Show the old settler 0 my dear san Jua ners one of the delightful surprises of my early married life was when my wife came to my cow camp in the canyon insisting that she would help me wrangle the cattle and that the time saved by her effort should be given to the building there of a cabin which should be our first home I 1 hid my secret doubts about what she could do as an assistant but she never failed of her promse neither then nor in the hectic years ahead she could saddle a horse and ride im not only on the tame gait of pink tea horsemanship but at the cedar crash ing clip necessary to keep in speaking distance of some of my incorrigible yearnings yearlings year lings linis the dutch oven and the open fire were no riddle to her she was never the victim of helplessness we graduated from the narrow walls of my tepee tent under a pine tree to a kind of house improvised provided pro cd by stretching a pack cover from a leaning rock and from that to a tent with a leanto lean to but we had resolved to have a cabin and loves resolutions make no compromise when we got into our little cabin with cedar and pine trees all around us I 1 felt quite contented wit without hrut any more trees but she wanted another tree a home kind of tree something more than these dull trees of the wilderness a locust tree we planned a ditch but so far we had to carry all our water up the hill from the spring she felt sure however that she could keep the little tree alive with wash water and dishwater dish water and when we got the little tree in there over the impossible road it was about the size of a shovel handle and stood six feet high she had it put where it would cast its growing shade over our west window and as she nursed it and it grew we loved it as a pleasant feature of our canyon romance and the pledges we had made there in our wilderness home when we left there in the continued on page 8 the old settler 0 continued from 1 spring of 1905 to become the first settlers in what became blanding we hated most f all to part with yur our frier lly ily li 11 te locust in fact we rc resolved to move it to our new home but we had other little newcomers new comers into our home and failed to go back for the tree after ten years we took our little folks m n a visit to the cabin cabi eh r ad the dear little tr tree ee chic fought its way through dreith and hardship as if wading for as to come we told the children the story of the tree and resolved again to get it but we had more babies and did not return to the canyon for twenty years the little tree had fought successfully cess fully for life through the 20 years its top had ad diemand died and been broken down but it had cone come up again from the root somehow its destiny seemed to be wrapped i up in the romance which had given it birth and it carried cabrit d on as a part of that romance after forty years and that was in june of this year my business brought me in the evening to the crumbling walls of tile the albin we lad had built I 1 removed my hross I 1 approached the sacred ruick saw near it the stump of the old pine f from rom which my tepee had hung I 1 went fearfully and with a sense of guilt tj look for the little locust tree it was still alive into the drouth baked hill it had sent its uncompromising roots and it had little shoots two feet high animated by the unfailing fidelity of the hand which had nourished it it carried on and on I 1 kneeled there and caressed it my heart swelling big with memories the hand that had nourished it was now in the damp earth but the magic touch of that hand had imparted some sweet element of life to the little root in the rocky hillside anait and it had bad kindled in me a positive hope which gathered new strength from the contemplation of inevitable death ALBERT R LYMAN |