Page:Randall Parrish - The Red Mist.djvu/328

 308 myself, and arose to my feet. I watered the animals, and then seated myself again, this time on a flat stone beside the stream. My position afforded me a clear view of the bluff opposite, and, as I idly studied its rocky outline, it somehow assumed a familiar appearance—awoke unconsciously a dormant memory. Surely I had never been here before, even in the days of my boyhood's vagrant tramping, and yet that terraced crest, with the huge rock chimney rising conspicuous at its center, revived a recollection that would not be entirely denied. I had seen it before, but from another angle—from the south; from that hillside, perhaps, where the creek headed. Why, yes; there was a spring gushing out of the rocks, and the opening of a shallow cave back of it. I was there with my father, and Jake Mocroft, the sheriff. They were hunting deer, and I had begged so to be taken along that they finally let me come. And Jake shot a deer just above the spring, and we camped there at the cave entrance; why that was fifteen years ago, and I was only nine; and the men were both dead. But I remembered—it all came back again clear and distinct—the rough trail from the spring, winding and twisting along the face of the steep hill until it finally attained the crest, and skirted that odd chimney rock, and then down to where a church stood alongside the pike, a big log