University of Virginia Library

I.

ONE bred to the hills and the care of dumb, helpless things must in the end, whatever else befalls, come back to them. That is the comfort they give him for their care and the revenge they have of their helplessness. If this were not so Gabriel Lausanne would never have found Jean Baptiste. Babette, who was the mother of Jean Baptiste and the wife of Gabriel, understood this also, and so came to her last sickness in more comfort of mind than would have been otherwise possible; for it was understood between them that when he had buried her, Gabriel was to go to America to find Jean Baptiste.

He had been a good son to them in his youth and good to look upon: a little short of stature,—no taller, in fact, than Babette, who was a head shorter than Gabriel,—but broad in the shoulders and strong in the thighs beyond belief. But the strength of his thews and sinews had been Jean Baptiste's undoing. About the time he came to the age of a man and the fullness of his strength, he began to think too much of himself and his cleverness in breaking other people's collar-bones by pitching them over his shoulder.

The towns drew him; the hills had no power to hold. He left minding the sheep; he sought jolly companions, and went boisterously about with them from inn door to inn door. Finally the fame of his wrestling spread until there were few men in the province dared try a fall with him. From bragging he went to broiling, and at last fell into such grievous trouble that there was nothing for it but to slip away to America between the night and the morning.

Then Gabriel and Babette, who had not thought before to take stock of their years, began to understand that they were old, and at the time when they had looked to see children's children about their knees, Babette had slipped away to find the little ones who died before Jean Baptiste was born, and Gabriel was beginning his search for Jean Baptiste, the well beloved.

America is a wide land, but the places in it where men fare forth to the hills with sheep are known and limited; and when he had inquired where these were, there, because of the faith he had, went Gabriel Lausanne. He came, in the course of a year, to the shepherd world that lies within the Sierra Nevada and its outlying spurs. For it is known that the shepherds of the Sierras are strange, Frenchmen, Basques mostly, and a few Mexicans, but never an English-speaking one, from the Temblor Hills to the Minaretts.

Things went hardly with Gabriel at first, for he was new to the land and bewildered by its bigness; but once he had gotten a place to help at lambing-time his work was assured, for there was little he did not know about lambs. And finally he was given charge of a flock, and went wandering with it into the high glacier meadows, learning the haps and seasons of the hills. He got to know the trails and the landmark peaks, what meadows were free and what could be rented for a song, the trail of bear and wildcat,

the chances of snow in August, and all shepherd's lore. He knew the brands of sheep as a man knows the faces of his neighbors, and from the signs of the trails how they fared that were ahead of him, and how to prosper his own.

All this time he had not left off inquiring for Jean Baptiste, though the manner in which he should do this gave much trouble of mind to

Gabriel Lausanne. He thought it reasonable to suppose that Jean Baptiste had not kept his own name, lest the old wrong should find him out by means of it. And if it should come to his ears that inquiries were made concerning him, he might be more careful to hide himself, suspecting an enemy. In the end Gabriel had to content himself asking every man he met for news of his son, whom he loved dearly and would find.

"Jean Baptiste, your father loves you," he wrote upon the rocks; "Jean Baptiste, your father loves you," he cut painstakingly upon the blazed trunks of pines; and "Jean Baptiste!" he whispered nightly to the wide-open stars when he lay with his flocks wintering on the sunward slopes of the Little Antelope.