Novel 1968 - Down The Long Hills (v5.0) Read Online Free PDF

disturbing.
    Several times he saw rabbits and tried shots at them, but the third one he saw he did not try for, since there was no way to get back on the horse after retrieving the arrow if he missed.
    When he at last found a place to camp, he was hungry and tired. Too tired to be scared, but not too tired to be cautious. The camp he made was under dead pines, below a bluff covered with them. There was only a trickle of water in the creek, and the grass was dry and brown. They found nothing to eat, and although he set some snares he had small hopes for them. It was a cold, miserable, unhappy night, and toward morning it began to rain. Nothing was in the snares, and there was nothing to do but go on.
    Big Red wanted to trot, so he gave the stallion his head and let him go. Today they stayed with the main trail, for Hardy knew that Indians will not ride in the rain unless circumstances demand it.
    The rain slanted across the gray sky like a steel mesh, and under the hoofs of Big Red the trail grew slippery, but the horse kept on untiringly. Huddled on his back, holding Betty Sue before him, Hardy lost all track of time. Finally the big horse slowed to a walk, but he plodded on. Around them the land grew rougher.
    Now the ridges were crested with trees, and along the watercourses there were some big old cottonwoods. Hardy straightened up in the saddle and peered around him. He must find shelter, and somehow get some food. Betty Sue was too quiet, and it frightened him.
    Hardy was learning to see. Back in the woods one always had to be alert, he knew, but there the range was narrower. Even when he was riding the wagon seat, the view was always somewhat obscured by the other wagons, by riders or dust. Now, riding high on Big Red, he could see further, and from hearing the mountain man talk, he had learned something about looking and seeing.
    All people look, but few really see; and they can rarely give details of any place they have passed—its appearance or what might be found there. Hardy was looking out for trouble, but now he was looking for food too, for something—anything—they could eat.
    Just before dark the rain stopped, but the sky remained overcast. They had only a brief time in which to find shelter before night came, but shelter was no longer so difficult to come by, for there were frequent deadfalls, hollows under the banks of a stream, or thick clumps of trees.
    Presently he found a huge cottonwood that had fallen, its top resting on the bank of a stream. Its boughs were still hung with dead brown leaves. Alongside it was a green slope leading down to the stream, and on this slope he staked Big Red, after watering him and rubbing him down with handfuls of grass. Betty Sue sat in a woebegone little huddle near the tree, watching him.
    Hardy crawled in under the tree and broke branches until he had shaped a hollow into which they could crawl. The broken branches he then wove in among those stretching out to the sides, to improve their shelter. He gathered the longer grass and weeds to make a mat several inches thick to cover the ground.
    Under a slab of rock that had fallen across two boulders he found a place big enough to hide Big Red, where he could lie down. Hardy tugged and sweated, getting some stones out of the sand so Red could rest easier.
    He was cold and tired, and shivered in his wet shirt, but it was Betty Sue who really troubled him. She sat so silent, asking none of her usual interminable questions, only staring with big, frightened eyes. He suddenly realized that she reminded him of a woman back in Wisconsin, a neighbor whose husband had died. She had sat still like that, talking to no one, and then one day they found her dead. Hardy gave a little shudder as he thought of this.
    Yet, he reassured himself, they had come a good way today, and every step brought them closer to pa; by now pa must be looking for them. On that one thing his faith did not waver. Pa would come, and he must care for Betty