look at the tree, for he saw that it trembled, and he felt that he had betrayed it. then the choir began to sing, and the candle on top of the tree burned down quite low, and mathew saw the slender cross of the topmost bough stand up dark before it. suddenly he remembered his old puzzle about it, how the smallest twigs were divided off in each in the shape of a cross, how the boughs repeated the star form every year, and what was true of his fir was true of them all. then it must have been that there were tears in his eyes, for he could not see plainly: the pillars of the church spread upward like the shafts of the trees, and the organ playing was like the sound of the wind in their branches, and the stately star-built firs rose up like spires, taller than the church tower, each with a cross on top. the sapling which was still before him trembled more, moving its boughs as if it spoke; and the boy heard it in his heart and believed, for it spoke to him of god. then all the fear went out of his heart and he had no more dread of going back to the mountain to spend his days, for now he knew that he need never be away from the green reminder of hope and sacrifice in the star and the cross of the silver fir; and the thought broadened in his mind that he might find more in the forest than he had ever thought to find, now that he knew what to look for, since everything speaks of god in its own way and it is only a matter of understanding how.
it was very gay in the little church that christmas night, with laughter and bonbons flying about, and every child had a package of candy and an armful of gifts. the charcoal-burner had his pockets bulging full of toys, and mathew's eyes glowed like the banked fires of the charcoal-pits as they walked home in the keen, windless night.
"well, my boy," said the charcoal-burner, "i am afraid you will not be wanting to go back to the mountain with me after this."
"oh, yes, i will," said mathew happily, "for i think the mountains know quite as much of the important things as they know here in the town."
"right you are," said the charcoal-burner, as he clapped his boy's hand between both his own, "and i am pleased to think you have turned out such a sensible little fellow." but he really did not know all that was in his son's heart.
