The Mountain and the Valley Read Online Free PDF

as evening all day and the caribous came right out to the edge of the fields. Even the men went to the church and prayed.”)
    Or she’d tell her again about the time a robber came into their house at night. He thought she was alone. Her husband identified him for the sheriff the next day by a bayonet cut he’d given him in the dark. It turned out to be a man he knew. Richard could eat no supper that night; but he said justice must be done. He was that kind of man.
    Or about the two moose hunters with the gold snuffboxes. Joseph was playing in the yard when they stopped to ask directions. They poured his small hands so full of silver dollars that some spilled out on the ground. That was a hard year, but the silver dollars lay inside the clock all winter. Until Richard could find who the men were and return their money.
    But if Anna said, “Where did you learn to waltz like
that?”
she’d only smile.
    “Well, tell me about somewhere,” Anna said now. “Not about here.”
    Ellen thought for a minute. She looked as if a frightening idea had come to her. One of those secret things you are suddenly tempted to tell no one else but a child.
    “I could tell you about the places where they’ve never seen snow,” she said.
    “Never?”
    Ellen seemed to be talking to herself.
    “Or where the sea is blue as—what’s the bluest thing you can think of?—and you can always smell spices.”
    “Where did
you
see them places?” Anna said.
    Ellen hesitated. “Right here,” she said.
    “Right
here?”
    Ellen started to rise. “Hark,” she said. “Is the rain over?”
    “No,” Anna pleaded. “No. Tell me that.”
    “If I told you something,” Ellen said very softly, “would you promise not to … never?”
    “Yes. Oh, yes!”
    “Do you see that scaffold?” Ellen said. “I hid a man there once.”
    Oh, this was wonderful. “Was he a bad man?” “No, he was young.”
    “You too?”
    “Yes.”
    Ellen smoothed her apron with her hands. She said, “One day …” Anna let all the questions curl up, cosy and delicious, inside her.
    “One spring day”—Ellen spoke slowly, as if the facts she could remember, but some other part of it was hard to find again—“your grandfather and I were planting potatoes in the burntland. I came back to the house first, to kindle the fire for supper. I went inside and there was a man standing there. He said, ‘I
thought
you might come first.’ He had on a sailor’s middy.”
    “Did you screech?” Anna said.
    “No,” Ellen said. “I don’t know why I wasn’t afraid. Thewoods weren’t cleared to the river then. I couldn’t see Richard. But I wasn’t afraid. I picked up the poker we had for the pigs’ potatoes, but when he smiled, I saw he meant no harm. A sailor looks like a child when he smiles.”
    “Why?”
    “I don’t know.” Ellen spoke as if she were trying to get the story straight for herself, not for Anna. “But something keeps their eyes new, like a child’s eyes.”
    Anna didn’t understand. This wasn’t such a good story. “What did Grandfather say?”
    “I didn’t tell him. It was wrong, but he wouldn’t have understood. He’d have notified the authorities. If he’d been in the sailor’s place, he’d have given
himself
up. So what could I do? The sailor kept saying, ‘I was afraid you might be an
older
woman.’ As if one young person couldn’t think of betraying another. I’d never thought about what it was to be young, before, I was always with older people here. But I thought of it then. I felt sort of frightened. Someday my youth would be gone. I wouldn’t even notice when. So I hid him. I only meant to hide him for one night.”
    She spoke as if she were trying to justify something to herself. She’d forgotten that she’d left out the facts of the story.
    “But what did he have to hide for?” Anna said. “Did he steal?”
    “Yes.” Ellen smiled. “A peacock feather.”
    Anna giggled. This was a real story after