Page:Letters from an Oregon Ranch.djvu/161

 would you like to go up on Mount Nebo?” She was on her feet in an instant, eyes dancing, plumy tail waving, as she took the basket in her white teeth and went proudly cavorting up the hillside. After reaching the delectable land and delivering the basket reluctantly, she hurried away to inspect various surrounding mole-hills and gopher-hills, entertaining, perhaps, a secret hope of scaring up a “Chiny,” all of which was so wildly exciting that she had frequently to dash back and poke her little pointed face up in my sunbonnet, as much as to say, “Isn’t this a high old time that we are having?”

The berries were plentiful, though very small. They lie so close to the ground that Bert always speaks of digging them. The filling of my basket was a work of time; when it was accomplished, that hillside was as hot as a fiery furnace. Gasping for breath, I hurried to the shade of a mighty fir,—one that Tom calls the guardian of the ranch, as it stands not far from the summit of Mount Nebo. It was deliciously cool there, and as it seemed an agreeable place in which to perform a disagreeable task, I poured the berries out on the grass and began the tedious process of stemming them, under the watchful supervision of the gray huntress, who, wearying of the pursuit of the ever-vanishing “Chiny,” had come up and thrown herself down beside me.

It was glorious away up there, high above the work and worry of the world. Before me was that solemn